It is not easy to determine how long the inferior tenants in chief continued to sit personally in parliament. In the charters of Henry III., the clause which we have been considering is omitted: and I think there is no express proof remaining that the sheriff was ever directed to summon the king's military tenants within his county, in the manner which the charter of John required. It appears however that they were in fact members of parliament on many occasions during Henry's reign, which shows that they were summoned either by particular writs or through the sheriff; and the latter is the more plausible conjecture. There is indeed great obscurity as to the constitution of parliament in this reign; and the passages which I am about to produce may lead some to conceive that the freeholders were _represented_ even from its beginning. I rather incline to a different opinion. In the Magna Charta of 1 Henry III. it is said: Pro hâc donatione et concessione ... archiepiscopi, episcopi, comites, barones, milites, et liberè tenentes, et omnes de regno nostro, dederunt nobis quintam decimam partem omnium bonorum suorum mobilium.[18] So in a record of 19 Henry III.: Comites, et barones, et omnes alii de toto regno nostro Angliæ, spontaneâ voluntate suâ, concesserunt nobis efficax auxilium.[19] The largeness of these words is, however, controlled by a subsequent passage, which declares the tax to be imposed ad mandatum omnium comitum et baronum et omnium aliorum _qui de nobis tenent in capite_. And it seems to have been a general practice to assume the common consent of all ranks to that which had actually been agreed by the higher. In a similar writ, 21 Henry III., the rants of men are enumerated specifically; archiepiscopi, episcopi, abbates, priores, et clerici terras habentes quæ ad ecclesias suas non pertinent, comites, barones, milites, et liberi homines, pro se et suis villanis, nobis concesserunt in auxilium tricesimam partem omnium mobilium.[20] In the close roll of the same year, we have a writ directed to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, knights, and freeholders (liberi homines) of Ireland, in which an aid is desired of them, and it is urged that one had been granted by his fideles Angliæ.[21] But this attendance in parliament of inferior tenants in chief, some of them too poor to have received knighthood, grew insupportably vexatious to themselves, and was not well liked by the king. He knew them to be dependent upon the barons, and dreaded the confluence of a multitude, who assumed the privilege of coming in arms to the appointed place. So inconvenient and mischievous a scheme could not long subsist among an advancing people, and fortunately the true remedy was discovered with little difficulty. [Sidenote: Origin and progress of parliamentary representation.]