the country had had under the Anglo-Saxon monarchs. Under the Normans there was no chance for absolute monarchy: the barons had their own lands and soldiers and did not let the king to have too much power. As a result there were constant quarrels between powerful barons and the kings who wanted more lands and more power.1215, at the council at Runnymede, the barons forced King John the Lackland to sign Magna Carta (the Great Charter). This document gave the nobles a legitimate share in the government of the country and limited the king s power. The controlling organ, a committee of 24 barons, was created which was nothing but a weapon in the hands of the baronial oligarchy.Henry III, the son of King John, became the king, he tried to get more power in his hands. As a result, a civil war, later called the Barons War, began. The King s army was defeated, and Simon de Montfort, the barons leader, summoned the first elected Parliament in 1265. It was the beginning of the division of the British Parliament into two parts: the House of Commons and the House of Lords. When Simon de Montfort and his army were defeated and Henry III reassumed power, both he and his son Edward I convened Parliament in the baronial form but in 1295 Edward had to include the wider representation of the commons which confirmed the status of England as feudal monarchy with class representation.
2. The Development of Parliament in the Late Middle Ages
.1 Splitting into the Two Houses in the 14 th Century
the time of Edward I «s death (1307), the county 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 14 th 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. [6, pp.68-69] composition of Parliament, where there were knights and burgesses, was of important significance. The knights or lesser landowners lived on their estates and made the largest possible income from them. They were greatly interested in the development of the wool-trade. Thus they had many common interests with the merchants and wealthy craftsmen of the towns. Later on the gentry emerged from these landowners, as well as the bourgeoisie from the top of the town dwellers.the course of the 14 th century Parliament took its modern shape consisting of two Houses - the House of Lords and the House of Commons. In this division the knights of the shire took their places in the House of Commons with the burgesses, whereas the lords and the top clergy sat in the House of Lords. Parliament gained control over statutes and taxation, created impeachment and presided over the abdications of the monarch. And no law could be made, nor any tax levied, without the consent of both Houses as well as the Sovereign. [5, p.61] Richard II came of age, the usual struggle «the crown - the nobles...
