Excerpt from Parliament: Its History, Constitution and Practice The word parliament originally meant a In its Latin form it is applied by monastic statutes of the thirteenth century to the talk held by monks in their Cloisters after dinner, talk which the statutes condemn as unedifying. A little later on the term was used to describe solemn conferences such as that held in 1245 between Louis IX of France and Pope Innocent IV. When our Henry III summoned a council or conference of great men to discuss grievances he was said by a contemporary chronicler to hold a parlia ment. The word struck root in England, and was soon applied regularly to the national assemblies which were summoned from time to time by Henry's great successor, Edward I, and which took something like definite shape in what was afterwards called the model parliament of 1295. The word, as we have seen, signified at first the talk itself, the conference held, not the persons holding it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.