It is evident from the genealogy of the royal family of Scotland, that there could only be two questions about the succession—that between Baliol and Bruce on the one hand, and Lord Hastings on the other, concerning the partition of the crown: and that between Baliol and Bruce themselves concerning the preference of their respective titles, supposing the kingdom indivisible: yet there appeared on this occasion no less than nine claimants besides; John Comyn or Cummin, lord of Badenoch, Florence, earl of Holland, Patric Dunbar, earl of March, William de Vescey, Robert de Pynkeni, Nicholas de Soules, Patric Galythly, Roger de Mandeville, Robert de Ross; not to mention the king of Norway, who claimed as heir to his daughter Margaret.[*] Some of these competitors were descended from more remote branches of the royal family; others were even sprung from illegitimate children; and as none of them had the least pretence of right, it is natural to conjecture that Edward had secretly encouraged them to appear in the list of claimants, that he might sow the more division among the Scottish nobility, make the cause appear the more intricate, and be able to choose, among a great number, the most obsequious candidate.

But he found them all equally obsequious on this occasion.[**] Robert Bruce was the first that acknowledged Edward’s right of superiority over Scotland; and he had so far foreseen the king’s pretensions, that even in his petition, where he set forth his claim to the crown, he had previously applied to him as liege lord of the kingdom; a step which was not taken by any of the other competitors.[***] They all, however, with seeming willingness, made a like acknowledgment when required; though Baliol, lest he should give offence to the Scottish nation, had taken care to be absent during the first days; and he was the last that recognized the king’s title.[****]

Edward next deliberated concerning the method of proceeding in the discussion of this great controversy. He gave orders that Baliol, and such of the competitors as adhered to him should choose forty commissioners; Bruce and his adherents forty more: to these the king added twenty-four Englishmen: he ordered these hundred and four commissioners to examine the cause deliberately among themselves, and make their report to him:[*] and he promised in the ensuing year to give his determination. Meanwhile he pretended that it was requisite to have all the fortresses of Scotland delivered into his hands, in order to enable him, without opposition, to put the true heir in possession of the crown; and this exorbitant demand was complied with, both by the states and by the claimants.[**] The governors also of all the castles immediately resigned their command; except Umfreville, earl of Angus, who refused, without a formal and particular acquittal from the parliament and the several claimants, to surrender his fortresses to so domineering an arbiter, who had given to Scotland so many just reasons of suspicion.[***] Before this assembly broke up, which had fixed such a mark of dishonor on the nation, all the prelates and barons there present swore fealty to Edward; and that prince appointed commissioners to receive a like oath from all the other barons and persons of distinction in Scotland.[****]

The king, having finally made, as he imagined, this important acquisition, left the commissioners to sit at Berwick, and examine the titles of the several competitors who claimed the precarious crown, which Edward was willing for some time to allow the lawful heir to enjoy. He went southwards, both in order to assist at the funeral of his mother, Queen Eleanor, who died about this time, and to compose some differences which had arisen among his principal nobility. Gilbert, earl of Glocester, the greatest baron of the kingdom, had espoused the king’s daughter; and being elated by that alliance, and still more by his own power, which, he thought, set him above the laws, he permitted his bailiffs and vassals to commit violence on the lands of Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford, who retaliated the injury by like violence. But this was not a reign in which such illegal proceedings could pass with impunity. Edward procured a sentence against the two earls, committed them both to prison, and would not restore them to their liberty, till he had exacted a fine of one thousand marks from Hereford, and one of ten thousand from his son-in-law.

1292.

During this interval, the titles of John Baliol and of Robert Bruce, whose claims appeared to be the best founded among the competitors for the crown of Scotland, were the subject of general disquisition, as well as of debate among the commissioners. Edward, in order to give greater authority to his intended decision, proposed this general question both to the commissioners and to all the celebrated lawyers in Europe, “Whether a person descended from the elder sister, but farther removed by one degree, were preferable, in the succession of kingdoms, fiefs, and other indivisible inheritances, to one descended from the younger sister, but one degree nearer to the common stock?” This was the true state of the case; and the principle of representation had now gained such ground every where, that a uniform answer was returned to the king in the affirmative. He therefore pronounced sentence in favor of Balioi; and when Bruce, upon this disappointment, joined afterwards Lord Hastings, and claimed a third of the kingdom, which he now pretended to be divisible, Edward, though his interests seemed more to require the partition of Scotland, again pronounced sentence in favor of Baliol. That competitor, upon renewing his oath of fealty to England, was put in possession of the kingdom;[*] all his fortresses were restored to him;[**] and the conduct of Edward, both in the deliberate solemnity of the proceedings, and in the justice of the award, was so far unexceptionable.

