These
knights and burgesses were the elements from which the House of Commons
was subsequently to be formed. Similar bodies met repeatedly in the
next thirty years, and in 1295 Edward I called a "model Parliament" of
archbishops, bishops, abbots, representative clergy, earls, and barons,
two knights from every shire, and two citizens from each privileged
city or borough,--more than four hundred in all. For some time after
1295 the clergy, nobility, and commoners [Footnote: _I.e._, the
knights of the shires and the burgesses from the towns.] may have
deliberated separately much as did the three "estates" in France. At
any rate, early in the fourteenth century the lesser clergy dropped
out, the greater prelates and nobles were fused into one body--the
House of "Lords spiritual and temporal,"--and the knights joined the
burgesses to form the House of Commons. Parliament was henceforth a
bicameral body, consisting of a House of Commons and a House of Lords.
[Sidenote: Powers of Parliament: Taxation]
The primary function of Parliament was to give information to the king
and to hear and grant his requests for new "subsidies" or direct taxes.
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