The invariable correspondence between the presence of burgesses in Parliament and the use or disuse of the system of committees, according as the king was weak or powerful, suggests as a possible explanation that the origin of the Committee of the Articles may be traced to an attempt of the barons to exclude the burgesses from Parliament. This view is confirmed to some extent by the fact that in 1371-72, within two years of the first employment of the device, the committee for the general business of Parliament seems to have been used for the purpose of excluding certain persons, while, both in 1369 and in 1371-72, burgesses were present in Parliament and were not elected to the General Committee. It was, further, only in this indirect way that Parliament could control the number of burgess members, for there is no evidence of the passing of any act dealing with burgess representation, and, as late as 1619, the Convention of Royal Burghs[59] ordered that every burgh, except Edinburgh, should send only one, instead of two, members to Parliament, and the resolution was carried into effect without even the formality of consulting the Estates. It cannot, however, be said that the evidence excludes the alternative explanation that these committees originated simply in the unwillingness of the burgesses to attend Parliament, and were afterwards employed by the barons for purposes of faction. But it is difficult to reconcile this view with the fact of the appearance of burgesses, in 1367, in such numbers that a choice of two members from each town could be made from among them, and with the instances of their retention for judicial purposes only, as well as with the concomitance, just pointed out, of the presence of burgesses and the election of Lords of the Articles. The next development in the history of the General Committee belongs to the year 1535, when King James V dispensed with the cumbrous device of two committees, and the Lords of the Articles entirely superseded the three Estates. As the Crown chanced to be strong, the committee was not allowed to deal with "all matters" as in the days when the king was weak, but only with such matters as it might "please his grace to lay before them," and King James reserved to himself the power of summoning all his prelates and barons if he should so wish. The new scheme was only for occasional use,[60] but it familiarized people with the all-sufficiency of the Lords of the Articles, and during the next reign Parliament ratified, without comment and as a matter of form, what they had done. Randolph, the English ambassador, has preserved for us a record of the proceedings in 1563.[61]