These accessions to the popular chamber of parliament after the reign of Henry VIII. were by no means derived from a popular principle, such as had influenced its earlier constitution. We may account perhaps on this ground for the writs addressed to a very few towns, such as Westminster. But the design of that great influx of new members from petty boroughs, which began in the short reigns of Edward and Mary, and continued under Elizabeth, must have been to secure the authority of government, especially in the successive revolutions of religion. Five towns only in Cornwall made returns at the accession of Edward VI.; twenty-one at the death of Elizabeth. It will not be pretended that the wretched villages, which corruption and perjury still hardly keep from famine, were seats of commerce and industry in the sixteenth century. But the county of Cornwall was more immediately subject to a coercive influence, through the indefinite and oppressive jurisdiction of the stannary court. Similar motives, if we could discover the secrets of those governments, doubtless operated in most other cases. A slight difficulty seems to have been raised in 1563 about the introduction of representatives from eight new boroughs at once by charters from the Crown, but was soon waived with the complaisance usual in those times. Many of the towns, which had abandoned their privilege at a time when they were compelled to the payment of daily wages to their members during the session, were now desirous of recovering it, when that burthen had ceased and the franchise had become valuable. And the house, out of favour to popular rights, laid it down in the reign of James I. as a principle, that every town, which has at any time returned members to parliament, is entitled to a writ as a matter of course. The speaker accordingly issued writs to Hertford, Pomfret, Ilchester, and some other places, on their petition. The restorations of boroughs in this manner, down to 1641, are fifteen in number. But though the doctrine that an elective right cannot be lost by disuse, is still current in parliament, none of the very numerous boroughs which have ceased to enjoy that franchise since the days of the three first Edwards, have from the restoration downwards made any attempt at retrieving it; nor is it by any means likely that they would be successful in the application. Charles I., whose temper inspired him rather with a systematic abhorrence of parliaments than with any notion of managing them by influence, created no new boroughs. The right indeed would certainly have been disputed, however frequently exercised. In 1673 the county and city of Durham, which had strangely been unrepresented to so late an æra, were raised by act of parliament to the privileges of their fellow-subjects.[67] About the same time a charter was granted to the town of Newark, enabling it to return two burgesses. It passed with some little objection at the