With the growth of power on the part of the nobles, there was also
imposed for the first time a restriction on the right of the people to
vote for members of Parliament. Up to this period all freemen might
take part in the election of representatives chosen by the counties to
sit in the House of Commons.
A law was now passed forbidding any one to vote at these elections
unless he was a resident of the county and possessed of landed
property yielding an annual income of forty shillings (S200).[1]
Subsequently it was further enacted that no county candidate should be
eligible unless he was a man of means and social standing.
[1] The income required by the statute was forty shillings, which,
says Freeman, we may fairly call forty pounds of our present money.
See E.A. Freeman's "Growth of the English Constitution," p. 97.
These two measures were blows against the free self-government of the
nation, since their manifest tendency was to make the House of Commons
represent the property rather than the people of the country (S319).
(See, too, Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xiii,
S14.)