ABSTRACT
In the last years of Elizabeth, signs of a revival of opposition came not from the Upper but from the Lower House; under the management of James, the Commons developed a new tradition of political resistance, under a new class of leaders, and created constitutional precedents more novel in reality than they were in law. But the feature most distinctive of the English Parliament was the method of mutual accommodation by which the gentry and the burgesses shared between them the anomalous representative system. The life and the wealth of England was to be found chiefly in the farm and the manor house, yet the Chamber that represented her opinion contained only 92 members for the counties, and some 400 members for the towns. The pick of the country gentlemen, sent by far-distant communities to act together for a few weeks in St Stephen’s Chapel, came up uncorrupted by previous contact with Vanity Fair.
