Progress of towns.
The progress of towns in several continental countries, from a condition bordering upon servitude to wealth and liberty, has more than once attracted our attention in other parts of the present work. Their growth in England, both from general causes and imitative policy, was very similar and nearly coincident. Under the Anglo-Saxon line of sovereigns we scarcely can discover in our scanty records the condition of their inhabitants, except retrospectively from the great survey of Domesday Book, which displays the state of England under Edward the Confessor. Some attention to commerce had been shown by Alfred and Athelstan; and a merchant who had made three voyages beyond sea wasraised by law of the latter monarch to the dignity of a Thane.[q]This privilege was not perhaps often claimed; but the burgesses of towns were already a distinct class from the ceorls or rustics, and, though hardly free according to our estimation, seem to have laid the foundation of more extensive immunities. It is probable, at least, that the English towns had made full as great advances towards emancipation as those of France. At the Conquest we find the burgesses or inhabitants of towns living under the superiority or protection of the king, or of some other lord, to whom they paid annual rents, and determinate dues or customs. Sometimes they belonged to different lords, and sometimes the same burgess paid customs to one master, while he was under the jurisdiction of another. They frequently enjoyed special privileges as to inheritance; and in two or three instances they seem to have possessed common property, belonging to a sort of guild or corporation, and in some instances, perhaps, had a municipal administration by magistrates of their own choice.[r]Besides the regularpayments, which were in general not heavy, they were liable to tallages at the discretion of their lords. This burthen continued for two centuries, with no limitation, except that the barons were latterly forced to ask permission of the king before they set a tallage on their tenants, which was commonly done when he imposed one upon his own.[s]Still the towns became considerably richer; for the profits of their traffic were undiminished by competition, and the consciousness that they could not be individually despoiled of their possessions, like the villeins of the country around, inspired an industry and perseverance which all the rapacity of Norman kings and barons was unable to daunt or overcome.
Towns let in fee-farm.
One of the earliest and most important changes in the condition of the burgesses was the conversion of their individual tributes into a perpetual rent from the whole borough. The town was then said to be affirmed, or let in fee-farm, to the burgesses and their successors for ever.[t]Previously to such a grant the lord held the town in his demesne, and was the legal proprietor of the soil and tenements; though I by no means apprehend that the burgesses were destitute of a certain estate in their possessions. But of a town in fee-farm he only kept the superiority and the inheritance of the annual rent, which he might recover by distress.[u]The burgesses held their lands by burgage-tenure, nearly analogous to, or rather a species of, free socage.[x]Perhaps before the grant they might correspond to modern copyholders. It is of some importance to observe that the lord, by such a grant of the town in fee-farm, whatever we may think of its previous condition, divested himself of his property,or lucrative dominion over the soil, in return for the perpetual rent; so that tallages subsequently set at his own discretion upon the inhabitants, however common, can hardly be considered as a just exercise of the rights of proprietorship.
Charters of incorporation.
Under such a system of arbitrary taxation, however, it was evident to the most selfish tyrant that the wealth of his burgesses was his wealth, and their prosperity his interest; much more were liberal and sagacious monarchs, like Henry II., inclined to encourage them by privileges. From the time of William Rufus there was no reign in which charters were not granted to different towns of exemption from tolls on rivers and at markets, those lighter manacles of feudal tyranny; or of commercial franchises; or of immunity from the ordinary jurisdictions; or, lastly, of internal self-regulation. Thus the original charter of Henry I. to the city of London[y]concedes to the citizens, in addition to valuable commercial and fiscal immunities, the right of choosing their own sheriff and justice, to the exclusion of every foreign jurisdiction.[z]These grants, however, were not in general so extensive till the reign of John.[a]Before that time the interior arrangement of towns had received a new organization. In the Saxon period we find voluntary associations, sometimes religious, sometimes secular; in some cases for mutual defence against injury, in others for mutual relief inpoverty. These were called guilds, from the Saxon verbgildan, to pay or contribute, and exhibited the natural, if not the legal, character of corporations.[b]At the time of the Conquest, as has been mentioned above, such voluntary incorporations of the burgesses possessed in some towns either landed property of their own, or rights of superiority over that of others. An internal elective government seems to have been required for the administration of a common revenue, and of other business incident to their association.[c]They became more numerous and more peculiarly commercial after that era, as well from the increase of trade as through imitation of similar fraternities existing in many towns of France. The spirit of monopoly gave strength to those institutions, each class of traders forming itself into a body, in order to exclude competition. Thus were established the companies in corporate towns, that of the Weavers in London being perhaps the earliest;[d]and these were successivelyconsolidated and sanctioned by charters from the crown. In towns not large enough to admit of distinct companies, one merchant guild comprehended the traders in general, or the chief of them; and this, from the reign of Henry II. downwards, became the subject of incorporating charters. The management of their internal concerns, previously to any incorporation, fell naturally enough into a sort of oligarchy, which the tenor of the charter generally preserved. Though the immunities might be very extensive, the powers were more or less restrained to a small number. Except in a few places, the right of choosing magistrates was first given by king John; and certainly must rather be ascribed to his poverty than to any enlarged policy, of which he was utterly incapable.[e]
Prosperity of English towns.
