The Origins of Assembly-Based Government
11.2.1 From the Germanic Kingdoms to the Feudal Stage
Rome had “popular” assemblies during the Republican period, but they were almost always controlled by the wealthy, and gradually lost their influence and power following the triumph of the imperial monarchy because of the process initiated by Augustus and the establishment of the Principate.
In contrast, we have already seen how originally, during their stage as nomads, the Germanic peoples made their most important decisions through assemblies of warriors (mallus), the origin in Anglo- Saxon England of councils known as the witan and moots, held from the eighth to the eleventh centuries.[507] In Anglo-Saxon England, for instance, the law forbade men from seeking the king’s justice unless they had failed to have their case heard in the local “hundred courts,[508]” made up of rich and poor men alike (Pollock and Maitland 2010, 42). The principle of collective justice, however, would endure down to our days in institutions such as the jury (Stanley 2000, 136-145).[509]It should be noted that after the various Germanic peoples settled in a particular territory and organized into kingdoms, their popular assemblies tended to become restricted, composed solely of “notables” acting as royal advisers—aula regia in Visigothic Spain or witenagemot (Gneist 2005, 101-103) in Anglo-Saxon England. The “aristocratic” assembly took on special importance during the feudal stage, evolving into the curia regis. Made up of bishops and the most influential noblemen, it was the body of advisers and courtiers who assisted the king and supervised the administration of the realm, the ancestor of the king’s privy council, which later splintered into Parliament and the Privy Council (Baker 1990, 20). The curia became the centerpiece of royal administration in England during the twelfth century, and gradually evolved, as in the rest of Europe, into an assembly of estates (Gneist 2005, 260-263),[510] though featuring the peculiarity that the medieval English assembly of “estates”, the Parliament, would play a more important legal and political role than in other European kingdoms.
11.2.2 The Westminster Parliament Appears
11.2.2.1 From the Assize of Clarendon to the Magna Carta
Following the Norman invasion England was ruled by a series of authoritarian kings, such as William I himself, and his descendant Henry II Plantagenet, who in 1166 had the curia regia approve the historic legislative text known as the Assize of Clarendon,[511] which limited the purview of feudal jurisdictions and laid down the foundation for the expansion of royal justice (Caenegem 1988, 40-42). It became the first step towards the unification of legal practice throughout the kingdom (common law).[512] His son John I—a brother of Richard the Lionhearted—ruined all that his father had achieved. His reign was so disastrous for England that he was called “John Lackland” because the French king, Philip Augustus, wrested from him all his domains in France. This, coupled with his voracious fiscal policy, so enraged the nobles that they forced the king to accept the Magna Carta in 1215, a document limiting the king’s power (and granting them more, of course).[513]
There after the English kings began to consult the most eminent members of the nobility before making the most important decisions for the kingdom. In fact, these nobles began to meet with the king in the city of Westminster—at that time separated from London—to discuss affairs of state. (The term Parliament1 would evolve from the French verb parler,[514] [515] meaning “to talk”.) These meetings of the king with his nobles constituted the origins of the English Parliament (Maddicott 2012).
11.2.2.2 From the Council of Nobles to the Assembly of Estates
In 1258, an English nobleman named Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester and a brother of King Henry III, weary of the monarch’s weakness and misrule, rebelled against him, and imposed upon the monarch the “Provisions of Oxford”, a document which left power in the hands of a restricted council of nobles and was considered, until 1264, the law of the land by the barons (Valente 2005, 40).
At the Battle of Lewes in 1264 (Sadler 2008, 55-70) Monfort defeated Henry III and imposed upon him the presence in Parliament of representatives from every county and the most important cities, in addition to its nobles and bishops (Maddicott 2001, 284-289). The citizens’ representation at Westminster was consolidated by Edward I (1272-1307), who as of 1295 relied upon knights and town representatives to counter the influence of the nobility, and to finance his military campaigns.[516]This explains as well why he was extremely active legislating, to the point that Frederick W. Maitland considered him the “English Justinian” (Maitland and Montague 2005, 2).[517]
11.2.3 The Political Consolidation of Parliament
In 1307, the successor to the energetic Edward was his son, Edward II who, unlike his father, was an utter disaster, so inept that in 1327 Parliament forced him to abdicate in favor of his son Edward III (Raban 2000, 149-151). This was the first time that Parliament succeeded in such a decisive political intervention, but it would not be the last.[518]
Edward III reigned for 50 years and proved to be one of England’s finest kings. It should be noted, however, that he was responsible for involving his kingdom in the Hundred Years War in 1346, after his resounding victory at the Battle of Crecy (Ormrod 2011, 277-284). The ensuing conflict would be a long one and take a heavy toll on the English monarchy, forcing its kings to summon Parliament often to ask for money. Over the course of its gatherings the current bicameral structure of the English Parliament developed, with one body made up of nobles (House of Lords), and another composed of the representatives of the cities (House of Commons).[519] This was a unique structure as compared to the assemblies of estates in the various European kingdoms,[520] as in England the underprivileged classes, the commoners, enjoyed 50 % of Parliamentary representation, rather than the one third they wielded in Spain’s Cortes, or France’s Estates General, where the other two thirds were controlled by the privileged classes: the clergy and the nobility.
By the final years of Henry III’ s reign the Commons would play a decisive political role in English politics (Harris 2006, 437-443).The growing power of Parliament was evident in 1399, when the two chambers acted to remove Richard II and usher in a new dynasty, the House of Lancaster, installing Henry IV on the throne (Dodd 2007, 324-325). The new king would reinitiate hostilities with France (prolonging the 100 Years War), which would reinforce Parliament’s political importance, as the monarchs once again required large sums of money to finance their military campaigns. Parliament’s power was further bolstered by the fact that England eventually lost the lengthy conflict, which left the crown’s prestige badly tarnished.[521] The defeat also led to the outbreak of a bloody civil war: the War of the Roses (1455-1485), in which the houses of Lancaster and York grappled for the throne. In the end it was Parliament which served as the arbitrator designating a new dynasty: the Tudors.[522]
11.3