maintenance, the two shillings a day paid to the burgess by his town as four were paid to the knight by his county, was a burden from which the boroughs made desperate efforts to escape.  Some persisted in making no return to the sheriff.  Some bought charters of exemption from the troublesome privilege.  Of the 165 who were summoned by Edward the First more than a third ceased to send representatives after a single compliance with the royal summons.  During the whole time from the reign of Edward the Third to the reign of Henry the Sixth the sheriff of Lancashire declined to return the names of any boroughs at all within that county “on account of their poverty.”  Nor were the representatives themselves more anxious to appear than their boroughs to send them.  The busy country squire and the thrifty trader were equally reluctant to undergo the trouble and expense of a journey to Westminster.  Legal measures were often necessary to ensure their presence.  Writs still exist in abundance such as that by which Walter le Rous is “held to bail in eight oxen and four cart-horses to come before the King on the day specified” for attendance in Parliament.  But in spite of obstacles such as these the presence of representatives from the boroughs may be regarded as continuous from the Parliament of 1295.  As the representation of the lesser barons had widened through a silent change into that of the shire, so that of the boroughs—­restricted in theory to those in the royal demesne—­seems practically from Edward’s time to have been extended to all who were in a condition to pay the cost of their representatives’ support.  By a change as silent within the Parliament itself the burgess, originally summoned to take part only in matters of taxation, was at last admitted to a full share in the deliberations and authority of the other orders of the State.

[Sidenote:  Parliament and the Clergy]

The admission of the burgesses and knights of the shire to the assembly of 1295 completed the fabric of our representative constitution.  The Great Council of the Barons became the Parliament of the Realm.  Every order of the state found itself represented in this assembly, and took part in the grant of supplies, the work of legislation, and in the end the control of government.  But though in all essential points the character of Parliament has remained the same from that time to this, there were some remarkable particulars in which the assembly of 1295 differed widely from the present Parliament at St. Stephen’s.  Some of these differences, such as those which sprang from the increased powers and changed relations of the different orders among themselves, we shall have occasion to consider at a later time.  But a difference of a far more startling kind than these lay in the presence of the clergy.  If there is any part in the parliamentary scheme of Edward the First which can be regarded as especially his own, it is his project for the representation