London.
From the middle of the twelfth century to that of the thirteenth the traders of England became more and more prosperous. The towns on the southern coast exported tin and other metals in exchange for the wines of France; those on the eastern sent corn to Norway—the Cinque Ports bartered wool against the stuffs of Flanders.[f]Though bearing no comparison with the cities of Italy or the Empire, they increased sufficiently to acquire importance at home. That vigorous prerogative of the Norman monarchs, which kept down the feudal aristocracy, compensated for whatever inferiority there might be in the population and defensible strength of the English towns, compared with those on the continent. They had to fear no petty oppressors, no local hostility; and if they could satisfy the rapacity of the crown, were secure from all other grievances. London, far above the rest, our ancient and noble capital, might, even in those early times, be justly termed a member of the political system. This great city, so admirably situated, was rich and populous long before the Conquest. Bede, at the beginning of the eighth century, speaks of London as a great market, which traders frequented by land and sea.[g]It paid 15,000l.out of 82,000l., raised by Canute upon the kingdom.[h]If we believe Roger Hoveden, the citizensof London, on the death of Ethelred II., joined with part of the nobility in raising Edmund Ironside to the throne.[i]Harold I., according to better authority, the Saxon Chronicle and William of Malmsbury, was elected by their concurrence.[k]Descending to later history, we find them active in the civil war of Stephen and Matilda. The famous bishop of Winchester tells the Londoners that they are almost accounted as noblemen on account of the greatness of their city; into the community of which it appears that some barons had been received.[m]Indeed, the citizens themselves, or at least the principal of them, were called barons. It was certainly by far the greatest city in England. There have been different estimates of its population, some of which are extravagant; but I think it could hardly have contained less than thirty or forty thousand souls within its walls; and the suburbs were very populous.[n]These numbers, theenjoyment of privileges, and the consciousness of strength, infused a free and even a mutinous spirit into their conduct.[o]The Londoners were always on the barons' side in their contests with the crown. They bore a part in deposing William Longchamp, the chancellor and justiciary of Richard I.[p]They were distinguished in the great struggle for Magna Charta; the privileges of their city are expressly confirmed in it; and the mayor of London was one of the twenty-five barons to whom the maintenance of its provisions was delegated. In the subsequent reign the citizens of London were regarded with much dislike and jealousy by the court, and sometimes suffered pretty severely at its hands, especially after the battle of Evesham.[q]
Notwithstanding the influence of London in these seasons of disturbance, we do not perceive that it was distinguished from the most insignificant town by greater participation in national councils. Rich, powerful, honourable, and high-spirited as its citizens had become,it was very long before they found a regular place in parliament. The prerogative of imposing tallages at pleasure, unsparingly exercised by Henry III. even over London,[r]left the crown no inducement to summon the inhabitants of cities and boroughs. As these indeed were daily growing more considerable, they were certain, in a monarchy so limited as that of England became in the thirteenth century, of attaining, sooner or later, this eminent privilege. Although therefore the object of Simon de Montfort in calling them to his parliament after the battle of Lewes was merely to strengthen his own faction, which prevailed among the commonalty, yet, their permanent admission into the legislature may be ascribed to a more general cause. For otherwise it is not easy to see why the innovation of an usurper should have been drawn into precedent, though it might perhaps accelerate what the course of affairs was gradually preparing.
