ABSTRACT
Two things were already accepted about parliament: taxes could only be imposed with its consent, and the laws declared there were superior to all other laws. The first point arose originally from the convenience of getting the consent of the realm in one place and at one time; it was the more easily adhered to because a strong king like Henry VII preferred to 'live of his own' and not to trouble his parliaments. The second point arose out of parliament's character as a high court-the highest in the realm-whose decisions were binding on inferior courts; several times in the fifteenth century, the judges declared that certain matters were outside their competence, having been made the subject of parliamentary statute. The roots of parliament's two modern pillars-eontrol of taxation and the supremacy of parliamentary legislation-had taken hold, though the institution was still very 'medieval'. The core of parliament was a meeting of the king with his council in the widest sense, a council consisting both of his barons and of his professional or permanent council. The parliament chamber, with its throne on the cloth of state, its benches for lords spiritual and temporal, and its woolsacks for councillors and judges, signified the true essence of parliament. In addition, there were the representatives of the communities-the knights of the shires and the burgesses of the boroughs. These had no right of access to the parliament chamber; they were outside the high court of parliament and for that very reason had organised themselves into a house of commons under the guidance of the Speaker who alone could address the king in his parliament. In the sixteenth century the meetings of the great council in the parliament were to develop into the house of lords, even as the meetings of the ordinary council in the star chamber developed into the court of star chamber. Visible from Edward IV's time onwards, this development was not complete until the middle of Henry VIII's reign.
