ABSTRACT
A number of themes do, however, emerge; the development of royal government from the early medieval period and its gradual transformation into the constitutional and predominantly ceremonial monarchy of today; the development of Parliament as a representative and sovereign body and its relationship with the executive; in these as in many other areas, a tradition of haphazard growth followed by rationalisation. Traditional textbooks on Constitutional and Administrative Law assume a historical knowledge which many, if not the majority, of law students no longer possess. Constitutional history has not, perhaps surprisingly, been the subject of any recent specialist text. From 1689 it became in practical terms a permanent institution, as the terms of the Bill of Rights required a parliament to be summoned annually in order to pass the Mutiny Act necessary to keep the army in being. A fourth theme which pervades the British constitution is the ‘constitutional myth’.
