Prior to the reign of Henry III., no regular legislative assembly existed, though the King would occasionally summon councils of the great men of the land for consultative purposes. In William the Conqueror's time the ownership of land became the qualification for the Witenagemot, and the National Council which succeeded that assembly thus became a Council of the King's feudal vassals, and not necessarily an assembly of wise men. When, however, Simon de Montford overthrew Henry III. at Lewes, he summoned a convocation which included representative knights and burgesses, and the parliamentary system, thus instituted, was subsequently adopted by Edward I. "Many things have changed," says Dr. Gardiner in his "History of England," "but in all main points the Parliament of England, as it exists at this day, is the same as that which gathered around the great Plantagenet." The first full Parliament in English history may, therefore, be said to have been summoned by Edward I. on November 13, 1295, and represented every class of the people. Parliament thereafter gradually resolved itself into two separate groups; on the one hand the barons and prelates, representing the aristocracy and the Church, on the other the knights and burgesses, representing the county freeholders, citizens and boroughfolk. The former constituted a High Court of Justice and final Court of Appeal; the chief duty of the latter lay in levying taxes, and they were not usually summoned unless the Crown were in need of money. These two component groups originally sat together, forming a collective assembly from which the modern Parliament has gradually developed. In the early days of Parliament the Lords came to be regarded as the King's Council, over which he presided in person; the Commons occupied a secondary and insignificant position. The power of legislating was entirely in the hands of the King, who framed whatever laws he deemed expedient, acting on the humble petition of his people. The Crown thus exercised absolute control over Parliament, and the royal yoke was not destined to be thrown off for many hundreds of years. In the reign of Edward III., the meetings of Parliament were uncertain and infrequent; its duration was brief. Three or four Parliaments would be held every year, and only sat for a few weeks at a time. The King's prerogative to dissolve Parliament whenever he so desired--"of all trusts vested in his majesty," as Burke says, "the most critical and delicate"[6] was one of which mediæval monarchs freely availed themselves in the days when Parliament had not yet found, nor indeed realised, its potential strength. [6] "Works and Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 525. (The power to dissolve Parliament is still theoretically in the hands of the Sovereign; practically it is in those of the Cabinet. Parliament has only been dissolved once by the Sovereign since the beginning of the eighteenth century.)