The ‘Mirror of Justices’, an anonymous work compiled towards
1290, called it ‘an abuse that, whereas parliaments ought to be held for
the salvation of the souls of trespassers twice a year and at London, they
are now held but rarely and at the king’s will for the purpose of obtain-
ing aids and collection of treasure’. The pattern of judicial parliaments
at Westminster was certainly disrupted by Edward’s Welsh and Scottish
wars and preoccupations in France, but adjournments continued to be
made ‘to the next parliament’ in expectation of Edward’s return, and
eventually the regent had to be allowed to hold a parliament at Easter
1289.^101
Of course, other sorts of business were transacted at judicial parlia-
ments if they arose at the right time: Henry III’s younger son Edmund
was married at the Easter parliament of 1269, and it was only after King
Edward the Confessor’s bones had been translated to a new shrine in
Westminster abbey at Michaelmas that year that ‘the nobles began, as
was their wont, to discuss the business of the king and of the kingdom
by way of parliament’ and agreed to a tax of a twentieth on moveable
property. Edward I summoned representatives of the shires and
boroughs to his first great parliament at Easter 1275, following de
Montfort’s example ten years earlier, but this time to facilitate the
agreement to new customs duties; and he added knights of the shire to
an Easter parliament in 1290 for the granting of a fifteenth on move-
ables. Representation of the shires, boroughs, and sometimes clergy as
well, which was irrelevant to judicial parliaments, became more
frequent in the emergencies of the latter part of Edward I’s reign and on
into Edward II’s reign, at assemblies which might be called at any time,
perhaps away in the north of the country.^102
Representative parliaments were on the way to becoming real
political assemblies, occasions when ‘the soundest wisdom’ could ‘be
brought to bear on the affairs of the king and the realm’. The defeat and
death of Earl Simon at Evesham in August 1265 had halted baronial
attempts to control the government, but during the weak rule of
Edward II (1307–27) the uses of parliament for this purpose once more
became apparent. In 1310, the contemporary Life of Edward the
Secondrelates, the barons secured the election of ‘twelve discreet and
powerful men... by whose judgement and decree the state should be
176 New High Courts and Reform of the Regime
1272–79, 167, 170, 200, 267–8, 271–2, 274; Jolliffe, ‘Some Factors in the Beginnings of
Parliament’, 103 ff., 108 ff., 113; Select Cases in the Court of King’s Bench,i, pp. lxx, 14, 45,
167, 179; ii, pp. cxxviii, 24, 151; iii, pp. lxxxvii, cxxii, cxxiv; iv, pp. 64, 87, 90; vi (Cases
under Edward III), 7, 27–8; vii (Cases under Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V), 220.
(^101) Sayles, Functions of the Medieval Parliament, 28 (n. 54a), 179–82, 189–93.
(^102) Ibid. 119, 125, 201, 351; Handbook of British Chronology, 544–7.