THE EVOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT BY A. F. POLLARD, M.A., LITT.D. SECOND EDITION, REVISED First published in 1920 Second edition 1926 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION THISvolulne is the outcome of studies which were turned Ln the direction of constitutional history partly by my appointment to a chair with that title at University College, London, in 1903, and more specifically by my election in 1908 to a fellowship at All Souls' College, Oxford, on con- dltion of pursuing researches suggested by the late F. W. Maitland. The first sketch of this essay took the form of six public lectures delivered in London in Lent Term 1913, which were expanded into fifteen lectures given on the Goldwin Smith foundation at Cornell University and else- where in the United States in the following spring. The manuscript was completed, save for some notes and refer- ences, in August 1915, when the increasing tension of the war put a stop to remoter studies. During these seventeen years the history of the English parliament has attracted the labour of several learned historians, and particular acknowledgement is due to Pro- fessor C. H. McIlwain's High Court of Parliament, which, coming into my hands at the end of 1912, confirmed the trend of my investigations and supplied me with fresh ideas and illustrations. Another American book, Professor Bald- win's King's Council in the Middle Ages, published in 1914, threw valuable light on a collateral subject. But the starting-point for all of us has been Maitland's introduction to the Menzoranda de Parliarnento, which he edited for the Rolls Series in 1893, the most original and suggestive essay v vi PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION vii that has ever been written on the medieval English par- held at University Collcge during the last six years liament. There would have been less reason for this book, to discuss various problems of historical research, and to had that essay, which is still on sale in its original limited whom I owe many suggestions, references, and corrections. edition, not been buried in the Rolls Series, excluded from A list of acknowledgements would be long and invidious, disinterment in Maitland's Collected Papers, and generally but I cannot repress a word of thanks to Miss Jeffries ignored by English instructors of youth for nearly a Davis, Lecturer in the Sources of English History at generation. University College, whose contribution to the value of those A student who is mainly versed in the history of the discussions has been crowned by a card-index of references sixteenth century must, however, if he trespasses on the to the materials for English parliamentary history, which middle ages, be ready to face prosecution with all the is available for all who care to consult it. It is not, of rigour of medieval lore; and this volume cannot escape course, complete ; and possibly its most fruitful function criticism of its lack of technical knowledge in many details. may be to indicate the need and value of similar registers My excuse for the trespass is that, being engaged on a of historical materials already printed or preserved in British study of the Tudor constitution, I could not understand it archives. without seeking answers to preliminary problems which had A. F. POLLARD. not been solved; and historical curiosity combined with an AfiriZ23, 1920. academic interest in politics to expand an introduction to the constitutional history of the Tudor period into an essay on the place of parliament in the past, the present, and the future of the English state. The last two chapters at least of this volume are not history; but I doubt the logic and the expedience of the contention that it is only the business of those who have not studied the past to discuss the present or the future. The book is less a history of parliament than a suggestion of the lines upon which it should be written, and rather an indication of the research that is still required than of that which has yet been done. Few of the conclusions here tentatively outlined can be established without pro- longed research by many scholars ; but happily the prospect of a school of historical research is not so distant as it was. Meanwhile, I have to express my deep obligations to the fellow-workers who have attended the formal and informal PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION THISvolume has been out of print for nearly two years and the demand for its reappearance has been sufficient to impose upon its author the alternatives of simply reprinting or making such revision as would entitle the re-issue to be called a second edition. The cost of setting the type afresh and lack of leisure to re-write the book suggested the easy course of a mere re-impression, and both were reinforced by the inadvisability of attempting to convert an introduction to the constitutional history of the Tudor period into a history of medieval English parliaments. On the other hand, such attention as I have been able to give to the topics dealt with herein made it difficult to seprint it without reference to the modification or confirmation which those subsequent studies have suggested. The result has been some correction of errors, some addition of facts, some notes on kindly criticism, and a rather lengthy appendix on parliamentary representation in the fourteenth century. These fall far short of what I could have desired. I should like to have responded to Mr. Crump's invitation' and attempted to add that chapter " to tell what 'law' is, and how it is related to parliament," and to have argued that, since the " king's grace " was needed to turn parlia- mentary petitions into acts of parliament, it is not easy to divorce it from statutes or statutes from the " law." But the chapter would have run to at least one inconclusive History, April 1921,p. 47. ix x PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xi volume; and, if I read him aright, Professor Holdsworth's Apart from two new appendices the book remains sub- seven have shown the impossibility of any definition of stalltially what it was. Such corrections as could be inserted " law " which will meet historical difficulties. It is, perhaps, disturbing the type have been made in the text the greatest of those " no-constants "-I had almost and will not be noticed except by the critics and corre- written non-constats-with which historical students have spondents to whom they are due. Others which required to grapple. I should like to have ventured also upon the some discussion have been relegated to an appendix of minor mystery of the " statute-book " and the relation notes, and reference to them has been made by letters of between rolls of parliament and statute-rolls ; but these are the alphabet to distinguish them from the numeric references problems for more expert hands than those of one whose to the footnotes. fate or fortune it has been to spend more time in facilitating A. I?. POLLARD. the research of others than in pursuing it himself. Institute of Historical Reseavch, Sefitcmbev 24, 1925. I have, however, been able to use for this edition some works which I ought to have used, but did not, before. The P.S.-Since this preface was written a second edition of war and even the first years of peace were not conducive to M. Pasquet's treatise has been published, in English and historical scholarship, and monographs published abroad with additional notes, by the Cambridge University Press. during that period tended to escape the notice they deserved. A detailed criticism of one or two points relating to medieval But my regret at having failed to read M. Pasquet's singu- parliamentary elections has also been contributed by Mr. larly acute and lucid Essai sur les origines de la Chambre des J. G. Edwards to Studies . presented to T. F. Tozlt Communes (1914), and Professor A. B. White's scholarly (Manchester, 1925) : I hope to deal with it in the April articles on that and cognate subjects before I wrote this number of History. book is tempered by satisfaction that so many of my more Finally, I have to thank the Society of Antiquaries and heterodox conclusions should have been independently Miss Ivy M. Cooper, who has been working for some years reached by more expert authorities. But not even the on the topography of Westminster Palace, for the last war will excuse the inadvertence which neglected Riess's illustration here for the first time reproduced. Geschichte des Wahlrechts zzlm englischen Parliament published as long ago as 1885, and his article on Der Urs$rung des englischen Unterha~ses.~I need hardly refer students to Professor Rait's Parliaments of Scotland, published last year ; and I have made no attempt to anticipate myself or others by expanding the sections of this volume which deal with the Tudor period. Aqnevican Historical Review, xvii. 12-16, xix. 735-50. Hist. Zeitschrift, 1888. CONTENTS CHAP. PACE I. THE PLACE OF PARLIAMENT IN HISTORY . I- 11. THE HIGH COURT OF PARLIAMENT . 111. EDWARD I'S PARLIAMENTARY MODELS . IV. THE MYTH OF THE THREE ESTATES V. THE FICTION OF THE PEERAGE . VI. THE GRO\\'TII OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS . VII. PARLIAMENT AND NATIONALISM . VIII. THE GROWTH OF REPRESENTATIOX . IX. PARLIAMENT AND LIBERTY . X. PARLIAMENT AND TIIE CIIURCH . XI. TIIE GROWTH OF SOVEREIGNTY IN PARLIAMENT XII. THE SEPARATION OF POWERS XTII. TIIE CROWN IN PARLIAMENT . XIV. THE COUNCIL IN PARLIAMENT .