those of later date. And it is followed, after an interval of forty years, by another and more decisive instance.

While the present king was on the continent in 1254, his queen and regents summoned the tenants in chief to sail to his assistance; and

gave

order in the summons, that “ besides these, two lawful and discreet knights should be chosen by the men of every county in the

place of all and each of them, to assemble at Westminster, and to determine with the knights of the other counties what aid they would grant to their sovereign in his present necessity, so 'that the same knights might be able to answer in the matter of • the said aid for their respective counties.”

Of the meaning of such a writ and its return there cannot be a question ; nor is easy to understand the discussion it has raised. Call it singular, anomalous ; or by what name may seem best fitted to express its irregular character ; except it from ordinary parliaments, and call it a convention ;-still the undeniable fact remains, that it was a scheme to obtain money from the commons of the various counties, and that to this end it prescribed the election of representatives whose determination and assent should controul those of their constituents. The language of the writ connects itself undoubtedly with that of its predecessor in the fifteenth of John. It is quite immaterial whether or not the barons and higher tenants in chief were summoned to sit with these knights. Enough that the commons of the shires were thus admitted to a coordinate share in the imposition and voting of taxes. Whatever antiquarians may urge as to Parliament's use of one chamber at Westminster, up to the middle of the third Edward's reign (abundant proof exists of separate sittings in other parts of England), it is sufficiently clear that the voting must always have been by each order separately, and without interference from each other. The mere circumstance of the different proportions of taxation would be evidence of this.

Here, then, in the 38th of Henry the Third, we have the principle of a real representation become part of our English constitution. Yet there had been no violent effort to obtain this acknowledgement. It had grown out of that increasing importance of the people, each step of whose development it has been the object of this history to trace. From lesser they had quietly risen to higher duties. The knight, whose business it had been to assess subsidies, was at length admitted by the side of the earls and barons to aid in the disposition of the money so obtained. That

they were admitted merely as the deputies of others, appeared even in the remuneration set apart for them. Great men such as earls and barons, who attended in their own right, paid their own charges ; men of smaller substance who had simply undertaken to transact business for others, were thought to have a right to compensation from those in behalf of whom they acted. As they were paid for their labour in assessment, so for their sacrifice of time and labour in representation they were paid. Wherefore a rate levied on the county discharged their expenses for so many specified days, in going, staying, and returning.'

This county rate would seem to have an important bearing on another branch of this inquiry, which has been sadly encumbered with needless learning and misplaced vehemence of discussion. It has been doubted, by antiquarians who would narrow as much as possible the basis on which our English freedom has been built, whether these representative knights did not simply represent the inferior tenants in chief (from whose reluctance to attend in parliament they first derived importance), and are not to be taken to have had relation to the county at large. But every reasonable supposition negatives this. The wages of the knights were levied on the whole county (de communitate comitatủs). The mesne tenant could hardly have been denied a right to the support of which he was obliged to contribute. That What concerned All should be approved by All, was a maxim not unused by even Norman kings. Nor can anything be more specific than the language of the writs of election. The tenants in chief are never mentioned in them. Tenants of the crown implied both tenants by free and by military service. The condition required of the candidate was to be discreet and lawful ; of the electors to be suitors of the county ; and of the election to be made in a full court. A full county court was always the least feudal of the modified feudality that prevailed in England. It comprised all freeholders ; whether of the king, of a mesne lord, or by military, or any other free service; and it surely therefore cannot admit of a doubt, that the knights of the shire in the reign of Henry the Third, as in that of Victoria the First, represented without regard to the quality of tenure the whole body of freeholders.

Still, they were knights. Their station associated them with the earls and barons. They were part of what in feudal institution was held to be a lower nobility. They did not rank with burgess or citizen churl. They represented the power of the

NO. XXI.YOL, IV.

T

• Am I then your

commons, but they were not commoners. They continued to sit with the barons when the commoners sat apart. As yet no man seems to have dreamt that this lower class could ever be raised to the national councils, whether in separate, co-ordinate, or subordinate rank. The principle which by easiest pressure expanded to admit them, had been acknowledged some centuries in England; yet they were still shut out. But ages and generations vainly strive for what the man and the hour accomplish. And both were at hand when Henry III, issued his writs of summons for the Great Council at Westminster on the 2nd of May, 1258.

