e, the immediate innovation in
our polity was not very extensive. This is an interesting, but very
obscure, topic of inquiry. Spelman and Brady, with other writers, have
restrained the original right of election to tenants in chief, among
whom, in process of time, those holding under mesne lords, not being
readily distinguishable in the hurry of an election, contrived to slide
in, till at length their encroachments were rendered legitimate by the
statute 7 Hen. IV. c. 15, which put all suitors to the county court on
an equal footing as to the elective franchise. The argument on this side
might be plausibly urged with the following reasoning.

The spirit of a feudal monarchy, which compelled every lord to act by
the advice and assent of his immediate vassals, established no relation
between him and those who held nothing at his hands. They were included,
so far as he was concerned, in their superiors; and the feudal incidents
were due to him from the whole of his vassal's fief, whatever tenants
might possess it by subinfeudation. In England the tenants in chief
alone were called to the great councils before representation was
thought of, as is evident both by the charter of John, and by the
language of many records; nor were any others concerned in levying aids
or escuages, which were only due by virtue of their tenure. These
military tenants were become, in the reign of Henry III., far more
numerous than they had been under the Conqueror. If we include those who
held of the king ut de honore, that is, the tenants of baronies
escheated or in ward, who may probably have enjoyed the same
privileges, being subject in general to the same burdens, their number
will be greatly augmented, and form no inconsiderable portion of the
freeholders of the kingdom. After the statute commonly called Quia
emptores in the eighteenth of Edward I. they were likely to increase
much more, as every licensed alienation of any portion of a fief by a
tenant in chief would create a new freehold immediately depending upon
the crown. Many of these tenants in capite held very small fractions of
knight's fees, and were consequently not called upon to receive
knighthood. They were plain freeholders holding in chief, and the liberi
homines or libere tenentes of those writs which have been already
quoted. The common form indeed of writs to the sheriff directs the
knights to be chosen de communitate comitatus. But the word communitas,
as in boroughs, deno