The History of Parliament Trust is delighted to announce that The Magna Carta Trust’s 800th Anniversary Commemoration has agreed to provide a grant of £5,000 towards next year’s international conference ‘Making constitutions, building parliaments: constructing representative institutions, 1000-2000’.

The conference will take place under the auspices of the History of Parliament and the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions (ICHRPI). It marks two anniversaries of enormous significance in the history of English, and British constitutional and legal history: the 800th anniversary of King John’s acceptance of Magna Carta, the great charter of liberties of the English nation in 1215; and the 750th anniversary of the Parliament summoned by Simon de Montfort in 1265, following his defeat of King Henry III in a civil war which was the culmination of a baronial revolt.

The conference will take 1215 and 1265 as a starting point for an exploration of the initiation and development of political institutions from the early Middle Ages onwards, and an assessment of their role in state formation or nation building. It will consider the significance of foundational documents and events such as Magna Carta and the de Montfort Parliament and how these – and the historiography of Parliaments – became so important in the subsequent history of Parliament and political institutions.

The conference will set the foundation of the English and British constitutional tradition alongside that of other jurisdictions elsewhere; it will explore other confrontations between communal traditions and royal powers and how these were expressed and resolved; it will seek to compare the development of the English political tradition with contemporary parallel institutions in Europe, and explore their divergence and/or convergence.

Notes for editors:

1.    The History of Parliament is a research project creating a comprehensive account of parliamentary politics in England, then Britain, from their origins in the thirteenth century. Unparalleled in the comprehensiveness of its treatment, the History is generally regarded as one of the most ambitious, authoritative and well-researched projects in British history. It consists of detailed studies of elections and electoral politics in each constituency, and of closely researched accounts of the lives of everyone who was elected to Parliament in the period, together with surveys drawing out the themes and discoveries of the research and adding information on the operation of Parliament as an institution. For more information, please see the Trust’s website, www.historyofparliamentonline.org.

2.    The Magna Carta Trust’s 800th Anniversary Commemoration Committee is charged by the Magna Carta Trust to co-ordinate activities, raise the profile of the anniversary and deliver a number of key national and international aspirations. For more information, visit www.magnacarta800th.com.

3.    Founded in 1936, the ICHRPI is the international body for research into the origin, development and growth of representative parliamentary constitutions throughout the world and in all periods. It has members in over thirty countries, including the USA, Canada and all European countries. It publishes a journal, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, and holds an annual conference. Recent conferences have included Cadiz in 2012 to mark the bicentenary of the liberal constitution of Spain created in 1812, and Edinburgh in 2007 to mark the tercentenary of the Anglo-Scottish Union of 2007.