The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (107 page)

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Online Library of Liberty: The History of England, vol. 2

number of knights fees, the king had no reasonable compensation when he levied scutages and exchanged their service for money: The alienations of the crown lands had reduced him to poverty: And above all, the concession of the Great Charter had set bounds to royal power, and had rendered it more difficult and dangerous for the prince to exert any extraordinary act of arbitrary authority. In this situation it was natural for the king to court the friendship of the lesser barons and knights, whose influence was no ways dangerous to him, and who, being exposed to oppression from their powerful neighbours, sought a legal protection under the shadow of the throne.

He desired, therefore, to have their presence in parliament, where they served to controul the turbulent resolutions of the great. To exact a regular attendance of the whole body would have produced confusion, and would have imposed too heavy a burden upon them. To summon only a few by writ, though it was practised and had a good effect, served not entirely the king’s purpose; because these members had no farther authority than attended their personal character, and were eclipsed by the appearance of the more powerful nobility. He therefore dispensed with the attendance of most of the lesser barons in parliament; and in return for this indulgence (for such it was then esteemed) required them to chuse in each county a certain number of their own body, whose charges they bore, and who, having gained the confidence, carried with them, of course, the authority, of the whole order. This expedient had been

practised at different times, in the reign of Henry III.f
and regularly, during that of the present king. The numbers sent up by each county varied at the will of the prince:
g

They took their seat among the other peers; because by their tenure they belonged to

that order:h
The introducing of them into that house scarcely appeared an innovation: And though it was easily in the king’s power, by varying their number, to command the resolutions of the whole parliament, this circumstance was little attended to, in an age when force was more prevalent than laws, and when a resolution, though taken by the majority of a legal assembly, could not be executed, if it opposed the will of the more powerful minority.

But there were other important consequences, which followed the diminution and consequent disuse of the ancient feudal militia. The king’s expence, in levying and maintaining a military force for every enterprize, was encreased beyond what his narrow revenues were able to bear: As the scutages of his military tenants, which were accepted in lieu of their personal service, had fallen to nothing; there were no means of supply but from voluntary aids granted him by the parliament and clergy: Or from the talliages which he might levy upon the towns and inhabitants in royal demesne. In the preceding year, Edward had been obliged to exact no less than the sixth of all moveables from the laity, and a moiety of all ecclesiastical benefices
i
for his expedition into Poictou, and the suppression of the Welsh: And this distressful situation, which was likely often to return upon him and his successors, made him think of a new device, and summon the representatives of all the boroughs to parliament. This period, which is the twenty-third of his reign, seems to be the real and true epoch of the house of commons; and the faint dawn of popular government in England. For the representatives of the counties were only deputies from the smaller barons and lesser nobility: And the former precedent of representatives from the boroughs, who were summoned by the earl of Leicester, was regarded as the act of a violent usurpation, had been discontinued in all the subsequent parliaments, and if PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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such a measure had not become necessary on other accounts, that precedent was more likely to blast than give credit to it.

During the course of several years, the kings of England, in imitation of other European princes, had embraced the salutary policy of encouraging and protecting the lower and more industrious orders of the state; whom they found well disposed to obey the laws and civil magistrate, and whose ingenuity and labour furnished commodities, requisite for the ornament of peace and support of war. Though the inhabitants of the country were still left at the disposal of their imperious lords; many attempts were made to give more security and liberty to citizens, and make them enjoy unmolested the fruits of their industry. Boroughs were erected by royal patent within the demesne lands: Liberty of trade was conferred upon them: The inhabitants were allowed to farm at a fixed rent their own tolls and customs:
k
They were permitted to elect their own magistrates: Justice was administered to them by these magistrates, without obliging them to attend the sheriff or county court: And some shadow of independence, by means of these equitable privileges, was gradually acquired by the people.
l
The king, however, retained still the power of levying talliages or taxes upon them at pleasure;
m
and though their poverty and the customs of the age made these demands neither frequent nor exorbitant, such unlimited authority in the sovereign was a sensible check upon commerce, and was utterly incompatible with all the principles of a free government. But when the multiplied necessities of the crown produced a greater avidity for supply, the king, whose prerogative entitled him to exact it, found that he had not power sufficient to enforce his edicts, and that it was necessary, before he imposed taxes, to smooth the way for his demand, and to obtain the previous consent of the boroughs, by solicitations, remonstrances, and authority. The inconvenience of transacting this business with every particular borough was soon felt; and Edward became sensible, that the most expeditious way of obtaining supply, was to assemble the deputies of all the boroughs, to lay before them the necessities of the state, to discuss the matter in their presence, and to require their consent to the demands of their sovereign. For this reason, he issued writs to the sheriffs, enjoining them to send to parliament, along with two knights of the shire, two deputies from each borough within their county,
n

and these provided with sufficient powers from their community, to consent, in their name, to what he and his council should require of them.
As it is a most equitable
rule,
says he, in his preamble to this writ,
that what concerns all should be approved
of by all; and common dangers be repelled by united efforts
;
o
a noble principle, which may seem to indicate a liberal mind in the king, and which laid the foundation of a free and an equitable government.

