What it was
Medieval kings summoned great councils; Simon de Montfort’s parliament of 1265 included knights and burgesses, and by the fourteenth century Lords and Commons sat separately with control of taxation. The seventeenth-century struggle — civil war, the Commonwealth, and the Bill of Rights of 1689 — established that law and taxation require Parliament.
Role
Parliament united with Scotland’s in 1707 and Ireland’s in 1801. The Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, and 1884 widened the franchise step by step, the Parliament Act of 1911 subordinated the Lords, and women gained the vote in 1918 and equally in 1928.
Fate
The Commons chamber, destroyed by German bombing in 1941, was rebuilt to its old form. Devolution in 1999 created a Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies beneath Westminster, which remains the sovereign legislature of the United Kingdom.