If indeed the knights were still elected by none but the king's military tenants, if the mode of representation was merely adopted to spare them the inconvenience of personal attendance, the immediate innovation in our polity was not very extensive. This is an interesting, but very obscure, topic of inquiry. Spelman and Brady, with other writers, have restrained the original right of election to tenants in chief, among whom, in process of time, those holding under mesne lords, not being readily distinguishable in the hurry of an election, contrived to slide in, till at length their encroachments were rendered legitimate by the statute 7 Hen. IV. c. 15, which put all suitors to the county court on an equal footing as to the elective franchise. The argument on this side might be plausibly urged with the following reasoning. The spirit of a feudal monarchy, which compelled every lord to act by the advice and assent of his immediate vassals, established no relation between him and those who held nothing at his hands. They were included, so far as he was concerned, in their superiors; and the feudal incidents were due to him from the whole of his vassal's fief, whatever tenants might possess it by subinfeudation. In England the tenants in chief alone were called to the great councils before representation was thought of, as is evident both by the charter of John, and by the language of many records; nor were any others concerned in levying aids or escuages, which were only due by virtue of their tenure. These military tenants were become, in the reign of Henry III., far more numerous than they had been under the Conqueror. If we include those who held of the king ut de honore, that is, the tenants of baronies escheated or in ward, who may probably have enjoyed the same privileges, being subject in general to the same burdens, their number will be greatly augmented, and form no inconsiderable portion of the freeholders of the kingdom. After the statute commonly called Quia emptores in the eighteenth of Edward I. they were likely to increase much more, as every licensed alienation of any portion of a fief by a tenant in chief would create a new freehold immediately depending upon the crown. Many of these tenants in capite held very small fractions of knight's fees, and were consequently not called upon to receive knighthood. They were plain freeholders holding in chief, and the liberi homines or libere tenentes of those writs which have been already quoted. The common form indeed of writs to the sheriff directs the knights to be chosen de communitate comitatûs. But the word communitas, as in boroughs, denotes only the superior part: it is not unusual to find mention in records of communitas populi or omnes de regno, where none are intended but the barons, or at most the tenants in chief. If we look attentively at the earliest instance of summoning knights of shires to parliament, that in 38 Henry III., which has been noticed above, it