502 Constitutional History. [chap.
Disputes
about the
payment of
wages.
It is on the arguments so put forward that some of the
erroneous views were formed, which we have seen early ob-
scuring the simplicity of the idea of parliamentary representa-
tion. The king’s advisers almost invariably decide that the
existing custom in the particular county shall be followed.
Under Henry VIII the wages of the newly added members
were secured by legislation; but until then they were levied
under the royal writ, the towns represented being of course at
liberty to increase the rate if they pleased. The representa-
tives of London, for instance, in 1296 received ten shillings
a day by a vote of the magistrates1, and the members for York
in 1483 were promised eight additional days’ wages on the
occasion of the coronation of Edward V. The sums were paid
with due consideration for the time spent on the way, iin
eundo, morando, et redeundo ; ’ this made the burden heavier
in the case of the northern counties, and may account in some
small measure for their disinclination to send members. In
1421 the people of Ely bought for £200, paid to the county
of Cambridge, immunity from this payment which they had
previously claimed as tenants of a great franchise : the same
county possessed in the reign of Henry VIII a manor, called
the shire manor, charged with a payment of Lio a year to
the expenses of the knights’ wages, the men of Cambridgeshire
being thus relieved from direct payments. The townsmen of
Cambridge passed an ordinance, in 1427, that the wages of
their burgesses should be only a shilling a day, and made an
agreement with their members to accept- half the usual sum 2.
Many curious particulars have been collected upon this point,
i. pɪ. In 1312 the member for Wilts brings an action against the sheriff Lo
recover the difference between 4s. and 16d., at which sum he had sent in
his account to the sheriff, ignorant of the more liberal tariff; Parl. λVrits,
II. i. 195.
1 The parliament of 1296 was at S. Edmund’s ; Parl. Writs, I. 149 : in
1298 the sum fixed is ɪoos. each, ib. p. 72, the parliament being at York.
In 1322 the rate is ʒs. for knights, 20rf. for burghers; Parl. Writs,
II. i. 258. In 1325, 3s. for valetti. At Lynn in 1431 the members
received 6s. Sd. a day ; Archaeol. xxiv. 320 : in 1442 it was voted that
they should have 2s. a day each and no more; ib. p. 322. On the im-
munity of tenants in ancient demesne, see Prynne, Peg. ii. 176.
2 Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, i. 178, ι86.
XX.]
Hights and Privileges.
5o3
which has an archaeological as well as a constitutional interest.
The refusal of the king, in all cases, to interfere with custom, The king
shows how ancient a right the payment was, and how hazardous favour of
a thing to meddle with it. The practice of course vanished as tom.cus'
a seat in parliament became an object of more selfish ambition
or greater political aspirations.
448. Although the two houses of parliament had, at least Special
since the accession of the house of Lancaster, been fully re- privileges
cognised as co-ordinate, equal, and mutually independent houses and
assemblies, they each retained peculiarities of usage and ex- ⅛S'' mθm'
elusive rights in special provinces of work to which the names
of prerogative or privilege might be given if those names were
not otherwise appropriated. At the close of the middle ages
the commons were advisers and assentors, not merely peti-
tioners, in matters of legislation, and in matters of political
consideration their voice was as powerful as that of the lords ;
they were no longer, if they had ever been, delegates, but
senators acting on behalf of the whole nation1. In the other
two branches of national business there were distinctions which
ran back to the early differences of origin. The lords were tho Financial
judges of parliament, the commons were the originators of commons,
grants ; and, although the commons were yet a long way from
that point at which they were to exclude the lords from all
interference with money bills, they had, both in the forms of
their grants and in the royal promise to receive information
of the grants from the mouth of the speaker alone, won the
ground on which their later claim was based. The judicial Judicial
position of the lords was scarcely better secured, if it were io⅛
seriously maintained, as it was in the bill of 1414 for the
reversal of the judgment against the earl of Salisbury, that
1 Coke, 4th Inst. p. 14: i It is to be observed, though one be chosen for
one particular county or borough, yet when he is returned and sits in
parliament, he serveth for the whole realm, for the end of his coming
thither, as in the writ of his election appeareth, is general ad faciendum
et COnsentiendum Mis quae tunc et ibidem de communi consilio dicti regni
nostιi, fai`ente Deo, ordinari Contigerint super negotiis praedictιs ; id
est, pro quibusdam arduis et urgentibus negotiis nos, statum et defen-
sionem regni nostι i Angliae et ecclcsiae Anglicanae COncernentibus, which
are rehearsed before in the writ.’ See also Hatsell, Precedents, ii. 76.