396 The Period of Constitution Making
bailiffs sent the result to the sheriff, who included it in his
statement of the county election which was sent to the
Chancery.I Till the Tudor period the boroughs returned
residents or " neighboring gentlemen whom they regarded
with respect"; but the Tudors' attempts to control elec-
tions developed the practice of electing at times men in
distant parts of the country.
y. Origin of the Chief Powers of Parliament: Control
over Taxation; Legislation; a Share in Administration.—
What has already been said of the functions of the repre-
sentative elements in the early Parliament has shown
them narrow and subordinate. The Commons were
present to vote taxes—which, paradoxical as it may
seem, dif^^^^^^&^gS^^T^se^em.; tcLpgtition
humblyrto aiisjsrarjj^^ servile part
played by the third estate in the French Estates General
of the same period was not unlike that of the corresponding
element in the English assembly. To be sure, the knights
of the shire, from their antecedents and local influence,
were accorded more consideration than the burgesses,
and in the union of these elements lay the greatest possi-
bilities. But it was all possibility at the beginning of
the fourteenth century, and we turn now from the study
of its structural beginnings to see how Parliament grew
conscious of itself as something apart from the king and
started on the road to power; how it became an institu-
tion fitted some day to gain or uphold the principles of
constitutional monarchy. Only the beginning of the
development is dealt with here, substantially what was
included in the fourteenth century; but in that period
nearly all Parliament's activities were outlined.
A preliminary consideration is to account for the early
remarkable vitality of Parliament. In order that Par-
liament should gain power of any sort, there must be
reasonably frequent meetings; the more frequent they
were in the early days, the more rapidly would grow the
1 On the general subject of the borough franchise, see Riess, Wahlrecht,
pp. 59-62.