onage but as knights of the shire, and by this silent revolution
the whole body of the rural freeholders were admitted to a share in the
government of the realm.

[Sidenote: Boroughs and the Crown]

The financial difficulties of the Crown led to a far more radical
revolution in the admission into the Great Council of representatives from
the boroughs. The presence of knights from each shire was the recognition
of an older right, but no right of attendance or share in the national
"counsel and assent" could be pleaded for the burgesses of the towns. On
the other hand the rapid developement of their wealth made them every day
more important as elements in the national taxation. From all payment of
the dues or fines exacted by the king as the original lord of the soil on
which they had in most cases grown up the towns had long since freed
themselves by what was called the purchase of the "farm of the borough"; in
other words, by the commutation of these uncertain dues for a fixed sum
paid annually to the Crown and apportioned by their own magistrates among
the general body of the burghers. All that the king legally retained was
the right enjoyed by every great proprietor of levying a corresponding
taxation on his tenants in demesne under the name of "a free aid" whenever
a grant was made for the national necessities by the barons of the Great
Council. But the temptation of appropriating the growing wealth of the
mercantile class proved stronger than legal restrictions, and we find both
Henry the Third and his son assuming a right of imposing taxes at pleasure
and without any authority from the Council even over London itself. The
burgesses could refuse indeed the invitation to contribute to the "free
aids" demanded by the royal officers, but the suspension of their markets
or trading privileges brought them in the end to submission. Each of these
"free aids" however had to be extorted after a long wrangle between the
borough and the officers of the Exchequer; and if the towns were driven to
comply with what they considered an extortion they could generally force
the Crown by evasions and delays to a compromise and abatement of its
original demands.

[Sidenote: Burgesses in Parliament]

The same financial reasons therefore existed for desiring the presence of
borough representatives in the Great Council as existed in the case of the
shires; but it was the genius of Earl Simon which first broke through the
older const