Parliament had now assumed its present outward form. But it was far from enjoying the authority which it acquired in later times. The Crown was still paramount ; the small body of earls and barons—not exceeding 4o—were connected with the royal family, or in the service of the king, or under his influence ; the prelates, once distinguished by their independence, were now seekers of royal favour ; and the Commons, though often able to extort concessions in return for their contributions to the royal exchequer, as yet held an inferior position among the estates of the realm. Instead of enjoying an equal share in the framing of laws, they appeared before the king in the humble guise of petitioners. Their petitions, together with the king's answers, were recorded in the rolls of parliament ; but it was not until the parliament had been discharged from attendance that statutes were framed by the judges and entered on the statute rolls. Under such conditions legislation was, in truth, the prerogative of the Crown rather than of parliament. Enactments were often found in the statutes at variance with the petitions and royal an swers, and neither prayed for by the Commons nor assented to by the Lords. In vain the Commons protested against so grave an abuse of royal authority; but the same practice was continued during this and succeeding reigns. Henry V., in the second year of his reign, promised "that nothing should be enacted to the petitions of the Commons, contrary to their asking, whereby they should be bound without their assent"; but, so long as the old method of framing laws was adhered to, there could be no security against abuse ; and it was not until the reign of Henry VI. that the introduction of the more regular system of legis lating by bill and statute ensured the thorough agreement of all the estates in the several provisions of every statute.
The Commons, however, notwithstanding these and other dis couragements, were constantly growing bolder in the assertion of their rights. In 1377 the demands of a former parliament were reiterated with greater boldness and persistence, the evil coun cillors of the late reign were driven out, and it was conceded that the principal officers of State should be appointed and re moved, during the minority of Richard II., upon the advice of the lords. The Commons also insisted upon the annual assembling of parliament, under the stringent provisions of a binding law. They claimed the right, not only of voting subsidies, but of appro priating them, and of examining public accounts. They inquired into public abuses, and impeached ministers of the Crown. Even the king himself was deposed by the parliament. Thus during this reign all the great powers of parliament were asserted and exer cised. The foreign wars of Henry IV. and Henry V., by continu ing the financial necessities of the Crown, maintained for a while the powers which parliament had acquired.
To this constitutional relapse various causes contributed at the same period. The Crown had recovered its absolute supremacy. The powerful baronage had been decimated on the battlefield and the scaffold; and vast estates had been confiscated to the Crown. The Commons had lost the liberal franchises of an early age. All freeholders, or suitors present at the county court, were formerly entitled to vote for a knight of the shire ; but in the eighth year of Henry VI. (143o) an Act was passed (c. 37) by
which this right was confined to 4os. freeholders, resident in the county. Large numbers of electors were thus disfranchised.
As for the cities and boroughs, they had virtually renounced their electoral privileges. As we have seen, they had never valued them very highly; and now by royal charters, or by the usurpa tion of small self-elected bodies of burgesses, the choice of mem bers had fallen into the hands of town councils and neighbouring landowners. The anomalous system of close and nomination boroughs, which had arisen thus early in English history, was suffered to continue without a check for four centuries, as a notorious blot upon a free constitution. None the less during the period of what Stubbs called the "Lancastrian experiment" there was a marked, though premature, period of parliamentary ascend ancy, due, no doubt, to the fact that the Lancastrian kings them selves reigned under a parliamentary title. The Commons fre quently asserted, and made good, a claim that the king's council lors should be named in parliament, although they were very far from asserting the modern principle of "responsible government." The Three Estates of the Realm.—This check in the for tunes of parliament affords a fitting occasion for examining the composition of each of the three estates of the realm. The archbishops and bishops had held an eminent position in the councils of Saxon and Norman kings, and many priors and abbots were from time to time associated with them as lords spiritual, until the suppression of the monasteries by Henry VIII. They generally outnumbered their brethren, the temporal peers, who sat with them in the same assembly. The king can create new bishoprics by Order in Council but his power to summon them to parliament is now limited by the Act of 1878 which limits the number of Lords Spiritual to 26.
The lords temporal comprised several dignities. Of these the baron, though now the lowest in rank, was the most ancient. The title was familiar in Saxon times, but it was not until after the Norman Conquest that it was invested with a distinct feudal dignity. Next in antiquity was the earl, whose official title was known to Danes and Saxons, and who after the Conquest ob tained a dignity equivalent to that of count in foreign States. The highest dignity, that of duke, was not created until Edward III. conferred it upon his son, Edward the Black Prince. The rank of marquess was first created by Richard II., with prece dence after a duke. It was in the reign of Henry VI. that the rank of viscount was created, to be placed between the earl and the baron. Thus the peerage consisted of five dignities of duke, marquess, earl, viscount and baron. During the i 5th century the number of temporal peers summoned to parliament rarely ex ceeded 5o, and no more than 29 received writs of summons to the first parliament of Henry VII. There were only 59 at the death of Queen Elizabeth. At the accession of William III. this number had been increased to about 15o. The most important step in the development of the independence of the Lords is their successful assertion in the Earl of Bristol's case, in the reign of Charles I., that once the king had issued a writ of summons to a subject to attend the House of Lords and it had been obeyed, a hereditary right to the writ had been created and vested in his heirs. The king's prerogative to create new peerages of the United Kingdom remains unlimited, except as regards the "limitation" or definition of the mode of descent. (See PEERAGE.) Since 1876 he has had the power to create life peerages (now seven) for Lords of Ap peal in Ordinary (q.v.).