They did the same in the reign of Edward III.; but the commons had then observed that the people paid these duties, though the merchants advanced them; and they therefore remonstrated against this practice.

Cotton's Abridg.p.39.The taxes imposed by the knights on the counties were always lighter than those which the burgesses laid on the boroughs; a presumption, that in voting those taxes the knights and burgesses did not form the same house.

See Chancellor West's Inquiry into the Manner of creating Peers, p.8.But there are so many proofs, that those two orders of representative were long separate, that it is needless to insist on them.

Mr.Carte, who had carefully consulted the rolls of parliament, affirms, that they never appear to have been united till the sixteenth of Edward III.

See Hist.