The Parliament, since known as the Model Parliament, assembled the 27th November, 1295, in accordance with the summons of the king. Each of the estates met by itself, and each made its grant to the king independently of the others.[161] The barons and the knights of the shire gave Edward an eleventh of their movables, the clergy a tenth, and the burgesses and citizens a seventh.[162] Here was the perfect form for the laying of taxes. In 1283 the provincial councils at Northampton and at York had suggested the composition of the Model Parliament, but the foreshadowed form was far from perfect. In 1295 the question was fully answered as to how the people should assent to taxation, in case their assent should be asked. The Model Parliament furnished the perfect mechanism; the question was still in the air, however, as to whether this mechanism should be the sole instrument by which the laying of taxation should be performed. [Similar composition at Parliament of 1296] Events, however, were tripping one another up in their haste to bring forward a suitable answer. The Parliament of 1296, which met at Bury St. Edmund’s on the 3d November, clinched a precedent which should have its weight in making the reply. Its constitution was precisely the same as in 1295; the barons and knights gave a twelfth of their movables, and the citizens and burghers an eighth. [Edward puts the clergy in outlawry] The clergy, however, held off. According to the understanding reached the previous December when Edward accepted from them a tenth in lieu of a larger grant, they were to meet a demand with a further contribution of like amount,[163] unless peace be declared in the interval. In consequence, Edward was scarcely ready to accept the apology of Archbishop Winchelsey; the archbishop declared that should the clergy acquiesce, the papal will expressed in the recently published bull “Clericis laicos”[164] would be contravened, and that therefore no grant would be forthcoming. He would give his final answer after meeting the clergy of his province at St. Paul’s early in January, 1297. When at last his reply was presented, it was in tenor different from that given in November; the Pope’s will was clear and it must hold. Edward moved swiftly. Remembering the satisfactory effect of his threat of outlawry in 1294, he immediately placed the clergy beyond the royal protection.[165] Some of the clergy won back the favor of the king by making individual contributions to the royal treasury, an evasion of the terms of the papal bull which was quite acceptable to Edward. On the 12th February, the king, weary of waiting for a favorable movement from Archbishop Winchelsey, ordered the seizure of the lay fees of the clergy in the see of Canterbury, whereat the archbishop brought forward his weapon of excommunication. Thus did Edward find disposed against himself and the royal cause the powerful body of English churchmen, at a moment when their adherence would have