1293.

Had the king entertained no other view than that of establishing his superiority over Scotland, though the iniquity of that claim was apparent, and was aggravated by the most egregious breach of trust, he might have fixed his pretensions, and have left that important acquisition to his posterity: but he immediately proceeded in such a manner as made it evident that, not content with this usurpation, he aimed also at the absolute sovereignty and dominion of the kingdom. Instead of gradually inuring the Scots to the yoke, and exerting his rights of superiority with moderation, he encouraged all appeals to England; required King John himself, by six different summons on trivial occasions, to come to London;[***] refused him the privilege of defending his cause by a procurator; and obliged him to appear at the bar of his parliament as a private person.[****]

These humiliating demands were hitherto quite unknown to a king of Scotland: they are, however, the necessary consequence of vassalage by the feudal law; and as there was no preceding instance of such treatment submitted to by a prince of that country, Edward must, from that circumstance alone, had there remained any doubt, have been himself convinced that his claim was altogether a usurpation.[*] 3 But his intention plainly was to enrage Baliol by these indignities, to engage him in rebellion, and to assume the dominion of the state as the punishment of his treason and felony. Accordingly Baliol, though a prince of a soft and gentle spirit, returned into Scotland highly provoked at this usage, and determined at all hazards to vindicate his liberty; and the war which soon after broke out between France and England, gave him a favorable opportunity of executing his purpose.

The violence, robberies, and disorders, to which that age was so subject, were not confined to the licentious barons and their retainers at land: the sea was equally infested with piracy: the feeble execution of the laws had given license to all orders of men: and a general appetite for rapine and revenge, supported by a false point of honor, had also infected the merchants and mariners; and it pushed them, on any provocation, to seek redress by immediate retaliation upon the aggressors. A Norman and an English vessel met off the coast near Bayonne; and both of them having occasion for water, they sent their boats to land, and the several crews came at the same time to the same spring: there ensued a quarrel for the preference: a Norman, drawing his dagger, attempted to stab an Englishman; who, grappling with him, threw his adversary on the ground; and the Norman, as was pretended, falling on his own dagger, was slain.[**] This scuffle between two seamen about water, soon kindled a bloody war between the two nations, and involved a great part of Europe in the quarrel. The mariners of the Norman ship carried their complaints to the French king: Philip, without inquiring into the fact, without demanding redress, bade them take revenge, and trouble him no more about the matter.[***]

The Normans, who had been more regular than usual in applying to the crown, needed but this hint to proceed to immediate violence. They seized an English ship in the channel; and hanging, along with some dogs, several of the crew on the yard-arm, in presence of their companions, dismissed the vessel; [*] and bade the mariners inform their countrymen that vengeance was now taken for the blood of the Norman killed at Bayonne. This injury, accompanied with so general and deliberate an insult, was resented by the mariners of the cinque ports, who, without carrying any complaint to the king, or waiting for redress, retaliated by committing like barbarities on all French vessels without distinction. The French, provoked by their losses, preyed on the ships of all Edward’s subjects, whether English or Gascon: the sea became a scene of piracy between the nations: the sovereigns, without either seconding or repressing the violence of their subjects, seemed to remain indifferent spectators: the English made private associations with the Irish and Dutch seamen; the French with the Flemish and Genoese;[**] and the animosities of the people on both sides became every day more violent and barbarous. A fleet of two hundred Norman vessels set sail to the south for wine and other commodities; and in their passage seized all the English ships which they met with, hanged the seamen, and seized the goods. The inhabitants of the English seaports, informed of this incident, fitted out a fleet of sixty sail, stronger and better manned than the others, and awaited the enemy on their return. After an obstinate battle, they put them to rout, and sunk, destroyed, or took the greater part of them.[***] No quarter was given; and it is pretended that the loss of the French amounted to fifteen thousand men; which is accounted for by this circumstance, that the Norman fleet was employed in transporting a considerable body of soldiers from the south.

The affair was now become too important to be any longer overlooked by the sovereigns. On Philip’s sending an envoy to demand reparation and restitution, the king despatched the bishop of London to the French court, in order to accommodate the quarrel. He first said, that the English courts of justice were open to all men; and if any Frenchman were injured, he might seek reparation by course of law.[****]

He next offered to adjust the matter by private arbiters, or by a personal interview with the king of France, or by a reference either to the pope, or the college of cardinals, or any particular cardinals, agreed on by both parties.[*] The French, probably the more disgusted, as they were hitherto losers in the quarrel, refused all these expedients: the vessels and the goods of merchants were confiscated on both sides: depredations were continued by the Gascons on the western coast of France, as well as by the English in the Channel: Philip cited the king, as duke of Guienne, to appear in his court at Paris, and answer for these offences; and Edward, apprehensive of danger to that province, sent John St. John, an experienced soldier, to Bordeaux, and gave him directions to put Guienne in a posture of defence.[**]

1294.

