Question

How did the Kings of England begin to centralize political power during the high middle ages?  In what ways were they checked by the church and the nobility?

Answer 1

The Normans established a tightly controlled feudal administration with high enforcement of royal prerogatives, which made it one of the best organized kingdoms for the whole of the 12th century, however, at the dawn of the 13th century, there was a sharp crisis that almost crushed royal authority in the kingdom. John Lackland managed to lose the English held territory in France to just the Duchy of Normandy, which provoked great anger among his vassals, resulting in a large scale revolt against the king by the barons.

Incapable of defeating the rebels, king John was forced to sign the Magna Carta, which is even today held as an early example of English liberalism and often cited as the synonym of a constitution. The only thing mildly innovative in the Magna Carta is the granting of some privileges to the cities, which in fact is not that innovative, since in 1188, the Cortes of the Kingdom of Leon called on representatives from the cities to attend to the assembly, effectively making Leon the creator of European parliamentarism.

After John's death, the push of the English nobility against royal authority continued with force, taking advantage of Henry III's prolonged nonage, and even carried on after he came of age, coming even to extreme scenarios were the king was practically a prisoner of a noble dictatorship led by the count of Leicester, Simon de Montfort. Luckily for the English monarchy, Henry III broke free of that oligarchy thanks to the rebellion of his son Edward. After that, the English monarchy under Edward I did something common to many European monarchies at the time that is essential to understand the transition between imperial, feudal and modern governments: he relied on the Parliament to give legitimacy to his enterprises and to gain direct support from his subjects, effetcively bypassing the feudal intermediaries. Parliamentarism was a development of the old Royal Curia: an assembly of great men gathered together to provide auxiulium to the monarch. The Royal Curia became the Parliament with the inclusion of representatives from urban society, which were strong allies of a strong centralized monarchy. The king gave them more and more prerogatives in exchange for their support in the Parliament. Working together with the Parliament and respecting its faculties, Edward I managed to rebuild the English monarchy after the disaster that was John's reign. This recovery is evidenced in the renewed international activity that England undertook, with the conquest of Wales and the attempted ocnquest of Scotland.

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