Note 298 — Chapter II

‘He is to be honoured as the founder of a representative system of government in this country.’ Campbell's Chief-Justices, vol. i. p. 61. Some writers (see, for instance, Dalrymple's Hist. of Feudal Property, p. 332) suppose that burgesses were summoned before the reign of Henry III.: but this assertion is not only unsupported by evidence, but is in itself improbable; because at an early period the citizens, though rapidly increasing in power, were hardly important enough to warrant such a step being taken. The best authorities are now agreed to refer the origin of the House of Commons to the period mentioned in the text. See Hallam's Supplement, Notes, pp. 335–339; Spence's Origin of the Laws of Europe, p. 512; Campbell's Chancellors, vol. i. p. 155; Lingard's England, vol. ii. p. 138; Guizot's Essais, p. 319. The notion of tracing this to the wittenagemot is as absurd as finding the origin of juries in the system of compurgators; both of which were favourite errors in the seventeenth, and even in the eighteenth century. In regard to the wittenagemot, this idea still lingers among antiquaries: but, in regard to compurgators, even they have abandoned their old ground, and it is now well understood that trial by jury did not exist till long after the Conquest. Compare Palgrave's English Commonwealth, part i. pp. 243 seq., with Meyer, Instit. Judic. vol. ii. pp. 152–173. There are few things in our history so irrational as the admiration expressed by a certain class of writers for the institutions of our barbarous Anglo-Saxon ancestors.