Ill
PARLIAMENT
L Origin of the House of lords*—In the
century a fundamental was in the larger,
summoned meeting of the king's court, the council1
When the change was that had
the House of Lords. At the
added to it certain new to
form the House of Commons. These the two
processes in the making of Parliament, with the first of
which we are here In this
subject, it is especially to rid the of
modem preconceptions; the very word pro-
duces involuntary mental of the fully developed
institution that are certain to interfere with the under-
standing of its beginnings/ One must be willing to
take one step at a time and to be mindful that the
institutional creations of medieval England not the
products of purposeful building for the future, but that
1 See above, pp. 116-118,
2 "When states are departed from their original Constitution, and
original by tract of time worn out of Memory; the view-
ing what is past by the present^ conceive the former to have like to
that they live in; and framing thereupon erroneous propositions, do like-
wise make thereon erroneous Inferences and Conclusions, " Cited from
Sir Henry Spelman's Of Parliaments by Professor Mcllwain in his
Court of Parliament, p. 166. The latter comments; "In no ration's his-
tory has this been more true than in English history, and in no part of
English history more than in the history of Parliament, The hardest
thing for a historian of institutions to do, and the thing he oftenest fails to
do, is * to think away distinctions which seem to us as clear as sunshine1;
and yetf as Professor Maitland says, 'this we must do, cot in a
festom, but of set purpose* knowing what we are doing/ "
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