85, from the records.
** Cotton's Abridgment, p.

13.
*** See note E, at the end of the volume.
**** See note F, at the end of the volume.
What sufficiently proves that the commencement of the house of burgesses, who are the true commons, was not an affair of chance, but arose from the necessities of the present situation, is, that Edward, at the very same time, summoned deputies from the inferior clergy, the first that ever met in England,[*] and he required them to impose taxes on their constituents for the public service.

Formerly the ecclesiastical benefices bore no part of the burdens of the state: the pope indeed of late had often levied impositions upon them: he had sometimes granted this power to the sovereign:[**] the king himself had in the preceding year exacted, by menaces and violence, a very grievous tax of half the revenues of the clergy: but as this precedent was dangerous, and could not easily be repeated in a government which required the consent of the subject to any extraordinary resolution, Edward found it more prudent to assemble a lower house of convocation, to lay before them his necessities, and to ask some supply.

But on this occasion he met with difficulties.

Whether that the clergy thought themselves the most independent body in the kingdom, or were disgusted by the former exorbitant impositions, they absolutely refused their assent to the king's demand of a fifth of their movables; and it was not till a second meeting that, on their persisting in this refusal, he was willing to accept of a tenth.