Footnote
[A] Scutage, or shield-money, was the commutation paid in lieu of military service by all who owed service to the king.
XLIV.—AN EARLY ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT.
The following preliminary sketch by J. R. Green, the historian, serves as an introduction to Palgrave's picture of an election under Edward I:
"It was Edward the First, who first made laws in what has ever since been called Parliament. For this purpose he called on the shires and larger towns to choose men to 'represent' them, or appear in their stead in the Great Council; the shires sending knights of the shire, the towns burgesses. These, added to the peers or high nobles and to the bishops, made up Parliament.
"The business of Parliament was not only to make good laws for the realm, but to grant money to the king for the needs of the state in peace and war, and to authorize him to raise this money by taxes or subsidies from his subjects. So at first people saw little of the great good of such Parliaments, but dreaded their calling together, because they brought taxes with them. Nor did men seek, as they do now, to be chosen members of Parliament, for the way thither was long and travel costly, and so they did their best not to be chosen, and when chosen had to be bound over under pain of heavy fines to serve in Parliament."
1. During the last half-hour the suitors had been gathering round the shire-oak awaiting the arrival of the high officer whose duty it was to preside. Notwithstanding the size of the meeting, there was an evident system in the crowd. A considerable proportion of the throng consisted of little knots of husbandmen or churls, four or five of whom were generally standing together, each company seeming to compose a deputation. The churls might be easily distinguished by their dress, a long frock of coarse yet snow-white linen hanging down to the same length before and behind, and ornamented round the neck with broidery rudely executed in blue thread. They wore, in fact, the attire of the carter and plowman, a garb which was common enough in country parts about five-and-twenty years ago, but which will probably soon be recollected only as an ancient costume, cast away with all the other obsolete characteristics of merry old England.