Answer the two questions
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Lect14f17England.pptxLecture 14 England
f17
England
By 1700 the English Parliament had established its right to limit the king’s actions; the king could not impose taxes, borrow money, declare war, or undertake government expenditures without approval in the form of a Parliamentary law; the king was also bound by the Common Law to respect the “rights of Englishmen”; he could not remove judges from the Common Law courts
We seek to explain how Parliamentary supremacy emerged in England at the same period in history when it did not emerge in France
England
We also want to understand how English government became bureaucratic rather than patrimonial
We begin by describing the structure of government in the 1200-1300 period; recall the Norman conquest 1066; the new king awarded properties to his vassals and they to their sub-vassals; a French-speaking Norman aristocracy ruled over an Anglo-Saxon population
England was divided into about 75 counties (shires), each with a sheriff appointed by the king; the counties were divided into smaller units called hundreds (say 10 to 20 hundreds per county), each under a bailiff appointed by the sheriff
England
Each county had an assembly that was called together by the sheriff; the members were the free men of the county, mostly landowners; the assemblies chose the judges of the county court
Each hundred also had an assembly called together by the bailiff; the members chose the judges of the hundred court
At the lowest level were the manor courts, where the lord of the manor ruled over his subjects (mainly peasants); the lord dominated the peasants in these courts
England
In the county and hundred courts, the free men of the district met in conditions of legal equality; the peasants were almost all serfs, not free men, but there were free landowners with small holdings
The point is that the free men of the district (county or hundred) shared authority with royally appointed officials (sheriff and bailiff)
Over time the peasants acquired the right to appeal cases from the manor courts to the hundred and county courts; these rights reflected the king’s authority over the magnates and their vassals
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There also emerged the king’s courts, in which royal judges moved through the realm to hear cases (itinerant judges); these judges heard complaints against the sheriffs; cases could be appealed from the county courts to these itinerant judges; the crown collected fees for these judicial services
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At the county level there was a coroner elected by the county assembly; in the hundreds the juries were selected by the hundred assembly
This structure in which royal officials called together the free men of the district to participate in government built on a similar system under the Saxon kings before the Norman conquest; (a similar system of shared governance was employed in the American colonies after 1600)
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The emergence of Parliament; the English kings had property in France and were continually fighting the French kings; hence they were always asking for tax collections (in addition to feudal levies of knights and infantry and bowmen); the magnates extracted from the king the Magna Carta in 1215,which asserted various rights of the barons but mainly their right to approve tax collections; by the way, it did contain the principle that the king was entitled to extraordinary revenues “in times of emergency”
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The Grand Council of Magna Carta consisted of the barons, but by 1270 the king was calling for representatives of the 75 counties and the 150 boroughs to send representatives to approve taxes; these representatives formed the House of Commons; the House of Lords consisted of the 70 lay lords and the 50 ecclesiastical lords; the two houses met at the same location and both had to approve tax measures and new legislation; it became understood that a statute of Parliament could alter the Common Law, but only such a statute; the king was bound by the Common Law and could not change it
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The House of Commons came to represent the smaller landowners (the gentry) and the free people in the towns, many of them merchants; the kings often supported these people against the barons; for example, towns were granted some autonomy in running their affairs and collecting taxes
We pass quickly over the period from 1300 to 1600; Parliament survived; kings at times went around Parliament to raise revenue; the Common Law was widely respected and it specified the rights of Englishmen
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The rights of Englishmen: property may not be taken away except by due process of law; right to trial by a jury of one’s peers; by 1600 the manor courts had disappeared, as had serf-like obligations; in principle English men were legally equal; there were rights against self incrimination (to prevent torture); the police were not allowed into your house without a warrant
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Parliamentary struggles of the 1600s; the Stuart kings aspired to become absolute like their French and Spanish counterparts
James I (1603-25) and Charles I (1625-49) raised revenue without Parliamentary approval; they also set up courts outside the Common Law courts and used them to punish dissenters; there were also religious conflicts between the kings, who were sympathetic to Catholicism, and the Protestant Dissenters, who demanded the right to practice their religion
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Protestant Reformation in England; recall Luther in 1517; protestant sects spread over western Europe, many of them quite radical in challenging the existing social order
King Henry VIII wanted to divorce his Spanish-born wife and marry Anne Boleyn, but the pope would not grant him a divorce; he declared the Anglican Church to be separate from Rome; the Anglican Church remained the official church as a Protestant church; Dissenter groups (some called Puritans) deviated from Anglican doctrine in the direction of local church autonomy
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In the 1600s James I and Charles I supported the Anglican Church against the Protestant Dissenters; some Dissenters were executed by courts in violation of the Common Law
The kings also raised money by selling offices; there was favoritism in the appointment of officials and Parliament tried to supervise royal expenditures; kings awarded patents, which provided monopolies to particular individuals; Parliament insisted that patents could only be awarded for genuine technological advances
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English Civil War 1641-49 ended in the beheading of Charles I; this was followed by the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, who ruled as a dictator until his death in 1657; the regime was discredited by extreme measures to dismantle aristocratic privileges; the Levelers had radical ideas that there should be no social distinctions
Restoration of Stuart king Charles II, ruled 1660-85; Charles was rather moderate in his punishment of the leaders of the Protectorate; but he tried to rule without Parliament by selling offices and finding sources of revenue
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Parliament initiated and carried out a reform of the tax collection bureaucracy, curtailing office selling and appointing competent officials
The new Treasury supervised all expenditures
Parliament issued new bonds to the general public (rather than inside finance) with sufficient credibility that the public bought them
In short, Parliament, through its commissions and supervision of the bureaucracy, limited patrimonial practices of the king
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Glorious Revolution of 1688-89; James II tried to stack Parliament with his own supporters; a revolution of Parliamentarians brought in a Protestant Dutchman, William of Orange, as the new king
William fully accepted the principle of Parliamentary supremacy
Parliamentary approval was now required for issuance of debt, for public expenditure, for taxation, and declaration of war
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Two political parties, the Tories and the Whigs, emerged and alternated in power in the 18th century; you could call this representative government, even though it represented perhaps 4-5% of the male population; a wider segment participated in local government through juries and county and hundred assemblies
The credibility of Parliament was such that public debt exploded in the 18th century; a major reason why England, with population of 6 million was able to defeat France, with population of over 20 million
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Why did England develop Parliamentary supremacy and a non-patrimonial bureaucracy while France did not? See Fukuyama’s explanation on pages 413-20, especially Fig 5 on page 414
