the case, the most distinguished lawyers notoriously considered the court and country as plaintiff and defendant in a great suit, and themselves as their retained advocates. It is not likely, however, that Heyle should have used the exact words imputed to him. He made, no doubt, a strong speech for prerogative, but so grossly to transcend all limits of truth and decency seems even beyond a lawyer seeking office. Townsend and D'Ewes write with a sort of sarcastic humour, which is not always to be taken according to the letter. D'Ewes, 433; Townsend, 205. Hume proceeds to tell us, that it was asserted this session, that the speaker might either admit or reject bills in the house; and remarks, that the very proposal of it is a proof at what a low ebb liberty was at that time in England. There cannot be a more complete mistake. No such assertion was made; but a member suggested that the speaker might, as the consuls in the Roman senate used, appoint the order in which bills should be read; at which speech, it is added, some hissed. D'Ewes, 677. The present regularity of parliamentary forms, so justly valued by the house, was yet unknown; and the members called confusedly for the business they wished to have brought forward. [434] _Parl. Hist._ 958. In the session of 1571, a committee was appointed to confer with the attorney and solicitor-general about the return of burgesses from nine places which had not been presented in the last parliament. But in the end it was "ordered, by Mr. Attorney's assent, that the burgesses shall remain according to their returns; for that the validity of the charters of their towns is elsewhere to be examined, if cause be." D'Ewes p. 156, 159. D'Ewes observes that it was very common in former times, in order to avoid the charge of paying wages to their burgesses, that a borough which had fallen into poverty or decay, either got licence of the sovereign for the time being to be discharged from electing members, or discontinued it of themselves; but that of late the members for the most part bearing their own charges, many of those towns which had thus discontinued their privilege, renewed it both in Elizabeth's reign and that of James. P. 80. This could only have been, it is hardly necessary to say, by obtaining writs out of chancery for that purpose. As to the payment of wages, the words of D'Ewes intimate that it was not entirely disused. In the session of 1586, the borough of Grantham complained that Arthur Hall (whose name now appears for the last time) had sued them for wages due to him as their representative in the preceding parliament; alleging that, as well by reason of his negligent attendance and some other offences by him committed in some of its sessions, as of his promise not to require any such wages, they ought not to be charged; and a committee having been appointed to enquire into this, reported that they had requested Mr. Hall to remit his claim for wages, which he had freely done. D'Ewes, p. 417.