t inviti et renitentes,
numerare sunt coacti. p. 492. Heu ubi est Londinensis, toties empta,
toties concessa, toties scripta, toties jurata libertas! &c. p. 627. The
king sometimes suspended their market, that is, I suppose, their right
of toll, till his demands were paid.

[61] These writs are not extant, having perhaps never been returned; and
consequently we cannot tell to what particular places they were
addressed. It appears however that the assembly was intended to be
numerous; for the entry runs: scribitur civibus Ebor, civibus Lincoln,
et caeteris burgis Angliae. It is singular that no mention is made of
London, which must have had some special summons. Rymer, t. i. p. 803.
Dugdale, Summonitiones ad Parliamentum, p. 1.

[62] It would ill repay any reader's diligence to wade through the vapid
and diluted pages of Tyrrell; but whoever would know what can be best
pleaded for a higher antiquity of our present parliamentary constitution
may have recourse to Hody on Convocations, and Lord Lyttelton's History
of Henry II. vol. ii. p. 276, and vol. iv. p. 79-106. I do not conceive
it possible to argue the question more ingeniously than has been done by
the noble writer last quoted. Whitelocke, in his commentary on the
parliamentary writ, has treated it very much at length, but with no
critical discrimination. [Note VII.]

[63] Madox, Hist. of Exchequer, c. 17.

[64] The only apparent exception to this is in the letter addressed to
the pope by the parliament of 1246; the salutation of which runs thus:
Barones, proceres, et magnates, _ac nobiles portuum maris habitatores_,
necnon et clerus et populus universus, salutem. Matt. Paris, p. 696. It
is plain, I think, from these words, that some of the chief inhabitants
of the Cinque Ports, at that time very flourishing towns, were present
in this parliament. But whether they sat as representatives, or by a
peculiar writ of summons, is not so evident; and the latter may be the
more probable hypothesis of the two.

[65] Thus Matthew Paris tells us that in 1237 the whole kingdom, regni
totius universitas, repaired to a parliament of Henry III. p. 367.

[66] Brady's Introduction to Hist. of England, p. 38.

[67] Convocatis universis Angliae prelatis et magnatibus, necnon
cunctatum regni sui civitatum et burgorum potentioribus. Wykes, in Gale,
XV Scriptores, t. ii. p. 88. I am indebted to Hody on Convocations for
this reference, which seems to have escaped most of our consti