English parliament in front of the king Edward I ~ 1300

One may trace the origin of Parliament to the times of the Anglo-Saxons. Anglo-Saxon Kings were advised by a council known as the Witenagemot, whose foremost members were the King's sons and brothers.
The entire Anglo-Saxon body politic was reformed when William of Normandy conquered England in 1066. He granted land to his most important military supporters, who in turn granted land to their supporters, thus creating a feudal hierarchy. Those who held lands directly from the King were known as tenants-in-chief. William I was an absolute ruler, but, as a matter of course, he sought the advice of a council of tenants-in-chief and ecclesiastics, before making laws.
The royal council slowly developed into a Parliament. The first time the term Parliament appears in official documents was during Henry III's reign. It still was largely an informal affair and was not an official body.
In 1265, Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, who was in rebellion against Henry III, summoned the first elected parliament without any prior royal authorisation. The right to vote in Parliamentary elections for county constituencies was uniform throughout the country, granting a vote to all those who owned the freehold of land to an annual rent of 40 shillings. The archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls and barons were summoned, as were two knights from each shire and two burgesses from each borough. Knights had been summoned to previous councils, but the representation of the boroughs was unprecedented. De Montfort's scheme was formally adopted by Edward I in the so-called Model Parliament of 1295. At first, each estate debated independently; by the reign of Edward III, however, Parliament had been separated into two Houses: one, including the nobility and higher clergy, the other, including the knights and burgesses. The authority of Parliament grew under Edward III; it was established that no law could be made, nor any tax levied without the consent of both Houses as well as of the Sovereign. This was a development that came out of necessity for Edward III as he was involved in the Hundred Years War and needed finances.
The growing influence of Parliament was restrained by numerous civil wars. By the end of the Wars of the Roses, royal supremacy had been restored. The Crown was at the height of its power during the reign of Henry VIII. Even though Parliaments continued to behave submissively under the Tudor monarchs who followed Henry their power in the business of running the state gradually kept increasing. Nowadays monarchs have a merely symbolical role in Parliament.

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