The British Parliament
PARLIAMENT
1) THE ELECTORAL PROCESS:
The basis of shire representation was, of course, the shire court. The shire court was almost a microcosm
of parliament with the role of the king being taken by his servant the sheriff and the composition of the
court consisting of all the freeholders of the county irrespective of their feudal status. In practice it seems
that the magnates very soon ceased to attend the shire court in person, though they may well have sent
stewards or representatives. From the early thirteenth century it was dominated, more or less, by a small
group of local knights, some of whom also represented the court in Parliament. It was the county court
which made elections to parliament under the direction of the sheriff. The knights of the shire elected to
parliament although themselves drawn from a narrow social group were expected to represent the whole
community of the county and not just their own order. From the beginning, therefore, it was the
community of the shire which was represented in parliament and not, as in other parts of Europe, a
particular feudal class or Estate. There were such estates in England, in particular the Estate of Merchants
and Edward Ist did deal with them as an Estate, but the representative assemblies to which members of
the estate of merchants were summoned were different both in purpose and in composition from the wider
representation embodied in what came to be called parliaments . The reasons for this distinction lie, at
least in part, in the legal mechanisms used by the chancery clerks in framing the writs which initiated the
electoral process.
WRITS, RETURNS AND MANDATES -
The county election was initiated by a writ issued by the Chancery to the sheriff ordering him to arrange
for the election of knights and burgesses to attend a specific parliament. The essential precepts...
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