council was no longer regarded as complete unless it contained a systematic representation of the three estates. All over Europe the thirteenth century saw the establishment of a system of estates. The various classes of the community, which had a separate social status and a common political interest, became organised communities, and sent their representatives to swell the council of the nation. By Edward's time there had already grown up in England some rough anticipation of the three estates of later history. ... It was with no intention of diminishing his power, but rather with the object of enlarging it, that Edward called the nation into some sort of partnership with him. The special clue to this aspect of his policy is his constant financial embarrassment. He found that he could get larger and more cheerful subsidies if he laid his financial condition before the representatives of his people. ... The really important thing was that Edward, like Montfort, brought shire and borough representatives together in a single estate, and so taught the country gentry, the lesser landowners, who, in a time when direct participation in politics was impossible for a lower class, were the real constituencies of the shire members, to look upon their interests as more in common with the traders of lower social status than with the greater landlords with whom in most continental countries the lesser gentry were forced to associate their lot. The result strengthened the union of classes, prevented the growth of the abnormally numerous privileged nobility of most foreign countries, and broadened and deepened the main current of the national life." _T. F. Tout, Edward the First, chapter 7-8._ {811} "There was nothing in England which answered to the 'third estate' in France--a class, that is to say, both isolated and close, composed exclusively of townspeople, enjoying no commerce with the rural population (except such as consisted in the reception of fugitives), and at once detesting and dreading the nobility by whom it was surrounded. In England the contrary was the case. The townsfolk and the other classes in each county were thrown together upon numberless occasions; a long period of common activity created a cordial understanding between the burghers on the one hand and their neighbours the knights and landowners on the other, and finally prepared the way for the fusion of the two classes." _E. Boutmy, The English Constitution, chapter 3._ ENGLAND: A. D. 1279. The Statute of Mortmain.