This privilege, however, of sending representatives to Parliament was not one which the towns were eager to grasp. The burgesses did not care to leave their business, and undertake an expensive and dangerous journey to attend the Parliament. It was an arrangement more for the King's convenience than for theirs. When they got there they had nothing to do but vote grants of money. It was only slowly, and without any outward struggle, that the knights, who represented the shires, and the burgesses, who represented the cities, came to take any part in legislation. It was in this respect that the reign of Edward III. saw a great change. In the Parliaments of Edward I. each order had deliberated separately. The clergy, the barons, the knights, and the burgesses made their grants separately. At first the barons and the knights, whose interests were very similar, tended to combine. The importance of the burgesses, however, increased during the reign of Edward II., as the barons needed their aid in the struggle against the Crown. As they increased in importance the knights of the shire seem to have broken off their connexion with the barons, and joined with the burgesses. We do not know how this change was brought about; but in the beginning of the reign of Edward III. we find the knights and burgesses combined together under the name of _the Commons_. That the knights of the shire united with the burgesses, and not with the barons, is a fact of immense importance in our constitutional history. Had they united with the barons, the aristocratic party would have been the strongest in the State. As it was, the Commons, the people, were to be the strongest. In the reign of Edward III., therefore, we find Parliament divided very much as it now is, into the Upper and Lower Houses. The clergy still sat apart, and formed what is now called the House of Convocation. Only the spiritual peers, that is, the members of the higher clergy, who by holding land directly from the Crown were in the same position as the barons, sat in the Upper House of Parliament. It was during the reign of Edward III. that the Commons first began to feel their power and importance, and really to desire the privilege of sitting in Parliament. This is one of the signs of the progress they made at this time. They were eager to make laws, and the King himself shared their eagerness, and in consequence this reign is marked by fussy legislation on many different points.