r publication before the people; that copies of
them should be kept in cathedral churches, and publicly read twice in
the year, accompanied by a solemn sentence of excommunication against
all who should infringe them; that any judgment given contrary to these
charters should be invalid, and holden for nought. This authentic
promulgation, those awful sanctions of the Great Charter, would alone
render the statute of which we are speaking illustrious. But it went a
great deal further. Hitherto the king's prerogative of levying money by
name of tallage or prise from his towns and tenants in demesne had
passed unquestioned. Some impositions, that especially on the export of
wool, affected all his subjects. It was now the moment to enfranchise
the people, and give that security to private property which Magna
Charta had given to personal liberty. By the 5th and 6th sections of
this statute "the aids, tasks, and prises," before taken are renounced
as precedents; and the king "grants for him and his heirs, as well to
archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and other folk of holy church, as
also to earls, barons, and to all commonalty of the land, that for no
business from henceforth we shall take such manner of aids, tasks, nor
prises, but by the common assent of the realm, and for the common
profit thereof, saving the ancient aids and prises due and accustomed."
The toll upon wool, so far as levied by the king's mere prerogative, is
expressly released by the seventh section.[4]

[Sidenote: Constitution of parliament.]

We come now to a part of our subject exceedingly important, but more
intricate and controverted than any other, the constitution of
parliament. I have taken no notice of this in the last section, in order
to present uninterruptedly to the reader the gradual progress of our
legislature down to its complete establishment under the Edwards. No
excuse need be made for the dry and critical disquisition of the
following pages; but among such obscure inquiries I cannot feel myself
as secure from error as I certainly do from partiality.

[Sidenote: The spiritual peers.]

One constituent branch of the great councils held by William the
Conqueror and all his successors was composed of the bishops and the
heads of religious houses holding their temporalities immediately of the
crown. It has been frequently maintained that these spiritual lords sat
in parliament only by virtue of their baronial tenure. And certainly
they