Petitioning parliament for justice
Others of the Ordinances of 1311 mentioning parliaments had a
judicial rather than political flavour. If the barons of the exchequer
unjustly disallowed tallies of receipt of debts paid to the crown,
plaintiffs should ‘have their recovery against them by petitions in parlia-
ment’, as should those wrongfully impleaded in the exchequer (cc. 24,
25). The king was ‘to hold parliament once a year, or twice if need be,
and this in a convenient place’, to hear pleas which royal servants
refused to answer without consultation with the king, and also pleas
where the justices held different opinions; ‘and likewise the petitions
which shall be handed in at parliament are to be determined as before,
as law and justice require’ (c. 29). Magna Carta and the Charter of
the Forests were ‘to be kept in all their articles’ and anything found
ambiguous in them ‘clarified in the next parliament after this by the
advice of the baronage and the justices and other learned men of law’
(c. 38). And a bishop, two earls, and two barons were ‘to be appointed
in each parliament to hear and determine all the plaints of those who
wish to complain against the king’s ministers, whoever they may be’,
who contravened the Ordinances (c. 40).^109
A political role was added to the judicial purposes of parliament so
much more conclusively in England than in France because of the
previous development of the king’s courts and the greater flexibility this
allowed in dealing with the stream of plaints. The Provisions of West-
minster of 1259 had given to the justices in eyre the power to hear com-
plaints of trespasses brought without writs against officials or anyone
else (ad audiendum omnes querelas de transgressionibus quibuscunque
factis).^110 The process after 1265 of settling disputes arising from ‘the
troubled time’, and the renewal by Edward I, immediately on his return
from crusade, of administrative inquiries before itinerant justices stimu-
lated a further increase of oral plaints—and the crucial transition to
written bills. The schedules of articles in the eyre rolls of the late 1260s
detailing trespasses against individual complainants ‘in the time of
trouble’ seem likely to have been framed by the victims themselves.^111
Before the inquest Edward set on foot throughout the counties of
England in 1274 concerning ‘certain rights, liberties, and other matters
affecting us and our state and the state of the community of the said
counties’ and ‘the deeds and behaviour of all sheriffs and bailiffs’, the
178 New High Courts and Reform of the Regime
(^109) Sayles, Functions of the Medieval Parliament, 42, 303–6, 329, 380, 433; Select Cases in
the Court of King’s Bench, iv. 72.
(^110) Jacob, Studies in the Period of Baronial Reform and Rebellion, 70–125, 147.
(^111) The Roll of the Shropshire Eyre of 1256, pp. xliii, lxxiii; Select Cases of Procedure with-
out Writ, pp. lxii–lxiv; Harding, ‘Plaints and Bills in the History of English Law’, 68, 76.