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been found bearing a direct application to the Borough; it is not therefore to be considered as a mere partial selection, made with a view of establishing a given proposition, but a concentration of all the Huntingdon documents, from which the inference contended for, we venture to say, must be drawn; namely, that the resident householders, the " probi et legales homines" of the place, were formerly the Burgesses, and that the Members were elected by such Burgesses.

The abstracts are made as short as possible, including only the important words, with sufficient of their context to make them intelligible. These abstracts are generally given in English, but when the words themselves seem to demand attention, or when the document inserted is not observed upon, they are copied in Latin. The observations are studiously abbreviated, referring rather to collateral contemporaneous facts, in illustration of each document, than to mere argumentative discussion.

In venturing on a subject of this nature, the Editor feels the necessity (a necessity which accords fully with his own inclination) of repudiating all political motives. Convinced on the one hand, that if usurpation can in any case be clearly made out (a task, for want of some general investigation, of considerable difficulty), the House of Commons will be ready to stop its progress, and to restore their rights to those from whom they were usurped; he is equally satisfied on the other, that in so doing justice there is no reason to fear that any serious evil will prevail : the wisdom and

political omnipotence of Parliament can, if absolutely necessary to the public good, establish that which no continuance of usurpation can legalize. The present publication has for its object, simply the investigation of the respective rights of parties, the corporators on the one hand, and the residents on the other, without any allusion to the subject of Parliamentary Reform, a question perhaps rather of theoretical than of practical importance.

A

COLLECTION OF RECORDS,

TO ILLUSTRATE THE

PARLIAMENTARRY HISTORY OF HUNTINGDON,

&c.

THE document first in chronological order, which has been found relating to Huntingdon, is the survey of the Borough, in that celebrated and valuable ancient record, called Domesday book.

Before we make any observation on the return in Domesday, as to this particular place, it may be useful to premise, that although a great number of Cities and Boroughs now existing are to be found surveyed in that record, there is no mention in plain, unequivocal terms, throughout the whole of it, of any corporations distinct from the general body of the inhabitants, unless indeed the word Borough, ex vi termini, means a select corporation in a place,—a position manifestly absurd, when it is considered that there are now many Boroughs which have never to this day had a select corporation within them, and many others which have not been incorporated generally, as the prominent examples of Westminster, Southwark, Petersfield, Stockbridge, and others evince.

The language of the several surveys in Domesday differs considerably, but the words Burgenses and Homines are used throughout indifferently and synonymously. The words Domi, Mansiones, and Mansura, or words of a local reference are as frequently employed in the descriptions of

Boroughs as the terms Burgenses, Homines, or other words of a personal signification.

A Borough is too often considered to be of necessity a corporation, and that according to the modern understanding of the word, as if every aggregate body must be a body corporate. We shall take occasion to show, as we proceed many instances of grants in early times to aggregate bodies which could not by possibility be corporations, in the legal acceptation of the word, and merely at present beg, with deference but with confidence, to affirm, that this error is the consequence of applying the principles of modern law to a period anterior to their introduction; to draw attention to the distinction between a town or borough and a corporation, as insisted on by Madox, in the " Firma Burgi;” and to observe, that the return for Huntingdon in Domesday, like all other returns of Cities and Boroughs in that record, does not necessarily import, but rather negatives, any corporation, even general, of the place, and is absolutely opposed to anything like a select elective corporation within it.

It may however be convenient to take this early opportunity of observing, that the question whether corporation or not, at the period of Domesday survey, is not of vital importance to the subject before us, of Parliamentary election. For even, if a corporation did then exist, it was a general corporation of all the Burgesses; and all the inhabitant householders, the liberi et legalis homines, subject to common law liabilities, were the Burgesses; and not any selected number of persons, resident, and non-resident, perpetuated, destroyed, extended, or reduced, at the mere will of the existing body*.

If we look to the whole of the Huntingdon survey, it is

* According to the present state of things in Huntingdon, and in many other Boroughs, it must be recollected that the corporation may make every man in the kingdom a Burgess and voter, and thereby introduce universal suffrage, on the one hand; or by omitting to elect new Burgesses as the old ones die off, they may, on the other, establish the oligarchy of two or three persons only returning the representatives to parliament.

obvious that there is a connexion between Burgesses and houses; the former are spoken of, "cum domibus," and in one instance their number is mentioned half a house less, "dimidium domus minus." Whatever may be the real import of these last words, it is clear, that house and Burgess are used throughout, as convertible terms, or at least as terms dependent on each other.

We may observe, that there were in two Ferlings, or divisions of the Borough, . 116 Burgesses.

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That the facts predicated of the Domesday-book generally (which facts should be borne in mind in the construction of any particular survey), may not stand unsupported, we shall insert the following instances, to shew the synonymous application of the words Burgesses, and houses in other Boroughs.

The Borough of Thetford is said to have had nine hundred and forty-four Burgesses in the time of Edward the Confessor; at the time of the survey, there were only seven

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