After the election of these deputies, by the aldermen and common council, they gave sureties for their attendance before the king and parliament: Their charges were respectively borne by the borough, which sent them: And they had so little idea of appearing as legislators, a character extremely wide of their low rank and condition,
p

that no intelligence could be more disagreeable to any borough, than to find that they must elect, or to any individual than that he was elected, to a trust from which no

profit or honour could possibly be derived.q
They composed not, properly speaking, any essential part of the parliament: They sat apart both from the barons and knights,
r

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to the taxes required of them, their business being then finished, they separated, even though the parliament still continued to sit, and to canvass the national business:
s
And as they all consisted of men, who were real burgesses of the place from which they were sent, the sheriff, when he found no person of abilities or wealth sufficient for the office, often used the freedom of omitting particular boroughs in his returns; and as he received the thanks of the people for this indulgence, he gave no displeasure to the court, who levied on all the boroughs, without distinction, the tax agreed to by the

majority of deputies.t

The union, however, of the representives from the boroughs gave gradually more weight to the whole order; and it became customary for them, in return for the supplies which they granted, to prefer petitions to the crown for the redress of any particular grievance, of which they found reason to complain. The more the king’s demands multiplied, the faster these petitions encreased both in number and authority; and the prince found it difficult to refuse men, whose grants had supported his throne, and to whose assistance he might so soon be again obliged to have recourse. The commons however were still much below the rank of legislators.
u
Their petitions, though they received a verbal assent from the throne, were only the rudiments of laws: The judges were afterwards entrusted with the power of putting them into form: And the king, by adding to them the sanction of his authority, and that sometimes without the assent of the nobles, bestowed validity upon them. The age did not refine so much as to perceive the danger of these irregularities. No man was displeased, that the sovereign, at the desire of any class of men, should issue an order, which appeared only to concern that class; and his predecessors were so near possessing the whole legislative power, that he gave no disgust by assuming it in this seemingly inoffensive manner. But time and farther experience gradually opened men’s eyes and corrected these abuses. It was found, that no laws could be fixed for one order of men without affecting the whole; and that the force and efficacy of laws depended entirely on the terms employed in wording them. The house of peers, therefore, the most powerful order in the state, with reason expected, that their assent should be expressly granted

to all public ordinances:w
And in the reign of Henry V. the commons required, that no laws should be framed merely upon their petitions, unless the statutes were worded by themselves, and had passed their house in the form of a bill.
x

But as the same causes, which had produced a partition of property, continued still to operate; the number of knights and lesser barons, or what the English call the gentry, perpetually encreased, and they sunk into a rank still more inferior to the great nobility. The equality of tenure was lost in the great inferiority of power and property; and the house of representatives from the counties was gradually separated from that of the peers, and formed a distinct order in the state.
y
The growth of commerce, meanwhile, augmented the private wealth and consideration of the burgesses; the frequent demands of the crown encreased their public importance; and as they resembled the knights of shires in one material circumstance, that of representing particular bodies of men; it no longer appeared unsuitable to unite them together in

the same house, and to confound their rights and privileges.z
Thus the third estate, that of the commons, reached at last its present form; and as the country gentlemen made thenceforwards no scruple of appearing as deputies from the buroughs, the distinction between the members was entirely lost, and the lower house acquired PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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thence a great accession of weight and importance in the kingdom. Still, however, the office of this estate was very different from that which it has since exercised with so much advantage to the public. Instead of checking and controuling the authority of the king, they were naturally induced to adhere to him, as the great fountain of law and justice, and to support him against the power of the aristocracy, which at once was the source of oppression to themselves, and disturbed him in the execution of the laws.

The king, in his turn, gave countenance to an order of men, so useful and so little dangerous: The peers also were obliged to pay them some consideration: And by this means, the third estate, formerly so abject in England, as well as in all other European nations, rose by slow degrees to their present importance; and in their progress made arts and commerce, the necessary attendants of liberty and equality, flourish in the kingdom.
a

What sufficiently proves, that the commencement of the house of burgesses, who are the true commons, was not an affair of chance, but arose from the necessities of the present situation, is, that Edward, at the very same time, summoned deputies from the inferior clergy, the first that ever met in England,
b
and he required them to impose taxes on their constituents for the public service. Formerly the ecclesiastical benefices bore no part of the burthens of the state: The pope indeed of late had often levied impositions upon them: He had sometimes granted this power to the sovereign:
c
The king himself had in the preceding year exacted, by menaces and violence, a very grievous tax of half the revenues of the clergy: But as this precedent was dangerous, and could not easily be repeated in a government which required the consent of the subject to any extraordinary resolution, Edward found it more prudent to assemble a lower house of convocation, to lay before them his necessities, and to ask some supply. But on this occasion he met with difficulties. Whether that the clergy thought themselves the most independant body in the kingdom, or were disgusted by the former exorbitant impositions, they absolutely refused their assent to the king’s demand of a fifth of their moveables, and it was not till a second meeting, that, on their persisting in this refusal, he was willing to accept of a tenth. The barons and knights granted him, without hesitation, an eleventh; the burgesses, a seventh. But the clergy still scrupled to meet on the king’s writ; lest by such an instance of obedience they should seem to acknowledge the authority of the temporal power: And this compromise was at last fallen upon, that the king should issue his writ to the archbishop; and that the archbishop should, in consequence of it, summon the clergy, who, as they then appeared to obey their spiritual superior, no longer hesitated to meet in convocation. This expedient, however, was the cause, why the ecclesiastics were separated into two houses of convocation, under their several archbishops, and formed not one estate, as in other countries of Europe; which was at first the king’s