The foundations of modern England were laid by Edward I., who did more than any other king to create a national parliament, a national system of justice, and a national army.[8] Edward III., with far less creative power, but with equal energy and ambition, inherited the ripe fruits of his grandfather's policy, and raised England to a place in European politics which she had never reached before and was seldom to reach again. "That which touches all," said Edward I., "should be approved by all"; and, though continental sovereigns might use similar language as a subtle cloke for their arbitrary encroachments, in England the maxim had from the first a real meaning. The great barons--themselves steadily dwindling in feudal power--no longer sat alone in the King's councils; by their side sat country gentlemen and citizens elected to share in the responsibilities of government; and the clergy, but for their own persistent separatism, might have sent their chosen representatives to sit with the rest. Moreover, already in Chaucer's time we find precedents for the boldest demands of the Long Parliament. The Commons claimed, and for a time obtained, the control of taxation; and five of Richard II.'s ministers were condemned as traitors for counselling him to measures which Parliament branded as unconstitutional. Professor Maitland has well described the "omnicompetence" of Parliament at this time. Nothing human was alien to its sphere of activity, from the sale of herrings at Yarmouth fair and the fashion of citizens' girdles to those great constitutional questions which remained in dispute for three centuries longer, and were only settled at last by a civil war and a revolution.
Nor was the judicial system less truly national than the Parliament. Maitland has pointed out that the years 1272-1290 were more fruitful in epoch-making legislation than any other period of English history, except perhaps that which succeeded the Reform Bill of 1832. Chaucer, like ourselves, lived in an age which was consolidating the great achievements of two generations past, and looking forward to far-reaching social changes in the future. Already in his time the Roman Law was outlandish in England; our land laws were fixed in many principles which for centuries remained unquestioned, and which are often found to underlie even the present system. Already under Edward III., as for many centuries afterwards, men looked upon the main principles of English jurisprudence as settled for ever, and strove only by a series of ingenious accommodations to fit them in with the requirements of a changing world. The framework of the law courts, again, was roughly that of modern England. The King's judges were no longer clerics, but laymen chosen from among the professional pleaders in the courts; and here again "one remarkable characteristic of our legal system is fixed."