Note (return) — PARLIAMENTS, ANCIENT AND MODERN.

Chamberlayne in his Notitia Angliæ, says, "Before the conquest, the great council of the king, consisting only of the great men of the kingdom, was called Magnatum Conventus, or else Prælatorum Procerumque Concilium, and by the Saxons in their own tongue Micel Gemote,3 the great assembly; after the conquest about the beginning of King Edward I., some say in the time of Henry I., it was called by the French word Parlementum, from Parler, to talk together; still consisting (as divers authors affirm) only of the great men of the nation, until the reign of Henry III. when the commons also were called to sit in parliament; for divers authors presume to say, the first writs to be found in records, sent forth to them, bear date 49 Henry III. Yet some antiquaries are of opinion, that long before, nothing of moment wherein the lives or estates of the common people of England were concerned, ever passed without their consent."