petitions of the Estates; but the laws were framed by the King and the
Crown lawyers, and often took a form which by no means expressed the
desires of the petitioners. The most important changes in the law of the
land were not made, but grew, through the accumulated effect of judicial
decisions. The chief function of Parliaments, after the voting of
supplies, was to criticise and to complain; to indicate the shortcomings
of a policy which they had not helped to make. Except as the guardians
of individual liberty they cannot be said to have made medieval
government more scientific or efficient. In the fifteenth century the
English Commons criticised the government of the Lancastrian dynasty
with the utmost freedom; but it was left for Yorkist and Tudor despots
to diagnose aright the maladies of the body politic. Englishmen and
Frenchmen alike were well advised when, at the close of the Middle Ages,
they committed the task of national reconstruction to sovereigns who
ignored or circumvented parliamentary institutions. A parliament was
admirable as a check or a balance, as a symbol of popular sovereignty,
as a school of political intelligence. But no parliament that had been
brought together in any medieval state was fitted to take the lead in
shaping policy, or in reforming governmental institutions.




VIII

THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE--THE CRUSADES


Neither the internal development of the medieval state nor the
international politics of medieval Europe can be explained without