chapter 11-12._

_H. Blaauw, The Barons' War._

_C. H. Pearson, England, Early and Middle Ages, volume 2._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1271. Crusade of Prince Edward:

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1270-1271.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1272. Accession of King Edward I.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1275-1295. Development of Parliamentary representation under Edward 1.

"Happily, Earl Simon [de Montfort] found a successor, and more than a successor, in the king's [Henry III.'s] son. ... Edward I. stood on the vantage ground of the throne. ... He could do that easily and without effort which Simon could only do laboriously, and with the certainty of rousing opposition. Especially was this the case with the encouragement given by the two men to the growing aspirations after parliamentary representation. Earl Simon's assemblies were instruments of warfare. Edward's assemblies were invitations to peace. ... Barons and prelates, knights and townsmen, came together only to support a king who took the initiative so wisely, and who, knowing what was best for all, sought the good of his kingdom without thought of his own ease. Yet even so, Edward was too prudent at once to gather together such a body as that which Earl Simon had planned. He summoned, indeed, all the constituent parts of Simon's parliament, but he seldom summoned them to meet in one place or at one time. Sometimes the barons and prelates met apart from the townsmen or the knights, sometimes one or the other class met entirely alone. ... In this way, during the first twenty years of Edward's reign, the nation rapidly grew in that consciousness of national unity which would one day transfer the function of regulation from the crown to the representatives of the people."

_S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, Introduction to the Study of English History, chapter 4, section 17._

"In 1264 Simon de Montfort had called up from both shires and boroughs representatives to aid him in the new work of government. That part of Earl Simon's work had not been lasting. The task was left for Edward I. to be advanced by gradual safe steps, but to be thoroughly completed, as a part of a definite and orderly arrangement, according to which the English parliament was to be the perfect representation of the Three Estates of the Realm, assembled for purposes of taxation, legislation and united political action. ... Edward's first parliament, in 1275, enabled him to pass a great statute of legal reform, called the Statute of Westminster the First, and to exact the new custom on wool; another assembly, the same year, granted him a fifteenth. ... There is no evidence that the commons of either town or county were represented. ... In 1282, when the expenses of the Welsh war were becoming heavy, Edward again tried the plan of obtaining money from the towns and counties by separate negotiation; but as that did not provide him with funds sufficient for his purpose, he called together, early in 1283, two great assemblies, one at York and another at Northampton, in which four knights from each shire and four members from each city and borough were ordered to attend; the cathedral and conventual clergy also of the two provinces were represented at the same places by their elected proctors. At these assemblies there was no attendance of the barons; they were with the king in Wales; but the commons made a grant of one-thirtieth on the understanding that the lords should do the same. Another assembly was held at Shrewsbury the same year, 1283, to witness the trial of David of Wales; to this the bishops and clergy were not called, but twenty towns and all the counties were ordered to send representatives. Another step was taken in 1290: knights of the shire were again summoned; but still much remained to be done before a perfect parliament was constituted. Counsel was wanted for legislation, consent was wanted for taxation. The lords were summoned in May, and did their work in June and July, granting a feudal aid and passing the statute 'Quia Emptores,' but the knights only came to vote or to promise a tax, after a law had been passed; and the towns were again taxed by special commissions. In 1294, ... under the alarm of war with France, an alarm which led Edward into several breaches of constitutional law, he went still further, assembling the clergy by their representatives in August, and the shires by their representative knights in October. {810} The next year, 1295, witnessed the first summons of a perfect and model parliament; the clergy represented by their bishops, deans, archdeacons, and elected proctors; the barons summoned severally in person by the king's special writ, and the commons summoned by writs addressed to the sheriffs, directing them to send up two elected knights from each shire, two elected citizens from each city, and two elected burghers from each borough. The writ by which the prelates were called to this parliament contained a famous sentence taken from the Roman law, 'That which touches all should be approved by all,' a maxim which might serve as a motto for Edward's constitutional scheme, however slowly it grew upon him, now permanently and consistently completed."

_W. Stubbs, The Early Plantagenets,