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GREATER AND SMALLER BARONS.

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design to found a system of representative government; and it was slow in attaining its present proportion and dignity. Its spring and rise, first as regards the representation of counties, and next of cities and boroughs, will now be briefly traced.

By the feudal system, as has been explained, large estates were granted to the Norman barons on condition of military service and suit in the king's court; and these barons, with the prelates,—the latter in right of their baronies,—formed the great council of the king. The councils were summoned by the king at his pleasure and by his writ,-the common mode of communicating his commands to all ranks of persons and public bodies. The councils, after the Conquest, were often called Parliaments; a name which was applied to assemblies of various kinds; to the Aula Regis, and to the convention from which the Great Charter issued, which was called Parliamentum Runnymede.

In progress of time, as the original baronies escheated and returned into the hands of the Crown, it became the policy of the king to divide them into smaller baronies, and thus to provide adherents against the power of the greater barons. But the new grants were made to the new grantees as tenants in capite, and they thus became of the same order as the greater barons; but not being possessed of the same wealth and power, they came to be distinguished as the lesser or smaller barons. They were equally entitled with the great barons to be summoned to, and to sit in, the great council.1 But although they possessed that right, and regarded it as a high privilege and distinction attached to their order, attendance at the council was a burden; and they were satisfied to be exempt from it, or with only an occasional attendance. representative government which, until our days, has existed with full vitality in Europe. (Guizot's 'History of Representative Government in Europe.')

1 The charter implies some distinction between those styled "Majores Barones" and the rest of the tenants in capite of the Crown; but it also implies that all the tenants in capite, or at least all the military tenants in capite, had an equal right to be summoned. (Peers' Report, vol. i. p. 67.)

The great numbers of the military tenants of the Crown, whether called lesser barons or knights (for both were tenants in capite of the king, and any distinction between them soon merged in their common knighthood), would have made it difficult for the king to summon them individually and personally by his writ or letter, like the great barons. Magna Charta solved the difficulty by providing that, "for holding the general council of the kingdom to assess aids, and for the assessing of scutages, we shall cause to be summoned the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and great barons (majores barones) of the realm, singly by our letters; and furthermore, we will cause to be summoned in general by our sheriffs and bailiffs, all others who hold of us in capite." This separation of the baronage into two classes,-those summoned by writs, directed to each individually, and those summoned by sheriffs under the direction of writs addressed to them,-laid the foundation of the distinction which afterwards arose between the ranks of nobility and gentry.

The next step towards the representation of the inferior class, arose from the necessity of consulting the convenience as well of the king and council, as of the knights themselves. The knights were a numerous class in each county. All persons holding land under the Crown as tenants-in-chief, of the yearly value of twenty pounds, were compellable to receive knighthood. The attendance of so large a body, even if it were practicable, would have rendered deliberation impossible. Attendance by representatives must, therefore, when it was desired to act upon the provision of Magna Charta, have suggested itself as the natural mode of giving effect to the general, but impracticable, right; and thus representation of the counties arose. An election of representative knights took place at the county-court, before the sheriff; the choosers (as the electors are called in the ancient statutes) being the knights themselves, but whether with or without the freeholders, is a question much 1 See Magna Charta, ante, p. 58.

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controverted. At the present day, the counties are supposed to be represented by actual knights. The writ directs the sheriff to return two knights; and each member, when his election is declared, is girt with a sword to supply the fiction of knighthood.

But Magna Charta,-out of which the representation of the counties by knights, as members of the feudal union, may be considered to have almost directly sprung,-gave not the remotest ground for foreseeing, as a coming event, the attendance, in the great council, of representatives of cities and boroughs: it provided, as we have seen, that the city of London, and all other cities and boroughs, should have their ancient liberties and free customs; but these places, at the time of Magna Charta, were too completely excluded from the feudal union; to be allowed any share whatever in the national government. London was, indeed, a city of considerable importance; but the other cities and boroughs,— with the exception of a few to whom charters of immunity had been granted,―belonged to the king or the great barons, who treated them as property, exacting from them toll or tallage. But as trade and commerce extended, the cities and boroughs increased in population; and as their citizens and burgesses then also increased in power and importance they were able to procure, or to force from their lords, charters of liberties, which were numerously granted in the reign of John; so that, in the reign of Henry III., they had begun to acquire self-government, and oftentimes the ownership of land in the vicinity of the city or borough; and, what was more important, the abolition of the arbitrary power of tallage, by the substitution of a fee-farm rent, or rent certain. The charters by which these changes were produced, were often wrung from the lords of the boroughs; and they have been well called treaties of peace between the burgesses and their lords.2

See p. 55, ante.