That he might, however, prevent a final rupture between the nations, the king despatched his brother, Edmond, earl of Lancaster, to Paris; and as this prince had espoused the queen of Navarre, mother to Jane, queen of France, he seemed, on account of that alliance, the most proper person for finding expedients to accommodate the difference. Jane pretended to interpose with her good offices: Mary, the queen dowager, feigned the same amicable disposition: and these two princesses told Edmond, that the circumstance the most difficult to adjust was the point of honor with Philip, who thought himself affronted by the injuries committed against him by his sub-vassals in Guienne; but if Edward would once consent to give him seizin and possession of that province, he would think his honor fully repaired, would engage to restore Guienne immediately, and would accept of a very easy satisfaction for all the other injuries. The king was consulted on the occasion; and as he then found himself in immediate danger of war with the Scots, which he regarded as the more important concern, this politic prince, blinded by his favorite passion for subduing that nation, allowed himself to be deceived by so gross an artifice.[***] He sent his brother orders to sign and execute the treaty with the two queens; Philip solemnly promised to execute his part of it; and the king’s citation to appear in the court of France, was accordingly recalled; but the French monarch was no sooner put in possession of Guienne, than the citation was renewed; Edward was condemned for non-appearance; and Guienne, by a formal sentence, was declared to be forfeited and annexed to the crown.[****]

Edward, fallen into a like snare with that which he himself had spread for the Scots, was enraged; and the more so, as he was justly ashamed of his own conduct, in being so egregiously overreached by the court of France. Sensible of the extreme difficulties which he should encounter in the recovery of Gascony, where he had not retained a single place in his hands, he endeavored to compensate that loss by forming alliances with several princes, who, he projected, should attack France on all quarters, and make a diversion of her forces. Adolphus de Nassau, king of the Romans, entered into a treaty with him for that purpose;[*] as did also Amadæus, count of Savoy, the archbishop of Cologne, the counts of Gueldre and Luxembourg; the duke of Brabant and count of Barre, who had married his two daughters, Margaret and Eleanor: but these alliances were extremely burdensome to his narrow revenues, and proved in the issue entirely ineffectual. More impression was made on Guienne by an English army, which he completed by emptying the jails of many thousand thieves and robbers, who had been confined there for their crimes. So low had the profession of arms fallen, and so much had it degenerated from the estimation in which it stood during the vigor of the feudal system!

1295.

The king himself was detained in England, first by contrary winds,[**] then by his apprehensions of a Scottish invasion, and by a rebellion of the Welsh, whom he repressed and brought again under subjection.[***] The army which he sent to Guienne, was commanded by his nephew, John de Bretagne, earl of Richmond, and under him by St. John, Tibetot, De Vere, and other officers of reputation;[****] who made themselves masters of the town of Bayonne, as well as of Bourg, Blaye, Reole, St. Severe, and other places, which straitened Bordeaux, and cut off its communication both by sea and land.

The favor which the Gascon nobility bore to the English government facilitated these conquests, and seemed to promise still greater successes; but this advantage was soon lost by the misconduct of some of the officers. Philip’s brother, Charles de Valois, who commanded the French armies, having laid siege to Podensac, a small fortress near Reole, obliged Giffard, the governor, to capitulate; and the articles though favorable to the English, left all the Gascons prisoners at discretion, of whom about fifty were hanged by Charles as rebels; a policy by which he both intimidated that people, and produced an irreparable breach between them and the English.[*] That prince immediately attacked Reole, where the earl of Richmond himself commanded; and as the place seemed not tenable, the English general drew his troops to the water side, with an intention of embarking with the greater part of the army. The enraged Gascons fell upon his rear, and at the same time opened their gates to the French, who, besides making themselves masters of the place, took many prisoners of distinction. St. Severe was more vigorously defended by Hugh de Vere, son of the earl of Oxford; but was at last obliged to capitulate. The French king, not content with these successes in Gascony, threatened England with an invasion; and, by a sudden attempt, his troops took and burnt Dover,[**] but were obliged soon after to retire. And in order to make a greater diversion of the English force, and engage Edward in dangerous and important wars, he formed a secret alliance with John Baliol, king of Scotland; the commencement of that strict union which, during so many centuries, was maintained, by mutual interests and necessities, between the French and Scottish nations. John confirmed this alliance by stipulating a marriage between his eldest son and the daughter of Charles de Valois.[***]

The expenses attending these multiplied wars of Edward, and his preparations for war, joined to alterations which had insensibly taken place in the general state of affairs, obliged him to have frequent recourse to parliamentary supplies, introduced the lower orders of the state into the public councils, and laid the foundations of great and important changes in the government.

