*24. The House of Commons in 1485.*--The House of Commons at the beginning of the Tudor period was a body of some 300 members. It contained 74 knights of the shire, representing all but three of the forty English counties, together with a fluctuating number of representatives of cities and boroughs. In the Model Parliament of 1295 the number of urban districts represented was 166, but as time went on the number declined, in part because of the discrimination exercised from time to time in the selection of boroughs to be represented, and in part by reason of the fact that in times when representation did not appear to yield tangible results the borough taxpayers begrudged the two shillings per day paid their representatives, in some instances sufficiently to be induced to abandon altogether the sending of members. By the time of Edward IV. (1399-1413) the number of represented towns had fallen to 111. At the beginning of the fifteenth century county members were elected by the body of freeholders present at the county court, but by statute of 1429 the electoral privilege was restricted to freeholders resident in the county and holding land of the yearly rental value of forty shillings, equivalent, perhaps, to some L30 to L40 in present values. This rule, adopted originally with the express purpose of disfranchising "the very great and outrageous number of people either of small substance or of no value" who had been claiming an electoral equality with the "worthy knights and squires," continued in operation without amendment until 1832. The electoral systems prevailing in the boroughs exhibited at all times the widest variation, and never prior to 1832 was there serious attempt to establish uniformity of practice. In some places (the so-called "scot and lot" boroughs) the suffrage was exercised by all rate-payers; in others, by the holders of particular tenements ("burgage" franchise); in others (the "potwalloper" (p. 024) boroughs) by all citizens who had hearths of their own; in many, by the municipal corporation, or by the members of a guild, or even by neighboring landholders. Borough electoral arrangements ran the full gamut from thoroughgoing democracy to the narrowest kind of oligarchy.