254 REVIEWS OF BOOKS April baronage were represented. It is not very safe to argue from the absence of writs that the terminal parliaments were attended by no barons but those whose counsel was regularly retained by the king. And even the latter may have been regarded as representing the barons at large, for there was no technical distinction at that date between a simple concilium and a magnum concilium. The theory which views these terminal parlia- ments as the solid basis to which Edward later added the estates for taxa- tion only fails to take account of the fact that, within a few months of his arrival in England, he held what was officially described, in apparently familiar language, as son primer parlement general whose assent was obtained not merely to a tax but to the comprehensive Statute of West- minster I. Its descriptive epithet no doubt implies the existence of the parliamentum singular e or terminal session. Yet it warns us not to under- estimate the element of assent and consent in the first phase of the evolu- tion of parliament. It is true that in 1275 the king enacted ' by his council ' and with the assent only of the other factors of the parliament. A comparison, however, of the large council in parliament in 1305 with the much smaller gathering in the Michaelmas session of 1278 x suggests that in a ' general ' parliament the council may have been afforced by a number of barons who did not usually attend. This would help to explain, without undue insistence on the powers of the more permanent and royal element, the continued application of the terms ' full ' and ' general ' to such a parliament as that of 1305 — which by the way was not asked to grant money— even when all except the council had been dismissed. More- over, even a conciliar parliament could express baronial assent. Edward I himself is reported to have declared that the Statute of Mortmain, which was enacted in a terminal session, was ' de consilio magnatum suorum editum et ordinatum 2 The line between parliaments, as between councils, was at first a wavering one. There is no doubt that, under Edward I, parliament, whether general or single, was the highest court of law, in which petitions to the king or to the king and his council for redress of grievances not cognizable, or not satisfactorily dealt with, by the two benches were heard and answered, and certain pleas were tried. This judicial or quasi-judicial work bulked largely in the business of parliament, but many petitions were referred to the ordinary courts and the others chiefly to committees. It is plain, too, that the work even of the terminal sessions was not exclusively judicial, for it was the business of the council to advise generally, and, as early as 1280, steps were taken to reduce the pressure of petitions ' so that the king and council might attend to the great business of the realm and of his foreign lands '. 3 After the death of Edward I, the regular terminal sessions were no longer held, 4 though general parliaments still met oftener than would have been necessary but for this class of business. The causes now stated for the summons of parliaments make it quite 1 Foedera, i. 563 (Record Commission). 2 Stubbs, Select Charters, ed. Davis, p. 429. 3 Stubbs, Const. Hist. (2nd edition), ii. 263.
- Dr. Pollard, after recording this (p. 131), speaks later of three parliaments a year
under Edward's immediate successors.