2 Guizot's History of Civilization in Europe, p. 52. This observation of M. Guizot is illustrated by a charter tested Tuesday, the Feast

E

It is remarkable that the first summoning of representatives of counties and boroughs to a great council, did not proceed from the sovereign, but from a faction which, in the reign of Henry III., obtained for a time the command of the kingdom. Henry had displeased his subjects by his devotion to and his enrichment of foreigners. He paid no regard to the Great Charter, or the laws which it promulgated; although he was forced frequently to recognize and confirm it. The pusillanimity of his character was unequal to the control of the turbulent barons; many of the most powerful of whom lived in continual opposition to his administration and government. At length Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, conspired with other barons to get the king into their power. They forced him to call a great council or parliament at Oxford, which assembled there on the 11th of June, 1258: it consisted of the prelates and barons only; they came to the assembly armed, and attended by their military vassals, and the king found himself a prisoner in their hands. Through their coercion, certain laws were passed, called "THE PROVISIONS OF OXFORD;" which, until they were revoked by the restored authority of the king, took all power from him, and put the government under the control of twenty-four selected barons. Civil war was the result a battle was fought, between the king and the of St. Mathias the Apostle, in the year 1305, and 34 Edward I., granted by William de Breouse, Lord of the Honour of Brember and Gower, to his burgesses of Swansea. After referring to a suit carried on by the burgesses against the lord in the king's court, which was compromised by the charter, it concludes with a grant by the lord,—that if he violate, by any act or device, the liberties or customs of the burgesses, he is become bound and indebted to our lord the king, of five hundred pounds of silver, in the name of pure debt; and to any one or more of the burgesses to whom wrong shall be done, contrary to the tenour of the charter, "in five hundred marks of silver, in the name of a pure debt," to be paid within "half a year of the wrong committed." (Dillwyn's Contributions towards a History of Swansea.) The combination and power of the burgesses must have been considerable to have forced concessions, guaranteed by a penalty, from so powerful a baron as William de Breouse.

1265.] KNIGHTS, CITIZENS, AND BURGESSES SUMMONED. 75

barons, at Lewes, on the 14th of May, 1264, in which the king's army was routed, and the king surrendered himself prisoner to the barons; his son, Prince Edward, being detained a hostage in Dover Castle.

Through this success, Leicester acquired the exercise of the sovereign power; and, to strengthen his power by increasing his popularity, he summoned, in the name of the captive king, a great council or parliament, to meet in London on the 20th of January, 1265, in the forty-ninth year of Henry's reign. The record of this parliament exists: it shows that twenty-three lay lords, and one hundred and twenty-two ecclesiastics, including abbots, priors, and deans, attended the assembly. Leicester also ordered the attendance of two knights from each shire, and two citizens and burgesses from each city and borough. That is the origin of the representation of the people. The writs for summoning this parliament are the earliest writs of summons now extant on record. Some historians have contended that earlier instances of representation may be inferred from the facts and documents of history; but the best authorities, and the highest research, have made it manifest that the assembly convened by Simon de Montfort is the first instance of popular representation in parliament.1

The prelates and barons were summoned by writs in the king's name, as were also the king's council; and by entries on the record it appears that all the sheriffs of England were commanded to cause to come to the king, at London, at the time stated, two of the more lawful and discreet knights of their several counties. It also appears that writs were sent to the cities and boroughs of England, commanding them to send two of the more discreet, lawful, and honest of their citizens and burgesses; and in like manner the barons and bailiffs of the Cinque Ports were required to send four of the more lawful and discreet men of their ports. 1 "After a long controversy, almost all judicious inquirers seem to have acquiesced in admitting this origin of popular representation." (Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 160.)