To this council the greater barons came alone ; and when the king entered the hall on the third day with his brother William de Valence, he found them assembled, with Simon de Montfort and Roger Bigod at their head, in complete coats of mail. He started in alarm at the unaccustomed sight. prisoner?' he asked. No, sir ;' and as the reply was given, each baron unbuckled his sword and put it aside ; but by your

partiality to foreigners, and your own wasteful profusion, the kingdom is involved in want and wretchedness. Wherefore, we are here • to demand that the powers of government be delegated to a com• mittee of barons and prelates, who may correct abuses and enact • salutary laws. A violent scene of altercation ensued between Simon de Montfort and William de Valence, but before Henry had left the hall that day he tendered complete submission. The demands of the barons were conceded, and the debts of the king were undertaken to be paid. Barons and prelates, to the number of twentyfour, were to be formed into a commission to reform the state. Twelve were to be selected from the council of the king ; and twelve to be named by the party of De Montfort, in a parliament to be immediately held at Oxford.

Oxford, on the eleventh of June, was accordingly the scene of that memorable assemblage, on which contemporaneous history bestowed the gracious imputation of madness. A more felicitous epithet could probably not have been selected, by the concurrent reason of the age. It was the Mad Parliament, in the sense wherein the Galileos and Columbuses were mad discoverers. No men had better right to use the Tord than the monks from whom our annals borrowed it, and who were at this time torturing Roger Bacon for a premature wisdom that seemed to them a wicked foolishness. But it vould be probably quite safe to affirm, that as the king and his coun

a

cillors rode to the meeting at Oxford, through the ranks of 60,000 baronial retainers encamped around that city, it was less by the thought of madness they were then subdued, than by that of wisdom and determination resolved to be trifled with no more.

The Committee of Reform was named. It comprised, on the side of the king, his nephew Henry; three of his half-brothers, Aymar, Guy, and William ; his brother-in-law, De Warenne; some of the officers of state ; John de Plessys, Earl of Warwick; and Fulk Basset, bishop of London. But among even these the event showed leanings to the popular side. The twelve named by the barons included Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and high stoward ; Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford; Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and high constable; Roger Bigod, earl marshal ; Walter Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester; Roger de Mortimer, and Peter and Hugh de Montfort. All, on either side, were in succession solemnly sworn to reform the state of the realm, to the honour of God, the service of the king, and the benefit of the people; and, in the discharge of that sacred duty, to suffer themselves to be influenced by no consideration, “neither of gift nor promise, profit nor loss, love nor hatred, nor fear.' The twelve then selected, each in its turn, two from the ranks of the party opposed to itself; and to the four thus chosen were committed the charge of appointing a Council of State of fifteen members. These important appointments were made with apparent impartiality; but the result determined where lay the vast preponderance of power and strength ; and from that moment the king's hope of resistance or evasion was gone. His nephew and brothers had been excluded, though the numbers were nominally equal; and Archbishop Boniface of Canterbury, with notorious popular inclinings, was placed at the head of the council.

But a few brief months were now to pass, before the Mad Parliament had assumed the government of England, and the greatest duties of the state were in charge of the most trusted adherents of De Montfort. He had named the justiciary, the chancellor, the treasurer, and all the sheriffs ; and had supplanted by men of his own choice the governors of twenty of the principal castles of the king: It has been called a Revolution; and it was so.

But it was a Revolution fenced round by guarantees for Re-Establishment ; in the spirit of the Great Charter, and with conscientious regard for the welfare of the people. The new justiciary was sworn to administer justice to all persons according to the ordinances of the com

T?

mittee and council ; the chancellor was restricted from placing the seal to any grant without the assent of the council, or to any instrument at variance with the regulations of the committee; and the governors of the castles, while for twelve years they were limited by special order of the council to obey its direction in relation to any surrender to the king, were left without restriction after that space to obey loyally the king's command. The necessary provisional arrangements having been thus completed, four ordinances were issued by the committee. The first empowered and instructed the freeholders of each county to elect four knights to ascertain and lay before parliament the trespasses, excesses, and injuries committed within the county during the government of the king. The second arranged for annual elections of high sheriffs in each county by the votes of all the freeholders. The third ordered an annual delivery of accounts, not only by all sheriffs, but by the treasurer, the chancellor, and the justiciary. And the fourth directed that parliaments should be assembled three several times in the year, at the beginning of the months of February, June, and October.

With this the Mad Parliament closed its session. years' struggle followed, and extraordinary incidents marked its

A seven

course.

New Books.

FATHER DARCY. By the Author of “ Mount Sorel," &c. 2 vols. p. 8vo.

London: Chapman and Hall. The author (or, as it must be, authoress) is incorrigible in her sentimentality; her imagination, though that is scarcely the right term, say rather her fancy, is perpetually running her understanding into the wildest career.

This faculty is not of that combinative and creative kind which belongs to the genuine poetical capacity, but of that fuming and exaggerated sort which belongs to all persons of impetuous temperament, and but comparatively slight reflective powers. Thus it is that she will not view or represent things as they are or were, but as they might be, if perfected according to the theory of their existence. This vice of writing is perceptible in every sentence; it strengthens every prejudice, and glows in every description-one cannot read a