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List of parliaments of EnglandList of acts of the Parliament of England | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
TheModel Parliament was the 1295Parliament of England ofKing Edward I. Its composition became themodel for later parliaments.
The termModel Parliament was coined byWilliam Stubbs (1825-1901) and later used also byFrederic William Maitland. The assembly of AD 1295 included members of the clergy and the aristocracy, as well as representatives from the variouscounties andboroughs. Each county returned twoknights, each borough elected twoburgesses, and each city provided two citizens. That composition became the model for later parliaments, hence the name.[1]
A similar scheme had been used in summoningSimon de Montfort's Parliament in 1265, but it had been called bySimon de Montfort in the midst of theSecond Barons' War againstHenry III of England. The same scheme was remarkably adopted by a king who was Henry's son and heir although he had quelled Montfort's uprising.
Edward I summoned the parliament to meet at Westminster on 13 November 1295.[2] In calling the parliament, Edward proclaimed in his writ of summons that "what touches all, should be approved of all (Latin:Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbari debet), and it is also clear that common dangers should be met by measures agreed upon in common".[3]
Parliament's legislative authority was then limited, and its primary role was to levy taxes. Edward's paramount goal in summoning the parliament was to raise funds for his wars, specifically the planned campaigns against theFrench and theScots for the forthcoming year and countering an insurgency inWales. That "sound finance" by taxation was a goal of summoning the parliament but was tied into "counsel" to the king and "the element of service" forfeudalism.[1]
However, the resulting parliament became a model for a new function as well, the addressing of grievances with the king. "The elected members were far more anxious to establish the second function: to discuss grievances. A kind ofquid pro quo was looked for: money for the Scottish campaign of 1296 would be forthcoming if certain grievances were addressed. This consciousness was growing, even if all was still in an embryonic state".[4] The concept of "Parliament" was in fact such that the division intoHouse of Commons andHouse of Lords had not yet taken place. The Model Parliament wasunicameral and summoned 49 lords to sit with 292 representatives of the Commons.[5]
The Model Parliament created aprecedent in which each "successor of a baron" (which includesLords Spiritual) who had received a writ to the parliament of 1295 "had a legal right to receive awrit".[1] However, this strictly hereditary right was not recognized formally until 1387.[1]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) indicates that the Commons did not deliberate apart until 1341. This article accepts the Parliament's version.