Though nothing could be worse calculated for cultivating the arts of peace, or maintaining peace itself, than the long subordination of vassalage from the king to the meanest gentleman, and the consequent slavery of the lower people, evils inseparable from the feudal system, that system was never able to fix the state in a proper warlike posture, or give it the full exertion of its power for defence, and still less for offence, against a public enemy. The military tenants, unacquainted with obedience, unexperienced in war, held a rank in the troops by their birth, not by their merits or services; composed a disorderly and consequently a feeble army; and during the few days which they were obliged by their tenures to remain in the field, were often more formidable to their own prince than to foreign powers, against whom they were assembled. The sovereigns came gradually to disuse this cumbersome and dangerous machine, so apt to recoil upon the hand which held it; and exchanging the military service for pecuniary supplies, enlisted forces by means of a contract with particular officers, (such as those the Italians denominate “condottieri,”) whom they dismissed at the end of the war.[*] The barons and knights themselves often entered into these engagements with the prince; and were enabled to fill their bands, both by the authority which they possessed over their vassals and tenants, and from the great numbers of loose, disorderly people whom they found on their estates, and who willingly embraced an opportunity of gratifying their appetite for war and rapine.

Meanwhile the old Gothic fabric, being neglected, went gradually to decay. Though the Conqueror had divided all the lands of England into sixty thousand knights’ fees, the number of these was insensibly diminished by various artifices; and the king at last found that, by putting the law in execution, he could assemble a small part only of the ancient force of the kingdom. It was a usual expedient for men who held of the king or great barons by military tenure, to transfer their land to the church, and receive it back by another tenure, called frankalmoigne, by which they were not bound to per form any service.[**] A law was made against this practice; but the abuse had probably gone far before it was attended to, and probably was not entirely corrected by the new statute, which, like most laws of that age, we may conjecture to have been but feebly executed by the magistrate against the perpetual interest of so many individuals. The constable and mareschal, when they mustered the armies, often in a hurry, and for want of better information, received the service of a baron for fewer knights’ fees than were due by him; and one precedent of this kind was held good against the king, and became ever after a reason for diminishing the service.[***]

The rolls of knights’ fees were inaccurately kept; no care was taken to correct them before the armies were summoned into the field,[*] it was then too late to think of examining records and charters; and the service was accepted on the footing which the vassal himself was pleased to acknowledge, after all the various subdivisions and conjunctions of property had thrown an obscurity on the nature and extent of his tenure.[**] It is easy to judge of the intricacies which would attend disputes of this kind with individuals; when even the number of military fees belonging to the church, whose property way fixed and unalienable, became the subject of controversy; and we find in particular, that when the bishop of Durham was charged with seventy knights’ fees for the aid levied on occasion of the marriage of Henry II.‘s daughter to the duke of Saxony, the prelate acknowledged ten, and disowned the other sixty.[***] It is not known in what mariner this difference was terminated; but had the question been concerning an armament to defend the kingdom, the bishop’s service would probably have been received without opposition for ten fees; and this rate must also have fixed all his future payments. Pecuniary scutages, therefore, diminished as much as military services;[****] other methods of filling the exchequer, as well as the armies, must be devised: new situations produced new laws and institutions; and the great alterations in the finances and military power of the crown, as well as in private property, were the source of equal innovations in every part of the legislature or civil government.

