Farliament
Ill's reign, there is evidence that numbers of people
attended the elections who were not properly suitors to
the county court. An act of 1406,z decreeing that
knights be elected not only by suitors duly summoned to
the court for the purpose of election but by all who might
be present, appears so out of harmony with the more
definitive legislation soon to follow and with what one
would naturally expect from the Commons as to suggest
an exceptional situation just at that time. The Commons
had been bringing forward an unusual number of peti-
tions looking towards an interference in the government
and a limitation of the royal power—some of these per-
haps at the suggestion of the Lords themselves. Possibly
a temporary estrangement arose between king and Com-
mons because of this, and was made use of by the Lords
to carry through an act by which they hoped in the end
to gain control of the lower house. If no restrictions
were placed upon the county electorate, they might ex-
pect, by means of the votes of their retainers, not only
to" prevent the return of specially obnoxious knights, but
possibly to compass the election of some of those retainers
themselves.2 But by 1413, the situation had changed.
Henry IV. was dead and the new king and Commons were
in harmony. A statute of that year decreed that knights
elected to Parliament be resident at the time of election
in the counties which chose them and that the electors
be of the same county in which they voted.3 This
removed much that was dangerous in earlier practice and
which was sanctioned by the act of 1406, but not alL
In 1430, was passed the famous disfranchising statute.4
It leaves no doubt of the interest now taken in the county
elections. The statute mentions great troops of people,
residents of the county, who come to elections, and, by
their presence, cause danger of "manslaughter, riots, bat-
teries, and divisions*'; and there is this significant clause:
whereas the elections of knights
1 A. and S., document in. * Riess, Wahlrecht, pp, 87, 88.
»A. and S., document 115. 4 Ibid., document 121.