EDWARD II 1307-1327 [Sidenote: Parliament and the Kings] In his calling together the estates of the realm Edward the First determined the course of English history.

From the first moment of its appearance the Parliament became the centre of English affairs.

The hundred years indeed which follow its assembly at Westminster saw its rise into a power which checked and overawed the Crown.
Of the kings in whose reigns the Parliament gathered this mighty strength not one was likely to look with indifference on the growth of a rival authority, and the bulk of them were men who in other times would have roughly checked it.

What held their hand was the need of the Crown.

The century and a half that followed the gathering of the estates at Westminster was a time of almost continual war, and of the financial pressure that springs from war.