assembled for purposes of taxation, legislation, and united political action. Under this system the several communities were no longer to be asked to give their money or to accept the laws, by commissions of judges whom they could neither resist nor refuse, but were to send their deputies with full powers to act for them, to join with the lords and the judges and the king himself in deliberation on all the matters on which counsel and consent were needed. The steps of the change may be traced very briefly. [Sidenote: Parliaments of Edward I. ] Edward’s first parliament, in 1275, enabled him to pass a great statute of legal reform, called the Statute of Westminster the First, and to exact the new custom on wool; another assembly, the same year, granted him a fifteenth. Both these are said to represent the “communaulte,” or community of the land; but there is no evidence that the commons of either town or county were represented. They were, in fact, consulted as to taxation by special commissions, as had been done before. In 1282, when the expenses of the Welsh war were becoming heavy, Edward again tried the plan of obtaining money from the towns and counties by separate negotiation; but as that did not provide him with funds sufficient for his purpose, he called together, early in 1283, two great assemblies, one at York, and another at Northampton, in which four knights from each shire and four members from each city and borough were ordered to attend; the cathedral and conventional clergy also of the two provinces being represented at the same places, by their elected proctors. At these assemblies there was no attendance of the barons; they were with the king in Wales; but the commons made a grant of one-thirtieth, on the understanding that the lords should do the same. Another assembly was held at Shrewsbury the same year, 1283, to witness the trial of David of Wales; to this the bishops and clergy were not called, but twenty towns and all the counties were ordered to send representatives. Another step was taken in 1290: knights of the shire were again summoned; but still much remained to be done before a perfect parliament was constituted. Counsel was wanted for legislation, consent was wanted for taxation. The lords were summoned in May, and did their work in June and July, granting a feudal aid and passing the statute “Quia Emptores,” but the knights only came to vote or to promise a tax, after the law had been passed; and the towns were again taxed by special commissions. In 1294--for we must anticipate the thread of the general history--under the alarm of war with France, an alarm which led Edward into several breaches of constitutional law, he went still further, assembling the clergy by their representatives in August, and the shires by their representative knights in October. The next year, 1295, witnessed the first summons of a perfect and model parliament; the clergy represented by their bishops, deans, archdeacons