Note (44) — Chapter II

On the occasional and irregular summoning of the borough members between 1265 and 1295 see Hallam, Middle Ages, ii. 160, 165, and more fully in Stubbs, Select Charters, 420, 427, where the gradual developement of parliamentary representation is treated as it has never been treated before, with a full citation of the authorities. The language in which the chroniclers speak of the constitution of the early Parliaments of Edward is as vague as that in which our ancient Gemóts are described. Sometimes they speak only of “proceres” and the like; sometimes they distinctly mention the popular element. Curiously enough, the official language is sometimes more popular than that of the annalists. Thus the Winchester Annals, recording the Statute of Westminster in 1273, call the Assembly which passed it a “communis convocatio omnium magnatum regni,” though it incidentally implies the presence of other persons, “quamplures de regno qui aliqua feoda de corona regia tenuerunt.” But the preamble of the Statute itself records the “assentement des erceveskes, eveskes, abbes, priurs, contes, barons, et la communaute de la tere ileokes somons.” So in the later Parliament of the same year the Annals speak only of the “communis consensus archiepiscoporum, comitum, et baronum,” while the official description is “prælati, comites, barones, et alii de regno nostro.” But in an earlier Assembly, that held in 1273, before Edward had come back to England, the same Winchester Annals tell us how “convenerunt archiepiscopi et episcopi, comites et barones, et de quolibet comitatu quatuor milites et de qualibet civitate quatuor.” This and the summons to the Parliament of 1285, which sat in judgement on David of Wales (Stubbs, 453, 457), seem the most distinct cases of borough representation earlier than 1295, since which time the summoning of the borough members has gone on regularly. See Stubbs, 473. Mr. Stubbs’ remarks on the Assemblies of “the transitionary period” in pp. 465, 469 should be specially studied.