tenure, one of the obligations the tenants-in-chief were bound to perform, although this membership gradually became restricted by the operation of the Royal prerogative to a small section of the Baronial class and eventually hereditary by custom. The Norman Councils may have arisen from the ashes of a Saxon Witenagemot, but there is little evidence of any historical continuity between the two. The Church in England, as in Christendom generally, occupied a position of paramount importance and far-reaching influence; its leaders, not alone from their special sanctity as ecclesiastics, but as practically the only educated men of the period, of necessity were among the chief advisers of every ruler in Western Europe. In England churchmen formed a large proportion of the Witan, the more influential of the great landowners making up the rest of its membership.
In place of the scattered individual and absolute ownership of Saxon days the Conqueror became practically the sole owner of the soil. The change, though not immediately complete, followed rapidly as the country settled down and the power of the Crown extended to its outlying frontiers. As Saxon land gradually passed Norman Feudal Tenure. into Norman hands the new owners became direct tenants of the king. Provided their loyal and military obligations were duly performed they had fixity of tenure for themselves and their heirs In addition fixed money payments were exacted on the succession of the heir, when the king’s eldest son was knighted, his eldest daughter married, or his person ransomed from captivity. In like manner and under similar conditions the king’s tenants, or as they were termed tenants-in-chief, sub-granted the greater portion of their holdings to their own immediate followers. Under Norman methods the manor was the unit of local government and jurisdiction, and when land was given away by the king the gift invariably took the form of a grant of one or more manors.
When he brought England into subjection the Conqueror’s main idea was to exalt the central power of the Crown at the expense of its feudatories, and the first two centuries following the conquest tell one long tale of opposition by the great tenant sin-chief to a steadily growing and unifying royal pressure. With this idea of royal supremacy firmly fixed in his mind, William’s grants, excepting outlying territory such as the marches of Wales or the debate able ground of the Scottish border, which needed special consideration, were seldom in bulk, but took the form of manors scattered over many counties. Under such conditions it was practically impossible for a great tenant to set up a powerful imperium in imperico (such as the fiefs of Normandy, Brittany and Burgundy), as his forces were distributed over the country, and could be reached by the long arm of royal power, acting through the sheriff of every county, long before they could effectively come together for fighting purposes. The tenants-in-chief were termed generally barons (see Baron) and may be regarded historically as the parents of the peers of later days. The pages of Domesday (1086), the early Norman fiscal record of England, show how unevenly the land was distributed, of the fifteen hundred odd tenants mentioned the majority held but two or three manors, while a favoured few possessed more than a hundred each. Land was then the only source of wealth, and the number of a baron’s manors might well be regarded as a correct index of his importance.
The king’s tenants owed yet another duty, the service of attending the King’s Court (curia regis), and out of this custom grew the parliaments of later days. In theory all the kings tenants-in-chief, great and small, had a right to be present as incident to their tenure. It has therefore been argued by some authorities that as the The King’s Court. Conqueror’s system of tenure constituted him the sole owner of the land, attendance at his courts was solely an incident of tenure, the Church having been compelled to accept the same conditions as those imposed on laymen. But, as already pointed out, the change in tenure had not been immediate, and there had been no general forfeiture suffered by ecclesiastical bodies; consequently throughout the early years of William’s reign some of the English bishops and abbots attended his courts as much by virtue of their personal and ecclesiastical importance as by right of tenure. The King’s Court was held regularly at the three great festivals of the Church and at such other times as were deemed advisable. The assembly for several generations neither possessed nor pretended to any legislative powers. Legislative power was a product of later years, and grew out of the custom of the Estates granting supplies only on condition that their grievances were first redressed. The great bulk of the tenants were present for the purpose of assenting to special taxation above and beyond their ordinary feudal dues. When necessary a general summons to attend was sent through the sheriff of every county, who controlled a system of local government which enabled him to reach every tenant. In course of time to a certain number of barons and high ecclesiastics, either from the great extent of their possessions, their official duties about the king or their personal importance, it became customary to issue a personal writ of summons, thus distinguishing them from the general mass summoned through the sheriff. That this custom was in being within a century of the Conquest is clear from an incident in the bitter fight for supremacy between Archbishop Becket and Henry II. in 1164 (Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 504), it being recorded that the king withheld the Archbishop’s personal summons to parliament, and put upon him the indignity of a summons through the sheriff. During the succeeding fifty years the line becomes even more definite, though it is evident that the Crown sometimes disregarded the custom, as the barons are found complaining that many of their number deemed entitled to a personal summons had frequently been overlooked
The sequel to these complaints is found in Magna Carta, wherein it is provided that the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls and greater barons are to be called up to the council by writ directed to each severally; and all who hold of the king in chief, below the rank of greater barons, are to be summoned by a general] Magna Carta and Personal Summons to the Majores of Barons. writ addressed to the sheriff of their shire.[1] Magna Carta thus indicates the existence of two definite sections of the king’s tenants, a division which had evidently persisted for some time. The “greater barons” are the immediate parents of the peerages of later days, every member of which for more than four centuries had a seat in the House of Lords. As for the rest of the tenants-in-chief, poorer in estate and therefore of less consequence, it is sufficient here to note that they fell back into the general mass of country families, and that their representatives, the knights of the shire, after some hesitation, at length joined forces with the city and burgher representatives to form the House of Commons.
In 1254, instead of the general summons through the sheriff
to all the lesser tenants-in-chief, the king requires them to elect
two knights for each shire to attend the council as
the accredited representative of their fellows. In
the closing days of 1264 Simon de Montfort summoned
to meet him early in 1265 the first parliament worthy of
Parliament
of 1254.
the name, a council in which prelatcs, earls and greater barons,
knights of the shire, citizens and burghers were present, thus
constituting a representation of all classes of people. It has been
argued that this assembly cannot be regarded as a full parliament,
inasmuch as Simon de Montfort summoned personally
only such members of the baronage as were favourable to his
cause, and issued writs generally only to those counties and
cities upon which he could rely to return representatives in
support of his policy. Stubbs holds the view that the first
assembly we ought to regard as a full parliament was the Model
Parliament which met at Westminster in 1295. This
Model Parliament
of 1295.
parliament, unlike Simon’s partisan assembly of Parliament
1265, was free and representative. To every spiritual
- ↑ Et ab habendum commune cons ilium regni . . . sumrnoneri faciemus archiepiscopos, episcopos, abbates, comites et majores barones sigillatim per lltteras nostras et praeterea faciemus summqneri in general per vice comes et ballivos nostros omnes illos qui de nobis tenent in capite (cited in Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 547 n.).
