tings of the English king s council in the middle of the 13 th century. Its immediate predecessor was the king s feudal council, the Curia Regis, and before that the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot. It was a device resorted to by the medieval kings to help them in running their governments and reflected the idea that the king should consult with his subjects.the 13 th century, King Edward I (1272-1307) called joint meetings of two governmental institutions : the Magnum Concilium, or the Great Council, comprising lay and ecclesiastical magnates, and the Curia Regis, or King s Court, a much smaller body of semiprofessional advisers. At those meetings of the Curia Regis that came to be called concilium regis in parliamento (the king s council in parliament), judicial problems might be settled that had proved beyond the scope of the ordinary law courts dating from the 12 th century. The members of the Curia Regis were preeminent and often remained to complete business after the magnates had been sent home; the proceedings of Parliament were not formally ended until they had accomplished their tasks. To about one in seven of these meetings Edward I summoned knights and burgesses to appear with the magnates.Parliament called in 1295, known as the Model Parliament and widely regarded as the first representative parliament, included the lower clergy for the first time as well as two knights from each county, two burgesses from each borough and two citizens from each city. Early in the 14 th century the practice developed of conducting debates between the lords spiritual and temporal in one chamber, or house, and between the knights and burgesses in another. Strictly speaking, there were, and still are, three houses: the king and his council, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons.in the 15 th century the kings of the House of Lancaster were usually forced to take all their councilors from among the lords, and later under the House of Tudor, it became the practice to find seats in the commons for privy councilors who were not lords. Meanwhile, the greater cohesion of the Privy Council achieved in the 14 th century separated it in practice from Parliament, and the decline of Parliament s judicial function led to an increase in its legislative activity, originating now not only from royal initiative but by petitions, or bills, framed by groups within Parliament itself. Bills, if assented to by the king, became acts of Parliament; eventually, under King Henry VI (1422-1461; 1470-1471), the assent of both Houses - the House of Lords (a body now based largely on heredity) and the House of Commons - was also required. Under the Tudors, though it was still possible to make law by royal proclamation, the monarchs rarely resorted to such an unpopular measure, and all major political changers were affected by acts of Parliament.1430 Parliament divided electoral constituencies to the House of Commons into counties and boroughs. Males who owned freehold property worth at least 40 shillings could vote in these elections. Members of the House of Commons were wealthy, as they were not paid and were required to have an annual income of at least? 600 for county seats and? 300 for borough seats. In most boroughs, very few individuals could vote, and some members were elected by less than a dozen electors. These rotten boroughs were eventually eliminated by the Reform Bill of 1832. As parliamentary sessions became more regular from the 15 t...
