During Henry IV's time on the throne, the role of Parliament expanded beyond the determination of taxation policy to include the "redress of grievances",[This quote needs a citation] which essentially enabled English citizens to petition the body to address complaints in their local towns and counties.

They occurred regularly at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun, allowing kings to maintain ties with powerful men in distant regions of the country.

The cause of this transition were new financial burdens imposed by the Crown to finance the Third Crusade, ransom Richard I, and pay for the series of Anglo-French wars fought between the Plantagenet and Capetian dynasties.

[11] King John (r. 1199–1216) alienated the barons by his partiality in dispensing justice, heavy financial demands and abusing his right to feudal incidents, reliefs, and aids.

[22] They brought together social classes resembling the estates of the realm of continental Europe: the landed aristocracy (barons and knights), the clergy, and the towns.

[23] Meetings of Parliament always included:[1][24] The lower clergy (deans, cathedral priors, archdeacons, parish priests) were occasionally summoned when papal taxation was on the agenda.

Beginning around the 1220s, the concept of representation, summarised in the Roman law maxim quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbetur (Latin for 'what touches all should be approved by all'), gained new importance among the clergy, and they began choosing proctors to represent them at church assemblies and, when summoned, at Parliament.

Historian John Maddicott writes that the "effect of the minority was thus to make the great council an indispensable part of the country's government [and] to give it a degree of independent initiative and authority which central assemblies had never previously possessed".

[43] The regency government officially ended when Henry turned sixteen in 1223, and the magnates demanded the adult king confirm previous grants of Magna Carta made in 1216 and 1217 to ensure their legality.

At a great council in 1225, a deal was reached that saw Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest reissued in return for a fifteenth (7 percent) tax on movable property.

Under Roches, the government revived practices used during King John's reign and that had been condemned in Magna Carta, such as arbitrary disseisins, revoking perpetual rights granted in royal charters, depriving heirs of their inheritances, and marrying heiresses to foreigners.

Significantly, the language of the preamble describes the legislation as "provided" by the magnates and "conceded" by the king, which implies that this was not simply a royal measure consented to by the barons.

The barons were unenthusiastic, but they granted the funds in return for the king's promise to reconfirm Magna Carta, add three magnates to his personal council, limit the royal prerogative of purveyance, and protect land tenure rights.

Important decisions were made without consulting Parliament, such as in 1254 when the king accepted the throne of the Kingdom of Sicily for his younger son, Edmund Crouchback.

The Michaelmas Parliament of 1259 enacted the Provisions of Westminster, a set of legal and administrative reforms designed to address grievances of freeholders and even villeins, such as abuses related to the murdrum fine.

Using the excuse of his absence from the realm and Welsh attacks in the marches, Henry ordered the justiciar, Hugh Bigod, to postpone the parliament scheduled for Candlemas 1260.

Simon de Montfort, a leader of the baronial reformers, ignored these orders and made plans to hold a parliament in London but was prevented by Bigod.

For the first time, burgesses (elected by those residents of boroughs or towns who held burgage tenure, such as wealthy merchants or craftsmen)[65] were summoned along with knights of the shire.

In January 1297, a convocation of the clergy met at St Paul's in London to consider the matter further but ultimately could find no way to pay the tax without violating the papal bull.

In exchange for a new tax, the Confirmatio Cartarum reconfirmed Magna Carta, abolished the maltolt, and formally recognised that "aids, mises, and prises" needed the consent of Parliament.

To this, Edward angrily refused, saying that every other magnate in England had the power "to arrange his household, to appoint bailiffs and stewards"[This quote needs a citation] without outside interference.

[86] Notably, the petition on behalf of "the prelates and leading men of the kingdom acting for the whole community"[This quote needs a citation] was presented by Henry de Keighley, knight for Lanchashire.

During the Good Parliament of 1376, the Presiding Officer of the lower chamber, Peter de la Mare, complained of heavy taxes, demanded an accounting of the royal expenditures, and criticised the king's management of the military.

The numbers of the Lords Spiritual diminished under Henry VIII, who commanded the Dissolution of the Monasteries, thereby depriving the abbots and priors of their seats in the Upper House.

In 1628, alarmed by the arbitrary exercise of royal power, the House of Commons submitted to Charles I the Petition of Right, demanding the restoration of their liberties.

Tensions between the king and his parliament reached a boiling point in January 1642 when Charles entered the House of Commons and tried, unsuccessfully, to arrest Pym and four other members for their alleged treason.

Although it is easy to dismiss the English Republic of 1649–60 as nothing more than a Cromwellian military dictatorship, the events that took place in this decade were hugely important in determining the future of parliament.

A constitutional monarchy, subservient to parliament and the laws of the nation, would act as the executive arm of the state at the top of the tree, assisted in carrying out their duties by a Privy Council.

They invited William of Orange,[90] a Protestant who had married Mary, daughter of James II and Anne Hyde to invade England and claim the throne.

Parliament then offered the Crown to his Protestant daughter Mary, instead of his infant son (James Francis Edward Stuart), who was baptised Catholic.