EVOLUTION OF FISCAL SOVEREIGNTY IN ENGLAND

FROM AN INSTRUMENT OF RESTRAINING THE KING TO THE PARLIAMENTARY PREROGATIVE

Abstract

History of parliamentary development is narrowly tied to the development of fiscal prerogatives of the legislature. This is especially pronounced in the origins and development of the English Parliament. Moreover, we can ascertain that the fight of “medieval taxpayers”, i.e. those partaking in the distribution of power in medieval feudal structures, foreshadows the very foundation of the English Parliament and its precursors – the “assemblies of King’s servants”. In that sense, medieval England’s earliest constitutional documents espouse mechanisms limiting Crown’s autocracy. Later on, the invocation of Parliament’s fiscal prerogatives represented the most efficient form of subverting such absolutism, especially regarding the absolutist
tendencies of the Stuarts. Upon establishment of Parliament’s supremacy over the Crown, the Victorian era was marked by the struggle between two houses of Parliament, culminating in early 20th century anent the issue of the Lords’ rejection of the budget bill. Parliament Act of 1911 marks the end of a centuries-long development
of Parliament’s fiscal sovereignty, affirming the prerogatives of the House of Commons as the holders of democratic electoral legitimacy.