The other theme was a characteristic idiom of political
life, one that
set tremendous store by rights and privileges of diverse origins, both
individual and corporate. This idiom gave political conflict in the
region a rather distinctive texture. A striking example of this, at a
national rather than a local level, is the institution of parliaments.
Rulers everywhere take advice, and it tends to be more or less
understood from whom they will take it, and for whom, if anyone, the
advisers can speak. But in later medieval England, for example,
Parliament was a lot more than this. It was an institution through
which rural and urban collectivities were formally represented; the
ruler could not impose a new tax or make a new law without its consent,
and his officials could be impeached by it. The ensuing conflicts
between rulers seeking to do what rulers do everywhere and subjects
bristling with rights and privileges could have a variety of outcomes.
The ruler might be hamstrung, as was to happen in Poland; or he might
find ways to bypass the thicket of rights and establish an absolute
monarchy, as was to happen in France. But the most significant of the
possible outcomes was something more like a tense symbiosis, as in the
case of England.
