ABSTRACT
The origins of the House of Lords lie in the councils summoned by English Kings in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in order to give advice, decide on appeal cases and, under certain circumstances, make financial grants to the King. These ‘King’s Councils’ had developed into a form which is recognisable today by 1295, then being an assembly of the ‘three estates of the realm’, the clergy, barons and commons – ‘those who pray, those who fight, those who work’. From the earliest times, both spiritual and secular hereditary peers formed the membership of the House of Lords, by which name it became known in the sixteenth century. Maitland (1908) asserts that the separation into two Houses occurred around the middle of the fourteenth century, although Stubbs (1880) contends that the two bodies were separate from the earliest time. The functions of the two Houses also differed: it was for the Lords to advise the King, and it was for the Commons to consent to the King’s proposals. By 1330, Parliament was to meet annually,4 at least once but more times as summonsed. Nevertheless, as seen in Chapter 5, the sitting of Parliament was a matter for the King to determine and, between 1364 and 1689, there were many years in which no Parliament met, the longest period being 11 years, during which time Charles I ruled under the prerogative.
