On a general review of the evidence several points are clear. The device of superseding Parliament by a committee was employed for the first time under a weak king, and precisely at the moment when burgesses were first appearing as an integral part of Parliament. After it was elaborated in 1369, the method continued to be employed on every occasion on which burgesses were present, and, so far as we know, only when burgesses were present, till the return of James I from England; and its usual result was to exclude the burgess element from the effective work of Parliament. From the date when James I had established his power to the time of his murder, in 1436-37, burgesses were regularly present, and there were no committees, except for judicial purposes, and on these burgesses were represented. The ordinary business of Parliament was transacted by the three Estates meeting in their full numbers. Between the death of James I and the fall of the house of Douglas, in 1451-52, we are again uncertain as to the presence of burgesses in Parliament, and there were no Lords of the Articles, so far as can be ascertained. The one occasion on which we know that burgesses took a share in the work of Parliament was in January 1449-50, when the young James II first asserted himself by procuring the forfeiture of the Livingstones, and here, as under the strong rule of James I, the presence of burgesses is no longer accompanied by the existence of the committees which occupy so prominent a place when burgesses are present and the barons are in power. So, again, after the king had defeated the great House, and had begun to rule in person, we find burgesses regularly present in Parliament, and the only committee was the judicial one, on which they find a place. During the first few years of the minority of James III the policy of the late king was continued by Bishop Kennedy, and it is not till after his death that the Lords of the Articles reappear. During the years of intrigue and faction which followed the death of Kennedy in 1465, the Committee of the Articles was developed and established as a normal part of parliamentary procedure.