Читать книгу The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 485, April 16, 1831 - Various - Страница 2

(To the Editor.)

As a general reader of your entertaining miscellany, I take the liberty to correct a mistake in No. 481, relative to the Origin of the House of Commons, which is indirectly stated to have originated from the Battle of Evesham. It is true that the earliest instance on record of the assembling in parliament representatives of the people occurred in the same year with the battle of Evesham; but it had no connexion whatever with the event of that engagement, since the parliament (to which for the first time citizens and burgesses were summoned) was assembled through the influence of the Earl of Leicester, who then held the king under his control; and the meeting took place in the beginning of the year 1265, the writs of summons having been issued in November, 1264; while the battle of Evesham, in which the Earl of Leicester was killed, did not happen till August 4, 1265, or between five and six months after the conclusion of the parliament. From that period to the death of Henry III. in 1272, it does not appear that any election of citizens or burgesses, to attend parliament, occurred. The next instance of such elections seems to have happened in the 18th of Edward I.; and the first returns to such writs of summons extant are dated the 23rd of the same reign, since which, with a few intermissions, they have been regularly continued.

The correctness of these statements will appear from a reference to the 4th and 5th chapters of Sir W. Betham’s recently published work on “Dignities Feudal and Parliamentary,” or to Sir James Mackintosh’s History of England.

M.

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We admit that the battle of Evesham, literally speaking, was not the origin of the House of Commons, and wish our correspondent P.T.W. had furnished us with the name of the “modern writer” who has made the assertion. At the same time it must be conceded that the fall of Simon de Montfort, at Evesham, led to the more speedy consummation of the wished for object. Thus Sir James Mackintosh, History of England, vol. i. p. 236, says—

“Simon de Montfort, at the very moment of his fall, set the example of an extensive reformation in the frame of parliament, which, though his authority was not acknowledged by the punctilious adherents to the letter and forms of law, was afterwards legally adopted by Edward, and rendered the parliament of that year the model of the British parliament, and in a considerable degree affected the constitution of all other representative assemblies. It may indeed be considered as the practical discovery of popular representation. The particulars of the war are faintly discerned at the distance of six or seven centuries. The reformation of parliament, which first afforded proof from experience that liberty, order, greatness, power, and wealth, are capable of being blended together in a degree of harmony which the wisest men had not before believed to be possible, will be held in everlasting remembrance. He died unconscious of the imperishable name which he acquired by an act which he probably considered as of very small importance—the summoning a parliament, of which the lower house was composed, as it has ever since been formed, of knights of the shires, and members for cities and boroughs. He thus unknowingly determined that England was to be a free country; and he was the blind instrument of disclosing to the world that great institution of representation which was to introduce into popular governments a regularity and order far more perfect than had heretofore been purchased by submission to absolute power, and to draw forth liberty from confinement in single cities to a fitness for being spread over territories which, experience does not forbid us to hope, may be as vast as have ever been grasped by the iron gripe of a despotic conqueror. The origin of so happy an innovation is one of the most interesting objects of inquiry which occurs in human affairs; but we have scarcely any positive information on the subject; for our ancient historians, though they are not wanting in diligently recording the number and the acts of national assemblies, describe their composition in a manner too general to be instructive, and take little note of novelty or peculiarity in the constitution of that which was called by the Earl of Leicester.

“That assembly met at London, on the 22nd of January, 1265, according to writs still extant, and the earliest of their kind known to us, directing ‘the sheriffs to elect and return two knights for each county, two citizens for each city, and two burgesses for every burgh in the county.’ If this assembly be supposed to be the same which is vested with the power of granting supply by the Great Charter of John, the constitution must be thought to have undergone an extensive, though unrecorded, revolution in the somewhat inadequate space of only fifty years, which had elapsed since the capitulation of Runnymede; for in the Great Charter we find the tenants of the crown in chief alone expressly mentioned as forming with the prelates and peers the common council for purposes of taxation; and even they seem to have been required to give their personal attendance, the important circumstances of election and representation not being mentioned in the treaty with John;—neither does it contain any stipulation of sufficient distinctness applicable to cities and boroughs, for which the charter provides no more than the maintenance of their ancient liberties.

“Probably conjecture is all that can now be expected respecting the rise and progress of these changes. It is, indeed, beyond all doubt, that by the constitution, even as subsisting under the early Normans, the great council shared the legislative power with the king, as clearly as the parliament have since done.3 But these great councils do not seem to have contained members of popular choice; and the king, who was supported by the revenue of his demesnes, and by dues from his military tenants, does not appear at first to have imposed, by legislative authority, general taxes to provide for the security and good government of the community.—These were abstract notions, not prevalent in ages when the monarch was a lord paramount rather than a supreme magistrate. Many of the feudal perquisites had been arbitrarily augmented, and oppressively levied. These the Great Charter, in some cases, reduced to a certain sum; while it limited the period of military service itself. With respect to scutages and aids, which were not capable of being reduced to a fixed rate, the security adopted was, that they should never be legal, unless they were assented to at least by the majority of those who were to pay them. Now these were not the people at large, but the military tenants of the crown, who are accordingly the only persons entitled to be present at the great council to be holden for taxation. Very early, however, talliages had been exacted by the crown from those who were not military tenants; and this imposition daily grew in importance with the relaxation of the feudal tenures, and the increasing opulence of towns. The attempt of the barons to include talliage, and even the vague mention of the privileges of burghs, are decisive symptoms of this silent revolution. But the generally feudal character of the charter and the main object of its framers prevailed over that premature, but very honest, effort of the barons.”

We recommend the reader to turn to the pages succeeding the above extract, where the views of the enlightened author and statesman on the origin of our parliament are set forth in perspicuous and masterly style.