Abstract
The language of community became fashionable in the thirteenth century. Magna Carta referred to ‘the community of the whole land’. In the 1240s universitas, a term effectively synonymous with ‘community’, was the favoured expression. The Provisions of Oxford of 1258 included an oath to be sworn by the community of England (le commun de Engleterre). Simon de Montfort’s parliament of 1265 was summoned to discuss matters affecting the community of the realm. The Confirmatio Cartarum of 1297 referred to both the community of the land, and of the realm. What precisely was meant by such phrases is often not easy to determine. The community might appear as a threat to the crown, as in 1215, or as consenting to royal legislation, as in 1275 in the first statute of Westminster. Parliament was another fashionable word. Historians have struggled to find an exact definition for a term which often lacked true precision. It began to be applied to certain royal councils from the 1230s. By 1311, when the Ordinances were issued, consent was to be provided in parliament, and no mention was made of the community.
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References
W. Stubbs (ed.), Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury (Rolls Ser., 1879–80), vol. ii, p. 96; Stubbs (ed.), Select Charters, pp. 276, 278.
Stubbs (ed.), Select Charters, pp. 356, 358.
Luard (ed.), Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, vol. iii, pp. 74, 364; Carpenter, ‘Chancellor Ralph de Neville and Plans of Political Reform, 1215–1258’, in Coss and Lloyd (eds.), Thirteenth Century England II, p. 70.
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Wright (ed.), Political Songs, pp. 110–11, 115; Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward, vol. ii, p. 509. I have modified Powicke’s ‘commonalty’ to ‘community’.
This view has been set out in a great many publications, but see in particular G. O. Sayles, The King’s Parliament of England (London: Arnold, 1975), and most recently, The Functions of the Medieval Parliament of England (London: Hambledon Press, 1988). Many of the papers he wrote jointly with H. G. Richardson are republished in their The English Parliament in the Middle Ages.
F. W. Maitland (ed.), Memoranda de Parliamento, 1305 (Rolls Ser. 1893).
See R. F. Treharne, ‘Parliament in the Reign of Henry III’, in Fryde and Miller (eds.), Historical Studies of the English Parliament, vol. i, pp. 70–6; Sayles, King’s Parliament of England, pp. 39–45.
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Treharne and Sanders (eds.), Documents of the Baronial Movement, p. 157; Stubbs (ed.), Select Charters, p. 442.
Prestwich (ed.), Documents illustrating the Crisis of 1297–98, pp. 115–17, 159–60.
Ibid., pp. 122, 129; E. L. G. Stones (ed.), Anglo-Scottish Relations 1174–1328 (London: Nelson, 1965), p. 107; Sayles, Functions of the Medieval Parliament, pp. 243–4.
M. Prestwich, ‘Parliament and the Community of the Realm in Fourteenth-Century England’, in A. Cosgrove and J. I. McGuire (eds.), Parliament and Community (Belfast: Appletree Press, 1983), pp. 7–9.
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J. C. Holt, ‘The Prehistory of Parliament’, in Davies and Denton (eds.), The English Parliament in the Middle Ages, pp. 1–28.
J. R. Maddicott, ‘The Crusade Taxation of 1268–1270 and the Development of Parliament’, in Coss and Lloyd (eds.), Thirteenth Century England II, pp. 93–117.
Close rolls 1268–72 (London: HMSO, 1938), 245; Stapleton (ed.), Liber de Antiquis Legibus, p. 122.
J. H. Denton, ‘The Clergy and Parliament in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in Denton and Davies (eds.), The English Parliament in the Middle Ages, pp. 88–108; J. H. Denton and J. P. Dooley, Representatives of the Lower Clergy in Parliament 1295–1340 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987).
J. R. Maddicott, ‘Parliament and the Constituencies’, in Davies and Denton (eds.), The English Parliament in the Middle Ages, pp. 61–87.
Prestwich, ‘Parliament and the Community of the Realm in fourteenth century England’, pp. 5–24.
For parliament under Edward I, Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 436–68; A. L. Brown, The Governance of Late Medieval England (London: Arnold, 1989), pp. 165–9.
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© 1990 Michael Prestwich
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Prestwich, M. (1990). Parliament and Community. In: English Politics in the Thirteenth Century. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20933-0_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20933-0_9
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