This was a good expedient for augmenting his revenue.

We are not to imagine, because the house of commons have since become of great importance, that the first summoning of them would form any remarkable and striking epoch, and be generally known to the people even seventy or eighty years after.

So ignorant were the generality of men in that age, that country burgesses would readily imagine an innovation, seemingly so little material, to have existed from time immemorial, because it was beyond their own memory, and perhaps that of their fathers.

Even the parliament in the reign of Henry V.say, that Ireland had, from the beginning of time, been subject to the crown of England.

(See Brady.) And surely if any thing interests the people above all others, it is war and conquests, with their dates and circumstances] [Footnote 7: NOTE G, p.233.This story of the six burgesses of Calais, like all other extraordinary stories, is somewhat to be suspected; and so much the more as Avesbury, (p.