The exorbitant estates conferred by the Norman on his barons and chieftains, remained not long entire and unimpaired. The landed property was gradually shared out into more hands; and those immense baronies were divided, either by provisions to younger children, by partitions among co-heirs, by sale, or by escheating to the king, who gratified a great number of his courtiers by dealing them out among them in smaller portions. Such moderate estates, as they required economy, and confined the proprietors to live at home, were better calculated for duration; and the order of knights and small barons grew daily more numerous, and began to form a very respectable rank or order in the state. As they were all immediate vassals of the crown by military tenure, they were, by the principles of the feudal law, equally entitled with the greatest barons to a seat in the national or general councils; and this right, though regarded as a privilege which the owners would not entirely relinquish, was also considered as a burden which they desired to be subjected to on extraordinary occasions only. Hence it was provided in the charter of King John, that, while the great barons were summoned to the national council by a particular writ, the small barons, under which appellation the knights were also comprehended, should only be called by a general summons of the sheriff. The distinction between great and small barons, like that between rich and poor, was not exactly defined; but, agreeably to the inaccurate genius of that age, and to the simplicity of ancient government, was left very much to be determined by the discretion of the king and his ministers. It was usual for the prince to require, by a particular summons, the attendance of a baron in one parliament, and to neglect him in future parliaments;[*] nor was this uncertainty ever complained of as an injury. He attended when required: he was better pleased on other occasions to be exempted from the burden: and as he was acknowledged to be of the same order with the greatest barons, it gave them no surprise to see him take his seat in the great council, whether he appeared of his own accord, or by a particular summons from the king. The barons by writ, therefore, began gradually to intermix themselves with the barons by tenure; and, as Camden tells us,[**] from an ancient manuscript now lost, that after the battle of Evesham, a positive law was enacted, prohibiting every baron from appearing in parliament, who was not invited thither by a particular summons, the whole baronage of England held thenceforward their seat by writ, and this important privilege of their tenures was in effect abolished. Only where writs had been regularly continued for some time in one great family, the omission of them would have been regarded as an affront, and even as an injury.

A like alteration gradually took place in the order of earls who were the highest rank of barons. The dignity of an earl, like that of a baron, was anciently territorial and official:[*] he exercised jurisdiction within his county: he levied the third of the fines to his own profit: he was at once a civil and a military magistrate: and though his authority, from the time of the Norman conquest, was hereditary in England, the title was so much connected with the office, that where the king intended to create a new earl, he had no other expedient than to erect a certain territory into a county or earldom, and to bestow it upon the person and his family.[**] But as the sheriffs, who were the vicegerents of the earls, were named by the king, and removable at pleasure, he found them more dependent upon him; and endeavored to throw the whole authority and jurisdiction of the office into their hands. This magistrate was at the head of the finances, and levied all the king’s rents within the county: he assessed at pleasure the talliages of the inhabitants in royal demesne: he had usually committed to him the management of wards, and often of escheats: he presided in the lower courts of judicature: and thus, though inferior to the earl in dignity, he was soon considered, by this union of the judicial and fiscal powers, and by the confidence reposed in him by the king, as much superior to him in authority, and undermined his influence within his own jurisdiction.[***] It became usual, in creating an earl, to give him a fixed salary, commonly about twenty pounds a year, in lieu of his third of the fines: the diminution of his power kept pace with the retrenchment of his profit: and the dignity of earl, instead of being territorial and official, dwindled into personal and titular. Such were the mighty alterations which already had fully taken place, or were gradually advancing, in the house of peers; that is, in the parliament: for there seems anciently to have been no other house.

But though the introduction of barons by writ, and of titular earls, had given some increase to royal authority, there were other causes which counterbalanced those innovations, and tended in a higher degree to diminish the power of the sovereign. The disuse into which the feudal militia had in a great measure fallen made the barons almost entirely forget their dependence on the crown: by the diminution of the 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 neighbors, sought a legal protection under the shadow of the throne. He desired, therefore, to have their presence in parliament, where they served to control 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 further 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 choose 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.,[*] and regularly during that of the present king. The numbers sent up by each county varied at the will of the prince:[**] they took their seat among the other peers; because by their tenure they belonged to that order:[***] 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 expense in levying and maintaining a military force for every enterprise, was increased 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 movables from the laity, and a moiety of all ecclesiastical benefices[*] 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 beer, discontinued in all the subsequent parliaments; and if 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 labor furnish 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,[*] 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.[**] The king, however, retained still the power of levying talliage or taxes upon them at pleasure;[***] and though their poverty and the customs of the age made these demands neither frequent or 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,[****] 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;”[*] 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,[**]—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 honor could possibly be derived.[***] They composed not, properly speaking, any essential part of the parliament: they sat apart both from the barons and knights,[****] who disdained to mix with such mean personages: after they had given their consent 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.[*****] 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.[******]

The union, however, of the representatives 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 increased 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.[*] 4 Their petitions, though they received a verbal assent from the throne, were only the rudiments of laws: the judges were afterwards intrusted 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 further 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:[**]

But no durable or general statute seems ever to have been made by the king from the petition of the commons alone, without the assent of the peers. It is more likely that the peers alone without the commons, would enact statutes, 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.[*]

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 increased, 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.[**] The growth of commerce, meanwhile, augmented the private wealth and consideration of the burgesses; the frequent demands of the crown increased 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.[***] 5 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 boroughs, the distinction between the members was entirely lost, and the lower house acquired 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 controlling 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.[****] 6