Note 420 — from the Origins To the Renaissance (continued 4)

Chéruel, "Dictionnaire des Institutions de la France," at the word Parlement. As early as the thirteenth century, Bracton, in England, declared that "laws bound the legislator," and that the king ought to obey them; his theory, however, is less bold than the one according to which the Commons act in the fourteenth century: "Dicitur enim rex," Bracton observes, "a bene regendo et non a regnando, quia rex est dum bene regit, tyrannus dum populum sibi creditum violenter opprimit dominatione. Temperet igitur potentiam suam per legem quæ frenum est potentiæ, quod secundum leges vivat, quod hoc sanxit lex humana quod leges suum ligent latorem." "De Legibus," 3rd part chap. ix.