same, to compear within the Tolbooth upon eight days' warning ... and there to choose one or two of the most qualified barons ... to be commissioners for the whole shire." Once again legislation was fruitless, and the fact confirms the suggestion that it was a mere party move. But it called attention to a constitutional grievance, and twenty years later the matter was taken up in earnest. It is not easy to believe that action was taken in 1585 purely out of love for constitutional principles. A keen religious contest was in progress, and the smaller barons were, as in 1560 and 1567, on the side of the General Assembly. One is therefore inclined to infer that the "article" which was presented to Parliament urging how "necessary it is that his highness and they be well and truly informed of the needs and causes pertaining to his loving subjects in all Estates, especially the commons of the Realm," originated in ecclesiastical quarters. It was decided to reaffirm the "gude and lovable" Act of 1427. The details of machinery need not detain us. There was to be an election of "two wise men being the king's freeholders resident indwellers of the shire of good rent," chosen by "all freeholders of the king under the degree of prelates and lords of Parliament," who have "forty shillings land in free tenandry of the king and their actual dwelling and residence within the same shire." The act was ratified two years later, when his Majesty had reached "his lawful and perfect age of twenty-one years complete"; and it was added that the shires should be taxed to pay the expenses of their commissioners. No other alteration of principle took place until the Reform Act of 1832. In the reign of William and Mary the proportion of members to each shire was readjusted. But the Acts of 1585 and 1587, succeeding where the Act of 1427 had failed, detached the small barons from the greater freeholders and created a new "Estate" of the realm.