This is the age of the great confederation of the Rhine, and the rise of the Hanseatic League; for in Germany and in Flanders, where the towns could not count on the protection of a friendly and central monarchy, the towns formed mutual leagues for protection and support amongst themselves. It would need a volume to work out this complex development. But we may take it that, for Northern Europe, the thirteenth century is the era of the definite establishment of rich, free, self-governing municipalities. It is the flourishing era of town charters, of city leagues, and of the systematic establishment of a European commerce, north of the Mediterranean, both inter-provincial and inter-national.
And out of these rich and teeming cities arose that social power destined to such a striking career in the next six centuries — the middle class, a new order in the State, whose importance rests on wealth, intelligence, and organisation, not on birth or on arms. And out of that middle class rose popular representation, election by the commons, i.e., by communes, or corporate constituencies, the third estate. The history of popular representation in Europe would occupy a volume, or many volumes: its conception, birth, and youth fall within the thirteenth century sofia daily tours.
The Great Charter
The Great Charter, which the barons, as real representatives of the whole nation, wrested from John in 1215, did not, it is true, contain any scheme of popular representation; but it asserted the principle, and it laid down canons of public law which led directly to popular representation and a parliamentary constitution. The Great Charter has been talked about for many centuries in vague superlatives of praise, by those who had little precise or accurate knowledge of it. But now that our knowledge of it is full and exact, we see that its importance was in no way exaggerated, and perhaps was hardly understood; and we find it hard adequately to express our admiration of its wise, just, and momentous policy. The Great Charter of 1215 led in a direct line to the complete and developed Parliament of 1295.
And Bishop Stubbs has well named the interval between the two, the eighty years of struggle for a political constitution. The Charter of John contains the principle of taxation through the common council of the realm. From the very first year after it representative councils appear; first from counties; then, in 1254, we have a regular Parliament from shires; in 1264, after the battle of Lewes, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, summoned two discreet representatives from towns and cities by writ; in 1273, Edward 1. summoned what was in effect a Parliament; and, after several Parliaments summoned in intervening years, we have the first complete and finally constituted Parliament in 1295.
But our own, the greatest and most permanent of Parliaments, was by no means the earliest. Representatives of cities and boroughs had come to the Cortes of Castile and of Arragon in the twelfth century; early in the thirteenth century Frederick 11. summoned them to general courts in Sicily; in the middle of the century the towns sent deputies to the German Diets; in 1277, the commons and towns swear fealty to Rudolph of Hapsburg; in 1291, was founded in the mountains of Schwytz that Swiss confederation which has just celebrated its 600th anniversary; and, in 1302, Philip the Fair summoned the States-General to back him in his desperate duel with Boniface vm. Thus, seven years after Edward 1. had called to Westminster that first true Parliament which has had there so great a history over 600 years, Philip called together to Notre Dame at Paris the three estates — the clergy, the baronage, and the commons. So clear is it that the thirteenth century called into being that momentous element of modern civilisation, the representation of the people in Parliament.
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