to Cotton's Abridgment.
** Brady's Answer to Petyt, from the records, p 151.
*** Brady's Treatise of Boroughs, App.No.

13.
But there were other important consequences, which followed the diminution and consequent disuse of the ancient feudal militia.

The king's expense in levying and maintaining a military force for every enterprise, was increased beyond what his narrow revenues were able to bear: as the scutages of his military tenants, which were accepted in lieu of their personal service, had fallen to nothing, there were no means of supply but from voluntary aids granted him by the parliament and clergy, or from the talliages which he might levy upon the towns and inhabitants in royal demesne.

In the preceding year, Edward had been obliged to exact no less than the sixth of all movables from the laity, and a moiety of all ecclesiastical benefices[*] for his expedition into Poictou, and the suppression of the Welsh: and this distressful situation which was likely often to return upon him and his successors, made him think of a new device, and summon the representatives of all the boroughs to parliament.

This period, which is the twenty-third of his reign, seems to be the real and true epoch of the house of commons, and the faint dawn of popular government in England.