The Governments of Europe | Page 9

structure was intended to be

grounded, that, namely, of impartial and unvarying justice.[12]
[Footnote 11: The term "peers," as here employed, means only equals
in rank. The clause cited does not imply trial by jury. It comprises a
guarantee simply that the barons should not be judged by persons
whose feudal rank was inferior to their own. Jury trial was increasingly
common in the thirteenth century, but it was not guaranteed in the
Great Charter.]
[Footnote 12: Good accounts of the institutional aspects of the
Norman-Angevin period are Stubbs, Constitutional History, I., 315-682,
II., 1-164; Taylor, Origin and Growth of the English Constitution, I.,
Bk. 2, Chaps. 2-3; Adams, The Origin of the English Constitution,
Chaps. 1-4; and White, Making of the English Constitution, 73-119.
Two excellent little books are Stubbs, Early Plantagenets (London,
1876) and Mrs. J. R. Green, Henry II. (London, 1892). General
accounts will be found in T. F. Tout, History of England from the
Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III., 1216-1377
(London, 1905), and H. W. C. Davis, England under the Normans and
the Angevins (London, 1904). A monumental treatise, though one
which requires a considerable amount of correction, is E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1867-69), and a
useful sketch is Freeman, Short History of the Norman Conquest (3d
ed., Oxford, 1901). Among extended and more technical works may be
mentioned: F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, History of English Law, 2
vols. (2d ed., Cambridge, 1898), which, as a study of legal history and
doctrines, supersedes all earlier works; F. W. Maitland, Domesday
Book and Beyond (Cambridge, 1897); J. H. Round, Feudal England
(London, 1895); K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, 2 vols.
(London, 1887); ibid., John Lackland (London, 1902), and J. H.
Ramsay, The Angevin Empire (London, 1903). The text of the Great
Charter is printed in Stubbs, Select Charters, 296-306. English versions
may be found in G. B. Adams and H. M. Stephens, Select Documents
of English Constitutional History (New York, 1906), 42-52; S. Amos,
Primer of the English Constitution and Government (London, 1895),
189-201; and University of Pennsylvania Translations and Reprints
(translation by E. P. Cheyney), I., No. 6. The principal special work on

the subject is W. S. McKechnie, Magna Carta; a Commentary on the
Great Charter of King John (Glasgow, 1905). An illuminating
commentary is contained in Adams, Origin of the English Constitution,
207-313.]
IV. THE RISE OF PARLIAMENT (p. 011)
*11. Beginnings of the Representative Principle.*--The thirteenth
century was clearly one of the most important periods in the growth of
the English constitution. It was marked not merely by the contest which
culminated in the grant of the Great Charter but also by the beginnings,
in its essentials, of Parliament. The formative epoch in the history of
Parliament may be said to have been, more precisely, the second half of
the reign of Henry III. (1216-1272), together with the reign of the
legislator-king Edward I. (1272-1307). The creation of Parliament as
we know it came about through the signal enlargement of the
Norman-Plantagenet Great Council by the introduction of
representative elements, followed by the splitting of the heterogeneous
mass of members definitely into two co-ordinate chambers. The
representative principle was in England no new thing in the thirteenth
century. As has appeared, there were important manifestations of it in
the local governmental system of Anglo-Saxon times. As brought to
bear in the development of Parliament, however, the principle is
generally understood to have sprung from the twelfth-century practice
of electing assessors to fix the value of real and personal property for
purposes of taxation, and of jurors to present criminal matters before
the king's justices. Thus, Henry II.'s Saladin Tithe of 1188--the first
national imposition upon incomes and movable property--was assessed,
at least in part, by juries of neighbors elected by, and in a sense
representative of, the taxpayers of the various parishes. By the opening
of the thirteenth century the idea was fast taking hold upon the minds
of Englishmen, not only that the taxpayer ought to have a voice in the
levying of taxes, but that between representation and taxation there was
a certain natural and inevitable connection. In the Great Charter, as has
been stated, it was stipulated that in the assessment of scutages and of
all save the three commonly recognized feudal aids the king should
seek the advice of the General Council. The General Council of the

earlier thirteenth century was not regularly a representative body, but it
was not beyond the range of possibility to impart to it a representative
character, and in point of fact that is precisely what was done. To
facilitate the process of taxation it was found expedient by the central
authorities to carry over into the domain of national affairs