ing; secretaries or
receivers of prizes; comptrollers of the army accounts; agents for
regiments; governors of plantations and their deputies; officers of
Minorca or Gibraltar; officers of the excise and customs; clerks or
deputies in the several offices of the treasury, exchequer, navy,
victualling, admiralty, pay of the army or navy, secretaries of state,
salt, stamps, appeals, wine licences, hackney coaches, hawkers and
pedlars) nor any persons that hold any new office under the crown
created since 1705, are capable of being elected members. 6. That no
person having a pension under the crown during pleasure, or for any
term of years, is capable of being elected. 7. That if any member
accepts an office under the crown, except an officer in the army or
navy accepting a new commission, his seat is void; but such member is
capable of being re-elected. 8. That all knights of the shire shall be
actual knights, or such notable esquires and gentlemen, as have
estates sufficient to be knights, and by no means of the degree of
yeomen. This is reduced to a still greater certainty, by ordaining, 9.
That every knight of a shire shall have a clear estate of freehold or
copyhold to the value of six hundred pounds _per annum_, and every
citizen and burgess to the value of three hundred pounds; except the
eldest sons of peers, and of persons qualified to be knights of
shires, and except the members for the two universities: which
somewhat ballances the ascendant which the boroughs have gained over
the counties, by obliging the trading interest to make choice of
landed men: and of this qualification the member must make oath, and
give in the particulars in writing, at the time of his taking his
seat. But, subject to these restrictions and disqualifications, every
subject of the realm is eligible of common right. It was therefore an
unconstitutional prohibition, which was inserted in the king's writs,
for the parliament holden at Coventry, 6 Hen. IV, that no apprentice
or other man of the law should be elected a knight of the shire
therein[f]: in return for which, our law books and historians[g] have
branded this parliament with the name of _parliamentum indoctum_, or
the lack-learning parliament; and sir Edward Coke observes with some
spleen[h], that there was never a good law made thereat.

[Footnote a: 4 Inst. 47.]

[Footnote b: 1 Hen. V. c. 1. 23 Hen. VI. c. 15. 1 W. & M. st. 2. c. 2.
5 & 6 W. & M. c. 7. 11 & 12 W. III. c. 2. 12