al excellence of these Parliaments. If not 'chance'
collections of Englishmen, they were 'undesigned' collections; no
administrations made them, or could make them. They were bona fide
counsellors, whose opinion might be wise or unwise, but was anyhow of
paramount importance, because their co-operation was wanted for what was in
hand."[30]

(3) _The political position of women in the Middle Ages._--Abbesses were
summoned to the convocations of clergy in Edward I.'s reign. Peeresses were
permitted to be represented by proxy in Parliament. The offices of sheriff,
high constable, governor of a royal castle, and justice of the peace have
all been held by women. In fact, the lady of the manor had the same rights
as the lord of the manor, and joined with men who were freeholders in
electing knights of the shire without question of sex disability.[31] (A
survival of the medieval rights of women may be seen in the power of women
to present clergy to benefices in the Church of England.)

In the towns women were members of various guilds and companies equally
with men, and were burgesses and freewomen. Not till 1832 was the word
"male" inserted before "persons" in the charters of boroughs. "Never before
has the phrase 'male persons' appeared in any statute of the realm. By this
Act (the Reform Bill), therefore, women were technically disfranchised for
the first time in the history of the English Constitution. The privilege of
abstention was converted into the penalty of exclusion."

NO THEORY OF DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The years of Simon of Montfort and Edward I., which saw the beginnings of a
representative national assembly, were not a time of theoretical discussion
on political rights. The English nation, indeed, has ever been averse from
political theories. The notion of a carefully balanced constitution was
outside the calculations of medieval statesmen, and the idea of political
democracy was not included among their visions.

"Even the scholastic writers, amid their calculations of all possible
combinations of principles in theology and morals, well aware of the
difference between the 'rex politicus' who rules according to law, and the
tyrant who rules without it, and of the characteristics of monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy, with their respective corruptions, contented
themselves for the most part with balancing the spiritual and secular
powers, and never broached the idea of a growth into political
enfranc