In 1954 Professor Hoyt published a very useful summary of American and Canadian writings on the mediaeval English parliament during the preceding fifteen years. This complemented a similar article by Mr Templeman published in 1948. Since 1952 there has been a surprising number of writings on the subject, sufficient and important enough to warrant another critical summary. Such is the purpose of my remarks tonight. There are three main topics to be considered: the origins of parliament, its essential nature, and the rôle of the Commons in it.

Modern historiography of the causes of the Hundred Years War begins with the publication of a book by M. Gavrilovitch entitled Etude sur le traité de Paris de 1259. This work, as the title suggests, was a study of the Treaty of Paris of 1259, an agreement reached between Henry III of England and Louis IX of France that restored the tie of vassalage between the monarchs of the two countries, which had been broken by the confiscation of King John's fiefs in France by Philip Augustus in 1202. Although the latter part of the book is devoted to an account of the fulfilment of the terms of the treaty, most of the study is concerned with the negotiations leading up to the treaty and to the provisions of the treaty itself. Gavrilovitch published in 1899. Between that date and the appearances in 1930 and 1940 of two general histories that took account of intervening articles and monographs on the causes of the war, at least thirty-three important titles were added to the bibliography. Most of these, however, dealt with the immediate, rather than with the underlying or long-term, causes of the war. The two general histories of which I speak are T. F. Tout's The History of England from the Accession of Henry III to the Death of Edward III, Volume iii of The Political History of England, edited by Hunt and Poole (London, 1930), and the two parts of Volume vi, devoted to Western Europe from 1270 to 1380, in Glotz's Histoire générale, written by Robert Fawtier (1270–1328) and A. Coville (1328–1380) respectively (Paris, 1940 and 1941).

At the accession of Philip of Valois to the throne of France and of Edward III to the throne of England, diplomatic relations between the two countries hinged on two questions: homage and the restitution of lands in Gascony. Neither question was new, and each was bound up with the other. The treaty of Paris of 1259, which was calculated to settle once and for all the conflicting rights and claims of the king of France and his English vassal, had stipulated that English kings should perform liege homage for their French holdings at the accession of each new king of France. But the treaty was scarcely eleven years old when Henry III, using illness as an excuse, neglected to swear fealty to the successor of Louis IX. Again, in 1272, although Edward I did liege homage to Philip III for the duchy of Guyenne, he made reservations in respect to the lands of Agenais and Saintonge. The procrastination of Edward II in the matter of homage was one of the principal reasons for his difficulties with Philip IV and Charles IV.

In October, 1306, Elias Joneston, a clerk of the diocese of Coventry, succeeded his master, Philip Martel, as keeper of processes relating to Aquitaine. The keepership of processes represented an attempt on the part of the English government to cope with the very special diplomatic situation growing out of the treaty of Paris, entered into by Henry III and St Louis in 1259. English administrators needed someone who could advise them and their envoys on such technical questions as homage, the redress of grievances, and the state of English cases before the Parlement de Paris, the great French lawcourt. Accordingly the council created the office of custos processuum, and the three clerks who held this post from 1304 to 1339 — Philip Martel, Elias Joneston, and Roger Staunford — were technical experts to whose care were entrusted the diplomatic relations between England and France.