The history of the British parliament is a very long history compared to that of most public institutions. This fact is a testimony both to how early in history this body was created and to the degree to which there has been some consistency and sense of continuity in British governmental history. The fifteenth century was a period of political ferment and particular turmoil for Parliament, which was cancelled in 1402 and which did not meet during several other years in the course of the century as changes were wrought in the institution. The procedures and privileges of Parliament in the fifteenth century had a particular character that casts light on the development of the institution, the nature of Parliament before the fifteenth century, and points to some of the developments that would come after.
By no means was the fifteenth century a period of power for the British parliament, for during the Medieval Period of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the representative parliaments met intermittently and by no stable rule binding upon the king. Royal government and administration was becoming more complex and demanded a "clearing-house" for difficult questions which parliament could best provide. This was especially true when the king and his council were at its center. Parliament was then attended by the prelates, lay magnates, and commons. the parliament itself was thus a necessary complement to the normal administrative machinery (Roskell, Parliament and Politics 448).
Parliament at this time as an expedient of government that was summoned by the king when he desired a particularly full and representative council. However, the king could, without infringing on any rights or inflicting any wrongs, transact business at great councils, summoned in a less formal way and acquiring no technical definition, to be summoned with less notice than parliament would require. Between 1400 and 1460, forty to fifty "great cou...