Norman attack on England in 1066. Norman Conquest of England

Despite the emergence in England of objective prerequisites for the consolidation of free estates and the transition to a new form of a feudal state - a monarchy with estate representation, the strengthened royal power not only showed no readiness to involve representatives of the estates in resolving issues of public life, but also constantly violated, in their opinion, the boundaries their royal prerogatives. In 1258, at the Council in Oxford, armed barons, once again taking advantage of the dissatisfaction of large sections of the free population with royal policy, forced the king to accept the so-called Oxford provisions. They provided for the transfer of all executive power in the country to the Council of 15 barons. Along with the Executive Council, a Great Council of Magnates, consisting of 27 members, was to meet three times a year or more often to resolve important issues. Followed then in 1259. The Westminster Provisions provided some guarantees to small landowners against arbitrariness on the part of the lords. However, the demands of the chivalry to participate in the central administration of the country were not satisfied. The demands of the barons were regarded as an attempt to establish a baronial oligarchy.
Under these conditions, part of the barons, led by Simon de Montfort, who were looking for a stronger alliance with the chivalry, broke away from the oligarchic group and united with the chivalry and cities into an independent camp opposing the king and his supporters. The split in the opposition camp made it possible for the king to refuse to comply with the Oxford provisions. During the civil war that began in 1263, the forces of de Montfort managed to defeat the supporters of the king. In 1264 de Montfort became the supreme ruler of the state and implemented the requirement of chivalry to participate in public administration. The most important result of the civil war was the convening of the first estate-representative institution in the history of England - Parliament (1265). Along with the barons and spiritual feudal lords, representatives from the knights and the most significant cities were invited to it.
At the end of the XIII century. the royal power finally realized the need for a compromise, a political agreement with the feudal lords of all ranks and the elite of the townspeople in order to establish political and social stability. The consequence of such an agreement was the completion of the formation of the body of estate representation. In 1295, a "model" parliament was convened, the composition of which served as a model for subsequent parliaments in England. In addition to the large secular and spiritual feudal lords personally invited by the king, it included two representatives from 37 counties (knights) and two representatives from cities.
The creation of parliament led to a change in the form of the feudal state, the emergence of a monarchy with estate representation. The correlation of socio-political forces within and outside the parliament, as well as the relationship with the monarch, determined the features of both the structure and the competence of the English medieval parliament. Until the middle of the XIV century. the English estates sat together, and then divided into two chambers. At the same time, the knights from the counties began to sit together with representatives of the cities in one chamber (the House of Commons) and separated from the largest magnates, who formed the upper house (the House of Lords). The English clergy was not a special element of estate representation. The higher clergy sat with the barons, while the lower clergy sat in the House of Commons. Initially, there was no electoral qualification for parliamentary elections. Statute of 1430 established that freeholders who received at least 40 shillings of annual income could participate in county meetings that elected representatives to parliament.
At first, the possibilities of parliament to influence the policy of the royal power were insignificant. Its functions were reduced to determining the amount of taxes on personal property and to filing collective petitions addressed to the king. True, in 1297, Edward I confirmed the Magna Carta in Parliament, as a result of which the Statute on the non-permission of taxes appeared. It stated that the imposition of taxes, benefits and requisitions would not take place without the general consent of the clergy and secular magnates, knights, citizens and other free people of the kingdom. However, the Statute contained reservations that allowed for the possibility for the king to levy pre-existing fees.
Gradually, the parliament of medieval England acquired three important powers: the right to initiate legislation and participate jointly with the king in the issuance of laws, the right to decide on collections from the population in favor of the royal treasury, and the right to exercise some control over senior officials and act in some cases as a special judicial organ.
The right of parliamentary initiative arose from the practice of filing collective parliamentary petitions with the king. Most often, they contained a request to prohibit the violation of old laws or to issue new ones. The king could grant the request of Parliament or reject it. However, during the XIV century. it was established that no law should be passed without the consent of the King and the Houses of Parliament. In the XV century. a rule was established that the petitions of parliament should be clothed in the form of bills, which were called bills. This is how the concept of law (statute) took shape as an act of parliament emanating from the king, the house of lords and the house of commons.
During the XIV century. the competence of parliament in financial matters was gradually consolidated. The statute of 1340 proclaimed without any reservations the inadmissibility of levying direct taxes without the consent of Parliament, and the statutes of 1362 and 1371. extended this provision to indirect taxes. In the XV century. Parliament began to indicate the purpose of the subsidies provided to them and seek control over their spending.
In an effort to exert greater influence on public administration, which was the undisputed prerogative of the crown, parliament from the end of the 14th century. gradually introduced impeachment proceedings. It consisted in initiating by the House of Commons before the House of Lords, as the highest court of the country, accusations against one or another royal official of abuse of power. In addition, in the XV century. the right of parliament to directly declare criminal these or those abuses was affirmed. At the same time, a special act was issued, approved by the king and called the "bill of disgrace."
The English Parliament, unlike the French and German Assemblies of Estates, was the only national body that had no regional analogues. His powers and regular activities, turning him into a permanent element of the system of government contributed not to the weakening, but to the strengthening of the prerogatives and legitimate foundations of royal power. It is no coincidence that the constitutional doctrine that developed considered the crown as an integral part of parliament (the king and two chambers). During the XIII century. there is also the development of a new executive body - the Royal Council. He began to represent a narrow group of the king's closest advisers, in whose hands the highest executive and judicial power was concentrated. This group usually included the chancellor, treasurer, judges, ministerials closest to the king, mostly from knightly strata. The Grand Council of the largest vassals of the crown lost its functions, which went to Parliament.

