4 D. The origin and growth of the parliamentary system

The Magnum Concilium (great council of tenants-in-chief) → the Model Parliament (1295 — Edward I: commons — knights and burgesses — summoned alongside lords, "what touches all must be approved by all"); the two houses separating (14th c.); the commons' weapons found: the power of the purse (grants of supply), impeachment (the commons accuse, the lords try), and statute itself (a petition of grievances matured into legislation — " parliamentary privilege" forming alongside); the 17th-century showdown: Tudor partnership → Stuart defiance (Ship Money) → Civil War (1642–51), a king executed (1649), Cromwell's interregnum → 1688's GloriousRevolution and the Bill of Rights (1689): taxation, army and law all conditional on parliament — parliamentary sovereignty achieved (Dicey's later doctrine); the franchise then widening over two centuries (1832, 1867, 1884, 1918's women's partial suffrage, 1928) — but the 17th century is the constitutional hour.