nction of the families of their possessors; of the greater
baronies, many had practically ceased to exist by their division among
female co-heiresses, many through the constant struggle of the poorer
nobles to rid themselves of their rank by a disclaimer so as to escape the
burthen of higher taxation and attendance in Parliament which it involved.
How far this diminution had gone we may see from the fact that hardly more
than a hundred barons sat in the earlier Councils of Edward's reign. But
while the number of those who actually exercised the privilege of assisting
in Parliament was rapidly diminishing, the numbers and wealth of the
"lesser baronage," whose right of attendance had become a mere
constitutional tradition, was as rapidly increasing. The long peace and
prosperity of the realm, the extension of its commerce and the increased
export of wool, were swelling the ranks and incomes of the country gentry
as well as of the freeholders and substantial yeomanry. We have already
noticed the effects of the increase of wealth in begetting a passion for
the possession of land which makes this reign so critical a period in the
history of the English freeholder; but the same tendency had to some extent
existed in the preceding century, and it was a consciousness of the growing
importance of this class of rural proprietors which induced the barons at
the moment of the Great Charter to make their fruitless attempt to induce
them to take part in the deliberations of the Great Council. But while the
barons desired their presence as an aid against the Crown, the Crown itself
desired it as a means of rendering taxation more efficient. So long as the
Great Council remained a mere assembly of magnates it was necessary for the
King's ministers to treat separately with the other orders of the state as
to the amount and assessment of their contributions. The grant made in the
Great Council was binding only on the barons and prelates who made it; but
before the aids of the boroughs, the Church, or the shires could reach the
royal treasury, a separate negotiation had to be conducted by the officers
of the Exchequer with the reeves of each town, the sheriff and shire-court
of each county, and the archdeacons of each diocese. Bargains of this sort
would be the more tedious and disappointing as the necessities of the Crown
increased in the later years of Edward, and it became a matter of fiscal
expediency to obtain the sanction of any propos