The burgesses had, indeed, a method of communicating with the king. Fordun tells us that in 1211 "King William held a great council at Stirling, when there were present his optimates, who gave him ten thousand marks, besides six thousand marks promised by the burgesses." It was with this quotation that Stuart clinched his argument. But the chronicler's words do not imply that the grants were made at the same meeting. We know, too, that each town sometimes treated separately with the king; and that for centuries before they were represented in the Great Councils the burgesses met in purely burghal assemblies. The "four burghs" of the South,[21] of which Edinburgh was the head, and the "Hanse burghs" of the North, which grouped themselves round Aberdeen, held their own conventions, legislated for themselves, and dealt directly with the king.[22] There was no necessity for their representation in the council. Beyond statements of chroniclers about the whole people's choosing a king[23] and so forth, we have absolutely no evidence that the Great Council, before the War of Independence, was anything more than a strictly feudal assembly, attended by such tenants-in-chief as chose to be present. 2. We pass now to consider the membership of the Scottish Parliament after the War of Independence. The first instance of the use of the word "parliamentum" is in connection with the treaty of Brigham, made in 1289 between Edward I of England and the Scots; but the terminology is obviously due to English influence, and there is no evidence whatsoever of any popular representation. It is not till the year 1326 that we find a complete parliament, containing lords and commons, and this must be kept in mind while we proceed to the consideration of the normal form of the "Estates of Scotland." In the first place, we have the clergy. Bishops, abbots, and priors possessed, as tenants-in-chief, the same right of attendance in councils as secular freeholders had, and they could more easily make use of their opportunities. At the Reformation, the bishops who became protestants, the lay commendators, and the "tulchan bishops," seem to have kept their seats. But acts between 1560 and 1597 speak of the "decay of the ecclesiastical estate," and we know from the lists of Lords of the Articles that the clergy almost ceased to be an essential portion of the Scottish Parliament. Presbyterianism neither desired nor claimed any such right. Its aim, as we shall see, was higher. We do, indeed, find that in 1567 Parliament thocht expedient ... that thair be adjoynit unto thame in treating of the thingis concerning the kirkis, thir personis underwritten, to wit, Maister John Spottiswood, Maister Johne Craig, Johne Knox, Maister Johne Row, and Maister David Lindesay or any three or foure of thame.