latter part of the assertion has, however, been made without a shadow of evidence, and the former is built on very fallacious grounds. It is, indeed, probable, that in the infancy of the Anglo-Saxon states, most of the military retainers may have attended the public councils; yet even then, the deliberations were confined to the chieftains, and nothing remained for the vassals but to applaud the determinations of their lords. In later times, when the several principalities were united into one monarchy, the recurrence of these assemblies, thrice in every year within the short space of six months, would have been an insupportable burthen to the lesser proprietors; and there is reason to suspect, that the greater proprietors attended only when it was required by the importance of events, or by the vicinity of the court. The principal members seem to have been the spiritual and temporal thanes, who held immediately of the crown, and who could command the services of military vassals. It was necessary that the king should obtain the assent of these to all legislative enactments, because, without their acquiescence and support, it was impossible to carry them into execution.

There are many charters to which the signatures of the wittenagemote are affixed. They seldom exceed thirty in number, and never amount to sixty. They include the names of the king and his sons, of a few bishops and abbots, of nearly an equal number of ealdormen and thanes, and occasionally of the queen and one or two abbesses. The fideles, or vassals, who had occompanied their lords, are mentioned as looking on and applauding; but there exists no proof whatever, that they enjoyed any share in the delibe

rations. Indeed, the wittenagemote did not possess much independent authority; for, as individually, they were the vassals of the sovereign, and had sworn "to love what he loved, and shun what he shunned," there can be little doubt that they generally acquiesced in his wishes.

We have instances of this council meeting to order the affairs of the kingdom, to make new laws, and amend the old, as early as the reign of Ina, King of the West Saxons; Offa, King of the Mercians; and Ethelbert, King of Kent, in the several realms of the Heptarchy. After their union, King Alfred ordained for a perpetual usage, "that these councils should meet twice in the year or oftener, if need be, to treat of the government of God's people, how they should keep themselves from sin, should live in quiet, and should receive right." Succeeding Saxon and Danish monarchs held frequent councils of the sort, as appears from their respective codes of laws.

After the Norman conquest, all laws were invariably made in the name of the king. On some important occasions, however, the king exercised his powers of legislation with the advice and consent of persons styled his barons, convened by his command; and on others, he appears to have exercised those powers with the advice of a council, consisting of certain officers of the crown. The Great Charter of King John is the earliest authentic document from which the constitution of that legislative assembly called the King's Great Council, or the Great Council of the Realm, can be with any degree of certainty collected. According to that charter, what ever might be the authority for enacting other laws,

such an assembly as there described, was alone competent to grant an extraordinary aid to the crown; and the persons composing that assembly were required to be summoned by the king's writ, either generally or personally, but both in reference to their holding lands in chief of the crown. No clear inference can be drawn from the charter, that any city or borough had any share in the constitution of this legislative assembly. The charter of John, however, does not appear to have been afterwards considered as having definitively settled that constitution, even for the purpose of granting extraordinary aids to the crown; for, by a subsequent charter of Henry the Third, in the first year of his reign, the whole subject was expressly reserved for future discussion. It is a charter of this last monarch, passed in the ninth year of his reign, and not that of John, which ought, in fact, to be regarded as the great charter of British liberty. A grant of a fifteenth of the moveables of all persons in the kingdom, is declared in this instrument to have been made by all the persons by whom it was to be paid. The instrument does not indeed express in what manner the consent of all was given to the grant; but, as that consent could not have been given by all personally, it must either have been given by persons representing, and competent to bind all, or the whole statement must be an audacious fiction. However the fact may stand, this charter distinctly recognized that principal on which the right of representation seems best to rest, that all who contribute to the support of the state, ought to have a voice in its councils.

In the 49th of Henry the Third, when the country

was torn by civil commotions, and that monarch was a prisoner in the hands of part of his subjects, a great council was convened in the king's name, consisting of certain persons, both of the clergy and laity, who were summoned individually by the king's special writ, according to the charter of King John, and of persons not so summoned, but required to attend in consequence of writs directed to the sheriffs of certain counties, and to the officers of certain cities and boroughs, and of the cinque ports, enjoining them to cause persons to be chosen as representatives of those counties, cities, boroughs, and cinque ports. This is the first authentic evidence we have of the existence of a legislative assembly in England, subsequent at least to the conquest, consisting partly of persons summoned by special writ of the king, and partly of others elected by certain portions of the community to represent them.

The legislative assemblies of the country appear to have been generally, though not always, constituted nearly in the same manner as this of Henry III., until the time of Edward II., when they at length consisted, as they now consist, of two distinct bodies, having different characters, rights, and duties, and generally distinguished by the appellation of LORDS and COMMONS.

The Lords were all summoned by special writs, but distinguished amongst themselves as spiritual and temporal. The rights of the Lords spiritual, as members of the legislative assembly, were attached to temporal possessions which they enjoyed as belonging to their respective ecclesiastical dignities, and were transmitted with these possessions to their suc

cessors in these dignities; whilst the rights of the temporal lords, as members of the legislative assembly, were generally, though not universally, considered as hereditary, according to the terms and modes of their creation.

The Commons consisted of those elected by the counties, cities, boroughs, and cinque ports, to represent them; but the king exercised a discretionary power of issuing precepts for such election, and could at his pleasure increase or diminish the number of members.

The functions of the legislature, as thus constituted, were solemnly fixed by a declaratory statute of the 15th of Edward II., and confirmed by an ordinance of Richard II. in the fifth year of his reign. It was by the former declared, that "all matters which were to be established for the estate of the king or his heirs, and for the estate of the realm and the people, should be treated, accorded, and established in Parliament by the king, and by the assent of the prelates, earls, and barons, and the commonalty of the realm, according as it had been theretofore accustomed."

Although the right of "the commonalty of the realm" to a share in the national legislature, was thus expressly declared, a right which they could not, of course, exercise in their aggregate capacity, but must do by a representative body, the constitution of that body remained extremely imperfect, as long as the king retained the power of adding, at his pleasure, to the number of places which were to return members. Yet this power the kings of England continued to exercise long after the days