Parliament 399
But if there had not been substantial political reasons
for the frequent summons of representatives and if
English knights had not formed a kind of natural bridge
or means of approach between barons and burgesses, it
is hard to see how this union with "parliament" could
have become a habit, with the resulting single-assembly
idea. The misrule and inefficiency of Edward II. caused
local oppressions and a demand for frequent meetings
of the body in which complaints might be made and
remedies sought. An article in the New Ordinances of
x 1311 says:
Inasmuch as many people are oppressed by the king's min-
isters, . . . and for such oppressions can" find no remedy,
save through the common parliament: we do ordain, that
the king shall hold a parliament once in the year, or twice, if
need be, and that in a convenient place.
This was a baronial scheme and no more may have been
meant by "parliament" than the great council, and yet
the representatives of shires and boroughs would have
been the natural bearers of mass petitions about the
"oppressions." In 1322, when the Ordinances were
revoked under the leadership of the Despensers, these
royal favourites found it convenient, on personal grounds,
in taking their stand against the barons, to proclaim a
principle, which surely did not represent the practice or
even the general theory of the time, but the statement of
which must have had its importance:
but the matters which are to be established for the estate of
our lord the king and of his heirs, and for the estate of the
ments and estates, was fatal to orderly constitutional development in
France." It was the "judicial functions which made parliament the high-
est law court in the land and gave it a framework and organisation strong
enough to save it from the shipwreck that overtook mere representative
bodies everywhere else." Evolution of Parliament, pp. 43, 55. But this
does not tell the whole story, much as we owe Professor Pollard for his
vigorous emphasis and clear statement,—as there is a slight attempt to
show in the text. The comparative constitutional history of England and
Prance is largely an unworked field.