The Ri of Parliamnt in England
Significance of the English parlimentary system England during the 16th and 17th centuries was deve1oping the Parliamentary system of government, while on the continent, especially in France, the trend was toward absolutism. The English revolutions of the 17th century assured the supremacy of Parliament over the Crown, and established a stable, yet flexible government. This development has had an immen influence on the general political evolution of Europe. English Parliamentarians reprents one of the three main streams of historical influence that have gone into the making of modern democracy, the other two streams being the French Revolution, and the ri of laisz faire Capitalism.
Part One
1) Early Steps Toward Parliamentary Government The germ of the Eng1ish Parliament is to be found in the ancient Witen of the Anglo-Saxon Kings, an advisory council of the chief (literally, the wi) men of the kingdom. After the Norman conquest (l066) the Witen was replaced by the Great Council, compod of all who held land by feud
al tenure directly from the king. It was thus originally in no n an elective body or one reprentative of the English people, but it rved to form a tradition that government was a joint responsibility.
2) Magna Carta In 12l5, exasperated by the abus of the worthless King John, a group of barons ro in rebellion and, forced the king to sign the agreement called the Great Charter or Magna Carta which placed restrictions on his Powers. Later generations undoubted1y read into the Magna Carta a great rnany guarantees of civil liberty that were never in the minds of the thoroughly reactionary and lf-interest eking barons who drew it up. Reinterpreted to suit changing times, the Magna Carta was appealed to in the 17th century as the great bulwark of the rights of English-men. It rved as a reminder that the subjects had once rin in arms against their monarch. It furnished a basis for 1f-taxation. It was the most important landmark in the tradition of the supremacy of the law as oppod to the king's arbiter will.
3) Bgeninning of the reprentative parliamant In the middle of the thirteenth centur
y King John's successor, Henry III, aroud great opposition by his subrvience to the financial exactions of the Pope. Once more the barons resisted and obtained substantial concessions. But the most interesting result of the contest was the establishment of Parliament as an elective and reprentative body containing commoners as well as the great feudal 1ords. Early in the fourteenth century there was a formal paration of Parliament into two hous, Lords and Commons.
4) Progress in the 14th and 15th Centuries Un1ike analogous reprentative and consultative bodies on the continent, which emed rudimentary, the English Parliament continued its development through the 14th and 15th centuries and became an indispensable arm of the government. It had the sole power of taxation and its connt was necessary for legislation. Although the Tudor sovereigns in the sixteenth century established a nearly absolute monarch, they did it by managing and overawing Parliament rather than by suppressing it. The real Powers of Parliament did not die but merely slept. Even Henry VIII, the most despotic and powerful of the Tudors, did not rule by decree, as did kings and princes in continental countries.
Part Two
1) Stuarts and the revival of resistance The death of Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors, and the accession of James I in 1603 marks the beginning of a long period of friction between Parliament and the Crown. Of the many factors that contributed to this friction, three were especial1y conspicuous: l ) the religious controversy between the growing ct of Puritans and the conrvatives who wished to maintain the Episcopal establishment and the forms and ritua1s that the English Church sti1l retained from Roman Catholicism, 2) the determination of the bourgeoisie and the smal1 1andowners to resist taxation unless they could control the foreign and domestic polices of the government, and 3) the personal tactlessness and political ineptitude of the Stuart kings James I, Charles I, Charles II, and James II.
2) James I and parliament When James attempted to lay and collect taxes himlf and Parliament protested, he dissolved Parliament. A further cau of annoyance to the monarch was by the Puritans, a wing of the Church of England that wished to purify the C
hurch of the doctrines and rituals that were still retained from the old Catholicism. Many of them also favored a change in Church organization from the Episcopal (government of the church by a hierarchy of concrated bishops) to the Presbyterian (government by e1ders lected from the congregations). This group, the Puritans, who strength was in the middle class, were troubled by the polices of James I, and sough to combat him and his successors with the weapon of parliamentary traditions. The condolatory Policy of James with Spain and the union of Scotland with England were oppod by the merchants.
