Talk:Model Parliament

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This article states that the next parliament was the Good Parliament of 1376. However, Good Parliament states that the parliament immediately preceding the Good Parliament was held in 1373. This is inconsistent. Can someone who knows English history better than I do fix this? Gwimpey 04:53, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually there were quite a few parliaments between the Good Parliament and the Model Parliament. The editor who put in that comment may have meant that the Good Parliament was the next noteworthy/named Parliament, or may have been making an unfounded assumption based on the fact that it's the next parliament on the Wikipedia List of Parliaments of England. Either way, it's factually inaccurate. DCB4W 01:23, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] citizens?

"...each city provided two citizens." Surely this is wrong, aren't residents of Britain subjects and not citizens? Changed it to "residents", hope this is correct. Herostratus 17:54, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

What I suspect was meant is citizen(s) of the specific city. Rather than citizen(s) in the modern sense (i.e. the citizen of nation state). Hence the use of the term “Burgesses” earlier in the article (...two burgesses were elected from each borough...) to refer to representatives/inhabitants from Boroughs.

A Burgher was a freeman of a given borough so a citizen is(?) a freeman of a city. A Burgher had a specific legal status in medieval England. I’m not so familiar with the use of the word “citizen” for this period in history but suspect that it was of similar status*.

Each individual borough (and city) had rights and privileges specific to it, detailed in its own charter and customs. For instance medieval London had quite a high degree of local government with a mayor, a council of Alderman and a petty council and it’s citizens(!) exhibited quite a lot of political independence. While the city of Salisbury was politically under the control of it’s Bishop, until the 17th Centaury. Interestingly the freeman of Salisbury formed a guild (The guild of St George) which elected a Mayor and Alderman and was rival government to that of the Bishop. I believe that this sort of thing quite common in England, which is one of the reasons why some towns/cities have “Guildhalls” and others “Town halls”

Also, a Burgher (or other Freeman) moved from one Borough to another, he would not automatically given the same rights.