This was in Lent 1461, before the battle of Towton. Edward was crowned June 29th in the same year. The same chronicler describes the election or acknowledgement of Richard the Third, p. 372.
[(60)] One special sign of the advance of the power of Parliament in the fifteenth century was the practice of bringing in bills in the form of Statutes ready made. Hitherto the Acts of the Commons had taken the form of petitions, and it was sometimes found that, after the Parliament had broken up, the petitions had been fraudulently modified. They now brought in bills, which the King accepted or rejected as they stood. See Hallam, Middle Ages, ii. 222.
[(61)] Macaulay, i. 38. “The knight of the shire was the connecting link between the baron and the shopkeeper. On the same benches on which sate the goldsmiths, drapers, and grocers who had been returned to Parliament by the commercial towns, sate also members who, in any other country, would have been called noblemen, hereditary lords of manors, entitled to hold courts and to bear coat armour, and able to trace back an honourable descent through many generations. Some of them were younger sons and brothers of great lords. Others could boast even of royal blood. At length the eldest son of an Earl of Bedford, called in courtesy by the second title of his father, offered himself as a candidate for a seat in the House of Commons, and his example was followed by others. Seated in that house, the heirs of the grandees of the realm naturally became as zealous for its privileges as any of the humble burgesses with whom they were mingled.”
Hallam remarks (ii. 250) that it is in the reign of Edward the Fourth that we first find borough members bearing the title of Esquire, and he goes on to refer to the Paston Letters as showing how important a seat in Parliament was then held, and as showing also the undue influences which were already brought to bear upon the electors. Since Hallam’s time, the authenticity of the Paston Letters has been called in question, but it has, I think, been fully established. Some of the entries are very curious indeed. In one (i. 96), without any date of the year, the Duchess of Norfolk writes to John Paston, Esquire, to use his influence at a county election on behalf of some creatures of the Duke’s: “It is thought right necessarie for divers causes þt my Lord have at this tyme in the p’lement suche p’sones as longe unto him and be of his menyall S’vaunts wherin we conceyve yor good will and diligence shal be right expedient.” The persons to be thus chosen for the convenience of the Duke are described as “our right wel-belovid Cossin and S’vaunts John Howard and Syr Roger Chambirlayn.” This is followed by a letter from the Earl of Oxford in 1455, much to the same effect. In ii. 98, we have a letter addressed to the Bailiff of Maldon, recommending the election of Sir John Paston on behalf of a certain great lady not named. The letter is worth giving in full.
“Ryght trusty frend I comand me to yow prey[~i]g yow to call to yor mynd that lyek as ye and I comonyd of it were necessary for my Lady and you all hyr Ser[~u]nts and te[~n]nts to have thys p’lement as for [~o]n of the Burgeys of the towne of Maldon syche a man of worchep and of wytt as wer towardys my seyd Lady and also syche on as is in favor of the Kyng and of the Lords of hys consayll nyghe abought hys p’sone. Sertyfy[~=i]g yow that my seid Lady for her parte and syche as be of hyr consayll be most agreeabyll that bothe ye and all syche as be hyr fermors and teñntys and wellwyllers shold geve your voyse to a worchepfull knyght and on’ of my Ladys consayll Sr John Paston whyche standys gretly in favore wt my Lord Chamberleyn and what my seyd Lord Chamberleyn may do wt the Kyng and wt all the Lordys of Inglond I trowe it be not unknowyn to you most of eny on man alyve. Wherefor by the meenys of the seyd Sr John Paston to my seyd Lord Chamberleyn bothe my Lady and ye of the towne kowd not have a meeter man to be for yow in the perlement to have yor needys sped at all seasons. Wherefor I prey yow labor all syche as be my Ladys ser[~=u]ntts tennts and wellwyllers to geve ther voyseys to the seyd Sr John Paston and that ye fayle not to sped my Ladys intent in thys mater as ye entend to do hyr as gret a plesur as if ye gave hyr an Cli [100l.] And God have yow in hys kep[~=i]g. Wretyn at Fysheley the xx day of Septebyr.—J. Arblaster.”
[(62)] On the effects of the reign of Charles the Fifth in Spain and his overthrow of the liberties of Castile, see the general view in Robertson, iii. 434, though in his narrative (ii. 186) he glorifies the King’s clemency. See also the first chapter of the sixth book of Prescott’s Philip the Second, and on the suppression of the constitution of Aragon by Philip, Watson, Philip the Second, iii. 223.
The last meeting of the French States-General before the final meeting in 1789 was that in 1614, during the minority of Lewis the Thirteenth. See Sismondi, xiii. 342.
[(63)] The legal character of William’s despotism I have tried to set forth almost throughout the whole of my fourth volume. See especially pp. 8, 617; but it is plain to everyone who has the slightest knowledge of Domesday. Nothing can show more utter ignorance of the real character of the man and his times than the idea of William being a mere “rude man of war,” as I have seen him called.
[(64)] On the true aspect of the reign of Henry the Eighth I have said something in the Fortnightly Review, September 1871.
[(65)] Both these forms of undue influence on the part of the Crown are set forth by Hallam, Constitutional History, i. 45, ii. 203. “It will not be pretended,” he says, “that the wretched villages, which corruption and perjury still hardly keep from famine [this was written before the Reform Bill, in 1827], were seats of commerce and industry in the sixteenth century. But the county of Cornwall was more immediately subject to a coercive influence, through the indefinite and oppressive jurisdiction of the stannary court. Similar motives, if we could discover the secrets of those governments, doubtless operated in most other cases.”