hat in times when
representation did not appear to yield tangible results the borough
taxpayers begrudged the two shillings per day paid their
representatives, in some instances sufficiently to be induced to
abandon altogether the sending of members. By the time of Edward IV.
(1399-1413) the number of represented towns had fallen to 111. At the
beginning of the fifteenth century county members were elected by the
body of freeholders present at the county court, but by statute of
1429 the electoral privilege was restricted to freeholders resident in
the county and holding land of the yearly rental value of forty
shillings, equivalent, perhaps, to some L30 to L40 in present values.
This rule, adopted originally with the express purpose of
disfranchising "the very great and outrageous number of people either
of small substance or of no value" who had been claiming an electoral
equality with the "worthy knights and squires," continued in operation
without amendment until 1832. The electoral systems prevailing in the
boroughs exhibited at all times the widest variation, and never prior
to 1832 was there serious attempt to establish uniformity of practice.
In some places (the so-called "scot and lot" boroughs) the suffrage
was exercised by all rate-payers; in others, by the holders of particular
tenements ("burgage" franchise); in others (the "potwalloper" (p. 024)
boroughs) by all citizens who had hearths of their own; in many, by
the municipal corporation, or by the members of a guild, or even by
neighboring landholders. Borough electoral arrangements ran the full
gamut from thoroughgoing democracy to the narrowest kind of oligarchy.

*25. Development under the Tudors: Composition.*--During the Tudor
period the composition of the two chambers underwent important change.
In the Lords the principal modification was the substitution of
temporal for spiritual preponderance. This was brought about in two
ways. The first was the increase numerically of the hereditary peers
from thirty-six at the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. to about
eighty at the accession of James I. The second was the dropping out of
twenty-eight abbots, incident to the closing of the monasteries by
Henry VIII. and only partially compensated by the creation at the time
of six new bishoprics. In 1509 the number of lords spiritual was
forty-eight; in 1603, it was but twenty-six. The House of Commons
under the Tudors was virtually doubled in size. Th