416 The Period of Constitution iviaKing-
law. The common petitions, after knights and burgesses
were regularly in Parliament, would naturally arise there.
Parliament was representative, it was often enough in
session, it was fitted to express public sentiment, it could
replace the irregular and revolutionary risings which had
been the only means of voicing general grievances. These
petitions were rather in the realm of public law, they
were political.x
The growth of the common petition was the natural result
of the collection of knights and burgesses in a common gath-
ering at Westminster and of the collective answer the crown
required to its requests for money. Members from divers
constituencies could hardly fail to fall into a habit of com-
paring notes, possibly at first in informal conversation and
afterwards in more regular ways, with respect to the peti-
tions with which they were charged; and sooner or later
they would be impressed by the extent to which these indi-
vidual petitions had a common foundation in the normal
behaviour or misbehaviour of the ministers of the king,
judges, sheriffs, escheators and so forth. Before long it must
have occurred to the shrewder among these early parliament-
arians that it would be wise to pool their petitions and their
powers of pressure upon the crown. It was an elementary
form of union, for which the crown itself had paved the way
by demanding common grants of aids and subsidies from
the commons at Westminster instead of demanding them
from individual "communitates" throughout the coun-
try; ... *
1 While we thus see a qualitative as well as a quantitative difference
between the individual and common petitions, this was hardly in mind
at the time. " By no sharp line can the petitions of the assembled lords and
commoners be marked off from the general mass of those petitions which
are to be expedited in the parliament by the king and his council. At a
somewhat later date the line will be drawn; the petitions of the assembled
commons, the petitions of 'the community of the land,' will be enrolled
along with the king's answers to them; petitions addressed to either of
the two houses will be enrolled, if they have received the assent of both
houses and of the king; but the ordinary petitions presented to the king
and council by those who have grievances will not be enrolled, though as
of old many of them will be answered in parliament by committees o* aud-
itors."—Maitland, Introduction to Memoranda de Parliament, pp. Ixxiv..
Ixxv,
* Pollard, Evolution of Parliament, pp. 118, 119.