II.: Magna Carta and the Reforms of Edward I.

The Great Charter, alike from its excellences and its defects, exercised a potent influence throughout the two succeeding reigns. It is hardly too much to say that the failure of Magna Carta to provide adequate machinery for its own enforcement is responsible for the protracted struggles and civil war that made up the troubled reign of Henry III.; while the difference of attitude assumed by Henry and his son respectively towards the scheme of reform it embodied, explains why one reign was full of conflicts and distress, while the other was prosperous and progressive. The fundamental difference between the policies of Henry and Edward lies in this, that while Henry, in spite of numerous nominal confirmations of Magna Carta, never loyally accepted the settlement it contained, Edward acquiesced in its main provisions honestly on the whole, with a sincere intention to carry them into practice.

At the same time, the attitude of Henry III. indicates an advance upon that of John. Henry, on attaining majority, had confirmed the charters freely and on his own intiative, and found himself thereafter unable openly to repudiate the bargain he had made. Yet the settlement between Crown and baronage was nominal rather than real: the King was bound by bonds of parchment which he could break at pleasure. In the absence of sanctions for its enforcement, the Charter became an empty expression of good intentions: no constitutional expedient existed to obviate a final recourse to the arbitrament of civil war. Thus, part of the blame for the recurring and devastating struggles of the reign of Henry must be attributed to the defects of the Great Charter.

The whole interest of the reign, indeed, lies in the attempts made to evolve adequate machinery for enforcing “the liberties.” Experiments of many kinds were tried in the hope of turning theory into practice. The system of government outlined in the Provisions of Oxford of 1258, for example, reproduced the defects of the scheme contained in chapter 61 of the Great Charter, and added new defects of its own. The baronial committee was not designed to enter into friendly co–operation with Henry in the normal work of government, but rather to supersede entirely certain of the royal prerogatives. No glimmering was yet apparent of the true solution afterwards adopted with success: it was not yet realized that the best way to control the Crown was through the agency of its own Ministers.

If Simon de Montfort had any vague conception of the real remedy for the evils of the reign, his ideals were overruled in 1258 by the more extreme section of the baronial party. Earl Simon, indeed, had one opportunity of putting his theories into practice: during the brief interval between the battle of Lewes, which made him supreme for the moment, and the battle of Evesham, which ended his career, he enjoyed an unfettered control; and some authorities find in the provisional scheme of the closing months of 1264, traces of the constitutional expedient afterwards successfully adopted as a solution of the problem. In one respect, the Earl of Leicester did influence the development of the English constitution; he furnished the first precedent for a true Parliament, reflecting interests wider than those of Crown tenants and free–holders, when he invited representatives of the boroughs to take their places by the side of representatives of the counties in a national council summoned to meet in January, 1265. His schemes of government, however, were not fated to be realized by him in a permanent form: the utter overthrow of his faction followed his decisive defeat and death on 4th August, 1265.

The personal humiliation of Simon, however, assured the ultimate triumph of the cause he had made his own. Prince Edward, from the moment of his brilliant victory at Evesham, was not only supreme over his father’s enemies, but also within his father’s councils. He found himself in a position to realize some of his political ideals; and he adopted as his own, the main constitutional conceptions of his uncle Earl Simon, who had been his friend and teacher before he became his deadliest enemy.

Edward Plantagenet, alike when acting as chief adviser of his aged father and after he had succeeded to his throne, not only accepted the main provisions of the Great Charter, but adopted also a new scheme of government which formed their necessary counterpart. The very fact of the adoption of Earl Simon’s ideals by the heir to the throne altered their chances of success. All such schemes had been foredoomed to failure so long as they emanated from an opposition leader, however powerful; but their triumph was assured when accepted by the monarch himself. Under the protection of Edward I.—the last of the four great master–builders of the constitution—the Commune Concilium of the Angevin kings grew into the English Parliament. This implied no sudden dramatic change, but a long process of adjustment, under the guiding hand of Edward.

The main features of his scheme may be briefly summarized: Edward’s conception of his position as a national king achieving national ends, the funds necessary for which ought to be contributed by the nation, led him to devise a system of taxation which would fill the Exchequer while avoiding unnecessary friction with the tax–payer. In broadening the basis of finance, he was led to broaden the basis of Parliament; and thus he advanced from the feudal conception of a Commune Concilium, attended only by Crown tenants, towards the nobler ideal of a national Parliament containing representatives of every community and every class in England. The principle of representation (foreshadowed in a vague way for centuries before the Conquest in English local government), now found a home, and, as it proved, a permanent home, in the English Parliament.

The powers of this assembly widened almost automatically, with the widening of its composition. To its original function of taxation, legislation was soon added. The functions of hearing grievances and of proffering advice had, even in the days of the Conqueror, belonged to such of the great magnates as were able to make their voices heard in the Curia Regis; and similar rights were gradually extended to the humbler members of the augmented assembly. The representatives of counties and towns retained rights of free discussion even after Parliament had split into two Houses. These rights, fortified by command of the purse strings, tended to increase, until they secured for the Commons some measure of control over the executive functions of the King, varying in extent and effectiveness with the weakness of the King, with his need of money, and with the political situation of the hour.

The new position and powers of Parliament logically involved a corresponding alteration in the position and powers of the smaller but more permanent council or Concilium Ordinarium (the future Privy Council). This had long been increasing in power, in prestige, and in independence, a process quickened by the minority of Henry III. The Council was now strengthened by the support of a powerful Parliament, usually acting in alliance with the leaders of the baronial opposition. The Council was recruited from Parliament, and the appointment of King’s ministers was influenced by the proceedings in the larger assembly.

The Council thus became neutral ground on which the conflicting interests of King and baronage might be discussed and compromised. Wild schemes like that of chapter 61 of Magna Carta or that typified in the Committee appointed by the Mad Parliament of 1258, were now unnecessary. The King’s own ministers, backed by Parliament, became an adequate means of enforcing the constitutional restraints embodied in royal Charters. The problem was thus, for the time being, solved. The bargain made at Runnymede between the English monarch and the English nation found its counterpart and sanction, before the close of the thirteenth century, in the conception of a King ruling through responsible ministers and in harmony with a national Parliament. Edward Plantagenet, though merely the unconscious instrument by whose agency the new conception was for a time partially realized, yet merits the gratitude of posterity for his share in the elaboration of a working scheme of government which took the place of the clumsy expedients designed as constitutional sanctions in 1215. The ultimate triumph of the principles underlying Magna Carta was assured not through any executive committee of rebellious barons, but through the constitutional machinery devised by Edward Plantagenet.