s and
ploughmen, were broken up into little knots of five, a reeve and four
assistants, each of which knots formed the representative of a rural
township. If in fact we regard the Shire Courts as lineally the descendants
of our earliest English Witenagemots, we may justly claim the principle of
parliamentary representation as among the oldest of our institutions.

[Sidenote: Knights of the Shire]

It was easy to give this principle a further extension by the choice of
representatives of the lesser barons in the shire courts to which they were
summoned; but it was only slowly and tentatively that this process was
applied to the reconstitution of the Great Council. As early as the close
of John's reign there are indications of the approaching change in the
summons of "four discreet knights" from every county. Fresh need of local
support was felt by both parties in the conflict of the succeeding reign,
and Henry and his barons alike summoned knights from each shire "to meet on
the common business of the realm." It was no doubt with the same purpose
that the writs of Earl Simon ordered the choice of knights in each shire
for his famous Parliament of 1265. Something like a continuous attendance
may be dated from the accession of Edward, but it was long before the
knights were regarded as more than local deputies for the assessment of
taxation or admitted to a share in the general business of the Great
Council. The statute "Quia Emptores," for instance, was passed in it before
the knights who had been summoned could attend. Their participation in the
deliberative power of Parliament, as well as their regular and continuous
attendance, dates only from the Parliament of 1295. But a far greater
constitutional change in their position had already taken place through the
extension of electoral rights to the freeholders at large. The one class
entitled to a seat in the Great Council was, as we have seen, that of the
lesser baronage; and it was of the lesser baronage alone that the knights
were in theory the representatives. But the necessity of holding their
election in the County Court rendered any restriction of the electoral body
physically impossible. The court was composed of the whole body of
freeholders, and no sheriff could distinguish the "aye, aye" of the yeoman
from the "aye, aye" of the lesser baron. From the first moment therefore of
their attendance we find the knights regarded not as mere representatives
of the bar