Half as many parliaments met under Edward II as under Edward III, and a fraction of parliamentary records survive for the earlier reign compared to the latter, and yet it is the development of parliament under Edward II that has really caught the attention and fired the enthusiasm of twentieth-century constitutional historians. This is because scholars have looked to the reign of Edward II to identify the first signs of a fundamental change that overtook parliament in the first half of the fourteenth century; namely, the emergence of the representatives as a permanent and important force in English politics. The paucity of parliamentary records under Edward II has shrouded these developments under a veil of uncertainty and ambiguity. One of the consequences has been a great body of historiography which attempts to draw broad conclusions about the political significance of the early fourteenth-century parliament but which uses only a handful of key texts associated with landmark parliamentary events – or, at least, political events that took place within a parliamentary context. These include the Ordinances of 1310–11, the Statute of York of 1322, Edward's deposition in 1327 and, finally, the tantalisingly enigmatic Modus Tenendi Parliamentum (circa Edward II's reign). The history of parliament under Edward II proves the maxim that a dearth of evidence will often generate greater volumes of historical writing than subjects for which there is an abundance of documentation, for where information is scarce there is greater scope for speculation, conjecture and disagreement.