The First European Parliament?

The word "parliament" is from the French parlement, first seen in the 11th century to mean "parley" or "conversation." By the middle of the 13th century it was being used for council meetings. It is often automatically associated with England, where the bicameral House of Lords and House of Commons met to decide matters of national importance. During the reign of Henry III, for instance, Parliament's consent was needed to approve taxation. This was an evolution of the rules laid out in Magna Carta.

Whereas the barons of England forced King John to allow them a voice in important decisions, not every king in Western Europe needed coercion. For example, take Alfonso IX of León and Galicia (a very large percentage of the Iberian Peninsula).

Born 15 August 1171, he was 17 when he succeeded his father, Ferdinand II. Wars with Castile had left León in an economic downturn, and Alfonso's first need was to raise taxes, including on the lower classes. This led to revolts in several towns. That, and the continued threat from Castile, prompted Alfonso to summon León's nobles, higher level clergy, and merchants and tradesmen as representatives of several towns, to a Cortes at the Basilica of San Isidoro.

The Cortes ("court") of León of 1188 was the first formal uniting of the Three Estates (Nobles, Clergy, Commoners) in Western Europe. The Cortes laid out rules that are familiar to modern constitutions: the right to private property, to appeal to justice, to the sanctity of the home. The Cortes also demanded oversight of royal spending. As one modern scholar* put it:

Thus, the "plain state" was incorporated into the nascent Cortes of the Kingdom. In this way, the Roman proverb applied: "what concerns everyone must be approved by everyone." Thomas Aquinas clarified that "to guarantee the common good it is necessary that rulers be elected by the people from among the people."

The Cortes of León pre-dated the Parliament of England by decades. I was careful, in the second paragraph above, to specifically refer to "Western Europe," because of course there is at least one notable example of "rule by committee" if we look northward from the Mediterranean at the witenagemot.

Alfonso is also known for a different historical precedent than the Cortes of 1188: his reign mirrored some of Henry VIII's troubles with marriage(s) and the pope. Stay tuned.

*(Thank you, Google Translate)

Getting Titles, Taking Wives

This is the story of a man who got everything he wanted...and possibly more than he deserved.

Ralph de Stafford was born 24 September 1301, eldest son of the first Baron Stafford, Edmund. Edmund died in 1308, and Ralph went to live with his mother and her new husband, joining the retinue of his maternal grandfather (for whom he was named, Ralph, 2nd Lord Bassett.

Sometime around 1326 he had married Katherine Hastings, a knight's daughter. With her he had two daughters, both of whom lived long enough to get married to knights.

At the age of 26 (in 1327) he was made a knight banneret* and fought in the wars against Scotland. He later helped to free Edward III from the control of his regents, his mother and her lover Roger Mortimer. Earning Edward III's gratitude for this and for later distinguished military service, he was made Lord Stafford by 1336 and served in Parliament. He was later (1341) made Steward of the Royal Household, and even later (1345) Seneschal of Aquitaine. These honors are indicative of the king's favor later in his life, but far earlier he had earned the friendship of Edward. The proof of this is seen in episodes involving his second wife.

We do not know when Katherine died, but it must have been prior to July 1336, because he was remarried by that time—despite opposition from his second bride's parents. Margaret Audley, daughter of Hugh de Audley, the 1st Baron Audley, was born about 1318. She was abducted by Ralph for the purposes of marriage—or perhaps for the purposes of financial gain, since she was worth £2314 per year. Ralph's estates were worth less than one-tenth of his new wife's. Her parents brought their objections to the king, who forgave Stafford's actions, approved the marriage, and appeased Margaret's father by making him an earl, the 1st Earl of Gloucester.**

In 1350, Edward decided to grant several new titles to reward military service. He created an earldom for Ralph, making him the 1st Earl Stafford, and granted an annual payment to him of 1000 marks (a mark was 2/3 of a pound).

