The Parliament of England was the legislature of the Kingdom of England from the 13th century until 1707 when it was replaced by the Parliament of Great Britain as a result of the Treaty of Union 1707 which merged the parliament with the Parliament of Scotland. Parliament evolved from the great council of bishops and peers that advised the English monarch. Great councils were first called Parliaments during the reign of Henry III (r. 1216–1272). By this time, the king required Parliament's consent to levy taxation.
Originally a unicameral body, a bicameral Parliament emerged when its membership was divided into the House of Lords and House of Commons, which included knights of the shire and burgesses. During Henry IV's reign, the role of Parliament expanded beyond the determination of taxation policy to include the right to petition, which essentially enabled English citizens to petition the body to address complaints in their local towns and counties. By this time, citizens were given the power to vote to elect their representatives—the burgesses—to the House of Commons.
Over the centuries, the English Parliament progressively limited the power of the English monarchy, a process that arguably culminated in the English Civil War and the High Court of Justice for the trial of Charles I.
The history of Parliament begins in the 13th century, but it grew out of consultative assemblies convened by the earliest English monarchs. In the Anglo-Saxon era, kings regularly summoned the witan or 'wise men' at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun. While the monarch chose who attended, these gatherings typically included bishops, abbots, ealdormen, and thegns. Although not an elected body, contemporaries viewed the witan as representative of the English people. Acting on behalf of the nation, it negotiated the terms for Æthelred the Unready's (r. 978–1016) restoration in 1014 and accepted Cnut the Great (r. 1016–1035) as king. The witan produced Anglo-Saxon law codes, decided political questions, and held state trials—such as the 1051 trial of Earl Godwin.
The Norman Conquest of 1066 introduced feudal principles into English government. Before 1066, kings had a duty to seek good counsel. After 1066, feudalism imposed upon a vassal the duty to give counsel to his lord. According to historian John Maddicott, this duty, "transmuted as it later came to be into the vassal's right to give counsel, was one of the building blocks of parliament" [emphasis in original].
Norman and Angevin kings took counsel and administered justice in the curia regis 'royal court'. Because government by itineration was the norm, the curia accompanied the monarch on his travels, drawing its participants from a shifting mixture of royal household officers and local magnates. When a king needed advice from a broader segment of the aristocracy, he convened a great council (magnum concilium) of tenants-in-chief. The greater tenants (bishops, abbots, earls, and feudal barons) were summoned by individual writ, while lesser tenants were summoned collectively by sheriffs. Although kings spent much of their time in their French territories, they held regular councils at Easter, Whitsun, and Christmas whenever they returned to England.
Councils provided a convenient alternative to itinerancy. They gathered the greatest men in the kingdom in one place to consider important political business. For example, the Domesday survey was planned at the Christmas council of 1085, and the Constitutions of Clarendon were made at the 1164 council. The council was also the setting of state trials, such as the 1164 trial of Thomas Becket. Although councils allowed kings to consult with their leading subjects, such consultation rarely resulted in a change in royal policy. According to historian Judith Green, "these assemblies were more concerned with ratification and publicity than with debate".
An important difference from Parliament was that the king could levy geld (the traditional land tax) without a council's consent. Furthermore, the king possessed other sources of revenue, including the royal demesne, feudal aids, feudal incidents, and profits from administering justice (such as from confiscation).
Originally, the magnum concilium did not approve taxation because the king could levy direct land taxes, such as geld (discontinued after 1162) or carucage (briefly in practice from 1194 to 1224), at his own discretion. This changed between 1189 and 1215 in response to new financial burdens imposed by the Crown to finance the Third Crusade, ransom Richard I, and pay for the series of Anglo-French wars fought between the Plantagenet and Capetian dynasties. In 1188, a precedent was established when the great council granted Henry II the Saladin tithe. In granting this tax, the magnum concilium was acting as representatives for all taxpayers.
The likelihood of resistance to national taxes made consent politically necessary. It was convenient for kings to present the great council as a representative body capable of consenting on behalf of all within the kingdom. Increasingly, the kingdom was described as the communitas regni (Latin for 'community of the realm') and the barons as their natural representatives. But this development also created more conflict between kings and the baronage as the latter attempted to defend what they considered the rights belonging to the king's subjects.
King John (r. 1199–1216) alienated the barons by his partiality in dispensing justice, heavy financial demands and abusing his right to feudal incidents, reliefs, and aids. In 1215, the barons forced John to abide by a charter of liberties similar to charters issued by earlier kings (see Charter of Liberties). Known as Magna Carta (Latin for 'Great Charter'), it was based on three assumptions important to the later development of Parliament:
the king was subject to the law
the king could only make law and raise taxation (except customary feudal dues) with the consent of the community of the realm
that the obedience owed by subjects to the king was conditional and not absolute
Clause 12 stated that certain taxes could only be levied "through the common counsel of our kingdom", and clause 14 specified that this common counsel was to come from bishops, earls, and barons. While the clause stipulating no taxation "without the common counsel" was deleted from later reissues, it was nevertheless adhered to by later kings. Magna Carta would gain the status of fundamental law after John's reign.
The word parliament comes from the French parlement first used in the late 11th century, meaning 'parley' or 'conversation'. In the mid-1230s, it became a common name for meetings of the great council. The word was first used with this meaning in 1236.
In the 13th century, parliaments were developing throughout north-western Europe. As a vassal to the King of France, English kings were suitors to the Parlement of Paris. In the 13th century, the French and English parliaments were similar in their functions; however, the two institutions diverged in significant ways in later centuries.
After the 1230s, the normal meeting place for Parliament was fixed at Westminster. Parliaments tended to meet according to the legal year so that the courts were also in session: January or February for the Hilary term, in April or May for the Easter term, in July, and in October for the Michaelmas term.