Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/283

 character than that which was gone through in the Parliament.

The House of Commons was a little, only a little, so far as concerns England proper, modified by Henry VIII: Preston, Lancaster, Thetford, Orford, Berwick, and possibly one or two more towns, gained the privilege of representation; but by bestowing representation on the towns and counties of Wales, Calais, and Chester, Henry added in 1543 thirty-two members, knights and burgesses, to the old number.

The suffrage, as we know from the case of Leicester, was in the corporate towns being altogether appropriated by the councillors and other officers who constituted the corporation. This loss of distinctly representative importance is accompanied by a certain rise in the position of the borough members. Up to this time the office of Speaker has been engrossed by the knights of the shire, and the only names of men who have taken a prominent part in the debates of the Commons have been those of county members. In this reign, however, Humfrey Wingfield, member for Yarmouth, was chosen Speaker in succession to Audley; and the only persons who axe found taking a leading part in the discussions of the Long Parliament of 1529–1536 are Thomas Cromwell, member for Taunton, who before he placed himself in the king's service had succeeded in throwing out the bill of attainder against Wolsey, and Mr. Temys, the member for Westbury, who had proposed that the king should, be asked to give up his plan for divorce.

Still we do not possess journals of the proceedings of the Commons before the year 1547. Those of the Lords begin in 1509, and furnish us with much of the information that we have looked for in vain in the older Rolls of Parliament. From them we learn to how large an extent the use of proxies prevailed in the House of Lords, notwithstanding the careful way in which it was limited and tested; a usage which shows how it was so easy for the king, by dealing with one or two of the more prominent prelates, generally to secure an ecclesiastical majority in parliament, and even in convocation. In the Lower House the Speaker of the Tudor reigns is in