First summoning of towns to parliament, in 49 H. III.
It is well known that the earliest writs of summons to cities and boroughs, of which we can prove the existence, are those of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, bearing date 12th of December, 1264, in the forty-ninth year of Henry III.[s]After a long controversy almost all judicious inquirers seem to have acquiesced in admitting this origin of popular representation.[t]The argument may be veryconcisely stated. We find from innumerable records that the king imposed tallages upon his demesne towns at discretion.[u]No public instrument previous to the forty-ninth of Henry III. names the citizens and burgesses as constituent parts of parliament; though prelates, barons, knights, and sometimes freeholders, are enumerated;[x]while, since the undoubted admission of the commons, they are almost invariably mentioned. No historian speaks of representatives appearing for the people, or uses the word citizen or burgess in describing those present in parliament. Such convincing, though negative, evidence is not to be invalidated by some general and ambiguous phrases, whether in writs and records or in historians.[y]Those monkish annalists are poor authorities upon any point where their language is to be delicately measured. But it is hardly possible that, writing circumstantially, as Roger de Hoveden and Matthew Paris sometimes did, concerning proceedings in parliament, they could have failed to mention the commons in unequivocal expressions, if any representatives from that order had actually formed a part of the assembly.
Authorities in favour of an earlier date. St. Albans.
Two authorities, however, which had been supposed to prove a greater antiquity than we have assigned to the representation of the commons, are deserving of particular consideration; the cases of St. Albans and Barnstaple. The burgesses of St. Albans complained to the council in the eighth year of Edward II., that, although they held of the king in capite, and ought to attend his parliaments whenever they are summoned, by two of their number, instead of all other services, as had been their custom in all past times, which services the said burgesses andtheir predecessors had performed as well in the time of the late king Edward and his ancestors as in that of the present king until the parliament now sitting, the names of their deputies having been constantly enrolled in chancery, yet the sheriff of Hertfordshire, at the instigation of the abbot of St. Albans, had neglected to cause an election and return to be made; and prayed remedy. To this petition it was answered, "Let the rolls of chancery be examined, that it may appear whether the said burgesses were accustomed to come to parliament, or not, in the time of the king's ancestors; and let right be done to them, vocatis evocandis, si necesse fuerit." I do not translate these words, concerning the sense of which there has been some dispute, though not, apparently, very material to the principal subject.[z]
This is, in my opinion, by far the most plausible testimony for the early representation of boroughs. The burgesses of St. Albans claim a prescriptive right from the usage of all past times, and more especially those of the late Edward and his ancestors. Could this be alleged, it has been said, of a privilege at the utmost of fifty years' standing, once granted by an usurper, in the days of the late king's father, and afterwards discontinued till about twenty years before the date of their petition, according to those who refer the regular appearance of the commons in parliament to the twenty-third of Edward I.? Brady, who obviously felt the strength of this authority, has shown little of his usual ardour and acuteness in repelling it. It was observed, however, by Madox, that the petition of St. Albans contains two very singular allegations: it asserts that the town was part of the king's demesne, whereas it had invariably belonged to the adjoining abbey; and that its burgesses held by the tenure of attending parliament, instead of all other services, contrary to all analogy, and without parallel in the condition of any tenant in capite throughout the kingdom. "It is no wonder, therefore," says Hume, "that a petition which advances two falsehoods should contain one historical mistake, which indeed amounts only to an inaccurate expression." But it must be confessed that we cannot so easily set aside thewhole authority of this record. For whatever assurance the people of St. Albans might show in asserting what was untrue, the king's council must have been aware how recently the deputies of any towns had been admitted into parliament. If the lawful birth of the House of Commons were in 1295, as is maintained by Brady and his disciples, is it conceivable that, in 1315, the council would have received a petition, claiming the elective franchise by