(1309) On the accession of Edward II came the Summary of Grievances, recited in the Statute of Stamford as recognized by Edward I at the close of his reign.  The seizure of supplies by the king without due payment; the maintenance of courts at the gates of the king’s castles in derogation of the common-law courts; the taking of “new customs,” two shillings per tun of wine, two shillings for cloth and other imports, “whereby the price to the people is enhanced"; the debasement of current coin; that petitions of the Commons to Parliament were not received, etc., etc.  All duties were then suspended, in order to know and be advised “what Profit and Advantage will accrue to him and his People by ceasing the taking of those Customs”—­a precedent it were to be wished we might have the intelligence to follow to-day—­surely better than a tariff commission!

Two years later came the New Ordinances, which contain a most interesting precedent, hitherto almost unnoted, of the American principle of having the courts construe the Constitution.  Section VI:  “It is Ordained, That the Great Charter be kept in all its points in such manner, that if there be in the said Charter any point obscure or doubtful, it shall be declared by the said Ordainours, and others whom they will, for that purpose, call to them, when they shall see occasion and season during their power.”  Section XXXVIII:  “That the Great Charter ... and the Points which are doubtful in it be explained by the advice of the Baronage and of the Justices, and of other sage Persons of the Law.”  It was ordained that the king should not go out of the realm, a precedent never violated until modern times, and even followed by our own presidents, except for Roosevelt’s trip to Panama and Taft’s to the borders of Mexico.  Again we find “new customs” abolished, “as upon Wools, Cloths, Wines, Avoir de pois, and other Things, whereby the Merchants come more seldom, and bring fewer Goods into the Land, and the Foreign Merchants abide longer than they were wont to do, by which abiding things become more dear,” saving only to the king his duty on wool and leather, half a mark for a sack of wool and one mark for a last of leather.  “The king shall hold a Parliament once in the year or twice if need be, and that in a convenient place.”  This principle has maintained itself in the English mind, still more in the American mind, ever since.  To this day, in Massachusetts, for instance, we cannot get a constitutional amendment to have the legislature sit only once in two years, though it would probably be a very wise reform, on account of this old inherited feeling that there is something peculiarly free about an annual parliament, as indeed there is.  The Anglo-Norman kings called parliaments once a year or oftener.  Most of the States in this country now have their legislatures sit every two years.  Alabama and some other States have recently changed, that they only sit once in four years.  But the conservative old States, like Massachusetts and New Jersey, have still the rule that the legislature sits every year; and the prejudice in favor of the annual legislature goes back at least as far as this law of 1330, where the Commons succeeded in getting a law that Parliament should sit as often as once in a year, and is incorporated in England’s and Massachusetts’ Bill of Rights.