electors in boroughs were.]

By what persons the election of burgesses was usually made is a question
of great obscurity, which is still occasionally debated before
committees of parliament. It appears to have been the common practice
for a very few of the principal members of the corporation to make the
election in the county-court, and their names, as actual electors, are
generally returned upon the writ by the sheriff.[273] But we cannot
surely be warranted by this to infer that they acted in any other
capacity than as deputies of the whole body, and indeed it is frequently
expressed that they chose such and such persons by the assent of the
community;[274] by which word, in an ancient corporate borough, it seems
natural to understand the freemen participating in its general
franchises, rather than the ruling body, which, in many instances at
present, and always perhaps in the earliest age of corporations, derived
its authority by delegation from the rest. The consent, however, of the
inferior freemen we may easily believe to have been merely nominal; and,
from being nominal, it would in many places come by degrees not to be
required at all; the corporation, specially so denominated, or municipal
government, acquiring by length of usage an exclusive privilege in
election of members of parliament, as they did in local administration.
This, at least, appears to me a more probable hypothesis than that of
Dr. Brady, who limits the original right of election in all corporate
boroughs to the aldermen or other capital burgesses.[275]

[Sidenote: Members of the house of commons.]

The members of the house of commons, from this occasional disuse of
ancient boroughs as well as from the creation of new ones, underwent
some fluctuation during the period subject to our review. Two hundred
citizens and burgesses sat in the parliament held by Edward I. in his
twenty-third year, the earliest epoch of acknowledged representation.
But in the reigns of Edward III. and his three successors about ninety
places, on an average, returned members, so that we may reckon this part
of the commons at one hundred and eighty.[276] These, if regular in
their duties, might appear an over-balance for the seventy-four knights
who sat with them. But the dignity of ancient lineage, territorial
wealth, and military character, in times when the feudal spirit was
hardly extinct and that of chivalry at its height, made these burghers
vail their heads to