prescription, and have referred to the rolls of chancery to inquire whether this had been used in the days of the king's progenitors? I confess that I see no answer which can easily be given to this objection by such as adopt thelatestepoch of borough representation, namely, the parliament of 23 E. I. But they are by no means equally conclusive against the supposition that the communities of cities and towns, having been first introduced into the legislature during Leicester's usurpation, in the forty-ninth year of Henry III., were summoned, not perhaps uniformly, but without any long intermission, to succeeding parliaments. There is a strong presumption, from the language of a contemporary historian, that they sat in the parliament of 1269, four years after that convened by Leicester.[a]It is more unequivocally stated by another annalist that they were present in the first parliament of Edward I. held in 1271.[b]Nor does a similar inference want some degree of support from the preambles of the statute of Marlebridge in 51 H. III., of Westminster I. in the third, and of Gloucester in the sixth, year of Edward I.[c]And the writs are extantwhich summon every city, borough, and market town to send two deputies to a council in the eleventh year of his reign. I call this a council, for it undoubtedly was not a parliament. The sheriffs were directed to summon personally all who held more than twenty pounds a year of the crown, as well as four knights for each county invested with full powers to act for the commons thereof. The knights and burgesses thus chosen, as well as the clergy within the province of Canterbury, met at Northampton; those within the province of York, at that city. And neither assembly was opened by the king.[d]This anomalous convention was nevertheless one means of establishing the representative system, and, to an inquirer free from technical prejudice, is little less important than a regular parliament. Nor have we long to look even for this. In the same year, about eight months after the councils at Northampton and York, writs were issued summoning to a parliament at Shrewsbury two citizens from London, and as many from each of twenty other considerable towns.[e]It is a slight cavilto object that these were not directed as usual to the sheriff of each county, but to the magistrates of each place. Though a very imperfect, this was a regular and unequivocal representation of the commons in parliament. But their attendance seems to have intermitted from this time to the twenty-third year of Edward's reign.[f]
Barnstaple.
Those to whom the petition of St. Albans is not satisfactory will hardly yield their conviction to that of Barnstaple. This town set forth in the eighteenth of Edward III. that, among other franchises granted to them by a charter of Athelstan, they had ever since exercised the right of sending two burgesses to parliament. The said charter, indeed, was unfortunately mislaid; and the prayer of their petition was to obtain one of the like import in its stead. Barnstaple, it must be observed, was a town belonging to Lord Audley, and had actually returned members ever since the twenty-third of Edward I. Upon an inquisition directed by the king to be made into the truth of these allegations, it was found that "the burgesses of the said town were wont to send two burgesses to parliament for the commonalty of the borough;" but nothing appeared as to the pretended charter of Athelstan, or the liberties which it was alleged to contain. The burgesses, dissatisfied with this inquest, prevailed that another should be taken, which certainly answered better their wishes. The second jury found that Barnstaple was a free borough from time immemorial; that the burgesses had enjoyed under a charter of Athelstan, which had been casually lost, certain franchises by them enumerated, and particularly that they should send two burgesses to parliament; and that it would not be to the king's prejudiceif he should grant them a fresh charter in terms equally ample with that of his predecessor Athelstan. But the following year we have another writ and another inquest; the former reciting that the second return had been unduly and fraudulently made; and the latter expressly contradicting the previous inquest in many points, and especially finding no proof of Athelstan's supposed charter. Comparing the various parts of this business, we shall probably be induced to agree with Willis, that it was but an attempt of the inhabitants of Barnstaple to withdraw themselves from the jurisdiction of their lord. For the right of returning burgesses, though it is the main point of our inquiries, was by no means the most prominent part of their petition, which rather went to establish some civil privileges of devising their tenements and electing their own mayor. The first and fairest return finds only that they were accustomed to send members to parliament, which an usage of fifty years (from 23 E. I. to 18 E. III.) was fully sufficient to establish, without searching into more remote antiquity.[g]
