Meanwhile the Angles and Saxons and their Teutonic kindred had long--even before leaving the continent--been familiar with the idea of representation.[56-2] Free men might be appointed or selected, not necessarily by vote, to attend a moot, including several towns or burghs, with authority to act there in the name of their fellows. And when, after the Norman Conquest, the people had sufficiently recovered themselves to be able to refuse taxes levied without their consent, the natural method of giving or withholding that consent was through representatives. If the king wanted money, he might ask the lords and bishops who were present and could speak for themselves in his councils, but he must ask also the people who, unable to present themselves in a vast body, were represented by some one who spoke for them. King John in 1213 bids "discreet men" from each shire come to Oxford,[56-3] and his son Henry III. in 1254 issues a writ requiring "to cause to come before the King's Council two good and discreet Knights of the Shire, whom the men of the county {57} shall have chosen for this purpose in the stead of all and of each of them, to consider along with the knights of other shires what aid they will grant the king."[57-1] In a similar writ of 1295 the term "to be elected" is first used instead of the less specific instruction "chosen."[57-2] The word representative, to describe such a person "chosen" or "elected" "with full and sufficient power _for themselves and for the community_"[57-3] was not yet in use. It appears in print in Cromwell's time,[57-4] and was then possibly new political jargon. The council so composed developed into the British Parliament, that name coming into use for it in 1275.[57-5] With the king it was for years the law-making power of the British Isles. The peers held their seats in the House of Lords by personal right, as did the wise men of the Witenagamot.[57-6] They acted on their own account, and were responsible to no one. The members of the House of Commons held their seats by no personal right, but as representatives of a large body of commoners {58} who could not all attend. They were chosen for this purpose, and derived authority from the people who employed them. The king in his own right gave or withheld his sanction to the measures agreed upon by the two houses. It followed that the king and peers had no vote for representatives in Parliament, as, being present to act for themselves, they needed none.