rs had rendered arbitrary impositions absolutely unconstitutional,
they might perhaps excite louder murmurs than a discreet administration
would risk. Though the necessities of the king, therefore, and his
imperious temper often led him to this course,[79] it was a more
prudent counsel to try the willingness of his people before he forced
their reluctance. And the success of his innovation rendered it worth
repetition. Whether it were from the complacency of the commons at being
thus admitted among the peers of the realm, or from a persuasion that
the king would take their money if they refused it, or from inability to
withstand the plausible reasons of his ministers, or from the private
influence to which the leaders of every popular assembly have been
accessible, much more was granted in subsidies after the representation
of the towns commenced than had ever been extorted in tallages.

To grant money was, therefore, the main object of their meeting; and if
the exigencies of the administration could have been relieved without
subsidies, the citizens and burgesses might still have sat at home and
obeyed the laws which a council of prelates and barons enacted for their
government. But it is a difficult question whether the king and the
peers designed to make room for them, as it were, in legislation; and
whether the power of the purse drew after it immediately, of only by
degrees, those indispensable rights of consenting to laws which they now
possess. There are no sufficient means of solving this doubt during the
reign of Edward I. The writ in 22 E. I. directs two knights to be chosen
cum plena potestate pro se et tota communitate comitatus praedicti ad
consulendum et consentiendum pro se et communitate illa, his quae
comites, barones, et proceres praedicti concorditer ordinaverint in
praemissis. That of the next year runs, ad faciendum tunc quod de communi
consilio ordinabitur in praemissis. The same words are inserted in the
writ of 26 E. I. In that of 28 E. I. the knights are directed to be sent
cum plena potestate audiendi et faciendi quae ibidem ordinari contigerint
pro communi commodo. Several others of the same reign have the words ad
faciendum. The difficulty is to pronounce whether this term is to be
interpreted in the sense of _performing_ or of _enacting_; whether the
representatives of the commons were merely to learn from the lords what
was to be done, or to bear their part in advising upon it. The earliest