It has, however, probably occurred to the reader of these two cases, St. Albans and Barnstaple, that the representation of the commons in parliament was not treated as a novelty, even in times little posterior to those in which we have been supposing it to have originated. In this consists, I think, the sole strength of the opposite argument. An act in the fifth year of Richard II. declares that, if any sheriff shall leave out of his returns any cities or boroughs which be bound and of old times were wont to come to the parliament, he shall be punished as was accustomed to be done in the like case in time past.[h]In the memorable assertion of legislative right by the commons in the second of Henry V. (which will be quoted hereafter) they affirm that "the commune of the land is,and ever has been, a member of parliament."[i]And the consenting suffrage of our older law-books must be placed in the same scale. The first gainsayers, I think, were Camden and Sir Henry Spelman, who, upon probing the antiquities ofour constitution somewhat more exactly than their predecessors, declared that they could find no signs of the commons in parliament till the forty-ninth of Henry III. Prynne, some years afterwards, with much vigour and learning, maintained the same argument, and Brady completed the victory. But the current doctrine of Westminster Hall, and still more of the two chambers of parliament, was certainly much against these antiquaries; and it passed at one time for a surrender of popular principles, and almost a breach of privilege, to dispute the lineal descent of the House of Commons from the witenagemot.[k]
The true ground of these pretensions to antiquity was a very well-founded persuasion that no other argument would be so conclusive to ordinary minds, or cut short so effectually all encroachments of the prerogative. The populace of every country, but none so much as the English, easily grasp the notion of right, meaning thereby something positive and definite; while the maxims of expediency or theoretical reasoning pass slightly over their minds. Happy indeed for England that it is so! But we have here to do with the fact alone. And it may be observed that several pious frauds were practised to exalt the antiquity of our constitutional liberties. These began, perhaps, very early, when the imaginary laws of Edward the Confessor were so earnestly demanded. They were carried further under Edward I. and his successor, when the fable of privilegesgranted by the Conqueror to the men of Kent was devised; when Andrew Horn filled his Mirrour of Justices with fictitious tales of Alfred; and, above all, when the "Method of holding parliaments in the time of Ethelred" was fabricated, about the end of Richard II.'s reign; an imposture which was not too gross to deceive Sir Edward Coke.[m]
Causes of summoning deputies from boroughs.
There is no great difficulty in answering the question why the deputies of boroughs were finally and permanently ingrafted upon parliament by Edward I.[n]The government was becoming constantly more attentive to the wealth that commerce brought into the kingdom, and the towns were becoming more flourishing and more independent. But chiefly there was a much stronger spirit of general liberty and a greater discontent at violent acts of prerogative from the era of Magna Charta; after which authentic recognition of free principles many acts which had seemed before but the regular exercise of authority were looked upon as infringements of the subject's right. Among these the custom of setting tallages at discretion would naturally appear the most intolerable; and men were unwilling to remember that the burgesses who paid them were indebted for the rest of their possessions to the bounty of the crown. In Edward I.'s reign, even before the great act of Confirmation of the Charters had rendered arbitrary impositions absolutely unconstitutional, they might perhaps excite louder murmurs than a discreet administration would risk. Though the necessities of the king, therefore, and his imperious temper often led him to this course,[o]it was amore prudent counsel to try the willingness of his people before he forced their reluctance. And the success of his innovation rendered it worth repetition. Whether it were from the complacency of the commons at being thus admitted among the peers of the realm, or from a persuasion that the king would take their money if they refused it, or from inability to withstand the plausible reasons of his ministers, or from the private influence to which the leaders of every popular assembly have been accessible, much more was granted in subsidies after the representation of the towns commenced than had ever been extorted in tallages.
