The Military Origins of Medieval Representation

AMONG the circumstances that attended the formation of parliamentary institutions in the Middle Ages, one seldom hears of militarism or military organization. The prevailing understanding comprises such factors as the persistence of feudal traditions of counsel and law, the emergence of an urban class, the revival of Roman legal principles of public responsibility and representation, and the ever more urgent financial needs of expanding governments. It is not my purpose to reject this pattern of explanation. On the contrary, I should like for the present to assume that it is generally satisfactory. But it seems to me that militarism has been unduly neglected in accounting for the rise of consultative government and that it should be investigated as a fundamental condition to which the well-known factors or causes may be related. Fortunately there have been some prospectors in this domain; the problem, while neglected, has not passed unnoticed. It will appear that my discussion owes much to suggestions and contributions made by William Stubbs, J. H. Round, J. E. A. Jolliffe, Michael Powicke, and other authorities. The underestimation of military aspects of parliamentary origins may perhaps be attributed to the tendency to view developments of the High Middle Ages anachronistically. In recent times representative institutions have come to be regarded as incompatible with militarist rule. Ordinary affairs of state are usually distinguished sharply from what we like to think of as the extraordinary affairs of war. Yet it is hardly open to doubt that European representation arose in a society of a different sort: a society that, notwithstanding considerable advances in social objectives and politicaladministrative techniques, remained organized primarily for war. Even in England, with its exceptionally progressive institutional life, those who ruled were still in the thirteenth century mainly those who fought. Those who were ruled, moreover, were still thought of in fundamentally military terms. Landholding, the obligations of society, and privileges long con-