Because of his and his wife's wealth and titles, their children (two sons and four daughters) were prime candidates for marriage in the eyes of others. They all married well, none of them having to abduct their spouses. Ralph died 31 August 1372.

*A knight banneret was a knight who had the right to lead troops under his own banner; Ralph's inheritance gave him that right.
**Technically, there had been Earls of Gloucester before this, but the line had been extinguished.

Regarding the Burning of Heretics

In 1401, during the reign of King Henry IV of England, Parliament passed a law known by the phrase, De heretic comburendo ["Regarding the burning of heretics"]. Heresy was always a concern, going back to Pelagius and Arius, but England had a new threat in the Middle Ages, in the form of John Wycliffe, whose attempts at reforming the church and politics did not sit well with those establishments.

True, by 1401 Wycliffe (c.1324-1384) had been dead for years, but his ideas had inspired a movement called Lollardy, and his plan to bring the word of God into the hands of the masses via his English-language Bible ran the risk (according to Church authorities) of leading the faithful astray by giving them the chance to read Scripture without the proper learning to understand its precise meaning. Something had to be done; something proper and legal—after all, England was a country governed by law, not whim.

Hence the De heretic comburendo, which described the Lollards as:

...divers false and perverse people of a certain new sect...they make and write books, they do wickedly instruct and inform people...and commit subversion of the said catholic faith. [link]

The law states further

...and they the same persons and every one of them, after such sentence promulgate shall receive, and them before the people in an high place cause to be burnt, that such punishment may strike fear into the minds of others, ...

This statute stayed on the books in England until 1677.

The Great Vowel Shift

Why it happened, and why it happened the way it did, are still hotly contested. Also, there are no images for it that don't themselves require an essay to explain, so this post could make a dull subject even duller. Let's begin.

Starting about 1350, pronunciation of English started to change. Not all pronunciation; mostly the long vowels that were stressed in the word. Pronunciation of vowel sounds depends on the relative positioning of the tongue and lips and palate (remember, I am simplifying). To put it another way: how your mouth forms the space in which the sound resonates determines pronunciation of the vowel sound. What happened during the Great Vowel Shift is that the pronunciation of those vowels moved upwards and backwards in the speaker's throat.

What did this sound like? Without teaching you the International Phonetic Alphabet*, we will try a few examples. The Modern English name would have been pronounced by Chaucer to sound like "na-ma" and by Shakespeare as "neem"; Modern English root would have been "ro-ta" to Chaucer and "rowt" to Shakespeare.

There were exceptions. For instance, "ea" took a different path, depending on the consonants around it. It was long, but it shortened when followed by consonants such as "d" and "th"; so we have "ea" sound like short "e" when "ea" shows up in Modern English dead, head, breath and wealth instead (<—there it is again) of sounding "longer" as in great and break.

Consonants stayed the same, although "silent letters" did develop later. Chaucer would have pronounced "knife" something like "ka-nife"; that is, both consonants would have been pronounced; it was later that we got lazy and stopped bothering with the "k" in "knife" and "knowledge."

(Okay, here's a picture)

So why did it happen? The most common theory is that social mobility after the Black Death brought people from all over England together in the London area where changes were caused by people organically blending the many dialects. There may also have been an attempt to distance England culturally from France. 1359-60 saw a major military conflict between the two, and in 1362 the law courts of London decided to switch from French to English. The original pronunciation of the long vowels was very "continental." The GVS took pronunciation further away from that similarity with the continent (remember that much of the English vocabulary at this time had come in with the Norman Invasion).

The sad part is that England had become a literate culture before the GVS was done. Printing was standardizing spelling even as pronunciation was going through its evolution. Therefore, the pronunciation of words moved well beyond their original spelling, creating issues for schoolchildren and non-native speakers for centuries to come.

*Which, to be honest, would require me to learn it first.

