In the Middle Ages a town might have no wish to be taxed for the wages of its Parliamentary representative, and in that case would do its best to come to an arrangement with the sheriff.
(It was not till the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that a considerable increase of boroughs took place.

The Tudors created "pocket" and "rotten" boroughs in order to have the nominees of the Crown in Parliament.) The size of the borough bore no relation to its membership till the Reform Act of the nineteenth century, and as the selection of towns to be represented was arbitrary, so the franchise in the towns was equally unsettled.

One or two places had a wide franchise, others confined the vote to freemen and corporation members.

But in spite of the extraordinary vagaries of the borough franchise, and the arbitrary selection of towns to be represented, these early medieval Parliaments really did in an imperfect way represent the nation--all but the peasants and artisans.
"Our English Parliaments were _un_symmetrical realities.

They were elected anyhow.