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Excessive taxation during the French war enhanced the importance of knights and burgesses, who began to meet separatly for financial debates before voting taxes.
In the year 1340 the Commoners met themselves for the first time.
This led to the division of the Great Council into the House of Commons (elected representatives of counties and boroughs) and the House of Lords (personally summoned barons and bishops).
But there was still a limitation: the Crown was still supreme in all matters, the Crown had always the "last word" in decisions.
The t w o - c h a m b e r s y s t e m, and the predominance of the Lower House, where the burgeois element was strenthened through the landed gentry, have since constituted the two principal features of the English Parliament.
Disintegration of Feudalism
In the 15th century the townspeople (esp. traders) became richer and richer, they were even able to pay more taxes than the nobles. Consequently the Commons gained a greater influence on all matters of finance. Numbers of former serfs freed themselves from feudal services by paying a fixed sum (firma), which made them free "farmers" (freeholders), while the rest became permanent paid land-labourers. Thus serfdom was abolished four hundred years earlier than on the Continent.
Decline of nobility
The Wars of the Roses, which were fought chiefly by barons, extinguished many noble families and encouraged lawlessness and violence among nobles and their retrainers (military employees used also in the Hundreds Years´ War). This led to the elimination of the old nobility from political influence and the creation of a new aristocracy of court officials under the Tudor kings.
The Tudors were the most popular dynasty in the English history, uniting absolotistic ten-
dencies with respect for Parliament and the interests of the powerful new middle classes through their keen instinct for England´s commercial possibilities.
Henry VII (Tudor) restored order and royal authotrity by r i g o r o u s t a x a t i o n and suppression of the lawless nobility, who were forbidden to keep retrainers. The former political influence of the nobility was now superseded by a new gentry (reliable offices drawn from middle classes).
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