(_To the Editor._)
As a general reader of your entertaining miscellany, I take the liberty to
correct a mistake in No. 481, relative to the Origin of the House of
Commons, which is indirectly stated to have _originated from the Battle of
Evesham_. It is true that the earliest instance on record of the
assembling in parliament representatives of the people occurred in the
same year with the battle of Evesham; but it had no connexion whatever
with the event of that engagement, since the parliament (to which for the
first time citizens and burgesses were summoned) was assembled through the
influence of the Earl of Leicester, who then held the king under his
control; and the meeting took place in the beginning of the year 1265, the
writs of summons having been issued in November, 1264; while the battle of
Evesham, in which the Earl of Leicester was killed, did not happen till
August 4, 1265, or between five and six months after the conclusion of the
parliament. From that period to the death of Henry III. in 1272, it does
not appear that any election of citizens or burgesses, to attend
parliament, occurred. The next instance of such elections seems to have
happened in the 18th of Edward I.; and the first returns to such writs of
summons extant are dated the 23rd of the same reign, since which, with a
few intermissions, they have been regularly continued.
The correctness of these statements will appear from a reference to the
4th and 5th chapters of Sir W. Betham's recently published work on
"Dignities Feudal and Parliamentary," or to Sir James Mackintosh's History
of England.