tion that during this same year his power was completely overthrown and he was slain in battle. And yet the innovation he had made in the constitution of parliament remained permanent. Although other political changes made by the baronial party in their period of triumph were at once undone, this was lasting. The facts are not intelligible if the new constitution of parliament be regarded merely as a stroke of individual statesmanship by De Montfort, but if he assumed that De Montfort's action was in response to an influence which still remained operative despite his death, then the sequence of events falls into rational order. The victor over De Montfort ascended the throne as Edward I, and he too had Dominican advisers. And so we find in the writs convoking the parliament of 1282, which doubtless like all public documents of the period were of clerical composition, a summons to each city, borough or merchant town, to send two men with power to act for their communities.1 We may conclude, as Hume long ago judiciously observed, that the system of popular representation thus established, was "an institution, for which the general state of things had already prepared the nation." The agency by which this preparation was affected is manifest. The church originated representative institutions; the state adopted them. 1 The Latin text of the original of the summons issued by De Montfort's government, and that issued by Edward I., is given in D. J. Medley's Original Illustrations of English Constitutional History. CHAPTER I THE MEANS OF CONTROL IN the first part of this work the conclusion was reached that the representative system was originally merely an appendage to royal authority formed upon a pattern supplied by the Dominican order. Its conversion into an organ of control over royal authority was the result of a long course of development, which forms the theme of English constitutional history. While it does not come within the plan of this work to enter into the historical details, some general observations upon the character of the process are appropriate at this point. Attendance of representatives of the people in parliament by the king's command does not necessarily imply any exercise of control over the king's exercise of his authority, and as a matter of fact representation long existed without showing any such tendency. Moreover, the representative character does not of itself confer ability to exert control. It is not until the representative assembly is in a position to make stipulations |