Note (Back) — Chapter I

8. King and Great Council.—Untrammelled by constitutional restrictions, the Conqueror and his earlier successors recognized such limitations only upon the royal authority as were imposed by powerful and turbulent subjects. Associated with the king, however, was from the first a body known as the Commune Concilium, the Common, or Great, Council. "Thrice a year," the Saxon Chronicle tells us, "King William wore his crown every year he was in England; at Easter he wore it at Winchester; at Pentecost, at Westminster; and at Christmas, at Gloucester; and at these times all the men of England were with him—archbishops, bishops and abbots, earls, thegns and knights." By the phrase "all the men of England" is to be understood only the great ecclesiastics, the principal officers of state, and the king's tenants-in-chief—in truth, only such of the more important of these as were summoned individually to the sovereign's presence. At least in theory, however, the Norman kings were accustomed to consult this gathering of magnates, very much as their predecessors had been accustomed to consult the witenagemot, upon all important questions of legislation, finance, and public policy. It may, indeed, be said that it is the development of this Council that comprises the central subject of English constitutional history; for, "out of it, directly or indirectly, by one process or another, have been evolved Parliament, the Cabinet, and the courts of law."[8]