Councils, Charters and Scots Law

Parliament grew out of the king's council of advisers, a body made up of important noblemen and the leaders of the Church whom a medieval king actually relied on to govern. Long before there were elections or formal Houses, this was where royal decisions were argued over and shaped, the seed from which the rest of Parliament eventually grew.

Magna Carta, the charter that reined in royal power, had its own Latin name: it was also known as the Great Charter, simply what the Latin words mean. Scotland, meanwhile, was building a legal tradition of its own. Scotland's legal system in this period developed slightly differently from England's, with laws that were 'codified', meaning written down in advance rather than built up case by case the way English common law was.