neck on the block, and exclaimed, "Lord Jesus, receive my soul." His
head was severed from his body at a single blow. His remains were
placed in a rich coffin, and buried that night, by torchlight, under
the pavement of Saint Martin's Church. No person has, since that day,
suffered death in England by Act of Attainder. [783]

Meanwhile an important question, about which public feeling was much
excited, had been under discussion. As soon as the Parliament met, a
Bill for Regulating Elections, differing little in substance from the
bill which the King had refused to pass in the preceding session, was
brought into the House of Commons, was eagerly welcomed by the country
gentlemen, and was pushed through every stage. On the report it
was moved that five thousand pounds in personal estate should be a
sufficient qualification for the representative of a city or borough.
But this amendment was rejected. On the third reading a rider was
added, which permitted a merchant possessed of five thousand pounds
to represent the town in which he resided; but it was provided that no
person should be considered as a merchant because he was a proprietor of
Bank Stock or East India Stock. The fight was hard. Cowper distinguished
himself among the opponents of the bill. His sarcastic remarks on the
hunting, hawking boors, who wished to keep in their own hands the whole
business of legislation, called forth some sharp rustic retorts. A plain
squire, he was told, was as likely to serve the country well as the most
fluent gownsman, who was ready, for a guinea, to prove that black was
white. On the question whether the bill should pass, the Ayes were two
hundred, the Noes a hundred and sixty. [784]

The Lords had, twelve months before, readily agreed to a similar bill;
but they had since reconsidered the subject and changed their opinion.
The truth is that, if a law requiring every member of the House of
Commons to possess an estate of some hundreds of pounds a year in land
could have been strictly enforced, such a law would have been very
advantageous to country gentlemen of moderate property, but would have
been by no means advantageous to the grandees of the realm. A lord of a
small manor would have stood for the town in the neighbourhood of which
his family had resided during centuries, without any apprehension that
he should be opposed by some alderman of London, whom the electors had
never seen before the day of nomination, and whose chi