tumultuous proceeding take place; something of which sort appears to have obstructed the execution of the first writ. It is to be noticed that the commons are not so much as named in this entry.[256] But several provisions were made by statute under the Lancastrian kings, when seats in parliament became much more an object of competition than before, to check the partiality of the sheriffs in making undue returns. One act (11 H. IV. c. 1) gives the justices of assise power to inquire into this matter, and inflicts a penalty of one hundred pounds on the sheriff. Another (6 H. VI. c. 4) mitigates the rigour of the former, so far as to permit the sheriff or the knights returned by him to traverse the inquests before the justices; that is, to be heard in their own defence, which, it seems, had not been permitted to them. Another (23 H. VI. c. 14) gives an additional penalty upon false returns to the party aggrieved. These statutes conspire with many other testimonies to manifest the rising importance of the house of commons, and the eagerness with which gentlemen of landed estates (whatever might be the case in petty boroughs) sought for a share in the national representation. [Sidenote: In whom the right of voting for knights resided.] Whoever may have been the original voters for county representatives, the first statute that regulates their election, so far from limiting the privilege to tenants in capite, appears to place it upon a very large and democratical foundation. For (as I rather conceive, though not without much hesitation), not only all freeholders, but all persons whatever present at the county-court, were declared, or rendered, capable of voting for the knight of their shire. Such at least seems to be the inference from the expressions of 7 H. IV. c. 15, "all who are there present, as well suitors duly summoned for that cause as others."[257] And this acquires some degree of confirmation from the later statute, 8 H. VI. c. 7, which, reciting that "elections of knights of shires have now of late been made by very great, outrageous, and excessive number of people dwelling within the same counties, of the which most part was people of small substance and of no value," confines the elective franchise to freeholders of lands or tenements to the value of forty shillings. [Sidenote: Elections of burgesses.]