ch beneath them, yet by whom they might be
outnumbered in those councils where they had bearded the king. No
effectual or permanent compromise could be made but by representation,
and the hour for representation was not come.

NOTE III. Page 19.

The Lords' committee, though not very confidently, take the view of
Brady and Blackstone, confining the electors of knights to tenants _in
capite_. They admit that "the subsequent usage, and the subsequent
statutes founded on that usage, afford ground for supposing that in the
49th of Henry III. and in the reign of Edward I. the knights of the
shires returned to parliament were elected at the county courts and by
the suitors of those courts. If the knights of the shires were so
elected in the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., it seems important to
discover, if possible, who were the suitors of the county courts in
these reigns" (p. 149). The subject, they are compelled to confess,
after a discussion of some length, remains involved in great obscurity,
which their industry has been unable to disperse. They had, however, in
an earlier part of their report (p. 30), thought it highly probable that
the knights of the shires in the reign of Edward III. represented a
description of persons who might in the reign of the Conqueror have been
termed barons. And the general spirit of their subsequent investigation
seems to favour this result, though they finally somewhat recede from
it, and admit at least that, before the close of Edward III.'s reign,
the elective franchise extended to freeholders.

The question, as the committee have stated it, will turn on the
character of those who were suitors to the county court. And, if this
may be granted, I must own that to my apprehension there is no room for
the hypothesis that the county court was differently constituted in the
reign of Edward I. or of Edward III. from what it was very lately, and
what it was long before those princes sat on the throne. In the
Anglo-Saxon period we find this court composed of thanes, but not
exclusively of royal thanes, who were comparatively few. In the laws of
Henry I. we still find sufficient evidence that the suitors of the court
were all who held freehold lands, _terrarum domini_; or, even if we
please to limit this to lords of manors, which is not at all probable,
still without distinction of a mesne or immediate tenure. Vavassors,
that is, mesne tenants, are particularly mentioned in one enumeration