The familiar modern theory of the ‘separation of powers’ makes it particularly difficult to classify and to analyse the varied functions of a judge as performed in the fourteenth century. Twentieth-century habits of thought lead one to try to distinguish between Shareshull's ‘judicial’ career and his ‘political’ career in parliament and council. But the fallacy of the distinction when applied to a public servant under Edward III is obvious. The well-known term, ‘high court of parliament’, the various judicial procedures in parliament, the frequency with which the council in, or outside of, parliament, acted as a judicial body, long before the development of star chamber or of chancery as a court of equity—all warn us that taxation, legislation, diplomatic arrangements, general supervision of the country, do not in this period constitute the sole business of parliament, increasingly important although they have become. Yet it still remains true that the major part of the routine work in common law was dealt with by common pleas and king's bench and by innumerable itinerant commissions, and that the judicial work of parliament was more often (not exclusively) concerned with supplying remedies not easily secured in the ordinary courts by ordinary methods. However artificial and unintelligible the distinction would have appeared to Shareshull and his associates, for convenience of treatment it has seemed wise to attempt to describe his ‘political’ separately from his ‘judicial’ career, with constant emphasis on the interrelation between the two.

Nowhere is there a greater difference between modern and medieval concepts and phraseology than in the use of the words ‘parliament’ and ‘ council’. This is not the place to enter into the long controversy; it is sufficient to state that I have accepted Plucknett's view as against that of Richardson and Sayles and therefore for 1327-36 have listed in Appendix II (2) under the heading ‘parliament’ an assembly of magnates, lay and spiritual, if the commons were also summoned, reserving the vague term ‘great council’ for those assemblies of magnates to which no commons were summoned.