To grant money was, therefore, the main object of their meeting; and if the exigencies of the administration could have been relieved without subsidies, the citizens and burgesses might still have sat at home and obeyed the laws which a council of prelates and barons enacted for their government. But it is a difficult question whether the king and the peers designed to make room for them, as it were, in legislation; and whether the power of the purse drew after it immediately, of only by degrees, those indispensable rights of consenting to laws which they now possess. There are no sufficient means of solving this doubt during the reign of Edward I. The writ in 22 E. I. directs two knights to be chosen cum plenâ potestate pro se et totâ communitate comitatûs prædicti ad consulendum et consentiendum pro se et communitate illâ, his quæ comites, barones, et proceres prædicti concorditer ordinaverint in præmissis. That of the next year runs, ad faciendum tunc quod de communi consilio ordinabitur in præmissis. The same words are inserted in the writ of 26 E. I. In that of 28 E. I. the knights are directed to be sent cum plenâ potestate audiendi et faciendi quæ ibidem ordinari contigerint pro communi commodo. Several others of the same reign have the words ad faciendum. The difficulty is to pronounce whether this term is to be interpreted in the sense ofperformingor ofenacting; whether the representatives of the commons were merely to learn from the lords what was to be done, or to bear their part in advising upon it. The earliest writ, that of 22 E. I., certainly implies the latter; and I do not know that any of the rest are conclusive to the contrary.In the reign of Edward II. the words ad consentiendum alone, or ad faciendum et consentiendum, begin; and from that of Edward III. this form has been constantly used.[p]It must still, however, be highly questionable whether the commons, who had so recently taken their place in parliament, gave anything more than a constructive assent to the laws enacted during this reign. They are not even named in the preamble of any statute till the last year of Edward I. Upon more than one occasion the sheriffs were directed to return the same members who had sat in the last parliament, unless prevented by death or infirmity.[q]
At what time parliament was divided into two houses.
It has been a very prevailing opinion that parliament was not divided into two houses at the first admission of the commons. If by this is only meant that the commons did not occupy a separate chamber till some time in the reign of Edward III., the proposition, true or false, will be of little importance. They may have sat at the bottom of Westminster Hall, while the lords occupied the upper end. But that they were ever intermingled in voting appears inconsistent with likelihood and authority. The usual object of calling a parliament was to impose taxes; and these for many years after the introduction of the commons were laid in different proportions upon the three estates of the realm. Thus in the 23 E. I. the earls, barons, and knights gave the king an eleventh, the clergy a tenth; while he obtained a seventh from the citizens and burgesses; in the twenty-fourth of the same king the two former of these orders gave a twelfth, the last an eighth; in the thirty-third year a thirtieth was the grant of the barons and knights and of the clergy, a twentieth of the cities and towns; in the first of Edward II. the counties paid a twentieth, the towns a fifteenth; in the sixth of Edward III. the rates were a fifteenth and a tenth.[r]These distinct grants imply distinct grantors; for it is not to be imagined that the commons intermeddled inthose affecting the lords, or the lords in those of the commons. In fact, however, there is abundant proof of their separate existence long before the seventeenth of Edward III., which is the epoch assigned by Carte,[s]or even the sixth of that king, which has been chosen by some other writers. Thus the commons sat at Acton Burnell in the eleventh of Edward I., while the upper house was at Shrewsbury. In the eighth of Edward II. "the commons of England complain to the king and his council, &c."[t]These must surely have been the commons assembled in parliament, for who else could thus have entitled themselves? In the nineteenth of the same king we find several petitions, evidently proceeding from the body of the commons in parliament, and complaining of public grievances.[u]The roll of 1 E. III., though mutilated, is conclusive to show that separate petitions were then presented by the commons, according to the regular usage of subsequent times.[x]And indeed the preamble of 1 E. III., stat. 2, is apparently capable of no other inference.
As the knights of shires correspond to the lower nobility of other feudal countries, we have less cause to be surprised that they belonged originally to the same branch of parliament as the barons, than at their subsequent intermixture with men so inferior in station as the citizens and burgesses. It is by no means easy to define the point of time when this distribution was settled; but I think it may be inferred from the rolls of parliament that the houses were divided as they are at present in the eighth, ninth, and nineteenth years of Edward II.[y]This appears, however, beyond doubt in the first of Edward III.[z]Yet in the sixth of the same prince, though the knights and burgesses are expressly mentioned to have consulted together, the former taxed themselves in a smaller rate of subsidy than the latter.[a]
The proper business of the House of Commons was to petition for redress of grievances, as much as to provide for the necessities of the crown. In the prudent fiction of English law no wrong is supposed to proceed fromthe source of right. The throne is fixed upon a pinnacle, which perpetual beams of truth and justice irradiate, though corruption and partiality may occupy the middle region and cast their chill shade upon all below. In his high court of parliament a king of England was to learn where injustice had been unpunished and where right had been delayed. The common courts of law, if they were sufficiently honest, were not sufficiently strong, to redress the subject's injuries where the officers of the crown or the nobles interfered. To parliament he looked as the great remedial court for relief of private as well as public grievances. For this cause it was ordained in the fifth of Edward II. that the king should hold a parliament once, or if necessary, twice every year; "that the pleas which have been thus delayed, and those where the justices have differed, may be brought to a close."[b]And a short act of 4 Edward III., which was not very strictly regarded, provides that a parliament shall be held "every year, or oftener, if need be."[c]By what persons, and under what limitations, this jurisdiction in parliament was exercised will come under our future consideration.
