Yet in the search for support he summoned two parliaments, at one of which the representatives of the towns as well as the knights and lords were present. From a period of authoritarian rule emerged an instrument of liberty; it can be said that the growing identity of the nation itself was shaped in opposition to the king. Out of contrast comes growth; out of opposition emerge principles. The exploitations of Richard and John had helped to foster a sense of communitas in towns and villages; the weakness of Henry now led to a more general recognition of the ‘community of the realm’.
The growth and development of parliament were part of the same process. There had always been parliaments of a kind. The structure itself existed before the moment it reached selfconsciousness, thereby acquiring an identity. We cannot look back into the darkness of prehistory, but we can be sure that the tribal leaders had their own councils of wise or noble men. The Saxon invaders had brought with them the idea of the witan, which means literally ‘the knowing’, or witenagemot (the word itself is not recorded before 1035); this was an assembly, made up of bishops and nobles, that met once or twice a year. They were consulted by the king, and deliberated upon the making of new laws or the raising of new taxes. They may have had the power of electing, and even deposing, a king.
The Norman council, established after the successful invasion of England, was a smaller body of perhaps thirty-five ecclesiastical and secular lords. In 1095 William Rufus called together a larger assembly, comprising all the abbots, bishops and principes or chief men of the land. This became the template for the councils of later reigns; with the absence of the Norman and Angevin kings in France and elsewhere, the assembly of magnates learned how to act collectively to enforce its will. They also assumed a collective identity. In the reign of Henry II the abbot of Battle declared that the king could not change the laws of the country without ‘the counsel and consent’ of the barons. That was still debatable.
The first parliamentary summons came from King John who, in the summer of 1212, demanded that the sheriff of each county should come to him with ‘six of the more lawful and discreet knights who are to do what we shall tell them’. The knights were not present to advise the king. They were there to communicate the royal will to their regions. Yet the provisions of the Magna Carta, three years later, were designed to curtail the powers of the king; in particular it was ordained that no monarch could levy extraordinary taxation without the ‘common counsel’ of the realm. The realm, at this juncture, of course meant only the barons and the bishops.
In 1236 Henry III called a parliament at Westminster. This represents the first official use of the term, but the actual assembly consisted only of lay magnates and bishops. There were no representatives from the shires or the towns. But the king needed money from various and different sources. He could no longer rely on the feudal tax paid by his barons, or on taxes collected from their tenants. So in 1254 the sheriffs were ordered to send two knights from each county chosen by the county court. The lower clergy were also graciously admitted to the parliamentary assembly.
Simon de Montfort, after his victory, summoned two representatives from each town. Knights and the leaders of the towns, known as burgesses, then became as much part of parliament as the bishops and lords. We have here the rudimentary beginnings of the House of Commons. No one seems to have noticed this at the time, however, and there is no extant commentary upon the change. It was not in any case a great exercise in democracy. De Montfort’s immediate purpose was simply to have more supporters in place against the great lords who were antagonistic to him; a large gathering would also help to disguise the enforced absence of his enemies. So he brought in the knights and the townsmen.
Unintended and unforeseen consequences followed the appearance of the parliament. Its growing importance, for example, elevated the role of knights as well as the richer townsmen. A knight can be defined as one who possessed one or several manors and who was generally involved in the government of his local area in such posts as sheriff or forest official. He took on the royal work of his shire, administrative and judicial.
The knights were known as buzones or ‘big men’. They were approximately 1,100 or 1,200 in number. They are the men whose images are seen, in wood and stone, in the old churches of England. They wear body armour, and some of them are about to draw the sword; some carry shields; others are shown with their hands folded in prayer; they are often cross-legged; double images of husband and wife are sometimes preferred. This was the period when coats of arms were recorded, and the science of heraldry emerged in all its fancifulness. Early in the fourteenth century, knights’ burials were commemorated with full-figure brasses.
Their pre-eminence led to a general stratification in the various ranks and classes below them. By the middle of the fourteenth century, at the latest, there had emerged the outlines of what has become known as the gentry, including knights, esquires and gentlemen. An esquire was a prosperous landowner who for various reasons had surrendered the status of knighthood. A gentleman was of lower standing, simply the head of a landed family. By 1400 this difference was stated in monetary terms. An esquire earned between £20 and £40 a year, while a gentleman would earn between £10 and £20. Knights and esquires might serve as sheriffs or as Justices of the Peace, while gentlemen took on such lesser roles as undersheriffs and coroners. Gentlemen were often parish gentry, while knights were always county gentry. It is a matter of some interest that this social structure survived, with modifications, until the latter part of the nineteenth century. It held together the country for more than 500 years.
Wherever we look in the thirteenth century, we see evidence of greater formality and control. In the towns of England an oligarchy of the richer merchants was strictly organized, in consort with royal officialdom; the crafts and merchants were now gathered into guilds and trade associations. The bureaucracy of the king’s court was becoming ever more complex and methodical. Administrative historians have noticed the huge proliferation of documents in the reign of Henry III. Even the crusaders setting out from England to the Holy Land were given written contracts that stipulated certain common terms of service. Every right, or verdict, was defined in writing. A royal bailiff, approaching a small farmer for taxes, tells him that ‘thou art writen yn my writ’. It is a paradox, perhaps, that in the reign of a weak or indecisive king the apparatus of the Crown had never been more efficient or adaptable. But how else are we to explain the fact that, despite the disasters of his government, Henry III continued to rule for so long? By degrees the nation was fixed and rendered stable, despite the manifest tempests upon its surface.
One of the tempests gathered at the end of May 1265. The Lord Edward, still in custody, was allowed to go riding; he was a prince of the royal blood, after all. But on this spring morning he tried one horse after another, going further and further out; then he chose one particular horse and, on the signal of a gentleman rider in the distance, he galloped off. Before long, he reached the safety of Ludlow Castle. Edward was at liberty. He was free to raise his father’s standard against de Montfort and the other rebels.
The threat was immediate, and the result not long in coming. The two armies met on 4 August at Evesham in Worcestershire. When de Montfort saw the royalist forces approaching him in well-ordered array he remarked that ‘they learned how to do that from me’. At their head was the Lord Edward; now, at twenty-six years old, he was de facto leader of the realm. De Montfort had taken Henry with him as hostage and, as the battle grew more fierce, he and his knights fought in a circle around the king; one of the royalists, Roger Leyburn, managed to rescue Henry from the mêlée. Edward had already appointed twelve men in what might be called a death squad, whose only task was to kill de Montfort. They were successful. His head was cut off, and his testicles dangled on each side of his nose; the trophy was then sent to the wife of the man who had beheaded him. A general slaughter ensued, the first of its kind in medieval England where lords and knights were ordinarily spared for ransom or for the sake of honour. Edward would not be the same kind of king as his father.