Lawyers in the English Parliament. the recorders sought election they offered to serve without wages. Frequently they went beyond this offer, and pledged themselves, if elected, to undertake the legal work of their boroughs in London without recom pense. In the archives of the old boroughs, as shown by the publications of the Histori cal Manuscripts Commission, and by the numerous city and borough histories, there are many agreements of this kind. On the one side the municipalities agreed to choose the recorder as their representative in Parlia ment; on the other, the recorder agreed to claim no parliamentary wages and to serve the town or borough in other capacities than as member of the House of Commons without fee or reward. Before the landed aristocracy began to fasten itself on the boroughs, the recorders had few competitors when they were seeking election, and in many instances a recorder found it easy to persuade his borough not only to elect him as one of its members, but also to permit him to nominate the second member. This was one of the ways in which the nomination system to the House of Commons was begun. In instances like these, there was generally an under taking that both the recorder and his nomi nee would put the borough to no expense. Occasionally the recorder did not serve for nothing. As late as 1523, the city of Lincoln paid parliamentary wages to its re corder. The mayor was the recorder's fel low-member, which perhaps accounts for the fact that wages for the two members were insisted upon. Twenty years later, however, a recorder who had been elected to the office on the recommendation of the Duke of Suffolk, was chosen to represent the city in Parliament, and in 1543 he re mitted " all the burgess money due to him for the last Parliament." Thereafter Lincoln was represented in many parliaments by its recorder, who, however, usually followed the example of 1543 and remitted the wages legally due him for service in Parliament.
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The story of the services of the recorders of Lincoln as representatives of the city in the House of Commons is pretty much the story of many of the cities and boroughs in the period when seats in- Parliament were becoming of value, and when the lawyers and the landed aristocracy were breaking through the early enactments as to residen tial qualification, and the payment of parlia mentary wages. Engagements not to claim wages were made long after the last wages to members of the House of Commons had been paid. These agreements are to be found among municipal documents of as late a period as the eighteenth century; although, as has been explained, the payment of wages as a system had come to an end before James I succeeded to the throne. It would be difficult to determine the proportionate responsibility of the lawyers and the landed aristocracy in connection with these two most important inroads on the Constitution of the House of Commons. I lean strongly to the opinion that the first movement against wages, and against the residential qualification came from the law yers. In the second period of the House of Commons, that beginning with the Stuart dy nasty, the landed aristocracy were able to pos sess themselves of the parliamentary boroughs to the exclusion of all but their nominees, and were able to hold on to them until the early part of the eighteenth century, when the moneyed class came into competition. The landed aristocracy were well on their way to this exclusive possession in the case of numerous boroughs long even before the Tudors had disappeared. Many of the boroughs created during the Tudor regime fell, in fact, at once into the possession of the aristocracy; and the privilege of send ing members to the House of Commons from these newly enfranchised places was, even as early as Queen Elizabeth's time, bequeathed in wills, given as marriage por tions bought and sold, and mortgaged and in other ways treated as property.
