rliament were still more securely laid. Following the king's defeat
at Lewes, in 1264, Simon de Montfort, leader of the barons, convened a
parliament composed of not only barons and clergy but also four
knights from each shire, and at London during the following year, he
caused again to be assembled, in addition to five earls, eighteen
barons, and a large body of clergy, two knights from each of the
several shires and two burgesses from each of twenty-one towns known
to be friendly to the barons' cause. These proceedings were
essentially revolutionary and unauthorized. Even the gathering of
1265, as Stubbs remarks, presented the appearance largely of a party
convention, and there is no evidence that its author intended such a
body to be regularly or frequently summoned, or even summoned a second
time at all. None the less, now for the first time representatives of
the towns were brought into political co-operation with the barons,
clergy, and knights; and the circumstance was filled with promise.
During the ensuing thirty years there were several "parliaments,"
although the extent to which knights and burgesses participated in
them is uncertain. The period was one of experimentation. In 1273 four
knights from each shire and four citizens from each town joined the
magnates in taking the oath of fealty to the new and absent sovereign,
Edward I. The First Statute of Westminster, in 1275, declares itself
to have been adopted with the assent of the "commonalty of the realm."
In 1283 a parliament was held which almost precisely duplicated that
of 1265. In 1290, and again in 1294, there was one, in which, however,
representation of the towns was omitted.

The gathering which served to fix the type for all time to come was
Edward I.'s so-called Model Parliament of 1295. To this parliament the
king summoned severally the two archbishops, all of the bishops, the
greater abbots, and the more important earls and barons; while (p. 013)
every sheriff was enjoined to see that two knights were chosen from
each shire, two citizens from each city, and two burgesses from each
borough. Each bishop was authorized, furthermore, to bring with him
his prior or the dean of the cathedral chapter, the archdeacons of his
diocese, one proctor or agent for his cathedral chapter, and two of
his diocesan clergy. In the parliament as actually convened there were
2 archbishops, 18 bishops with their lesser clergy, 66 abbots, 3 heads
of religious ord