When the feudal lords entered into a systematic struggle with the kings, one of their main demands concerned the convening of feudal congresses to resolve emergency subsidies, in excess of the usual ones (4 cases were considered the usual legitimate reasons for collecting subsidies from vassals: when a seigneur married a daughter, when he made his son a knight, when he had to be redeemed from captivity, when he went on a crusade). In 1215, large landowners forced John the Landless to sign the Magna Carta, according to which the king could not impose new taxes without the consent of the royal council (Curia regis), which gradually evolved into parliament.

organized a council of 9 members, which actually took the king under guardianship and appropriated the highest leadership of state affairs. In support of this council, Montfort, at the beginning of 1265, convened a parliament, which differed in its composition from the previous feudal congresses: the barons, bishops and abbots who supported Montfort's party were called, and in addition, two knights from each county and 2 deputies from the most important cities .

Montfort's opponent and conqueror, Edward I, was forced to return to the same system in order to secure sufficient subsidies for himself. Starting in 1295, he began to convene a parliament on the model of 1265. In 1297, he confirmed the Magna Carta and promised not to levy taxes without the consent of Parliament.

medieval parliament

In 1649, Charles I was executed, the monarchy fell, and the English Republic was proclaimed. In 1653, Oliver Cromwell, who became dictator with the title of Lord Protector, dissolved the Long Parliament (of which by that time only the so-called Rump remained after the Pride Purge in 1648). Convened by him in 1654, the Parliament (en: First Protectorate Parliament) consisted of one chamber (the House of Lords was abolished by the Long Parliament in 1649). The former electoral system was declared unsuitable, since it provided many seats for deputies from small cities, often dependent on large landowners, while the new cities had no representatives at all. To eliminate this shortcoming, the seats in Parliament were re-distributed according to the size of the population.

The new Parliament entered into a dispute with Cromwell over the appointment of members of the Council of State. Parliament wished to retain at least the approval of these officials, but Cromwell did not agree to allow any intervention of Parliament in this area. Cromwell ended up dissolving Parliament. In 1656, he convened a new parliament (en: Second Protectorate Parliament), from which, however, from the very beginning he eliminated by force 93 legally elected deputies. This parliament, on the initiative of Cromwell, made an attempt to re-create the upper house, but not as a chamber of hereditary peers, but as consisting of life members appointed by the Lord Protector (en: Cromwell's Other House). This attempt again led to conflict with Cromwell and to the dissolution of that Parliament as well, It was succeeded by the last Republican Parliament (en:Third Protectorate Parliament), which lasted less than a year in 1659, and was then replaced again by the Rump of the Long Parliament, which lasted until 1660.

The progressive ideas of the Republican era - the need for electoral reform, the reformation of the upper house, closer communication between the legislature and the executive - were set aside by the Stuart Restoration in 1660, when the House of Lords was restored.

Now there are parliaments in almost all countries of the world and are considered an integral attribute of the democratic structure of the state. But in England this institution has a special significance. It is a symbol of England, like the five o'clock tea party or football.

The emergence of parliament is connected with the struggle of the king and the barons, which, as it turned out, did not end with the death of the stubborn John I. His son Henry III was crowned when he was only 9 years old, and began to rule independently from 1224. He was a man of a non-state mindset - he loved pomp, patronized art, was trusting and not energetic. Henry entrusted affairs of state to favorites, most of them foreigners. People from Poitou gained great influence at court. They were given positions and lands. Dissatisfied English feudal lords rebelled against Henry in 1233, and the king was forced to remove his favorite Pierre Rocher and his fellow countrymen from himself. But soon Henry III married Eleanor of Provence, and knights from the south of France again followed her to England. Henry's mother Isabella also had her numerous Gascon protégés.

