who resist the collec tion of the unauthor ized taxes. After this appeal, it seems the peace during his absence.1 that the baronial leaders brought forward a formal list of grievances, which were duly presented to the king before his departure.2 Thus the issue stood at the time of Edward's embarkation for Flanders on the 22d of August. Before leaving, the king appointed his son Edward regent, with Reginald Grey as his chief counsellor. On the day following the king's departure the storm broke: on that day Bohun and Bigod, backed by a military force in which appeared the citizens of London, came into the exchequer and forbade the collection of the unauthorized taxes which the king had levied until the promised confirmation of the charters had taken place. In the presence of such a demonstration, which amounted to civil war, the regent was compelled to yield; and in order to carry out such concessions as were promised, a parliament was summoned for the 6th of October. In this assembly, which was irregularly summoned, and in which the baronial leaders appeared with a strong military force at Close of the their backs, the prolonged struggle was brought to a close. struggle. The earls demanded not only the confirmation of the charters, but also the adoption, as a part of such confirmation, of certain supplementary articles that embodied the list of grievances which prior to his departure they had presented to the king. The regent, with the advice of his council, at once conceded all that was demanded of him, and then forwarded the charters with the new articles to the king, who confirmed both at Ghent on the 5th of November.5 The new articles, which were thus solemnly made a part of the Confirma constitution, not only denounced all of the unauthorized taxation which had recently been imposed by royal authority, but Charters confirmed at Ghent, Nov. 5, 1297, tio Cartarum. 1 B. Cotton, p. 330; Fadera, i. p. 872,873. 2 B. Cotton, p. 325; Ann. Trivet, p. 360; Rishanger, p. 175; Select Charters, P. 491. 8 M. Westm., p. 430; Rishanger, p. 178; Parl. Writs, i. p. 32; Lords' Report, vol. i. p. 222. 4 That is to say, writs were addressed to the sheriffs on the 15th September commanding them to return, by the day named, representatives of the shires, to receive the king's charters and letters patent in consideration of an eighth to be granted him. No mention is made of representatives from the cities and towns, or of the inferior clergy. The facts as to this assembly, which was summoned in a most irregular manner, are all stated in the Lord's' Report, vol. i. pp. 224, 225. See, also, Select Charters, p. 492. ↳ Fœdera, i. p. 880. The charters had been previously confirmed by in speximus on the 12th of October. Fadera, i. p. 879; Statutes of the Realm, i. pp. 114-119. they also provided that, with certain exceptions, no taxes should henceforth be imposed without the common consent of the realm and to the common profit thereof. The king was made to promise the clergy, the barons, and "all the Provisions commonalty of the land, that for no business from hence of the new forth will we take such manner of aids, tasks, nor prizes, but to taxation. by the common assent of the realm, and for the common profit thereof, saving the ancient aids and prizes due and accustomed." And in order to extend the limitation to indirect as well as to direct taxation, the articles further provide that the royal right of taxing wool shall not in the future be exercised "without their common assent and goodwill; saving to us and our heirs the custom of wools, skins, and leather granted before by the commonalty aforesaid." 2 Thus by the reincorporation into the charters of these vital limitations upon the royal right of taxation, which for more than eighty years had been omitted from them, the prolonged struggle which the barons of Runnymede had inaugurated ended at last in a completely successful consummation. The exclusive right of the national assembly to Exclusive authorize taxation was now fully and finally recognized, save nation to right of the so far as that right was limited by the proviso, "saving the authorize ancient aids and prizes due and accustomed."3 How under finally admitted by the cover of this proviso the crown afterwards exercised the the crown. right to talliage the cities and towns upon the royal demesnes will be explained hereafter. taxation II. Before the end of Edward's reign the struggle for the Summary. charters was brought to a close, and with the close of that struggle finally disappeared the political results of the Norman conquest. The fact has 1 Art. vi. 2 Art. vii. The supplementary articles are preserved in French and Latin, and the two forms differ materially from each other. In the French form the articles have become a permanent part of English law. Statutes of the Realm, i. 124, 125. In their Latin form, preserved by Walter of Hemingburg (ii. p. 152), the articles are generally known as the statute De tallagio non concedendo. A lucid analysis and comparison of the two forms of the articles with each other may be found in Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. ii. p. 142, 143. again and again been drawn "They (the Latin articles, as the stat- 3 By this proviso the king refused out that the coming of the Normans did not involve the displacement of the English nation, nor a wiping out of the immemorial laws and political institutions of the conquered The Old-English political system of local self-governing communities, together with the customary law, survived the shock of the Conquest, and upon that tenacious system as a substructure the Norman system of central administration was superimposed. By the coming of William two kindred systems of government, both tending in the same direction and yet in different stages of development, were brought into the closest contact, and out of the fusion between the two has grown the modern constitution. The period of transition and growth which intervenes between the ancient constitution and the constitution in its modern form naturally divides itself into three stages: the first or Norman stage, embracing the reigns of the four Norman kings, is the