Treason

Nowadays, when the word "traitor" is used casually to refer to someone who has decided he likes "Hunger Games" better than "Harry Potter," and when Freedom of Speech tolerates numerous calumnies against political leaders, it is difficult to imagine the enormity of the charge of treason centuries ago. "Traitor" comes into English from the French traitour, which in turn is from Latin traditor, "one who hands over." It is directly connected in the medieval mind with Judas Iscariot turning over Jesus to the authorities.

If medieval kings were duly anointed and therefore had God behind them, betraying a king was akin to blasphemy. Only the harshest of punishments was suitable for treason: to be hanged, drawn and quartered; however, a woman was burnt at the stake (the quartering of her body would result in people seeing naked lady parts, and that was unacceptable in a civilized society), and nobles convicted of treason had the more genteel conclusion of beheading.

Edward III

The difficulty with treason was the flexibility of the charge. During the time of Edward III (1312-1377), the courts sometimes declared as treason crimes that others would consider mere felonies, or acts that infringed on the king's power. By this loose definition, gathering firewood in the king's hunting grounds could be prosecuted as treason. The Treason Act of 1351 clarified the position of the Crown and Parliament, splitting offenses into high and petty treason. Petty treason was the killing of your (non-king) superior, and was abolished in 1828.

High treason could be achieved by numerous actions:

• Killing (or planning to kill) the King, his wife, or his heir
• Violating the King's wife, the King's unmarried eldest daughter, the wife of the King's heir
• Warring against the King
• Providing aid and comfort to the King's enemies
• Counterfeiting the Great Seal or Privy Seal
• Counterfeiting English currency
• Killing an acting Chancellor, Treasurer, or a King's Justice

The Act took no chances, however, that new forms of treason would be thought of, and allowed for them in the future:

And because that many other like Cases of Treason may happen in Time to come, which a Man cannot think nor declare at this present Time; it is accorded, That if any other Case, supposed Treason, which is not above specified, doth happen before any Justices, the Justices shall tarry without any going to Judgement of the Treason till the Cause be shewed and declared before the King and his Parliament, whether it ought to be judged Treason or other Felony.

Changes have been made over the centuries. For instance, although the Treason Act of 1351 still holds in Scotland (because Parliament has not given Scotland the power to change it), it is no longer treason in England (as of 1861) to copy the Great Seal. Also, counterfeiting was reduced to a felony in 1832.

Magna Carta

The "Great Charter" was signed on June 10, 1215 by King John.

After the Norman Invasion of 1066, the kings of England started to rule more as the monarchs we think of today, abandoning the English custom of a council of wise men, the witenagemot, that had aided kings for centuries. Under strong and charismatic individuals such as Henry II (who ruled from 1154 until 1189), this system may have worked, but King John was not like Henry II. He was called "Bad" King John because he taxed people so heavily. He was called "Lackland" (in Old French, Johan Sanz Terre) because he lost the Duchy of Normandy to King Philip II of France. For these and other reasons, he lost the support of his barons.

The barons decided they needed to return the kingdom's governance to a system that allowed them more input. To that end, they conferred and agreed to draw up a great charter, which was drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. Although Langton may not have been as affected by John's whims as the barons, he had been the cause of a dispute between John and Pope Innocent III, which had resulted in John's brief excommunication. Langton definitely saw the need to curb John's ability to get himself and England into trouble.

When John decided to tax the barons themselves in order to mount a war to regain lost provinces on the continent, the barons had had enough. The barons and Langton produced a document called the "Articles of the Barons" in January of 1215, which John rejected. The barons then armed themselves and marched to London, occupying it in May. They confronted John at Windsor Castle, and he agreed to a meeting at a place called Runnymede.

Some items established by Magna Carta:

• The Church was free to rule itself, especially in the appointment of bishops.
• No new taxes, except with the consent of the Great Council, or Parliament
• Weights and Measures were to be made uniform throughout the realm
• Everyone had the right to due process

On June 15th (797 years ago today), the Barons reciprocated by renewing their Oath of Fealty to King John.

Of course, John had no intention of being bound by the restrictions of the Magna Carta, but that's another story.