We have already said that we cannot doubt that, in the first parliament of Westminster, some citizens, under the name of “the commonalty of the realm,” were present; but we find no record of any formal summoning of burgesses or borough‐representatives. Now, however, the chancellor had a particular statute, relating to trade, to bring forward, and now, therefore, he could advise the king to summon, from the city of London and from twenty other great towns, from each two representatives, “de sapientioribus et aptioribus,” for the consideration and discussion of the said statute. Here we have the real commencement of the borough representation of England. Let Simon de Montfort have all the merit which can justly be attributed to him, for having, in 1265, called to a council in Westminster some burgesses or borough‐representatives:—that fact must always be taken with two qualifications: first, that earl Simon needed these borough‐representatives to fill the empty benches, only five earls and seventeen barons attending at his call; and secondly, that that council was not what we now understand by the term, a “parliament,”—no legislation being attempted in it.
Some historians have been too ready to assume or assert, on all occasions, that our free constitution has been won by the repeated struggles of the people, who succeeded in wresting from their sovereigns one privilege after another. The whole course of Edward’s government clears him from any imputation of this kind. At the opening of his political life, when he stood as a victorious leader at the head of an army, we find him again and again asserting the principle, that in a well‐constituted parliament all classes should be represented; and now, when he orders these writs to be issued for the summoning of forty‐two borough representatives to Shrewsbury, it is wholly of his own free will, and without the slightest “pressure of circumstances,” that he acts. His chancellor feels the want of a new law for the regulation of commerce, and at once the idea seems to occur, and is forthwith acted upon, “Let all the principal towns, where the merchants and traders dwell—let them send representatives to this parliament, and let the new statute be passed with their help and in their presence.”