The right to refuse grants was gradually assumed and legally
recognized. As taxes on the middle class soon exceeded those on the
clergy and nobility, it became customary in the fifteenth century for
money bills to be introduced in the Commons, approved by the Lords, and
signed by the king.
[Sidenote: Legislation]
The right to make laws had always been a royal prerogative, in theory
at least. Parliament, however, soon utilized its financial control in
order to obtain initiative in legislation. A threat of withholding
subsidies had been an effective way of forcing Henry III to confirm
_Magna Carta_ in 1225; it proved no less effective in securing
royal enactment of later "petitions" for laws. In the fifteenth century
legislation by "petition" was supplanted by legislation by "bill," that
is, introducing in either House of Parliament measures which, in form
and language, were complete statutes and which became such by the
united assent of Commons, Lords, and king. To this day English laws
have continued to be made formally "by the King's most Excellent
Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and
Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the
authority of the same.
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