An emerging parliament

The emergence of the parliament of England as a power in the land is generally traced back to Edward's reign. The enormous cost of his war campaigns, and the need to justify them to the taxpayers, made him call numerous parliaments, with representatives from shires and boroughs to supplement the lords. He was not the first to call a parliament; it grew out of the Great Council from 1265, when Simon de Montfort was first to call on the chief towns each to send two representatives in addition to two knights from each shire. This was because de Montfort could rely on towns for support, and for a long time to come parliament was in effect a tool of the king, or the king's government, summoned when it was needed, expected to assent to requests for funds and taxes, and dissolved when its assent was given.

The lords, the church, the towns – these were the three estates which combined to form parliament, for the reason that they controlled the country's wealth. From the lords and the church also came the members of the king's immediate Council and the royal household. The king's Council was the origin of what would later be the House of Lords. Under the feudal system, a lordship was not a hereditary benefit, but reverted to the king on the holder's death; by the fourteenth century it was becoming more common for an eldest son to inherit an earldom or baronage, just as it was by now accepted that the eldest son of the king should succeed to the throne. But in England, unlike the countries of Europe, the concept and social distinctions of 'nobility' did not apply to the children of a lord, but only to the lord himself. By the time of Edward I's death, the country knights and the town burgesses were already identified as the 'Community', whose interests were not necessarily identical to those of lords and church. In the reign of Edward II, which afforded plenty of opportunity for discontent and concern for the national welfare, they formed the custom of meeting together during the course of a parliament, to discuss their own concerns. By the middle of the fourteenth century this gathering had become sufficiently formal to have its own clerk to record proceedings and its 'speaker' to report its views and present its claims to the full parliament. In this way, without formal statute or charter, the House of Commons began its emergence as a separate if still junior chamber to the House of Lords.

Friends, favourites – and murder

In 1322, with a new and stronger right- hand man, Hugh Despenser, Edward reasserted royal control over a country which was slipping into baronial anarchy, but Scottish raids, a French invasion of Gascony, and the barons' resentment against Despenser's personal empire-building, wrecked everything. His queen, Isabella, sister of the King of France, went to Paris to negotiate a peace, but once there; she stayed, and became the mistress of Roger Mortimer, an exiled magnate of the Welsh marches and bitter opponent of Despenser. Isabella and Mortimer landed in England with an army of Dutch mercenaries in 1326 and Edward II, deserted by everyone, became their prisoner. He was compelled to abdicate in favour of his fourteen-year-old son Edward HI, and in 1327 he was murdered in Berkeley Castle.

For three years, Roger Mortimer, his status confirmed as Earl of March, was the de facto ruler of England. He acquired vast estates in the Marches and south Wales, made inglorious peace treaties with Scotland and France and for a time held off opposition until in 1330 the eighteen-year-old king finally shook off his mother's control and with the aid of the Earl of Lancaster arrested Mortimer and had him hanged at Tyburn like a common thief.