Crown, Woolsack and Mace: the model Parliament of 1295.

All anniversaries this year have been overshadowed by VE day and VJ day, but this should not obscure the calling, seven hundred years ago, of that very Parliament, representative of the liberties secured in 1945.

A state which has no visible, single document called the Constitution. making it unique in the developed, Western world, is bound to rely heavily on symbols. These symbols themselves represent an evolved partnership between the three authorities we find in Parliament. The Queen in Parliament, our legislative authority, is represented by the potent symbols of the Crown, the Woolsack and the Mace. To an outsider they must seem, like much that is English, strange and dissonant objects of authority.

When Edward I called the Parliament, now known as the Model Parliament, on November 13, 1295, he felt secure in his own authority. The point of calling Parliament then was primarily to obtain money, certainly not to make laws; that authority belonged essentially to the Crown. The king was anxious to enlist the financial help of all classes of authority, not only the nobles. Simon de Montfort's Parliament, summoned by a rebel lord thirty years earlier, cannot be regarded as a representative assembly, but King Edward's was. It gives us, as the great Victorian historian F. W. Maitland wrote, the model for all future Parliaments. The Archbishops and Bishops are directed to bring the heads of their chapters, their Archdeacons, one proctor for the clergy of every cathedral, and two for the clergy of each diocese. Every sheriff is to cause two knights of each shire, two citizens of each city and two burgesses of each borough to be elected. Seven earls and forty-two barons are summoned by name. The clergy and baronage are summoned to treat, ordain and execute; the representatives of the Commons are to bring full powers from those whom they represent to execute what should be ordained by the common council. A body constituted in this manner is a Parliament; what the king enacts with the consent of such a body is a statute. The importance of this moment in our history cannot be underestimated.

Very soon indeed, as Maitland said, usage becomes fixed: a parliamentum is a body framed on the model of 1295, it is frequently, habitually summoned and with its consent the King can make statuta, eventually to become the most important source of law.

The Model Parliament begged the whole question of what a Parliament is for. The original word of course signifies `a conference, a meeting at which there is to be talk, debate, deliberation'. Already, by the time of the Model Parliament, the granting of funds was considered to be its most important immediate function. As it developed, four functions were assigned to Parliament: the power to legislate, to discuss grievances, to criticise the details of administration, and to provide money. Only the last of these functions was assigned to it by Edward I in 1295. The elected members were far more anxious to establish the second function: to discuss grievances. A kind of quid pro quo was looked for: money for the Scottish campaign of 1296 would be forthcoming if certain grievances were addressed. This consciousness was growing, even if all was still in an embryonic state.

Parliament in 1295 was assembled for a deep political purpose. The formal language of the writs summoning the wide range of representatives to Parliament reflected this. `Inasmuch as a most righteous law of the emperors', wrote Edward I, `ordains that what touches all should be approved by all, so it evidently appears that common dangers should be met by remedies agreed upon in common'.

Edward I was a most persuasive ruler. Despite his striking appearance and charismatic personality, which persisted into old age, [and at the time of the Model Parliament he was already 56] he had a speech impediment and was known for his distressing stutter. However, whenever any issue set him on fire, his eloquence reduced his audience either to tears or dogged devotion. Such was the language he used before the Model Parliament. Known afterwards as the `English Justinian', not without reason, he drew on the laws of the Roman Emperors. When the Parliament met in November 1295 each estate deliberated separately, contributing its quota to the national defence. The barons and knights offered an eleventh of their incomes; the boroughs a seventh. It was a bitter disappointment to Edward that the clergy could not be induced to make a larger grant than a tenth. Enough, however, was obtained to equip the two armies which, in the spring of 1296, were to operate against the French and the Scots.

Did those who sat in the Parliament of 1295 realise the great initial step which was being taken? Arthur Erwin Dascent, writing during the crucial time of 1911, when all eyes were fixed on the successful attempt to decrease the powers of the House of Lords in Parliament, wrote then: `The Parliament of 1295, which has been called the Model Parliament, marked the end of the experimental stage and the definite and permanent establishment of an assembly comprising the three estates of the realm. For a while in the reign of King John and at the accession of Henry III, the legislative assembly of the kingdom converted for the purpose of granting aids to the Crown may be deemed to have been wholly constituted by tenure. After 1295 it is clear that tenure did not constitute the qualifications by which members of the Commons sat. Their qualification was henceforth constituted by election and the earlier constitution of a legislature wholly by tenure was superceded.'

It is possible to say then that the idea of a democratically elected Commons, even in a very limited way, began in 1295. Thus, the composition of the House of Commons which met at Westminster in November 1295 though presumably based upon the distribution of the existing population, was remarkable, with certain exceptions, for the preponderance of representatives from the southern and western shires. It numbered 292 members. Of these, no less than 219 represented the towns, whilst only 73 knights of the shires were returned. From now on Parliament could only develop and some developments were rapid during the succeeding century, the fourteenth. Thus in 1332 and 1339 the Lords and the Commons made separate grants, and so it is possible to say that Parliament had then become divided between the two Houses.

