ncils" met and 22 parliaments:
Such great councils were dominated by peers, and those of lesser rank who might be summoned were not elected by counties or boroughs. In his choice between these alternatives the king was only slightly hampered by the convention that gave parliament a higher status, a formal and established position, and by the limits of what it was necessary and politic to do by general assent (Sayles 134).
Parliament was a well-established institution by the early 1370s and was considered the great political assembly of the English, with important rights and a developed procedure. Into the fifteenth century, primarily because of discontent with taxation and the repeated failure of kings and councilors to provide military success and acceptable government, parliament served as the scene of great political events. Many notable incidents took place there during that time, involving kings, lords, and commons, ranging from points of procedure to sustained criticism of government, the appointment of councils and committees to achieve better government, and state trials. Parliament itself grew and developed at this time to such a degree that the period stands out in parliamentary history (Brown 109).
Annual parliaments had been the goal since the beginning of the fourteenth century, but it was not to be achieved for some time. The intent at first was to provide a remedy for delays in the courts and to secure answers to private petitions, but this was an older view of parliament that died out in the fourteenth century. The new attitude that developed called for annual parliaments in order to correct "errors and faults in the realm," which probably meant to remedy misgovernment, which is precisely what parliaments during this era did. There were no rules about the time of the year that parliament should meet, though sessions in the summer, the time of campaign and harvest, were rare. The favored months were O...