gives the justices of assise power to inquire
into this matter, and inflicts a penalty of one hundred pounds on the
sheriff. Another (6 H. VI. c. 4) mitigates the rigour of the former, so
far as to permit the sheriff or the knights returned by him to traverse
the inquests before the justices; that is, to be heard in their own
defence, which, it seems, had not been permitted to them. Another (23 H.
VI. c. 14) gives an additional penalty upon false returns to the party
aggrieved. These statutes conspire with many other testimonies to
manifest the rising importance of the house of commons, and the
eagerness with which gentlemen of landed estates (whatever might be the
case in petty boroughs) sought for a share in the national
representation.

[Sidenote: In whom the right of voting for knights resided.]

Whoever may have been the original voters for county representatives,
the first statute that regulates their election, so far from limiting
the privilege to tenants in capite, appears to place it upon a very
large and democratical foundation. For (as I rather conceive, though not
without much hesitation), not only all freeholders, but all persons
whatever present at the county-court, were declared, or rendered,
capable of voting for the knight of their shire. Such at least seems to
be the inference from the expressions of 7 H. IV. c. 15, "all who are
there present, as well suitors duly summoned for that cause as
others."[257] And this acquires some degree of confirmation from the
later statute, 8 H. VI. c. 7, which, reciting that "elections of knights
of shires have now of late been made by very great, outrageous, and
excessive number of people dwelling within the same counties, of the
which most part was people of small substance and of no value," confines
the elective franchise to freeholders of lands or tenements to the value
of forty shillings.

[Sidenote: Elections of burgesses.]

The representation of towns in parliament was founded upon two
principles--of consent to public burthens, and of advice in public
measures, especially such as related to trade and shipping. Upon both
these accounts it was natural for the kings who first summoned them to
parliament, little foreseeing that such half-emancipated burghers would
ever clip the loftiest plumes of their prerogative, to make these
assemblies numerous, and summon members from every town of consideration
in the kingdom. Thus the writ of 23 E. I. directs the sheriff