when the barons insisted on these concessions.
The circumstances are not wholly unlike those of Magna Charta.

The Lords' Committee do not seem to reject the statute "de tallagio non
concedendo" altogether, but say that, "if the manuscript containing it
(in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge) is a true copy of a statute, it
is undoubtedly a copy of a statute of the 25th, and not of a statute of
the 34th of Edward I." p. 230. It seems to me on comparing the two, that
the supposed statute de tallagio is but an imperfect transcript of the
king's charter at Ghent. But at least, as one exists in an authentic
form, and the other is only found in an unauthorized copy, there can be
no question which ought to be quoted.

[5] Hody (Treatise on Convocations, p. 126) states the matter thus: in
the Saxon times all bishops and abbots sat and voted in the state
councils, or parliament, as such, and not on account of their tenures.
After the Conquest the abbots sat there not as such, but by virtue of
their tenures, as barons; and the bishops sat in a double capacity, as
bishops, and as barons.

[6] Hody, p. 128.

[7] [Note I.]

[8] Madox, Baronia Anglica, p. 138. Dialogus de Scaccario, 1. i. c. 17.
Lyttelton's Henry II. vol. ii. p. 217. The last of these writers
supposes, contrary to Selden, that the earls continued to be governors
of their counties under Henry II. Stephen created a few titular earls,
with grants of crown lands to support them; but his successor resumed
the grants, and deprived them of their earldoms.

In Rymer's Foedera, vol. i. p. 3, we find a grant of Matilda, creating
Milo of Gloucester earl of Hereford, with the moat and castle of that
city in fee to him and his heirs, the third penny of the rent of the
city, and of the pleas in the county, three manors and a forest, and the
service of three tenants in chief, with all their fiefs; to be held with
all privileges and liberties as fully as ever any earl in England had
possessed them.

[9] Selden's Works, vol. iii. p. 713-743.

[10] Lyttelton's Henry II. vol. ii. p. 212.

[11] Hody on Convocations, p. 222, 234.

[12] Lib. ii. c. 9.

[13] Hody and Lord Lyttelton maintain these "barons of the second rank"
to have been the sub-vassals of the crown; tenants of the great barons
to whom the name was sometimes improperly applied. This was very
consistent with their opinion, that the commons were a part of
parliament at that time. But Hume, assuming at once the t