foreshadowing of one of the most weighty innovations which were to be made by the constitutional reformers of the latter part of the century. It seems that at the end of October or early in November the tenants by knight-service were ordered to meet the king at Oxford on November 15. On November 7 John sent letters to the sheriffs bidding each one of them cause the knights within his shire to appear as previously directed, with their arms, the barons also in person but without arms, “and”--so ran the writ--“that thou cause to come thither at the same time four discreet men of the shire, to speak with us concerning the affairs of our realm.”[861] This writ is the earliest known instance of an attempt to call into council on “the affairs of the realm” representatives of the freemen of the shire, as distinguished from the tenants-in-chivalry. Representatives in the strict sense of the word, indeed, they were not; the writ says nothing of how they were to be chosen, and there can be little doubt that they would be selected by the sheriff. Still, the fact remains that--so far as extant evidence goes--John Lackland seems to have been the first English statesman who proposed to give some place, however subordinate, in the great council of the realm to laymen who were neither barons nor knights, but simple freemen. His motive is plain; he was seeking to win the support of the yeomen as a counterpoise to the hostility of the barons. Unluckily we know nothing of the results of his experiment, and cannot even be sure that it was actually tried; for though the king was certainly at Oxford in that year on November 15 and the two following days,[862] no mention occurs, in either chronicle or record, of any council holden there at that date. [Sidenote: 1213–14]