HOUSE OF COMMONS.
(For the Mirror.)
In the vale of Evesham, was fought the most memorable battle recorded in the annals of English history, between Simon de Mountfort, the powerful Earl of Leicester, and Prince Edward, afterwards King Edward the First; in which the earl was completely defeated, and the refractory barons, with most of their adherents taken or slain. This important battle restored Henry the Third to his throne and liberty. When he had ascended the throne, he determined to still further curtail the enormous power of the barons; and by his writs summoned together, as his advisers, representatives from numerous cities and boroughs, as well as counties; the battle of Evesham therefore may be considered, says a modern writer, "as the origin of our present House of Commons."
The learned John Selden says, "All are involved in a parliament. There was a time when all men had their voice in choosing knights. About Henry the Sixth's time they found the inconvenience, so one parliament made a law, that only he that had forty shillings per annum should give his voice, they under should be excluded." "In a word (says Chamberlayne) a parliament's authority is most absolute; a parliament can do all that Senatus populusque Romanus could do, centuriatis Comitis seu Tributis; it represents the whole kingdom, so that the consent of the parliament is presumed to be the consent of every man in England."
P.T.W.
THE LEGACY OF THE SWORD.
(For the Mirror.)
It is thine—it shall win thee a wreath for thy brow
When thy spirit seems more energetic than now;—