(65) Both these forms of undue influence on the part of the Crown are set forth by Hallam, Constitutional History, i. 45, ii. 203. “It will not be pretended,” he says, “that the wretched villages, which corruption and perjury still hardly keep from famine [this was written before the Reform Bill, in 1827], were seats of commerce and industry in the sixteenth century. But the county of Cornwall was more immediately subject to a coercive influence, through the indefinite and oppressive jurisdiction of the stannary court. Similar motives, if we could discover the secrets of those governments, doubtless operated in most other cases.” In the same page the historian, speaking of the different boroughs and counties which received the franchise in the sixteenth century, says, “It might be possible to trace the reason, why the county of Durham was passed over.” And he suggests, “The attachment of those northern parts to popery seems as likely as any other.” The reason for the omission of Durham was doubtless that the Bishoprick had not wholly lost the character of a separate principality. It was under Charles the Second that Durham city and county, as well as Newark, first sent members to Parliament. Durham was enfranchised by Act of Parliament, as Chester city and county—hitherto kept distinct as being a Palatinate—were by 34 & 35 Hen. VIII. c. 13. (Revised Statutes, i. 522.) Newark was enfranchised by a Royal Charter, the last case of that kind of exercise of the prerogative. Hallam, ii. 204. (66) I do not know what was the exact state of Old Sarum in 1265 or in 1295, but earlier in the thirteenth century it was still the chief dwelling-place both of the Earl and of the Bishop. But in the reign of Edward the Third it had so greatly decayed that the stones of the Cathedral were used for the completion of the new one which had arisen in the plain. (67) On the relations between Queen Elizabeth and her Parliaments, and especially for the bold bearing of the two Wentworths, Peter and Paul, see the fifth chapter of Hallam’s Constitutional History, largely grounded on the Journals of Sir Simonds D’Ewes. The frontispiece to D’Ewes’ book (London, 1682) gives a lively picture of a Parliament of those days. (68) On the relations between the Crown and the House of Commons under James the First, see the sixth chapter of Hallam’s Constitutional History, and the fifth chapter of Gardner’s History of England from 1603 to 1616. CHAPTER III. (1) This was the famous motion made by Sir Robert Peel against the Ministry of Lord Melbourne, and carried by a majority of one, June 4, 1841. See May’s Constitutional History, i. 158. Irving’s Annals of our Times, 86.