These
never could make a crowd, as they must have had a regular
place assigned them if they had made a regular part of the
legislative body. There were only one hundred and thirty
boroughs who received writs of summons from Edward I. It is
expressly said in Gesta Reg. Steph. p. 932, that it was
usual for the populace, "vulgus," to crowd into the great
councils; where they were plainly mere spectators, and could
only gratify their curiosity.]
If in the long period of two hundred years, which elapsed between
the conquest and the latter end of Henry III., and which abounded
in factions, revolutions, and convulsions of all kinds, the house of
commons never performed one single legislative act so considerable as
to be once mentioned by any of the numerous historians of that age, they
must have been totally insignificant: and in that case, what reason can
be assigned for their ever being assembled? Can it be supposed that men
of so little weight or importance possessed a negative voice against the
king and the barons? Every page of the subsequent histories discovers
their existence; though these histories are not written with greater
accuracy than the preceding ones, and indeed scarcely equal them in that
particular.
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