An Introduction

He who would seek the origins of parliament cannot proceed without knowing that this is, and this has been, a matter much controverted. English politics have very often been conducted in terms of what has passed for history, not least because they have so frequently revolved around the rights and powers and privileges of parliament. Then again, parliament has for so long been a central institution in our polity that scholars have been apt to envisage past parliaments in the mirror of parliaments of their own time or parliaments they would like for their own time. The consequence is that the modern investigator has upon his hands a great legacy of past learning, often the work of giants in their day; but along with that the debris of past disputes of many sorts, extending even to dispute about the order of institutions to which past parliaments belong...