As the knights of shires correspond to the lower nobility of other feudal countries, we have less cause to be surprised that they belonged originally to the same branch of parliament as the barons, than at their subsequent intermixture with men so inferior in station as the citizens and burgesses. It is by no means easy to define the point of time when this distribution was settled; but I think it may be inferred from the rolls of parliament that the houses were divided as they are at present in the eighth, ninth, and nineteenth years of Edward II.[87] This appears, however, beyond doubt in the first of Edward III.[88] Yet in the sixth of the same prince, though the knights and burgesses are expressly mentioned to have consulted together, the former taxed themselves in a smaller rate of subsidy than the latter.[89] The proper business of the House of Commons was to petition for redress of grievances, as much as to provide for the necessities of the crown. In the prudent fiction of English law no wrong is supposed to proceed from the source of right. The throne is fixed upon a pinnacle, which perpetual beams of truth and justice irradiate, though corruption and partiality may occupy the middle region and cast their chill shade upon all below. In his high court of parliament a king of England was to learn where injustice had been unpunished and where right had been delayed. The common courts of law, if they were sufficiently honest, were not sufficiently strong, to redress the subject's injuries where the officers of the crown or the nobles interfered. To parliament he looked as the great remedial court for relief of private as well as public grievances. For this cause it was ordained in the fifth of Edward II. that the king should hold a parliament once, or if necessary, twice every year; "that the pleas which have been thus delayed, and those where the justices have differed, may be brought to a close."[90] And a short act of 4 Edward III., which was not very strictly regarded, provides that a parliament shall be held "every year, or oftener, if need be."[91] By what persons, and under what limitations, this jurisdiction in parliament was exercised will come under our future consideration. [Sidenote: Edward II. Petitions of parliament during his reign.]