Gloss, in verb.Feodum.There were two hundred and forty-three thousand six hundred hides in England, and sixty thousand two hundred and fifteen knights' fees; whence it is evident that there were a little more than four hides in each knight's fee.] All the immediate military tenants of the crown amounted not fully to seven hundred, when Domesday-book was framed; and as the membeirs were well pleased, on any pretext, to excuse themselves from attendance, the assembly was never likely to become too numerous for the despatch of public business.
So far the nature of a general council or ancient parliament is determined without any doubt or controversy, The only question seems to be with regard to the commons, or the representatives of counties and boroughs; whether they were also, in more early times, constituent parts of parliament.

This question was once disputed in England with great acrimony; but such is the force of time and evidence, that they can sometimes prevail even over faction; and the question seems, by general consent, and even by their own, to be at last determined against the ruling party.

It is agreed, that the commons were no part of the great council till some ages after the conquest; and that the military tenants alone of the crown composed that supreme and legislative assembly.
The vassals of a baron were by their tenure immediately dependent on him, owed attendance at his court, and paid all their duty to the king, through that dependence which their lord was obliged by his tenure to acknowledge to his sovereign and superior.

Their land, comprehended in the barony, was represented in parliament by the baron himself, who was supposed, according to the fictions of the feudal law, to possess the direct property of it; and it would have been deemed incongruous to give it any other representation.

They stood m the same capacity to him, that he and the other barons did to the king: the former were peers of the barony; the latter were peers of the realm: the vassals possessed a subordinate rank within their district: the baron enjoyed a superior dignity in the great assembly: they were in some degree his companions at home; he the king's companion at court: and nothing can be more evidently repugnant to all feudal ideas, and to that gradual subordination which was essential to those ancient institutions, than to imagine that the king would apply either for the advice or consent of men who were of a rank so much inferior, and whose duty was immediately paid to the mesne lord that was interposed between them and the throne.[*] [* Spel.