It does not appear at all probable that such varying and indefinite usages, as we find in our present representation of boroughs, could have begun simultaneously, when they were first called to parliament by Edward I. and his two next descendants. There would have been what may be fairly called a common-law right, even were we to admit that some variation from it may, at the very commencement, have occurred in particular places. The earliest writ of summons directed the sheriff to make a return from every borough within his jurisdiction, without any limitation to such as had obtained charters, or any rule as to the electoral body. Charters, in fact, incorporating towns seem to have been by no means common in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and though they grew more frequent afterwards, yet the first that gave expressly a right of returning members to parliament was that of Wenlock under Edward IV. These charters, it has been contended, were incorporations of the inhabitants, and gave no power either to exclude any of them or to admit non-resident strangers, according to the practice of later ages. But, however this may be, it is highly probable that the word burgess (burgensis), long before the elective franchise or the character of a corporation existed, meant literally the free inhabitant householder of a borough, a member of its court-leet, and subject to its jurisdiction. We may, I believe, reject with confidence what I have reckoned as the third proposition; namely, that the elective franchise belonged, as of common right, to the freemen of corporations; and still more that of Brady, which few would be found to support at the present day.