heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

352 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
by the provisions of Oxford, July, 1258; and afterwards as far as the
towns were concerned, by Earl Simon de Montfort, who broke through
older constitutional tradition, and dared to summon two burgesses from
each borough to the Parliament of 1265.
Edward seems to have done willingly and generously what his
predecessor had done grudgingly and reluctantly. He based the representation
of the country by knights of the shire, upon the old county
court, presided over by the sheriff; and freely accepting the representation
of the boroughs, he admitted the burgesses, originally summoned to take
part only in matters of taxation, to a full share in the deliberation and
authority of other orders of the State. Finally, he developed the representation
of the clergy from mere ex-officio members to elected members,
and added to the bishops and greater abbots, all archdeacons, deans, or
priors of cathedral churches, with a proctor for each cathedral chapter,
and two for the clergy within the diocese. The Parliament thus organized
was at first called in various places, Winchester, Acton Burnell, Northampton,
Oxford, &c., but eventually
it was settled at Westminster.
The provisions of Oxford had enjoined that three Parliaments should
be assembled every year, whether summoned by the King or no ;
but as
far as I can discover, this formed no portion of Edward's plan, and he
and his successors seem to have only called their Parliaments together
when and where they needed their advice and support.
Under these circumstances it is
very evident why, during the reigns
of the first three Edwards, Parliaments were summoned, and summoned
to York
; for during that epoch the most vigorous efforts were made for
the assertion of English supremacy in Scotland.
To comprehend the reason for this, we must remember that at
what we now call Scotland was
the close of the thirteenth century,
an aggregate of at least four distinct countries. Saxony, now called
the Lowlands, the space between the Firth of Forth and the Tweed,
which had been the northern portion of the kingdom of Northumbria,
reaching from the Humber to the Firth of Forth. The long strip of
coast between the Clyde and the Dee had formed the country of Cumbria.
The whole country north of the Forth and Clyde had acknowledged
the supremacy of the Picts and
;
the little kingdom of Scot-land amongst
the lakes and mountains on the south of Loch Lynne, founded centuries
before, when a fleet of coracles had borne thither a tribe of the " Scots,"
as the inhabitants of Ireland were at that time called. In days gone by,
these several kingdoms had banded together to resist their common
enemy the Danes; and in the tenth century the direct line of Pictish
sovereigns becoming extinct, the Scot king, Kenneth Mac- Alpine, who
claimed to be their nearest kinsman, was raised to the vacant throne, and