CHAPTER I.

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The assembling of parliaments--Synopsis of parliamentary history--Orders for the attendance of members--Qualifications for the franchise: burgesses, burgage-tenures, scot and lot, pot-wallopers, faggot-votes, splitting--Disqualifications: alms, charity, “faggots,” “occasionality”--Election of knights of the shire, and burgesses--Outlines of an election in the Middle Ages--Queen Elizabeth and her faithful Commons--An early instance of buying a seat in the Commons--Returns vested in the municipal corporations; “Money makes the mayor to go”--Privileges of parliament--“Knights girt with a sword”--Inferior standing of the citizens and burgesses sent to Parliament--Reluctance of early constituencies to sending representatives to parliament--Paid members--Members chosen and nominated by the “great families”--The Earl of Essex nominating his partisans and servants--Exemption from sending representatives to the Commons esteemed a privilege--The growth of legislative and electoral independence--The beginning of “contested elections”--Coercion at elections--Lords-lieutenant calling out the train-bands for purposes of intimidation--Early violence--_Nugæ Antiquæ_; the election of a Harrington for Bath, 1658-9; the present of a horse to paid members--The method of election for counties, cities, and boroughs--Relations of representatives with their constituents--The “wages” of members of parliament--“Extracts from the Proceedings of Lynn Regis”--An account rendered to the burgesses--The civil wars--Peers returned for the Commons in the Long Parliament after the abolition of the House of Lords. 1