In the Parliament of the 18th of Edward the first there were no Citizens or Burgesses. There is a bundle of writs yet extant, by which this Parliament was summoned. They are directed to the sheriffs of several or most of the counties of England, by which two or three Knights were directed to be chosen for each county, and accordingly the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge and Huntingdon, and Cumberland returned each of them _three_ Knights, and the other counties two each. This Parliament gave the King a fifteenth of all their moveables as appears by the account of the same which is entered upon the Great Roll of the 23d of that king, in which account we have the style of this Parliament, namely, “The account of the fifteenth, granted to the king in his 18th year, by the Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Priors, Earls, Barons, and _all others of the kingdom_, assessed, collected, and levied,” &c. We may here observe that the two or three Knights, chosen by the several counties, did represent those counties, and according to the form of the writ, consulted upon and consented to this grant of a fifteenth. So also in the 22d Edward the First there were neither Citizens nor Burgesses summoned to the Parliament of that year. On the 8th of October the king issued writs directed to every sheriff in England to cause two discreet Knights to be chosen for each county, with full powers, “so that for defect of such powers, the business might not remain undone.” And on the following day the king issued other writs to the sheriffs to cause to be elected two knights more, to be added to the former two, making four for each county, and these four Knights for each county, and the Earls, Barons, and Great Men, on the day of their meeting gave the king a tenth part of all their goods. Footnote 39: This was only a grant of forty shillings for every Knight’s fee.—See Rolls of Parliament, vol. 2, p. 112, a. hereinafter referred to in 14 of Edward III. Footnote 40: Proxies in Parliament is a privilege appropriated to the Lords only; the first instance of a Proxy that occurs in the History of the English Parliament, is in the reign of Edward the first. In a Parliament at Westminster in the reign of Edward the second, the bishops of Durham and Carlisle were allowed to send their Proxies to Parliament. In the early period of the History of Parliament, the Lords were not obliged to make Barons only their Proxies as the custom now is; the Bishops and Parliamentary Abbots usually gave their letters of proxy to Prebendaries, Parsons, and Canons; but since the first year of king Henry the eighth, there appear in the journals no Proxies but such as were Lords of Parliament.