ABSTRACT
The early history of parliament has proved to be almost as dangerous a battleground for historians as the field of Bannockburn was for Edward II. Although there is no evidence to suggest that contemporaries were in any doubt as to what a parliament was, there are difficult problems of definition. The composition of early parliaments varied widely, from a relatively informal gathering of the king’s councillors to a well-planned meeting including lay and ecclesiastical magnates, and representatives of shires, boroughs and lower clergy. The function of the assemblies varied widely, from the discussion of great affairs of state and the granting of taxation, to legislation, judicial business and the hearing of private petitions. There is no medieval Erskine May to serve as a reliable guide. The one early fourteenth-century text describing parliament gives a highly idealized picture which purports to describe the institution as it existed in the time of Edward the Confessor, when of course there was no such thing. The application of the logic of Occam’s Razor, paring away at the inessentials, has led to some absurdities, with meetings clearly designated as parliaments in contemporary records being declared by historians to be nothing of the sort, since they fail to fulfil certain arbitrary definitions. The aim of this chapter is to examine parliament in its formative years up to the beginning of Edward III’s reign, looking at both its functions and its composition. There were to be further important developments under Edward III, but these will emerge in the discussion of the domestic politics of his reign in chapters eight and ten.
