reformed and consolidated (status reformaretur et consolidaretur)’.^103
The modern translator of the Vita Edwardi Secundihas ‘conditions’
being reformed, though statusis clearly in the singular, and there may
be a suggestion here of the notion of an abstract ‘state’ which historians
are reluctant to admit at this early date.^104 The Parliament Roll says that
the job of the Ordainers was ‘to ordain and establish the state of the
[king’s] household and his realm (ordiner & establir l’estat de son
houstiel et de son roiaume)’;^105 and Earl Thomas of Lancaster, Edward’s
chief critic, confirmed the identification of the king’s state with his
household as the seat of government when he resolved to ordain ‘what
seems necessary... for your household and the rule of your king-
dom’.^106 In this period the king of France linked his ‘rights, state and
honour’ with those of his realm only to resist an ideological offensive by
the papacy:^107 in England the connection between the state of the realm
and the quality of its rule was made at times of internal political dis-
content.
In 1322 Thomas of Lancaster was defeated and executed, and
Edward II obtained the repeal of the Ordinances imposed on him in
1311, several of which had given parliaments a leading role in govern-
ment, but parliaments constituted of magnates. Chapter 9 of the
Ordinances had laid down that the king was not to make war against
another kingdom or appoint a keeper of the realm in his absence with-
out the ‘common assent of his baronage and this in parliament’; chapter
14 that the appointments of chancellor, chief justices, treasurer, and
other ministers required similar approval. In response, the Statute of
York of 1322 declared that ‘the estate of the king and the estate of
the realm’ must be discussed by the assent of prelates, barons, and
commonalty.^108
English parliaments 177(^103) For the Ordinances of 1311, see Rotuli Parliamentorum [RP],Edward I–Henry VII, 6
vols. (London, 1783; index vol., 1832), i. 281–6: tr. in EHDiii.1189–1327, ed. Harry
Rothwell (London, 1975), 527, 530 (cc. 13, 14).
(^104) Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. and tr. N. Denholm Young (Edinburgh, 1957), 9.
(^105) RPi. 281a, 282b (cc. 13, 14).
(^106) RPi. 351–2; J. R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 1307–1322: A Study in the Reign
of Edward II (Oxford UP, 1970), 181–2, 188, 192, 196–7, 1319; W. Childs, ‘Resistance and
Treason in the Vita Edwardi Secundi’, in Thirteenth Century England VI,ed. M. Prestwich,
R. H. Britnell, and R. Frame (Woodbridge, 1997).
(^107) Documents relatifs aux États Généraux et Assemblées réunis sous Philippe Le Bel,
ed. M. G. Picot (Paris, 1901), 1, 3, 8, 14, 15, 26; J. H. Denton, ‘Philip the Fair and the
Ecclesiastical Assemblies of 1294–5’, TAm Phil Soc81/1 (1991), 35, 38.
(^108) Statutes of the Realm[SR], ed. A. Luders, et al11 vols. (London: Record Commission,
1810–28), i. 189–90: tr. EHDiii. 543–4; G. L. Haskins, ‘A Draft of the Statute of York’, EHR
52 (1937), 74; Gaines Post, ‘Status Regisand Lestat du Roiin the Statute of York’, in his
Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State, 1100–1322(Princeton UP,
1964).