Edward II. Petitions of parliament during his reign.
The efficacy of a king's personal character in so imperfect a state of government was never more stronglyexemplified than in the two first Edwards. The father, a little before his death, had humbled his boldest opponents among the nobility; and as for the commons, so far from claiming a right of remonstrating, we have seen cause to doubt whether they were accounted effectual members of the legislature for any purposes but taxation. But in the very second year of the son's reign they granted the twenty-fifth penny of their goods, "upon this condition, that the king should take advice and grant redress upon certain articles wherein they are aggrieved." These were answered at the ensuing parliament, and are entered with the king's respective promises of redress upon the roll. It will be worth while to extract part of this record, that we may see what were the complaints of the commons of England, and their notions of right, in 1309. I have chosen on this as on other occasions to translate very literally, at the expense of some stiffness, and perhaps obscurity, in language.
"The good people of the kingdom who are come hither to parliament pray our lord the king that he will, if it please him, have regard to his poor subjects, who are much aggrieved by reason that they are not governed as they should be, especially as to the articles of the Great Charter; and for this, if it please him, they pray remedy. Besides which, they pray their lord the king to hear what has long aggrieved his people, and still does so from day to day, on the part of those who call themselves his officers, and to amend it, if he pleases." The articles, eleven in number, are to the following purport:—1. That the king's purveyors seize great quantities of victuals without payment; 2. That new customs are set on wine, cloth, and other imports; 3. That the current coin is not so good as formerly;[d]4, 5. That the steward and marshal enlarge their jurisdiction beyond measure, to the oppression of the people; 6. That the commons find none to receive petitions addressed to the council; 7. That the collectors of the king's dues (pernours des prises) in towns and at fairs take more than islawful; 8. That men are delayed in their civil suits by writs of protection; 9. That felons escape punishment by procuring charters of pardon; 10. That the constables of the king's castles take cognizance of common pleas; 11. That the king's escheators oust men of lands held by good title, under pretence of an inquest of office.[e]
These articles display in a short compass the nature of those grievances which existed under almost all the princes of the Plantagenet dynasty, and are spread over the rolls of parliament for more than a century after this time. Edward gave the amplest assurances of putting an end to them all, except in one instance, the augmented customs on imports, to which he answered, rather evasively, that he would take them off till he should perceive whether himself and his people derived advantage from so doing, and act thereupon as he should be advised. Accordingly, the next year, he issued writs to collect these new customs again. But the Lords Ordainers superseded the writs, having entirely abrogated all illegal impositions.[f]It does not appear, however, that, regard had to the times, there was anything very tyrannical in Edward's government. He set tallages sometimes, like his father, on his demesne towns, without assent of parliament.[g]In the nineteenth year of his reign the commons show that, "whereas we and our ancestors have given many tallages to the king's ancestors to obtain the charter of the forest, which charter we have had confirmed by the present king, paying him largely on our part; yet the king's officers of the forest seize on lands, and destroy ditches, and oppress the people, for which they pray remedy, for the sake of God and his father's soul." They complain at the same time of arbitrary imprisonment, against the law of the land.[h]To both these petitions the king returned a promise of redress; and they complete the catalogue of customary grievances in this period of our constitution.
During the reign of Edward II. the rolls of parliament are imperfect, and we have not much assistance from other sources. The assent of the commons, which frequently is not specified in the statutes of this age,[i]appears in a remarkable and revolutionary proceeding, the appointment of the Lords Ordainers in 1312.[k]In this case it indicates that the aristocratic party then combined against the crown were desirous of conciliating popularity. An historian relates that some of the commons were consulted upon the ordinances to be made for the reformation of government.[m]