For many ages it was a legal doctrine universally received that Parliament at once expired at the death of the reigning King. The argument by which the lawyers reached this conclusion is, like most of their arguments, altogether unanswerable, provided only we admit their premisses. According to the lawyers’ conception, whatever might be the powers of Parliament when it actually came together, however much the King might be bound to act by its advice, consent, and authority, the Parliament itself did nevertheless derive its being from the authority of the King. Parliament was summoned by the King’s writ. The King might indeed be bound to issue the writs for its summons; still it was from the King’s writ that the Parliament actually derived its being and its powers. By another legal assumption, the force of the King’s writ was held to last only during the lifetime of the King who issued it. It followed therefore that Parliament, summoned by the King’s writ and deriving its authority from the King’s writ, was dissolved _ipso facto_ by the death of the King who summoned it. Once admit the assumptions from which this reasoning starts, and the reasoning itself is perfect. But what is the worth of the assumptions? Let us see how this mass of legal subtlety would have looked in the eyes of a man of the eleventh century, in the eyes of a man who had borne his part in the elections of Eadward and of Harold, and who had raised his voice and clashed his arms in the great Assembly which restored Godwine to his lands and honours(14). To such an one the doctrine that a national Assembly could be gathered together only by the King’s writ, and the consequent doctrine that the national Assembly ceased to exist when the breath went out of the King’s body, would have seemed like the babble of a madman. When was the gathering together of the national Assembly more needed, when was it called upon to exercise higher and more inherent powers, than when the throne was actually vacant, and when the Assembly of the nation came together to determine who should fill it? And how could the Assembly be gathered together by the King’s writ when there was no King in the land to issue a writ? The King’s writ would be, in his eyes, a convenient way in ordinary times for fixing a time and place for the meetings of the Assembly, but it would be nothing more. It would be in no sense the source of the powers of the Assembly, powers which he would look upon as derived from the simple fact that the Assembly was itself the nation. In his eyes it was not the King who created the Assembly, but the Assembly which created the King. The doctrine that the King never dies, that the throne never can be vacant, would have seemed gibberish to one who had seen the throne vacant and had borne his part in filling it. The doctrine that the King can do no wrong would have seemed no less gibberish to one who knew that he might possibly be called on to bear his part in deposing a King.