(9) See Norman Conquest, iv. 694. In this case the Chronicler, under the year 1086, distinguishes two classes in the Assembly, “his witan and ealle Þa landsittende men Þe ahtes wæron ofer eall Engleland.” These “landsittende men” were evidently the forerunners of the “libere tenentes,” who, whether their holdings were great or small, kept their place in the early Parliaments. See Hallam, ii. 140-146, where will be found many passages showing the still abiding traces of the popular constitution of the Assembly. (10) The practice of summoning particular persons can be traced up to very early times. See Kemble, ii. 202, for instances in the reign of Æthelstan. On its use in later times, see Hallam, ii. 254-260; and on the irregularity in the way of summoning the spiritual peers, ii. 253. The bearing of these precedents on the question of life peerages will be seen by any one who goes through Sir T. E. May’s summary, Constitutional History, i. 291-298. (11) Sismondi, Histoire des Français, v. 289: “Ce roi, le plus absolu entre ceux qui ont porté la couronne de France, le moins occupé du bien de ses peuples, le moins consciencieux dans son observation des droits établis avant lui, est cependant le restaurateur des assemblées populaires de la France, et l’auteur de la représentation des communes dans les états généraux.” See Historical Essays, 45. (12) See the history of Stephen Martel in Sismondi, Histoire des Français, vol. vi. cap. viii. ix., and the account of the dominion of the Butchers, vii. 259, and more at large in Thierry’s History of the Tiers-État, capp. ii. iii. (13) The Parliament of Paris, though it had its use as some small check on the mere despotism of the Crown, can hardly come under the head of free institutions. France, as France, under the old state of things, cannot be said to have kept any free institutions at all; the only traces of freedom were to be found in the local Estates which still met in several of the provinces. See De Tocqueville, Ancien Régime, 347. (14) The thirteenth century was the time when most of the existing states and nations of Europe took something like their present form and constitution. The great powers which had hitherto, in name at least, divided the Christian and Mahometan world, the Eastern and Western Empires and the Eastern and Western Caliphates, may now be looked on as practically coming to an end. England, France, and Spain began to take something like their present shape, and to show the beginnings of the characteristic position and policy of each. The chief languages of Western Europe grew into something like their modern form. In short, the character of this age as a time of beginnings and endings might be traced out in detail through the most part of Europe and Asia.