magistrates or chief men of cities, as it is still for the judges of the exchequer, and the representatives of the Cinque Ports.[14] The passage however before cited from the Great Charter of John affords one spot of firm footing in the course of our progress. Then, at least, it is evident that all tenants in chief were entitled to their summons; the greater barons by particular writs, the rest through one directed to their sheriff. The epoch when all, who, though tenants in chief, had not been actually summoned, were deprived of their right of attendance in parliament, is again involved in uncertainty and conjecture. The unknown writer quoted by Camden seems not sufficient authority to establish his assertion, that they were excluded by a statute made after the battle of Evesham. The principle was most likely acknowledged at an earlier time. Simon de Montfort summoned only twenty-three temporal peers to his famous parliament. In the year 1255 the barons complained that many of their number had not received their writs according to the tenor of the charter, and refused to grant an aid to the king till they were issued.[15] But it would have been easy to disappoint this mode of packing a parliament, if an unsummoned baron could have sat by mere right of his tenure. The opinion of Selden, that a law of exclusion was enacted towards the beginning of Henry's reign is not liable to so much objection. But perhaps it is unnecessary to frame an hypothesis of this nature. Writs of summons seem to have been older than the time of John;[16] and when this had become the customary and regular preliminary of a baron's coming to parliament, it was a natural transition to look upon it as an indispensable condition; in times when the prerogative was high, the law unsettled, and the service in parliament deemed by many still more burthensome than honourable. Some omissions in summoning the king's tenants to former parliaments may perhaps have produced the above-mentioned provision of the Great Charter, which had a relation to the imposition of taxes wherein it was deemed essential to obtain a more universal consent than was required in councils held for state, or even for advice.[17] [Sidenote: Whether mere tenants in chief attended parliament under Henry III.]