In the Kingdom of England, the Magnum Concilium (Latin for "Great Council") was an assembly historically convened at certain times of the year when the English nobles and church leaders outside the Curia regis were summoned to discuss the affairs of the country with the king.
Great councils were valued because they "carried fewer political risks, allowed responsibility to be more broadly shared, and drew a larger body of prelates and magnates into the making of decisions".
This changed near the end of Henry II's reign (1154–1189) due to the need to finance the Third Crusade, ransom Richard I, and pay for the series of Anglo-French wars fought between the Plantagenet and Capetian dynasties.
[8] King John (r. 1199–1216) alienated the barons by showing partiality when dispensing justice, heavy financial demands and abusing his right to feudal incidents and aids.
[9] Known as Magna Carta (Latin for "Great Charter"), the document was based on three assumptions important to the later development of Parliament:[10] While the clause stipulating no taxation "without the common counsel" was deleted from later reissues, it was nevertheless followed.
[11] During the reign of John's son, Henry III (r. 1216–1272), meetings of the great council began to be called parliament from the French parlement first used in the late 11th century with the meaning of parley or conversation.
According to The Oxford History of England, Henry VII summoned the Magnum Concilium half a dozen times in the last years of the fifteenth century,[13] but thereafter it fell into disuse.
In the autumn of 1640 Charles I summoned the first Magnum Concilium in generations, having dissolved the Short Parliament and suffered defeats in the Bishops' Wars against Scotland.
The Concilium offered Charles a guaranteed loan of £200,000 sterling to pay the army and attempted unsuccessfully to negotiate with the Scots, but it declined to resume its ancient governing role, and urged Charles instead to summon a new Parliament, which then became a protagonist in the English Civil War.