Something like a continuous attendance may be dated from the accession of Edward, but it was long before the knights were regarded as more than local deputies for the assessment of taxation or admitted to a share in the general business of the Great Council.

The statute "Quia Emptores," for instance, was passed in it before the knights who had been summoned could attend.

Their participation in the deliberative power of Parliament, as well as their regular and continuous attendance, dates only from the Parliament of 1295.

But a far greater constitutional change in their position had already taken place through the extension of electoral rights to the freeholders at large.

The one class entitled to a seat in the Great Council was, as we have seen, that of the lesser baronage; and it was of the lesser baronage alone that the knights were in theory the representatives.