r
assistance in the administration of justice and the collection of revenue.
The judges of the supreme court were always summoned to Parliament, as the
law lords sit in the Upper House to-day.

Money, or rather the raising of money, was the main cause for calling a
Parliament. The clergy at first voted their own grants to the Crown in
convocation, but came to agree to pay the taxes voted by Lords and Commons,
And Lords and Commons, instead of making separate grants, joined in a
common grant.

"And, as the bulk of the burden fell upon the Commons, they adopted a
formula which placed the Commons in the foreground. The grant was made by
the Commons, with the assent of the Lords spiritual and temporal. This
formula appeared in 1395, and became the rule. In 1407, eight years after
Henry IV. came to the throne, he assented to the important principle that
money grants were to be initiated by the House of Commons, were not to be
reported to the King until both Houses were agreed, and were to be reported
by the Speaker of the Commons' House. This rule is strictly observed at the
present day. When a money bill, such as the Finance bill for the year or
the Appropriation bill, has been passed by the House of Commons and agreed
to by the House of Lords, it is, unlike all other bills, returned to the
House of Commons."[22] The Speaker, with his own hand, delivers all money
bills to the Clerk of Parliaments, the officer whose business it is to
signify the royal assent.

In addition to voting money, the Commons, on the assembly of Parliament,
would petition for the redress of grievances. In the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, they were not legislators, but petitioners for
legislation; and as it often happened that their petitions were not granted
in the form they asked, it became a matter of bitter complaint that the
laws did not correspond with the petitions. Henry V. in 1414 granted the
request that "nothing should be enacted to the petition of the Commons
contrary to their asking, whereby they should be bound without their
assent"; and from that time it became customary for bills to be sent up to
the Crown instead of petitions, leaving the King the alternative of assent
or reaction.

THE NOBILITY PREDOMINANT IN PARLIAMENT

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the power of Parliament was
strong enough to force the abdication of two kings--Edward II. and Richard
II.--but not strong enough to free the land of the turbul