17 Medieval origins


Opposite: An early 14th-century picture of Henry III enthroned beside Westminster Abbey, the rebuilding of which he


initiated, above a family tree showing his children


“From the 1180s, the crown’s expenditure rapidly began to outrun its traditional resources”


the king’s rights over his tenants-in-chief. None of these revenue sources needed any form of consent, so that consent to taxation, a future cause of contention in parliament, was never an issue. Te traditional characteristics of assemblies, now usually


known to the sources as “councils” or “great councils”, were maintained in other ways. Te making of the law known as the Assize of Northampton at a council meeting there in 1176, for example, showed the maintenance of the assembly’s legislative role. Yet one factor increasingly disrupted the old pattern of assemblies. By Henry II’s reign (1154–89) the crown’s extensive overseas possessions covered most of western France. Te king’s long absences overseas meant that assemblies, though still frequent, lost much of their former regularity. It was these foreign commitments that ultimately did most to terminate the long history of stable assembly relationships. Te main solvent here was the crown’s need for money, as, from


the 1180s, its expenditure rapidly began to outrun its traditional resources. Henry II’s projected crusade in 1188, Richard I’s actual crusade in 1189 and the huge ransom payment exacted by his enemies after his capture in 1192—as well as the continual need to defend foreign territories against an aggressive French monarchy—all created unprecedented financial demands. To meet those demands a new tax was introduced: the


levy on moveables, by which the crown took a proportion of the value of every man’s moveable goods. Tis novel national tax necessitated some form of national consent, best given by the magnate council. When King John (1199–1216) levied a tax of a thirteenth in 1207, in an attempt to finance the recovery of his French lands lost in 1204, he secured the consent of the great council to the levy, but probably only after a good deal of bullying and coercion. Te circumstances of the 1207 levy help to explain the new rule introduced by Magna Carta in 1215. Henceforth, said the Charter’s 12th clause, no general taxes were to be levied “without common counsel”, meaning the consent given by an assembly. Consent to taxation had


arrived on the political scene, and with it a major strand in the development of parliament.


Te 13th-century origins of parliamentary politics Te hundred years following Magna Carta saw the emergence of parliament in the form in which it was to retain for the remainder of the middle ages. Evolving from the great councils of the 12th century, it was shaped by the political circumstances of the reign of Henry III (1216–72). Henry came to the throne as a young boy and, with him being a minor until 1227, it meant that the great council’s status was enhanced. Te regents who were in charge of the kingdom while the king was a child looked to these periodic assemblies of magnates and churchmen for authority and support. Te great council thus consented to taxes, sanctioned the various political acts of the regents, and provided a forum for the three confirmations of Magna Carta in 1216, 1217 and 1225. As a result, when Henry was old enough to take charge himself, it was potentially a much more authoritative body than it had been in the 12th century. Its members had become accustomed to being consulted. Henry’s own aspirations and policies provided the


stimulus for the emergence of parliament from out of the council. His chief aim was to regain the Angevin Empire in France, lost under King John and during his own minority. But this was an impossibly expensive ambition. He could only achieve it by securing general taxation but, under the terms of Magna Carta, he could only do this through the great council. Henry’s unpopular domestic policies stood in


the way of such grants: he was spendthrift, he was generous to his foreign friends, and his system of justice and government in the countryside—designed to make a profit for the king—was expensive and oppressive. Because of these grievances, as well as their disapproval of Henry’s ambitions abroad,


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