Edward I, the next king, definitely adopted this innovation. He doubtless called in the representatives of the towns because the townspeople were becoming rich and he wished to have an opportunity to ask them to make grants to meet the expenses of the government. He also wished to obtain the approval of all classes when he determined upon important measures affecting the whole realm. Since the Model Parliament of 1295, the commons, or representatives of the people, have always been included along with the clergy and nobility when the national assembly of England has been summoned. We shall see later how the present houses of Lords and Commons came into existence under Edward's son. [Sidenote: England in the fourteenth century.] From the reign of Edward I we are, as a distinguished English historian has well said, "face to face with modern England. Kings, Lords, Commons, the courts of justice, ... the relations of Church and State, in a great measure the framework of society itself, have all taken the shape which they still essentially retain" (Green). The English language was, moreover, about to become the speech we use to-day. CHAPTER XII GERMANY AND ITALY IN THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES [Sidenote: Contrast between the development of Germany and France.] 56. The history of the kingship in the eastern, or German, part of Charlemagne's empire is very different from that in France, which was reviewed in a previous chapter. After a struggle of four hundred years, it had become clear by the thirteenth century that the successors of Louis the German (Charlemagne's grandson) could not make of Germany a kingdom such as St. Louis left to his descendants. From the thirteenth century down to Napoleon's time there was no Germany in a political sense, but only a great number of practically independent states, great and small. It was but a generation ago that, under the leadership of Prussia,--a kingdom unknown until many centuries after Charlemagne's time,--the previously independent kingdoms, principalities, and free towns were formed into the federation now known as the German empire. [Sidenote: Stem duchies.]