Montfort's Parliament meets at Westminster

January 20, 1265

Simon de Montfort summoned an assembly that included, for the first time, elected representatives from the towns and shires alongside barons and bishops. The innovation did not save him, but it laid the conceptual foundation for the Commons in later English parliaments. The principle that taxation required the consent of those who paid it, already implicit in Magna Carta, was given institutional form for the first time.