."[33] It will
scarcely be contended that no one was to contribute under this writ but
tenants in chief; and yet the word communitas can hardly be applied to
different persons, when it occurs in the same instrument and upon the
same matter. The series of petitions above mentioned relative to the
payment of wages rather tends to support a conclusion that all mesne
tenants had the right of suffrage, if they thought fit to exercise it,
since it was earnestly contended that they were liable to contribute
towards that expense. Nor does there appear any reason to doubt that
all freeholders, except those within particular franchises, were suitors
to the county court--an institution of no feudal nature, and in which
elections were to be made by those present. As to the meeting to which
knights of shires were summoned in 38 Henry III., it ought not to be
reckoned a parliament, but rather one of those anomalous conventions
which sometimes occurred in the unfixed state of government. It is at
least the earliest known instance of representation, and leads us to no
conclusion in respect of later times, when the commons had become an
essential part of the legislature, and their consent was required to all
public burthens.

This question, upon the whole, is certainly not free from considerable
difficulty. The legal antiquaries are divided. Prynne does not seem to
have doubted but that the knights were "elected in the full county, by
and for the whole county," without respect to the tenure of the
freeholders.[34] But Brady and Carte are of a different opinion.[35] Yet
their disposition to narrow the basis of the constitution is so strong,
that it creates a sort of prejudice against their authority. And if I
might offer an opinion on so obscure a subject, I should be much
inclined to believe that, even from the reign of Henry III., the
election of knights by all freeholders in the county-court, without
regard to tenure, was little, if at all, different from what it is at
present.[36]

[Sidenote: Progress of towns.]

The progress of towns in several continental countries, from a condition
bordering upon servitude to wealth and liberty, has more than once
attracted our attention in other parts of the present work. Their growth
in England, both from general causes and imitative policy, was very
similar and nearly coincident. Under the Anglo-Saxon line of sovereigns
we scarcely can discover in our scanty records the condition of their
i