War, Politics and Parliament

English people rather like to talk about their parliament at Westminster as the ‘mother of parliaments’; by which they mean not only that it was a prototype for other democratic institutions in different parts of the world, but also that it has a very long history. In fact the history of the English parliament goes back to the thirteenth century. On the other hand, it is not quite as typical as we might think. What makes the English parliament rather different from other similar bodies elsewhere is the fact that under the English system it is the lower house, the House of Commons, which has the real power, not the upper house, the House of Lords. What needs to be explained therefore, is not simply how parliament came into being, but also how and why it was that the commons came to play such an important role in parliament.