26 The Story of Parliament


Opposite: Some of the earliest meetings of parliament are


known to have taken place in the Painted Chamber in the


Palace of Westminster, shown here in a picture made in the early 19th century


illness that entirely prevented him from carrying out the duties of his office. It fell to his cousin, Richard, Duke of York, to assume the reins of government as Protector. In the aftermath of the loss of Normandy, York had positioned himself as the principal critic of the conduct of the French wars, and thus in opposition to the court party successively headed by the dukes of Suffolk and Somerset. Te ensuing struggle for power between York and


his allies and the court party—increasingly dominated by Henry VI’s formidable queen, Margaret—eventually resulted in the open civil wars commonly known as the Wars of the Roses. In 1460 parliament sanctioned a settlement that mirrored the one at Troyes 40 years earlier, in that it disinherited Henry VI’s son, the Prince of Wales, in favour of York and his descendants. Queen Margaret was not prepared to see her son deprived of his inheritance without a struggle but, following fresh fighting and York’s death in battle, the deal fell apart, Henry VI was deposed, and the duke’s son and heir was proclaimed King Edward IV in March 1461. In the early years of his reign, Edward IV


(1461–70, 1471–83) depended heavily on the support of his older and more experienced cousin, Richard Neville, the “Kingmaker” Earl of Warwick, and it was their increasing estrangement as the young king began to develop independent policies that threw the kingdom into renewed turmoil. Warwick orchestrated a series of popular uprisings and, for a time, attempted to rule through King Edward while holding him captive. In 1470 Edward was forced to seek refuge in the Low Countries, and Henry VI was restored to the throne with French aid. Yet, after a decade of Yorkist rule, the Lancastrian


dynasty could call on little lasting support. In the spring of 1471 Edward IV returned and reclaimed the throne. For the next 12 years, he ruled unchallenged, and took his revenge on his French adversaries by leading a major military invasion of the European mainland, the first such expedition since the loss of Gascony. As the reign


progressed, the king summoned parliament less and less frequently. Rather than rely on the Commons for grants of taxation, he tried to raise money using a new type of levy, the “benevolence”, imposed at the king’s behest and relying on the authority of his regal powers—his “royal prerogative”—without the need for parliamentary assent. It got around parliament’s monopoly on authorising


taxation because it was, in theory at least, not really a tax, but a voluntary donation to the crown. At the same time, there is no suggestion that the king was actively trying to establish himself as an absolute ruler: parliament’s right to control taxation in principle was not in question. And, when Edward went to war against Scotland in the early 1480s, the Lords and Commons were duly reconvened. Edward IV’s unexpected death at the age of just 40 in


April 1483 inaugurated a fresh civil war. His young son Edward V was supplanted by his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, who claimed the throne as Richard III (1483–85). Richard’s reign lasted a mere two years before he in turn was displaced by a distant relative of Henry VI’s, Henry, Earl of Richmond. Over the course of a reign of 24 years Henry VII (1485–1509) saw off a series of rebellions, most notably an uprising of the men of Cornwall who marched on London in 1497. Like Edward IV, whose eldest daughter he had married, he increasingly sought to rule without parliament, and in 1491 revived his father-in-law’s prerogative levy, the benevolence (which had been formally abolished by parliament under Richard III). He was eventually able to pass his throne securely to his son Henry VIII, having left his final parliament in 1504 with the— to the modern mind curious—reassurance that he was disinclined to summon another for a long time without “great and necessary and urgent causes”.


Medieval MPs Te House of Commons in the Middle Ages might be said to be more properly representative of the population of England than was to be the case for several centuries afterwards. A medieval parliament contained members with an impressively wide range of occupations and financial resources: from the lowliest rope-maker or baker to the most highly favoured of the king’s courtiers; men of small means side-by-side with the wealthiest of the landowning gentry.


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