The main feature of the royal financial policy under Henry III was extravagance. He showered favors on his favorites, arranged festivities, waged war in France and Wales. All this required constant cash injections, and the king constantly convened congresses of large nobles in order to ask for regular benefits. Such congresses were already then called parliaments (from the French "parle" - "to speak"). According to another version, the word "parliament" arose as a result of the merger of the Latin "parium" ("equal") and "lamentum" ("complaints, sorrows"). Parliament was thus a place where people of equal status could voice their grievances. Differences in etymology also cause differences in relation to the history of the establishment of the first class-representative body in England. Some historians argue that the prototype of the modern parliament arose already in the 9th century. Then Alfred the Great, having united England, convened parliaments. According to another point of view, the most common, the English parliament appears as a result of acute social contradictions only in the second half of the 13th century.

The monarch addressed monetary demands not only to the feudal lords, but also to cities and trading corporations, laying the foundation for the creation of a future government body, which included representatives not only of the aristocracy and clergy, but also of the third estate.

At some point, Henry got the idea to get the Sicilian crown for his son, for which he paid a lot of money to the Pope. He got into debt, failure to fulfill obligations threatened Henry with excommunication. In 1258, the king asked the barons for help, but met with implacable opposition in their person. Its leader was Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, the son of a commander who became famous in the Albigensian wars. The congress, which met in Oxford in June, was called "The Mad Parliament". The barons demanded from the king the removal of foreign advisers, the cessation of extraordinary monetary extortions and new political concessions. Their offerings went down in history as the "Oxford Provisions".

Heinrich was forced to agree to the formation of a commission of 24 members, half of whom were appointed by himself, and half by parliament. This commission was given the right to approve and remove officials. A state council of 15 members was elected, which was instructed to carry out judicial reform, to control all the actions of the king. Commissions of four knights were set up in each county to hear complaints.

As a result of the adoption of the Oxford Provisions, foreigners were expelled from Britain. Henry himself went to France, where he enlisted the support of Louis IX. The Pope released the English king from the oath given to him in Oxford, and blessed him to go to war with the rebels. (The fact is that under the power of the barons, the pope stopped receiving money from England.) The war began in 1263. In the decisive battle of Lewes, Montfort defeated the royalists. The king was taken prisoner and had to recognize the Oxford regulations.

As early as 1259, in Westminster, small and medium-sized knights worked out their provisions, aimed at limiting both the tyranny of the king and the oligarchic power of the barons. Among the latter there was no unity of opinion about the form of government. Thus, Simon de Montfort, proclaimed protector of the state and actually becoming king, believed that it was worth expanding the social base of the anti-royalist movement at the expense of petty feudal lords, free farmers and cities. Earl Richard of Gloucester, on the contrary, was categorically against such "profanity". In January 1265, Montfort, in fulfillment of his plan, assembled another parliament, in which, in addition to prelates and barons, he invited representatives of the above-mentioned estates. This year is considered the year of birth of the English Parliament. In March, this Parliament concluded a new treaty with Prince Edward and the King, who recognized all the changes in government.

Soon, however, Edward managed to deceive the spies assigned to him by the protector and begin a new stage of armed struggle. Richard of Gloucester gave him support. In August, near the city of Evesgem, the royalists won a victory, Montfort was killed on the battlefield. The king was released. The war lasted two years, and the victory was won by the king and the prince. However, they had to make a certain compromise, which was achieved by the same Earl of Gloucester. In 1267, the Magna Carta was restored, the opponents of the king received a full amnesty. In the future, Henry sacredly observed all the clauses of the charter, constantly consulted with Parliament and replaced government posts exclusively by the British.

In 1295 a "model" parliament was convened, the composition of which served as a model for subsequent parliaments in England. In addition to the large secular and spiritual feudal lords personally invited by the king, it included 2 representatives from 37 counties (knights) and 2 representatives from cities. Until the middle of the XIV century. they sat together. At first, the possibilities of parliament to influence the policy of the royal power were insignificant. Its functions were limited to determining the amount of taxes on personal property and to filing collective petitions addressed to the king. True, in 1297, Edward I confirmed the Magna Carta in Parliament, as a result of which the Statute of Non-Permission of Taxes appeared. It stated that taxation, allowances, and exactions would not take place without the general consent of the spiritual and secular magnates, knights, burgesses, and other free people of the kingdom. However, the Statute contained reservations that allowed for the possibility for the king to levy pre-existing fees.

The right of parliamentary initiative arose from the practice of filing collective parliamentary petitions with the king. Most often, they contained demands to prohibit the violation of old laws or to issue new ones. The king could agree to the requests of Parliament or reject them. However, in the XIV century. it was established that no law should be passed without the consent of the King and the Houses of Parliament. In the XV century. a rule was established that the petitions of Parliament should be clothed in the form of bills, which were called "bills".