The circumstance of receiving a salary does not appear to have compromised the independence of members, but to the contrary, as they were thus enabled to keep their honesty the purer, by resisting the venal attacks of the Court. The integrity of members seems to have suffered when their fees were no longer recognized. The “Pensioner Parliament” came into existence precisely at the epoch when representatives remitted “their wages;” a significant circumstance, but indicative of the times; when selfishness usurped the place of patriotism, members sacrificed the modest retainers designed to keep them honest, that they might be the less fettered to bargain in their own interests. “The senate, which should head-strong Princes stay, Let’s loose the reins, and gives the Realm away; With lavish hands they constant tributes give, And annual stipends for their guilt receive.” (ANDREW MARVELL: _An Historical Poem_.) The proverbial incorruptibility of Andrew Marvell is a case in point. This example of a true patriot is erroneously said to have been the last member who received wages from his constituents. He died in 1678, M.P. for Hull.[5] Others, his contemporaries, maintained the right, and suffered their arrears to accumulate, as a cheap resource at the next election. Marvell more than once, in his correspondence, speaks of members threatening to sue their boroughs for pay.[6] Lord Braybrooke, in his notes to Pepys’s “Diary,” refers to a case, noticed by Lord Campbell in his “Life of Lord Nottingham,” where the M.P. for Harwich, in 1681, petitioned the Lord Chancellor, as that borough had failed “to pay him his wages.” A writ was issued “De expensis Burgensium levandis.” Lord Campbell adds, “For this point of the People’s Charter [payment of wages] no new law is required.”[7] Pepys’s later allusions concern the constantly threatened dissolutions; in November, 1668, he records, “The great discourse now is that the Parliament shall be dissolved and another called, which shall give the King the Dean and Chapter’s lands, and that will put him out of debt,” concluding with a hint that the subtle and “brisk” Duke of Buckingham, at that time the actual ruler of the kingdom, “does knowingly meet daily with Wildman and other Commonwealth-men,” the while deceiving Charles into the belief that his intrigues were of a more tender nature. At Whitehall, the same month, Pepys acquires some fresh and rather significant information upon the subject of the Commons; it is imparted to him that--