Tour Script: Westminster Hall
1Welcome to Westminster Hall. King William II, son of William the Conqueror, had this great hall built in the 1090s. For centuries, until 1882, England's chief royal courts met inside it. Many of the steps that slowly limited English rulers were argued over within these walls or close by.
21100: a promise. When Henry I took the throne, he issued a Charter of Liberties. He promised to end some unfair demands his brother William II had made on the barons and the Church. More than a century later, rebel barons used this charter as a model when they drew up the Magna Carta in 1215.
31166: juries of neighbors. Henry II wanted royal justice, not each lord's private court, to deal with serious crimes. Under the Assize of Clarendon, groups of twelve men from each district had to tell the king's traveling judges which local people were suspected of robbery or murder. Over time, the same royal law came to apply across the kingdom.
41297: the charter confirmed. Edward I needed money for wars in France and Scotland. In return for new taxes, he confirmed the Magna Carta and promised that such taxes would be taken only with the common consent of the kingdom.
51376: officials on trial. In the Good Parliament, members of the House of Commons accused several officials of the aging King Edward III of cheating the Crown and the people. The House of Lords tried them and found them guilty. Parliament could not put the king himself on trial, but it could remove men who acted in his name.
61628: a petition. Charles I had forced people to lend him money and had jailed some who refused without naming any law they had broken. Parliament, guided by the former chief judge Sir Edward Coke, pointed to the Magna Carta and passed the Petition of Right: no taxes or forced loans without Parliament's consent, and no jailing without a cause shown. Charles accepted it. The next year he sent Parliament home and ruled without it for eleven years.
71649: a king on trial. After a civil war between the king's supporters and Parliament's army, Charles I was tried in this hall in January 1649. He refused to answer, saying no court had the power to judge a king. The court found him guilty, and he was executed.
81679: show the prisoner. Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act. It said that a jailer must bring a prisoner before a judge, who would decide whether the prisoner was being held lawfully.