Representatives of shires, cities and boroughs were summoned to some parliaments in the reign of Edward I (1272-1307) and were customarily summoned from the reign of his son Edward II (d. 1327) onwards. Writs were sent from chancery to sheriffs ordering them to cause elections of two shire knights each to be held in thirty-seven shires. Cheshire and County Durham, where respectively the earls of Chester and bishops of Durham exercised regal authority, were unrepresented. Only occasionally were those elected actually knights; more commonly they were gentlefolk, often lawyers and stewards of estates busy in local administration. Under the Lancastrian kings in the fifteenth century there was legislation to ensure that the elections in the shire court reflected truly the will of better-off, resident freeholders.
The number of boroughs which were ordered to elect two burgesses (London was unique in electing four citizens) and which sent them fluctuated in the period. According to Professor McKisack, an average of seventy cities and boroughs were represented in Edward II's parliaments and of eighty-three in the parliaments of Richard II (reigned 1377-99). The map shows cities and boroughs which returned in the early decades of the fifteenth century. Northern England was poorly represented compared with England south of the river Trent, with two unenfranchised shires and few cities and boroughs. Many enfranchised boroughs were dwindling into insignificance in terms of population and wealth by the fifteenth century, when there was a tendency for such boroughs to return members of aristocratic rather than bourgeois status, often non-resident. Gentlefolk had come to consider it prestigious and useful to sit in the Commons House, even as burgesses: the out-numbered shire knights apparently controlled the business of the House. By the time the 'Good Parliament' met in 1376, shire knights and burgesses were in the habit of sitting and debating together: then, under the leadership of the first known Commons Speaker, they demonstrated a remarkable ability to press reform of government on the Crown.
A. Goodman
World History
