394 The Period of Constitution iviafcing

portance is attached to the beginnings of things really
great, petty and obscure influences may play a great
role.1' There was a £J2L^ecline in

boroughs receiving the summons from the_one^_hundred

to^about 1445 when only
Then~TKere~"was a slow

new boroughs were added later
in Henry VI.'s reign, and Edward IV. added or restored
five. Under the later Tudors there was a rather rapid
increase. But there is much evidence that there was a
tremendous gap between the number of boroughs receiving
the summons and nominally returning members and the
number of burgesses actually present at a session in
Westminster. A careful study of the expense records
indicates that in many, perhaps most, Parliaments of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the number of burgesses
fell below the stable seventy-four knights always present
for the thirty-seven shires. Thus it was not alone in
status and influence that the knights were above the
burgesses in the early Commons, but in numbers also.2
The sheriff had about as much opportunity to manipu-
late borough as county representation. The writ ordering
the election passed through his hands and he might be
induced not to send it. Such suppression of writs seems
to have occurred occasionally in the last half of the
fourteenth century and later, when the list of boroughs
that commonly sent representatives had become quite
fixed.3 Moreover, it was possible for the sheriff, since
the names of the borough members had to be returned
through him together with the results of the shire elec-
tions, to change the names. This left the boroughs quite
powerless since the Chancery did not ordinarily go back
of the sheriff's returns. There was no reason for this
abuse until seats in Parliament were regarded as worth
something. It was somewhat lessened through the peti-
1 For a full discussion of this subject, see Riess, Wahlrecht, ch, ii.
2 Pollard, Evolution of Parliament, pp. 316-319.
* A statute of 1382 provided for the punishment of sheriffs who omitted
boroughs that had before sent members.