them permanently and regularly profitable, and this he undertook in his first parliament. [Sidenote: Parliamentary settlement of revenue on Edward I. ] He had come home, deep in debt, to an inheritance heavily encumbered by his father’s debts. He had obtained from the Pope, whom he visited at Orvieto on his way, permission to exact a tenth of the income of the clergy for three years. But this would not be sufficient. He took counsel, therefore, with the Italian bankers, who had already obtained a footing in England, and devised the plan of obtaining from his assembled estates a permanent revenue from wool; half a mark--that is, six shillings and eightpence--on each sack of wool exported. This is the legal foundation of the English customs. It was formally granted in the parliament which met soon after Easter 1275, and with a grant of a fifteenth of movables, and the tax already imposed on the clergy, provided him with a revenue which carried on the government for some years. Nor did it require material increase until Edward, in 1292 and 1293, became involved in a new series of wars. The exigencies of the Welsh war, the necessity for legal changes, and the orderly arrangement of the royal revenue, could not have failed to make their mark on the growth of parliament, even if Edward had not learned the lessons of constitutional lore which his father’s reign had furnished; and, even without those lessons, Edward was eminently qualified by the very habit of his mind to be a constitutional reformer. Accordingly, in the parliaments of his reign, especially in those which were called at irregular intervals from 1275 to 1295, are found the clearest, most distinct, steps of growth, which led to the complete organization of the three estates of the realm in one central assembly. And here, again, we must take a brief retrospect. [Sidenote: Summoning of representative assemblies for purposes of taxation. ]