The Feudal Origins of English Constitutionalism zy GRAHAM MADDOX” Most recent approaches to constitutionalism view the doctrine as a zyx IegaI limitation on government power. Undoubtedly formal legal restrictions are at the core of constitutional control, but they can only be effective when they are surrounded and supported by a cultural context in which people are habituated to accepting the ‘rules and spirit of the game’. The evolution of such a political culture can best be demonstrated by reviewing the origins of modern constitutionalism in the medieval rradition of England. There the practice of feudalism, with its peculiar blend of national unity, central government, loyalty to the crown, and resilient and assertive individualism, produced a climate of opinion in which cooperative and consensual patterns of behaviour gave rise to the constitutional idea. Ultimately constitutionalism is the public spirit of a people, expressed in its laws and customs, and embodied in its public institutions. English history best illustrates the gradual emergence of a public spirit, not because of some special quality in the English character,’ but rather because of a unique confluence of historical forces, and a unique experience shared by a people. In the feudal era people began to assert their individual liberties as of right, not so much to be defended by violent retaliation, but rather to be accepted by mutual obligations, first of convenience, but then hallowed in the public code of loyalty and honour. From feudalism modern society drew the notion that political organization can be based on contractual arrangements between autonomous individuals. This was no abstracted theory or simple speculation, but a working principle of everyday relationships. When in later times this principle was translated into political institutions it became the collective consciousness of a people and eventually gave rise to the highly developed and civilized notion of constitutional government. The Establishment of Order in the Middle Ages A constitutional order depended first of all on communal security. Any regime, to survive, must impose some kind of order. Within tyrannies, however, order is maintained for the benefit of the ruler himself, whatever the ideological props of his regime, however much he appeals to the ‘national interest’, whatever demands for self-denial he makes on his subjects. Greece and Rome, the one more in theory, the other more in practice, contributed to the notion of ‘government in the interests of the governed’. But even stern despotisms, whether or not only slightly softened by concern for the welfare of subjects, had taken the first steps towards constitutional government when they established a political order giving a measure of security and stability. The Roman empire, for example, at times lapsed into anarchy whenever would-be tyrants wrestled for the imperial helm, but, as McIlwain has shown, an undercurrent of constitutional consciousness maintained at least the potential for *I am indebted to the late Professor Walter Ullmann of Cambridge University for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and I also wish to acknowledge the editorial assistance of this journal.