Edward III: September 1337

1337 September

Introduction September-October 1337

Westminster

26 September - 4 October

Writs were issued on 18 August 1337 ordering the assembly of a great council at Westminster on 26 September. Because the writs of summons was very similar to the form used for parliament, and because the crown required the return of commons' representatives and proctors of the lower clergy to this assembly, there is good reason to treat it as though it was a parliament - as, indeed, did the writs de expensis issued to the commons at the conclusion of the meeting, on 4 October, which referred to the meeting explicitly as a parliament. (fn. f1337bint-1) The purpose of summons of the assembly, as stated in the writs, was to sanction arrangements for the government of the realm during the king's impending absence in his pursuit of the impending war with France. Although, in the event, Edward III did not embark for the continent until July 1338, hostilities were now deemed unavoidable: a few days after the dismissal of the assembly, the king made his first formal assertion of his right to the throne of France. (fn. f1337bint-2) One very important outcome of such discussion was the grant to the king of an unprecedented triennial fifteenth and tenth: the assembly bound the kingdom to three years of continuous direct taxation in aid of the war. (fn. f1337bint-3) The tax was also a signal of the more general consent evidently provided by this assembly for the war: on a number of occasions in subsequent years when his subjects proved less than enthusiastic about the domestic consequences of such a exhaustive and expensive enterprise, Edward III was to remind them that their own representatives had approved the undertaking in 1337. (fn. f1337bint-4) One explanation as to why the crown may have chosen to summon this assembly as a great council rather than a parliament lies in the urgency of the great business that it undertook: if we are disposed to the argument that it was only in meetings labelled as parliaments in their writs of summons that the king's subjects had the right to present private and common petitions, then it may be that in 1337 the crown simply preferred to set aside its obligation to deal with such business and to focus instead on the matter of the French war. (fn. f1337bint-5)

Given the political importance of the assembly and the ambiguity on the part not merely of historians but also of contemporaries as to its precise status, it is worth stressing that no formal and official record of this meeting survives. This may represent a loss: after all, there are no parliament rolls for the period between 1334 and October 1339. (fn. f1337bint-6) However, it is also to be remarked that none of the representative great councils summoned by Edward III up to 1337 yields a record equivalent to the parliament roll, and that in 1353 the commons at another such assembly (for which, under special circumstances, a roll was compiled) commented that 'ordinances and agreements made in councils are not of record as they would be if they were made by common parliament' (parliament of 1353, item 42) (see also Introduction to parliament of 1353). It is therefore possible to suggest that the equivalent of a parliament roll was never, in fact, prepared as a record of the great council of September-October 1337.