Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/427

 12 s. ii. NOV. 25, 1916. ] NOTES AND QUERIES.

421

LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER :.'.:, 191G.

CONTENTS. No. 48.


 * Payment of Members : a Zone System of Allow,

ance, 421 The Grammar School, Entield, 423 Inscrip- tions in the Burial-Ground of the Chapel Royal, Savoy, 425 Cyprus Cat Hardv's 'The Three Strangers ' War Jewellery of Iron Midsummer Fires and Twelfth-Day Fires in England, 427 German and Austrian Princes killed in the War -Magic Drum, 428.

QUERIES : Forrester, Simpson, Dickson. and Anderson, 428 Author Wanted Stevenson -Peirson Manora, Manareh Nances of the Moon" ffoliott "and " ffrench " The Ghazel Col. J. Suther Williamson, R.A. Prof. T. Winstanley Boat-Race won by Oxford with Seven Oars- Bath Forum, 429 Effect of War on a Nation's Physique- Spanish Women and Smoking Tiller Bowe : Brandreth : Rackencrookp : Gavelock : Maubre Timothy Constable- Numbering; Public Vehicles Chapels of Ease : Tithe Barns Hungary Hill, Stourbridge John Prudde : " King's Glazier," 430.

'REPLIES: An Euglish Army List of 1740 Mews or Mewys Family, 432 -Harding of Somerset. 434 Farmers' Sayings Will of Prince Rupert^The Third Yellow quilt, 435 Edward Herbert, M.P. " Septem sine horis " Authors Wanted Certain Gentlemen of the Sixteenth Century, 436 ' The Morning Post,' Restoration of Old Deeds and Manuscripts, 437 Right Hon. Sir Andrew R. Scoble St. Inan, 438.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' The True History of the Conquest of New Spain.'

'Books of the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century. Notices to Correspondents.

PAYMENT OF MEMBERS:

A ZONE SYSTEM OF ALLOWANCE

IN EARLY TIMES.

IT is a commonplace of our Parliamentary Tiistory that members of the House of Commons, in its earliest days of directly representative existence, were paid for their services, 4. daily being chargeable upon the localities concerned for each knight of the shire, and 2s. for each burgess. The usual assumption has been that the number of days paid for in the respective instances indicated the number of attendances put in at the Parliament House ; but examination of . the writs would seem to show that it really embraces the official estimate of the time occupied by members in travelling to and from the place of meeting, which" was not invariably Westminster, as well as the actual period of sitting. It looks, indeed, as if there were recognized by the authorities concerned a kind of zone system, members ^receiving a steadily increasing allowance the

farther away they dwelt ; for the Parliamen- tary representative in those times \vas regarded as coming directly from the con- stituency he was chosen to represent, and returning thither immediately his legislative work was done.

This theory can be tested from various lists of the writs de expensis preserved in the Close Rolls ; and one of the most complete that of the Parliament of 37 Edward III., sum- moned to meet at Westminster on Oct. 6, 1363 specially deserves analysis on that head. On Oct. 30 an order was issued at Westminster to the sheriffs of counties, and the mayors and bailiffs of cities and boroughs, for payment of the expenses of members in coming to Parliament, there abiding, and thence returning, for a specified and varying number of days. The maximum allowance was for forty-one days ; and the following table will illustrate my theory of a zone system of allowances : D

Middlesex 24

Herts and Surrey. . . . . . 27

Beds, Berks, Bucks, Cambs, Essex, Hants,

Hunts, Kent, Northants, Oxon, and Sussex 29 Leicester, Rutland, Suffolk, Warwick, and

Worcester. . .... . . . . 31

Gloucester, Hereford, Norfolk, Notts, and

Staffs 33

Dorset and Salop. . . . . . . . 35

Somerset. . . . . . . . 37

Westmorland. . . . . . . . 39

Cumberland and Northumberland. . . . 41

Only four writs for cities and boroughs are given in the ' Calendar of Close Rolls, Edward III., 1360-64,' pp. 556-8, from which I have taken the above figures ; and these show thirty-nine days as the time allowed for members coming from such constituencies situated in Devon and forty-one for those from Cornwall, " Chepyngetoriton " (Great Torrington) supplying the former illus- tration, and ' Dounhevedburgh " (Dun- heved, otherwise Launceston) the latter. The writ for neither Cornwall nor Devon is preserved, but the fact that the members for the towns of Bedford and Oxford were allowed for twenty-nine days, the same as their respective knights of the shire, may be taken as proving the exist- ence of a regular system applicable to members all round, precisely according to the time they could be considered legitimately to take, not only in abiding at the place where Parliament assembled, but in coming thereto and thence returning.

It may be noted that, beyond the orders for payment, thus made, allowances were directed for longer periods for certain legislators " who by order of the king abode