With the representatives of the commons and the estate of the lords Edward associated a representative assembly of clergy; delegates were to be sent from each diocese to each parliament to assist in the national work and to tax the ecclesiastical property. And the form invented by Edward in 1294 still subsists, although for many centuries no such representatives have been chosen or sat in parliament. In truth the clergy were averse to obeying the mandate for their appearance in a secular parliament, and preferred to vote the money, which it would have been very difficult for them to refuse, in the two provincial convocations of York and Canterbury, which likewise contained their chosen representatives, assembled as a spiritual council. These were called together by the writs of the two archbishops; they could, through the bishops, act in concert with the parliament, and were not unfrequently, in modern times invariably, called together within a few days of the meeting of parliament. [Sidenote: National policy of Edward I. ] The latter half of Edward’s reign witnessed most of the critical occasions which opened the way for those changes or improvements in the constitutional system, and supplied means for testing their efficiency. These must form the subject of another chapter. But we may pause, before we proceed, to mark definitely one other note of Edward’s policy. Henry II., had done his best to get rid of the feudal element in judicial matters, and to create a national army independent of the influences of land tenure. He had sent his judges throughout the land and taken the judicature out of the hands of the feudal lords. He armed all freemen under the assize of arms, and, by instituting scutage, raised money to provide mercenaries. By the national militia at home and by mercenary forces abroad he strengthened himself so as not to depend for an army on that feudal rule by which every landlord led his vassals to battle. Edward I., whilst he still more perfectly carried out these principles, went further in the same direction, in his constitution of parliament. The representatives whom he called up from the shires and towns were chosen by the freemen of the shires and towns in their ancient courts; they were not the delegates of royal tenants-in-chief but of the whole free people. Even the barons who composed the House of Lords owed their places there not so much to the fact that they held great estates as the immediate vassals of the crown, as to the summons by which they were selected from a great number of persons so qualified. Even if this had not been the case, the institution of the House of Commons would itself have marked the extinction of the ancient feudal idea that the council of the king was merely the assembly of those who held their land under him. But it was so throughout Edward’s policy. In court, and camp, and council, it was the general bond of allegiance and fealty, not the peculiar tie of