Chapter I: Page

The assembling of parliaments--Synopsis of parliamentary
history--Orders for the attendance of members--Qualifications
for the franchise: burgesses, burgage-tenures, scot and lot,
pot-wallopers, faggot-votes, splitting--Disqualifications:
alms, charity, “faggots,” “occasionality”--Election of knights
of the shire, and burgesses--Outlines of an election in the
Middle Ages--Queen Elizabeth and her faithful Commons--An
early instance of buying a seat in the Commons--Returns
vested in the municipal corporations; “Money makes the
mayor to go”--Privileges of parliament--“Knights girt with
a sword”--Inferior standing of the citizens and burgesses
sent to Parliament--Reluctance of early constituencies to
sending representatives to parliament--Paid members--Members
chosen and nominated by the “great families”--The Earl of
Essex nominating his partisans and servants--Exemption
from sending representatives to the Commons esteemed
a privilege--The growth of legislative and electoral
independence--The beginning of “contested elections”--Coercion
at elections--Lords-lieutenant calling out the train-bands for
purposes of intimidation--Early violence--_Nugæ Antiquæ_; the
election of a Harrington for Bath, 1658-9; the present of a
horse to paid members--The method of election for counties,
cities, and boroughs--Relations of representatives with their
constituents--The “wages” of members of parliament--“Extracts
from the Proceedings of Lynn Regis”--An account rendered to the
burgesses--The civil wars--Peers returned for the Commons in
the Long Parliament after the abolition of the House of Lords. 1