ad grasped even more fully than Simon
the notion of a national representative assembly, and that he accepted the
principle, "that which touches all shall be approved by all."

Henry III. died in 1272, and it was not till two years later that Edward I.
was back in England from the crusades to take up the crown. It was an age
of great lawgivers; an age that saw St. Louis ruling in France, Alfonso the
Wise in Castile, the Emperor Frederick II.--the Wonder of the World--in
Sicily. In England Edward shaped the Constitution and settled for future
times the lines of Parliamentary representative government.

EDWARD I.'S MODEL PARLIAMENT, 1295

For the first twenty years Edward's Parliaments were great assemblies of
barons and knights, and it was not till 1295 that the famous Model
Parliament was summoned. "It is very evident that common dangers must be
met by measures concerted in common," ran the writ to the bishops. Every
sheriff was to cause two knights to be elected from each shire, two
citizens from each city, two burgesses from each borough. The clergy were
to be fully represented from each cathedral and each diocese.

Hitherto Parliament, save in 1265, had been little else than a feudal
court, a council of the King's tenants; it became, after 1295, a national
assembly. Edward's plan was that the three estates--clergy, barons, and
commons: those who pray, those who fight, and those who work--should be
represented. But the clergy always stood aloof, preferring to meet in their
own houses of convocation; and the archbishops, bishops, and greater abbots
only attended because they were great holders of land and important feudal
lords.

Although the knights of the shire were of much the same class as the
barons, the latter received personal summons to attend, and the knights
joined with the representatives of the cities and boroughs. So the two
Houses of Parliament consisted of barons and bishops--lords spiritual and
lords temporal--and knights and commons; and we have to-day the House of
Lords and the House of Commons; the former, as in the thirteenth century,
lords spiritual and temporal, the latter, representatives from counties and
boroughs.

The admission of elected representatives was to move, in course of time,
the centre of government from the Crown to the House of Commons; but in
Edward I.'s reign Parliament was just a larger growth of the King's
Council--the Council that Norman and Plantagenet kings relied on fo