stage in which the great mass of foreign clements and influences were infused into the blood, the language, the laws, the political institutions of the conquered race; the second or Angevin stage, embracing the reigns of Henry II. and his sons, is the stage in which the foreign and native elements were worked into a new combination which retained the strongest elements of both; the third or charter stage, extending from the fifteenth year of John to the twenty-fifth of Edward I., is the stage in which the work of limitation and definition was so far advanced, and the machinery of the constitution so far perfected, as to render it in outward form at least essentially the same as it is at the present day. The new system of central administration, with the source of its strength in the royal authority, grew and widened during the reigns of the Norman and Angevin kings, until it became the dominant force in the constitution. While the growth of the royal authority was thus advancing and overshadowing the traditional liberties of the people, the causes were at work which finally brought about the division and classification of the nation in three estates. By the thirteenth century the estate system had reached its completion and the royal authority the limit of its growth. This limit was reached when both Richard and John, accepting the imperialist theories of Glanvill, held that the will of the prince was the law of the land. Upon the part of the nation it was claimed that the law of the land was not the will of the prince, but the immemorial laws of the English kingdom, with such additions and amendments as those laws had suffered through the results of the Norman conquest. In the conflict between these irreconcilable theories, the struggle for the charters had its birth. The parties to that struggle were the royal authority on the one hand and the nation marshalled in the ranks of the three estates on the other. In order to make good its cause against the crown, the nation undertook to render the royal authority subservient to that ancient system of Teutonic law which finds its source in the customs of the people, and which as a system of law the effects of the Conquest were unable to wipe out. After the Conquest the Old-English system of customary law was generally appealed to as "the laws of good King Eadward," while the changes which it suffered through the results of the Conquest were generally described as the amendments made by King William, who claimed to rule, not according to any laws of his own making, but according to the laws of his predecessor, King Eadward. This statement is illustrated with great clearness in that clause of the famous charter of Henry I. in which the king promises to restore the laws of Eadward with the amendments which his father had made. It is therefore plain that when the barons seized upon Henry's charter as the basis of national action, and demanded of the king that he should enter into a fresh understanding upon the lines which it defined, their action simply amounted to a demand that the legal and constitutional relations between the nation and the king should henceforth be regulated by the OldEnglish code of customary law as modified and amended through the effects of the Norman conquest. The struggle for the charters involved no attempt to wipe out the irrevocable effects of the Conquest; in the charters themselves the new system of central administration and the system of feudal tenures are both recognized as abiding elements in the constitution. The effort was to fix the limits of innovation, to define the extent to which the centralizing and feudalizing processes to which the Conquest gave birth should be permitted to abridge the immemorial freedom in the time to come. Before the struggle for the charters began, the process of assimilation, through which the lesser mass of the conquerors was absorbed by the greater mass of the conquered, had been fully worked out. The winning of the Great Charter was in fact the final consummation of the work of union; it was "the first great act of the English nation after the descendants of Norman conquerors and Norman settlers had fully become Englishmen." But the fact must never be lost sight of that the winning of the Great Charter was the beginning, not the end, of a conflict. It embodied, not a final statement of concessions from the crown to the nation, but rather a definite programme of reform which the nation resolved to persevere in until it should be finally accepted by the crown as an irrevocable basis of government. The struggle does not end until the charters are finally accepted in good faith by both parties as authoritative definitions of the rights and liberties of the nation on the one hand, and of the rights and prerogatives of the crown on the other. The definitions of rights and liberties thus established in favor of the nation as against the crown embody no abstract theories of government; they consist simply of a summing up of the traditional liberties of the English nation, with such modifications and amendments as those liberties had suffered through the effects of the Norman conquest. When the struggle is over, when the process of limitation and definition has been finally completed under the master hand of Edward I., the English constitution stands forth, in a broad and general sense, in essentially the same outward form which it wears at the present day. During the reign of Edward the struggle of the constitution for existence comes to an end; every vital part of the constitutional machinery exists; nearly all of the great principles of English freedom have been firmly established. Under Edward's organizing hand the Old-English system of local administration, embodied in the township, the hundred, and the shire, is revivified and readjusted to the more perfectly organized system of central administration to which 1 It can hardly be maintained, how ever, that the mechanism of the constitution was complete in any full and perfect sense until its vital organ- the parliament - had developed all of its powers and privileges, a result which was not reached until the reigns of the Lancastrian kings. |