coram regeaccording to the record, or before the king ‘in parliament at
Windsor’ according to the chronicler Thomas Wykes; while the Annals
of Tewkesbury and Matthew Paris transfer the process to a ‘great
parliament’ at London, where King Henry is described as magnifying
the accusations into treason, allegedly swearing in typical style that ‘if
someone killed Henry of Bath he should be acquitted of his death’ and
having to be restrained by his councillors. The most interesting detail in
Matthew’s account is that a proclamation was made ‘in London and in
the court’ (presumably at Westminster) summoning anyone having
querelaeagainst the judge to present them, and that many complainants
(queruli) did so. In the proceedings against Henry of Bath may be seen
the distant origins of the procedure of impeachment, by which the
king’s ministers would be put on trial in parliament ‘by the clamour of
the commons’.^88
The parliament which set about reforming the state of the realm at
the instance of the barons in 1258, put at the centre of its scheme of
government ‘three parliaments every [administrative] year, the first at
the octave of Michaelmas, the second on the morrow of Candlemas,
and the third on the first of June’. That ‘mad parliament of Oxford’ was
nothing if not political, yet the detailed legislation that stemmed from it
suggests that the effective answering of petitions and the proper exercise
of judicial power on the part of the lords as well as the king were its
chief objectives. In 1215 a permanent court in a fixed place for the hear-
ing of common pleas had been a demand of the barons; in 1258 it was
the consolidation at Westminster of a high court standing above the
courts of king’s bench, common pleas, and the exchequer, and meeting
at fixed times. From the answering of specific petitions would follow
general legislation. The three annual parliaments prescribed at Oxford
were for the elected councillors of the king to ‘review the state of the
realm and of the king together’, and ‘the justices and other wise men’
were ordered ‘between that and the next parliament [to] consider of
what ill laws and need of reformation there were’. In July 1258 there
was a further edict that there should be sent to Westminster for the
Michaelmas parliament the records of the inquests which the Oxford
parliament had ordered to be made in every county into complaints of
‘all serious offences, trespasses and wrongs committed... in times past
by any persons whatsoever to any others, [that is by] justices and
sheriffs as well as our other bailiffs and all other persons whatsoever’.^89
These reports, along with plaints adjourned to parliaments from the
172 New High Courts and Reform of the Regime
(^88) Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora, iv. 511, 518, 526, 622, v. 20, 213–23, 324, 373, 493;
Annales Monastici, i. 143, iv. 101; Treharne, ‘The Nature of Parliament’, 76–7; Harding,
‘Plaints and Bills in the History of English Law’, 78–80.
(^89) Documents of the Baronial Movement, 110–11, 114–15; G. O. Sayles, The Functions of
the Medieval Parliament of England(London, 1988), 62–79.