Definition
The Lords Ordainers were a committee of twenty-one English barons, bishops, and earls appointed in 1311 to reform the government of King Edward II and impose formal controls on royal power. Their chief product was a set of legislative provisions known as the Ordinances of 1311, which sought to restrict the king's freedom to make war, levy financial exactions, appoint ministers, and grant royal lands without baronial consent. The Lords Ordainers represent an early and significant episode in the long struggle between the English crown and the nobility over the limits of sovereign authority.
Common Confusion
The Lords Ordainers are sometimes conflated with the Lords Appellant, a distinct baronial coalition that challenged royal prerogative under Richard II in 1388. The two groups operated in different reigns, under different legal frameworks, and with different outcomes. Researchers should not treat them as a single tradition of baronial opposition — they are separate historical and constitutional episodes, though both appear in the broader literature on medieval restraints on kingship.
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces almost exclusively in historical and constitutional legal research rather than in practical legal contexts. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus on the development of parliamentary sovereignty, the limits of royal prerogative, or the constitutional prehistory of English legislation will encounter the Lords Ordainers as a structural precursor to later developments.
Several navigational points deserve attention. First, the Ordinances of 1311 were formally revoked by the Statute of York in 1322, which declared that matters touching the king and realm required consent in Parliament rather than by baronial ordinance alone. The Statute of York is itself a contested document — its precise constitutional meaning has been debated by historians, and researchers should not assume that its text settled the question of parliamentary supremacy in any modern sense. Second, primary sources from the period use variable spellings and forms: Ordeiners, Ordeyners, and Ordainers all appear. Historical dictionary sources and early legal compilations may index the term inconsistently. Third, Bouvier's treatment is brief and secondary — it cites Brown (most likely William Brown or a general historical reference) without elaboration, signaling that Bouvier treated this as a historical note rather than a term with ongoing legal application. Researchers needing depth should move quickly past Bouvier to constitutional history sources. Fourth, the Lords Ordainers matter for understanding the word "ordinance" as a legal instrument — their use of ordinance rather than statute to impose reform was itself legally significant, a distinction the Statute of York later used against them.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary provides only a compressed note: the Lords Ordainers were appointed in 1311 (Bouvier's entry reads 1312, likely a typographical error in the source — the appointment is conventionally dated to March 1310, with the Ordinances promulgated in 1311) for the control of the sovereign and the court party, for the general reform of the country, citing Brown. Bouvier adds nothing on the legal framework, the content of the Ordinances, or their ultimate fate. No other historical dictionary in the present source set covers this term. The entry is better treated as a cross-reference placeholder than as substantive authority. Researchers should note that Bouvier's dating discrepancy — 1312 versus the standard 1310–1311 — is worth flagging when using Bouvier as a source in historical argument.
Jurisdictional Note
This term has no application in modern American, Commonwealth, or civil law jurisdictions as a functional legal concept. Its relevance is confined to English constitutional history and to legal scholarship examining the medieval roots of parliamentary government and the separation of powers.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Medieval English Constitutional History
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Magna Carta and the Origins of Parliamentary Constraint
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Royal Prerogative