388 The Period of Constitution Making

In this condition the shire elections remained until the
one thing which could cause change occurred. At the
end of the fourteenth century, places in Parliament were
less matters of indifference; hence more interest in electing
men to those places and developments in the electoral
process. There were two things in the reign of Richard
II. that began to threaten the influence of the class of
knights and esquires, the country gentlemen, the smaller
landlords. The peasant agitations then culminating
showed that there was a class below whose rights and
power must be reckoned with, and the long war with
France had resulted in increased power and arrogance of
the great nobles. Livery and maintenance were begin-
ning; the nobles returned from the continent with bands
of followers whom they were loathe to dismiss ; they often
brought increased wealth, and always high-flown ideas of
their superiority to the classes below them. They were
the essence of the tawdry, decadent feudalism of the
English and French courts of that time. The knights
felt themselves in danger of being crushed between the
upper and nether millstones. In Parliament they could
make themselves felt; they could enact "statutes^of
labourers" on the one haxid^rjoin the kingTn his at-

aristocracy^

^ interest on the
part of the borough members.
This approach of king and Commons, or at least the
knights of the shire, was one of the most striking features
of Richard's reign. In fact the Commons, under the
knights' lead, began to take the independent position
between Lords and king which became characteristic in
the fifteenth century. A new significance began to
attach to their election to Parliament. Should the rising
peasant class, whose interests they thought so contrary
to theirs, or the insolent followers of the great nobles
share in the county elections? From the end of Edward
1 See above, pp. 193, 204, note i, 209. See also the Statute of Mainten-
ance and Liveries, 1390, A, and S., document 96.