Canterbury City Council Election Of A City Councillor: Fill & Download for Free

The original idea was that Parliament would represent all the main interest groups in the realm. They would meet together to offer the King advice, and give their approval to any new laws and measures that might be required.The Church was one of the most wealthy and influential organisations in the kingdom, so of course its representatives were invited to every parliament. Bishops, archbishops and the abbots of the largest monasteries were among those summoned to attend.The most powerful nobles were also an obvious choice to attend Parliament. They had castles, manors, and private armies of knights and footsoldiers. While an individual nobleman wasn't usually powerful enough to challenge the King directly, an alliance of many of them was potentially a threat to any monarch. Keeping them happy, and on the King's side, was therefore essential to stable government.Parliament played an important role here: by giving the nobility a say in how the kingdom was ruled, they were less likely to object to royal policies. Meetings of Parliament were also full of pageantry and ceremony, intended to flatter the nobles and make them feel they were privileged to be invited.A king and his advisers. (This is actually an illustration from a Bible published in about the 1040s, supposedly depicting the Pharaoh of Egypt and his court, but dressed as 11th century English nobles)The custom of inviting churchmen and nobles to the royal court was well-established early on. The innovation of the 13th century, which would develop into Parliament, was inviting representatives of the commoners as well.This was in recognition of the fact that while an individual city councillor or knight of the shire was not as powerful or influential as a bishop or an earl, large numbers of them had power collectively. An alderman of London might be a mere commoner; but the City of London, as a corporate entity, was richer than any two earls put together. It therefore made sense to invite representatives from London, and the other cities and communities of the realm, to attend Parliament as well. They couldn't all be invited, of course, there were too many of them -- so each community was invited to send representatives.The method of choosing these representatives was, at first, left up to the individual organisation or community to decide. In some cities, the town council simply met together and picked the Members of Parliament itself; other cities organised a vote by all taxpaying citizens of the town, or all those who owned land in the town, or those who were guildmembers, or whatever other system they thought best. The idea that there should be a single, uniform franchise throughout the country only developed gradually -- and it wasn't until the 19th century that it was fully confirmed. This emphasises the fact that Members of Parliament didn't represent 'the People' as a single amorphous entity; they were there to speak for their own specific community, their city or county.As such, the idea that there was friction between Lords and Commons is an oversimplification. There was friction between the City of Bristol and the Earl of Gloucester, between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Earl of Kent, and between the County of Somerset and the Abbot of Glastonbury, and several hundred other local conflicts besides. Each MP represented his own community; each bishop represented the Church in his diocese; and each noble represented himself and his followers and vassals. Their alliances, as well as their conflicts, cut across simplistic class boundaries.An assembly of Parliament (specifically, the Lords) in the time of Edward I. The four men in red robes seated one level below the king are (L-R) the Archbishop of Canterbury, the King of Scotland and the Prince of Wales (there’s no evidence either ever actually attended an English parliament; they’re included here as propaganda), and the Archbishop of York. The men in black on the main floor are the clergy, those in red the lords.Having said that, then yes, there was social friction between people of different rank and status. It was a source of great prestige to be personally invited to Parliament, by the king sending you a writ with your name at the top, rather than him addressing an anonymous writ to your city or county asking them to choose representatives.In fact, the division into Houses of Lords and Commons grew out of this social division. Originally, there was simply Parliament, to which many different people were invited. However, in the late 13th and early 14th centuries the custom arose of the elected representatives meeting in a different room to those who were individually invited. This was primarily a social distinction; those of gentle birth didn't want to mingle with those who made their money by trade, or who weren't descended on both sides from nobility.If the King chose to attend Parliament in person, he almost always sat in the room with the nobles and churchmen, and listened to their debates directly. The commoners, meanwhile, were expected to discuss matters among themselves, then send a messenger to inform the King of their decisions or requests. The message was clear: the Lords were the King's trusted advisers and confidants, while the Commons were there to participate in the machinery of government at one step removed.There was, however, another factor in this. The English nobility did pay taxes, which was different to most other countries in Europe where class divisions were more rigid. Even so, the primary sources of extra income for the government (above and beyond the royal estates, which were its day-to-day source of revenue) were the taxes and tariffs paid by the cities and by the gentry of the shires. Which is to say, the Commons. Since the principle of Parliament was to ensure and demonstrate that the primary interest groups of the realm consented to the King's government, it was quickly obvious that any new tax must be agreed upon specifically by the Commons, since they (and the people they represented) would be the ones to pay it.In other words, before he could raise new taxes, the King needed to persuade the Commons -- and specifically the Commons, not Parliament as a whole -- to agree to the tax increase. The Commons naturally preferred to debate the King's request in private, without the interference of the Lords and the Church, so this was another reason for them to separate off into a different chamber. Gradually, this division into Lords and Commons became institutionalised and permanent.The history of the birth of democracy in Britain is how the Commons gradually realised that if they had a veto over new taxation, that gave them the power to demand concessions before approving taxes -- or even insisting on a say in how the money would be spent. But that's another story.