The Birth of Representative Institutions

As thirteenth-century monarchs and princes expanded their powers, they devised a new political tool to enlist more broadly based support: all across Europe, from Spain to Poland, from England to Hungary, rulers summoned parliaments. These grew out of the ad hoc advisory sessions kings had held in the past with men from the two most powerful classes, or orders, of medieval society—the nobility and the clergy. In the thirteenth century, the advisory sessions turned into solemn, formal meetings of representatives of the orders to the kings’ chief councils—the precursor of parliamentary sessions. Eventually these groups became institutions through which people not ordinarily present at court could articulate their wishes. In practice, thirteenth-century kings did not so much command representatives of the orders to come to court as they simply summoned the most powerful members of their realm—whether clerics, nobles, or important townsmen—to support their policies.

The cortes of Castile-León in Spain were among the earliest representative assemblies called to the king’s court and the first to include townsmen. Enriched by plunder, fledgling villages soon burgeoned into major commercial centers. Like the cities of Italy, Spanish towns dominated the countryside. No wonder King Alfonso IX (r. 1188–1230) summoned townsmen to the cortes in the first year of his reign, getting their representatives to agree to his plea for military and financial support and for help in consolidating his rule. Once convened at court, the townsmen joined bishops and noblemen in formally counseling the king and assenting to royal decisions. Beginning with Alfonso X (r. 1252–1284), Castilian monarchs regularly called on the cortes to participate in major political and military decisions and to assent to new taxes to finance them.

The English Parliament also developed as a new tool of royal government.* In this case, however, the king’s control was complicated by the power of the barons, manifested, for example, in Magna Carta. In the twelfth century, the king had used great councils of churchmen and barons to ratify and gain support for his policies. Although Magna Carta had nothing to do with such councils, the barons thought the document gave them an important and permanent role in royal government as the king’s advisers and a solid guarantee of their customary rights and privileges. In the thirteenth century, while Henry III (r. 1216–1272) was still a child, England was governed by a council consisting of a few barons, some university-trained administrators, and a papal legate. Although not quite “government by Parliament,” this council set a precedent for baronial participation in government.

A parliament that included commoners came only in the midst of war and as a result of political weakness. Once in power, Henry III so alienated nobles and commoners alike by his wars, debts, choices of advisers, and demands for money that the barons threatened to rebel. At a meeting at Oxford in 1258, they forced Henry to dismiss his foreign advisers. Henceforth he was to rule with the advice of a so-called Council of Fifteen, chosen jointly by the barons and the king. Chief royal officers were to serve for one year only, after which they were to account for their actions to the council. However, this new government was itself plagued by strife among the barons, and civil war erupted in 1264. At the battle of Lewes in the same year, the leader of the baronial opposition, Simon de Montfort (c. 1208–1265), routed the king’s forces, captured the king, and became England’s de facto ruler.

Because only a minority of the barons followed him, Simon sought new support by convening a parliament in 1265, to which he summoned not only the earls, barons, and churchmen who backed him but also representatives from the towns, the “commons”—and he appealed for their help. Thus, for the first time, the commons were given a voice in English government. Even though Simon’s brief rule ended that very year and Henry’s son Edward I (r. 1272–1307) became a rallying point for royalists, the idea of representative government in England had emerged, born out of the interplay between royal initiatives and baronial revolts.