Page:The Enfranchisement of Women, the law of the land.pdf/24

24 matter verie unworthy of anie gentleman, and most dishonourable in such an election to make use of their voices, ; nor did the said High Sheriffe allow of the said votes, upon his numbering the said poll, but with the allowance and consent of the said two knights themselves, discount them and cast them out." The two puritan candidates did not need the female votes, having a good majority without, and standing in awe of Sir E. Coke and Saint Bernard. The carnal reason of worldlings—"the law," gave the right of voting to "some single women," and the clerkes knowing and obeying "the law," took their oaths and entered them in the poll books; but the godly Sir Simonds, "with consent" of the "unco' gude" puritan candidates, gave their consciences the benefit of a sacrifice the that cost them nothing. The significancy of these facts, however, is not to be mistaken. The "single women" knew they had their rights; devout women, they took the oath; the clerks, accustomed to the procedure, took and recorded them; the High Sheriff, fully acquainted with the law and the procedure at elections, makes his report to Parliament that "they in law might have been allowed." If at that time there was no such custom or understanding of the law, is there any likelihood he so would have reported? Moved by these facts and authorities Bovill, C. J., in the very case now under review, is obliged to concede "it is quite true that a few instances of women being parties to indentures of returns of members of Parliament have been shown, and it is quite possible that there may have been some other instances in early times of women having voted and assisted in legislation. Indeed, such instances are mentioned by Selden" ("Epinomis,"vol. 3, p. 10). It is perhaps worthy of note that in the earlier stages of our Constitutional and Parliamentary history, peers appear to have been parties to indentures of returns of members to the House of Commons. But while, by 25 Henry VI., the Lords spiritual and temporal were thenceforth precluded from attesting such indentures as not being of the estate or order of the Commons, and no farther trace of their interposition in that regard can be found, women continued to attest returns at least to the reign of Elizabeth. Yet all his Lordship can oppose to his own admissions is that "the fact of the right, not having been asserted for centuries,