power to reside wholly in the sovereign.  It was in fact under Henry that these assemblies became more regular, and their functions more important.  The reforms which marked his reign were issued in the Great Council, and even financial matters were suffered to be debated there.  But it was not till the grant of the Great Charter that the powers of this assembly over taxation were formally recognized, and the principle established that no burthen beyond the customary feudal aids might be imposed “save by the Common Council of the Realm.”

[Sidenote:  Greater and Lesser Barons]

The same document first expressly regulated its form.  In theory, as we have seen, the Great Council consisted of all who held land directly of the Crown.  But the same causes which restricted attendance at the Witenagemot to the greater nobles told on the actual composition of the Council of Barons.  While the attendance of the ordinary tenants in chief, the Knights or “Lesser Barons” as they were called, was burthensome from its expense to themselves, their numbers and their dependence on the higher nobles made the assembly of these knights dangerous to the Crown.  As early therefore as the time of Henry the First we find a distinction recognized between the “Greater Barons,” of whom the Council was usually composed, and the “Lesser Barons” who formed the bulk of the tenants of the Crown.  But though the attendance of the latter had become rare their right of attendance remained intact.  While enacting that the prelates and greater barons should be summoned by special writs to each gathering of the Council a remarkable provision of the Great Charter orders a general summons to be issued through the Sheriff to all direct tenants of the Crown.  The provision was probably intended to rouse the lesser Baronage to the exercise of rights which had practically passed into desuetude, but as the clause is omitted in later issues of the Charter we may doubt whether the principle it embodied ever received more than a very limited application.  There are traces of the attendance of a few of the lesser knighthood, gentry perhaps of the neighbourhood where the assembly was held, in some of its meetings under Henry the Third, but till a late period in the reign of his successor the Great Council practically remained a gathering of the greater barons, the prelates, and the high officers of the Crown.

[Sidenote:  Constitutional Influence of Finance]

The change which the Great Charter had failed to accomplish was now however brought about by the social circumstances of the time.  One of the most remarkable of these was a steady decrease in the number of the greater nobles.  The bulk of the earldoms had already lapsed to the Crown through the extinction of the families of their possessors; of the greater baronies, many had practically ceased to exist by their division among female co-heiresses, many through the constant struggle of the poorer nobles to rid themselves of their rank