than Philip refused to restore the fortresses which had been left in pledge.  In February 1294 he declared the English king contumacious, and in May declared his fiefs forfeited to the French Crown.  Edward was driven to take up arms, but a revolt in Wales deferred the expedition to the following year.  No sooner however was it again taken in hand than it became clear that a double danger had to be met.  The summons which Edward addressed to the Scotch barons to follow him in arms to Guienne was disregarded.  It was in truth, as we have seen, a breach of customary law, and was probably meant to force Scotland into an open declaration of its connexion with France.  A second summons was followed by a more formal refusal.  The greatness of the danger threw Edward on England itself.  For a war in Guienne and the north he needed supplies; but he needed yet more the firm support of his people in a struggle which, little as he foresaw its ultimate results, would plainly be one of great difficulty and danger.  In 1295 he called a Parliament to counsel with him on the affairs of the realm, but with the large statesmanship which distinguished him he took this occasion of giving the Parliament a shape and organization which has left its assembly the most important event in English history.

[Sidenote:  The Great Council]

To realize its importance we must briefly review the changes by which the Great Council of the Norman kings had been gradually transforming itself into what was henceforth to be known as the English Parliament.  Neither the Meeting of the Wise Men before the Conquest nor the Great Council of the Barons after it had been in any legal or formal way representative bodies.  The first theoretically included all free holders of land, but it shrank at an early time into a gathering of earls, higher nobles, and bishops, with the officers and thegns of the royal household.  Little change was made in the composition of this assembly by the Conquest, for the Great Council of the Norman kings was supposed to include all tenants who held directly of the Crown, the bishops and greater abbots (whose character as independent spiritual members tended more and more to merge in their position as barons), and the high officers of the Court.  But though its composition remained the same, the character of the assembly was essentially altered; from a free gathering of “Wise Men” it sank to a Royal Court of feudal vassals.  Its functions too seem to have become almost nominal and its powers to have been restricted to the sanctioning, without debate or possibility of refusal, all grants demanded from it by the Crown.  But nominal as such a sanction might be, the “counsel and consent” of the Great Council was necessary for the legal validity of every considerable fiscal or political measure.  Its existence therefore remained an effectual protest against the imperial theories advanced by the lawyers of Henry the Second which declared all legislative