Maitland, with his usual common sense, could see that something sudden and dramatic had not taken place in 1295, but it was vital in the sense that it was seminal. Sovereign powers which had hitherto been exercised by the king, or by the king and the barons, were not suddenly transferred to an assembly of estates. In his own words: `It is only in the light of what was at that time future history that the parliaments of Edward's last years have their vast importance'. However, we know as a matter of fact that they did form precedents; that parliaments formed on the model of 1295 were constantly held during the coming centuries; that at last it was distinctly recognized that the sovereign power of the realm was vested in a king and a parliament constituted after this model.

The king surrendered to the Model Parliament his power of arbitrary taxation and, although subsequently infringed, the parliamentary control of taxation became an accepted constitutional principle from this date.

The second perceived function, the discussion of grievances, achieved high profile in 1309, when the Commons presented to the new king, Edward II, a prepared list of grievances, which they insisted should be redressed before they would make any grant of supply. One function is clearly being played off against another, and it can be seen in many developing parliamentary institutions, right down to the European Parliament elected in 1994.

By 1322 it becomes clear that legislation affecting the entire community [what now would be called a Public Act] should be approved by the representatives of all classes, legislative authority being vested in the king, with the assent of the prelates, lords and Commons assembled in Parliament. By now this principle of sovereign authority `the king-in-parliament' has certainly developed.

Other developments follow. By 1407 the initiation of Money Bills should be arrogated to the Commons, and by 1414, when English is being used instead of Norman French as the normative Parliamentary language, law making has advanced beyond the petition stage to that of ready drafted statutes. Yet this new and improved status for Parliament was not fully established until the end of the reign of King Henry VI, that is, about 1461. The royal veto is acknowledged: the king could either assent or dissent but he could not amend proposed legislation. The elevation of the Commons to a legislative body was acknowledged in a new formula which placed the two Houses on an equal footing. Statutes were now enacted by the advice and consent of the Lords and Commons and before the middle of the fifteenth century the significant words `and by the authority of the same', were added to the formula. A very strong power was still reserved to the Sovereign in his own right, frequently exercised for many years to come, to withhold assent to measures which had been agreed to by both Houses.

As Parliament developed there was a changing of the relationship between this emergent body and its creator, the Crown. The deposition of Edward II in 1327 recalled a power of the ancient Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot, resolving a tense political situation by settling the crown on his still adolescent son, Edward III. This power was used again in 1399, when the transfer of the crown from Richard II to Henry IV made the title to the crown parliamentary. That seems undeniable, although in a real statutory sense it was not expressed until 1688 or 1701. Other factors coloured or discoloured the transfer of the crown between these dates, and they were certainly not always parliamentary ones. The rise of the device of Impeachment in 1376, which was to be used until 1806, certainly made clear Parliament's function of reviewing the actions of servants and ministers of the crown.

The United Kingdom has no single, written document which can be called `The Constitution'; a document we can gaze at in a glass case as the Americans can in the National Archives in Washington. This makes us unique in the Western, developed world, and has led of course to such pressure groups as Charter 88. When students are taught about the British Constitution, where, therefore, does authority lie? The answer must be in the evolved historical partnership of `the Queen-in-Parliament', and this accounts for the potency of the symbols of this partnership. The Crown, the Woolsack and the Mace are symbols redolent with both history and authority. Edward I had a simple crown compared with the Imperial State Crown which the present Queen wears at the State Opening of Parliament, dating from Queen Victoria's coronation in 1838. But, as both a symbol of royal and State authority, it may seem astonishing how this symbol is treated. The Queen its preceded down the route to Parliament by the Regalia, which, having been collected from the Tower of London, are transported from Buckingham Palace in a carriage of their nun, usually Queen Alexandra's State Coach. The regalia are also entitled not only to a mounted escort of a Corporal of Horse and six troopers from the Household Cavalry, but also to the paying of compliments by the Street Liners members of the Armed Forces who line the route.

From the Model Parliament onwards the idea of a `national' identity becomes associated with the growth of Parliament. It meant the creation of national and political unity and the establishment of honoured formulae and symbols. The Woolsack dates from this time. The square couch was placed in the House of Lords stuffed with wool clippings to be a reminder of mediaeval England's staple trade, though in course of time it came to be stuffed with hair. Now the very woolsack itself is a symbol of the authority of the Lords. Even the Lord Chancellor, who sits on it, respects it as a symbol of impartiality. If he wishes to speak himself, he must rise and stand aside from it. In 1938 it was re-stuffed with a blend of wool from the British Isles and Commonwealth countries given by the International Wool Secretariat! Such is the potency of ancient symbols in the absence of a formal, written constitution. Of these none is more potent than the Mace, the symbol of the authority of the Commons. It must be respected, like the flag in the United States. If it is not on the table but under it, then the validity of proceedings may be questioned. Those who touch it without authority may be suspended or expelled from the House.

Thus this anthropomorphisation of symbols in itself sums up the importance and authority they represent. These symbols date from the seminal period of Parliament in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is right that these events should be remembered and commemorated. Formulae which began as flourishes began to mature into the constitutional significance they have today. The touchstone however must be development. That which does not develop stagnates and atrophies. Authority shifts from one institution to another, sometimes imperceptibly. It its a moral for us today.