386 The Period of Constitution Making
over, the business upon which they were employed had
no limitation to a single class. And in coming to the
later representative activities of the knights in Parlia-
ment, the language of the summoning writs is very cleai
to the effect that they were to come for the whole county
and were to be elected in full county court. This idea
is expressed so many times and in such a variety of ways
as to leave no doubt that the whole court was supposed
to be concerned in the electing, and that the knights
went up to Parliament representing all the elements of
the county as found in the county courts.x
Who went to the county court? It is impossible to
answer by a definite enumeration; for long before this,
suit of court had become attached to certain holdings of
land, and the tenants of these were bound to this duty by
the terms of their tenure. It would not often be the
large meetings of the county courts, summoned to meet
the justices, that elected the knights; only forty days
lay between the issue of the summoning writs and the
meeting of Parliament; so it was usually the ordinary
monthly meeting of the court, at which there was likely
to be but a small attendance beyond those concerned in
the cases to be tried. There would be no flocking to an
election in which, in the nature of things, there could be
no interest. Especially it is to be remembered that there
were no villeins in the county court. Thus England's
peasantry, about two-thirds of the population, had
nothing to do with electing the county representatives
and cannot be regarded as represented by them. When
it was stated that the knights were to represent the
"whole county" the context makes it quite clear that it
was the county of the county court that was in mind.
As to the electoral process, one's mind is so filled by
the modern paraphernalia of ballot-boxes or voting
machines, election judges, accurate counts, majorities,
and pluralities, that he is likely to forget that such things
are the product of a very long evolution, These thir-
1 See above, pp. 361, 362, 364.