Statutes & Royal Ordinances, Edward II

The Barons did mention the Parliament several times in the Ordinances of 1311. However, they did not foresee any role for the commonality in it, neither did they seek the co-operation of the commonality in drafting the ordinances or in their battle against the King. The role that the Barons sought for the Parliament was as a meeting place for the Magnates who could effectively act as a check on King’s power. They did not envisage the parliament to be an effective centre of power, especially legislatively. The focus of the Baron’s challenge, and what they were really concerned with was administrative power. And the way they sought to use the parliament is either as a judicial body (to check king’s decision) or as a body which gives consent to all the important administrative postings. Ordinance 29, through which the Magnates in Parliament were to hear pleas delayed in the Royal Court, or against Royal ministers was an example of the former. Ordinance 14, which stipulated that the ‘counsel and assent of the Baronage and that in Parliament” was required for any significant royal appointment was an example of the latter. In neither of these functions did the commonality have any role to play. Their role was limited to assenting to laws, granting money and petitioning for new laws – all alongside the rest of the Parliament, and mostly just formal in nature. Eitherways, the Barons were not so concerned about the legislative aspect of the power, their focus was on controlling the administration of the realm.

In this context the abovementioned phrase in the statute can be seen as a major concession to the commonalities. While such concessions have been made by Kings earlier from time to time for strategic purposes (including Edward’s father Edward I), this statute gave it permanency, and as would be argued by future historians and politicians, a constitutional validity to the right of the community to be consulted on fundamental matters which clearly concerned it..

However, it would not be in any ways correct to surmise from this that the intention of Edward II and his advisers who drafted the Statute was to establish the Parliament as a centre democratic power. The commonality was only a bit part of the drama. The express intention of the statute was to secure royal supremacy, as the rest of the statute makes it amply clear. Moreover, what Edwards was specifically concerned about is having unchecked and unfettered power over matters concerning his own person, estate, family and heirs. In the fractured Feudal nature of the British realm, this was of the central concern to him. The concession to the commons on the other hand was made regarding the “estate of the realm”. Here, it was not seen as threatening to his immediate concerns to atleast acknowledge the principle that matters concerning all must be approved by all. In anycase, it is likely that he saw the commonality as playing a merely formal role as they ad used to and not emerging as a alternate centre of power, like the Barons, who were the more immediate enemies.

Neither was he proven wrong in his belief in his lifetime. Only when the social and economic conditions of the country changed, and democracy and republicanism became serious political issues, did these words get a new life. As one can say, it is not the words of law that make the world, but the world which makes the words of law what they are. However, this is a great example of how words gain whole new significance, and a political life of their own when the circumstances change. Especially in the hands of the Whig lawyers, these words served as one of the main constitutional arguments against absolute royal power and at the heart of the claim that all important legislation needed co-operation of the commons in a full parliament.

More importantly, this also signified the shift of power from Ordinances to Statutes. From Edwrad II’s reign, though not by his express design, Ordinances would signify an administrative decree, while statutes, like that of York, would signify a more fundamental legislative act. The hierarchy of the two, and their jurisdictional separation, so to speak, as we are used to today, can be traced back to Edward II’s fight for power with the Barons.