while, augmented the private wealth and confideration of the burgeffes; the frequent demands of the crown increased their public importance; and as they resembled the knights of the shires in one material circumftance, that of reprefenting particular bodies of men, it no longer appeared unfuitable to unite them together in the fame house, and fo confounded their rights and privileges; but 'tis certain that this union was not final in Edward the 3d's reign; for in the year 1372 the burgeffes acted by themselves, and voted a tax after the knights were difmiffed. The taxes impofed by the knights on the counties, were always higher than those which the burgeffes laid on the boroughs; and this difference of taxation voted by these several branches of the lower house, kept them naturally feparate; but as their petitions had mostly the fame object, viz. redrefs of grievances, and the support of law and justice both against the crown and the barons, this caufe as naturally united them, and was the reason why they at laft formed into one house for the difpatch

F 4

patch of business. The barons had few petitions, their privileges were of more ancient date, grievances feldom affected them, for they were themselves the chief oppreffors. From these causes the diftinction between the leffer barons and knights of the counties, and the reprefentatives of boroughs, was entirely loft, and the lower house, thence, affumed a greater acceffion of right and importance in the kingdom; and the commons, or third eftate, as they are commonly called, rose by flow degrees to their prefent importance, and reached at laft to their present form; and the gentlemen of the country then, made no fcruple of appearing as deputies of the boroughs.

What fufficiently proves that the commencement of the house of burgeffes, who are the true commons, was not an affair of chance, but rose from the neceffities of the prefent fituation, is, that Edward, at the very fame time, fummoned deputies from the inferior clergy, the firft that ever met in England, and he required them to impofe taxes on their conftituents for the

public fervice. Formerly the ecclefiaftical benefices bore no part of the burthen of the ftate. The pope, indeed, had often levied impofitions upon them: he had fometimes granted this power to the fovereigns. Edward himself had in the former year exacted, by menaces and violence, a very grievous tax of half the revenue of the clergy. But as this precedent was dangerous, and could not be easily repeated, Edward found it more prudent to assemble the lower house of convocation, to lay before them his neceffities, and to ask fome fupply. But on this occafion he met with difficulties, for the clergy fcrupled to meet on the king's writ; left by fuch obedience they should feem to acknowledge the authority of the temporal power: and this compromise was at last fallen upon, that the king should issue his writ to the archbishop, and that the archbishop fhould, in confequence of it, fummons the clergy. This was the cause why the ecclefiaftics met in two houfes of convocation under their feveral bishops.

The

The antiquity of the house of commons hath been disputed with much acrimony; but fuch is the force of time and evidence, that they can sometimes prevail even over faction; and the question feems with general consent, even by their own, to be at last determined against the ruling party. It is agreed the commons were no part of the great council till fome ages after the conqueft; and that the military tenants alone, of the crown, compofed that fupreme legiflative affembly, and were the king's counfellors when he pleased to make use of them.

BEFORE we proceed farther, we shall here give the reader an account of the Scottish constitution in the words of Dr. Robertson. If the authority of the barons far exceeded its proper bounds in the other nations of Europe, we may affirm that the balance which ought to be preferved between the king and his nobles, was entirely loft in Scotland. The calamities which befel their kings, contributed more than any other thing to diminish the royal authority,

Never was any race of monarchs fo unfortunate as the Scottifh. Of fix fucceffive princes, from Robert 3d to James the 6th of Scotland and Ift of England, not one died a natural death; and their minorities during that time were long and more frequent than ever happened in any other kingdom. When the king himself came to affume the reins of government, he found his revenue wafted or alienated, the crown lands feized or given away, and the nobles fo accustomed to independence, that after the struggles of a whole reign he was feldom able to reduce them to the fame ftate in which they had been at the beginning of his minority, or to wrest from them what they had ufurped during that time; fo that the reigns of the Scottish kings, for many years, were spent in continual quarrels with the barons, whose power, by encroachment upon the rights of the crown, became quite intolerable.

Many years after the declenfion of the feudal fyftems in the other kingdoms of Europe, and when the arms or policy of

princes