iament, instead of all
other services, contrary to all analogy, and without parallel in the
condition of any tenant in capite throughout the kingdom. "It is no
wonder, therefore," says Hume, "that a petition which advances two
falsehoods should contain one historical mistake, which indeed amounts
only to an inaccurate expression." But it must be confessed that we
cannot so easily set aside the whole authority of this record. For
whatever assurance the people of St. Albans might show in asserting what
was untrue, the king's council must have been aware how recently the
deputies of any towns had been admitted into parliament. If the lawful
birth of the House of Commons were in 1295, as is maintained by Brady
and his disciples, is it conceivable that, in 1315, the council would
have received a petition, claiming the elective franchise by
prescription, and have referred to the rolls of chancery to inquire
whether this had been used in the days of the king's progenitors? I
confess that I see no answer which can easily be given to this objection
by such as adopt the _latest_ epoch of borough representation, namely,
the parliament of 23 E. I. But they are by no means equally conclusive
against the supposition that the communities of cities and towns, having
been first introduced into the legislature during Leicester's
usurpation, in the forty-ninth year of Henry III., were summoned, not
perhaps uniformly, but without any long intermission, to succeeding
parliaments. There is a strong presumption, from the language of a
contemporary historian, that they sat in the parliament of 1269, four
years after that convened by Leicester.[67] It is more unequivocally
stated by another annalist that they were present in the first
parliament of Edward I. held in 1271.[68] Nor does a similar inference
want some degree of support from the preambles of the statute of
Marlebridge in 51 H. III., of Westminster I. in the third, and of
Gloucester in the sixth, year of Edward I.[69] And the writs are extant
which summon every city, borough, and market town to send two deputies
to a council in the eleventh year of his reign. I call this a council,
for it undoubtedly was not a parliament. The sheriffs were directed to
summon personally all who held more than twenty pounds a year of the
crown, as well as four knights for each county invested with full powers
to act for the commons thereof. The knights and burgesses thus chosen,
as well as the clergy wi