Warwick.

“1628. May 31, Mr. Hackwill reported from the Committee of Privileges the case for this borough:

Question,

Whether the election to be made by the Mayor and Common Council, or by the Commons in general?

Upon the Question it was resolved,

That the right of election for the Town of Warwick belongs to the Commonalty.”

The following are Dr. Brady’s remarks on this decision of the Committee of the House of Commons:

“The ground of this popular error was, That this Committee (notwithstanding the two great antiquaries, Sir Robert Cotton, and Mr. Selden, and the oracle of law [so called] Sir Edward Coke, were members of it) did not truly understand the meaning of the words communitatis civitatum et burgorum, the commonalty of cities and burghs; which always signified the mayor, aldermen, and common council, where they were to be found, or the steward or bayliff, and capital burgesses, or in short the governing part of cities and towns, by what persons soever they were governed, or names and titles they were called and known, which hath been sufficiently evinced by what has been said before in this Treatise, on that subject. So that, if the communities of cities and burghs had been truly understood, the Committee ought to have determined, and the House resolved, That the right of election in very many, if not in most, or all cities and burghs, ought to have rested in the governing part of them, which is always a select number.”

Dr. Brady possessed considerable shrewdness, and his situation of Keeper of the Records in the Tower afforded him opportunity for learned research, but it did not become him to speak contemptuously of such men as Cotton, Coke, and Selden; nor had he good grounds for the inference he made, as appears from the following extract from another part of his “Treatise:”—

“In the 29th of Edward the First, John Blund was chosen Mayor per Commune Consilium Elye Russell tune Majoris, and the Aldermen there named, and the Sheriffs, per assensum Duodecim proborum hominum singularum Wardarum, by assent of Twelve good Men of every Ward. In the 31st of the same King, also in the 32d and 33d, John Lincoln and John Blund were the third and fourth time chosen, by Twelve bouos & legales homines de qualibet Warda summonitos; twelve good and lawful men summoned out of every Ward.”

By a reference to page 12 of Newell’s “Evidence of the Elective Franchise in London,” it will be seen that Brady has not given the 27th and 28th of Edward the First, because both those records prove that those elections were made by the whole commonalty; he also puts the 31st of Edward I. in the sleight of hand way,—In the 31st of the same King—and there leaves it, for the reader to suppose that the election in that year was made in the same way as in the 29th, while he must have known that the record of that year shews, that the election was made by the mayor, aldermen, sheriffs, and the whole commonalty. He also states that John Lincoln and John Blund were a third and fourth time chosen, whereas John Lincoln never was a mayor at all. This is quite enough for the accuracy and authority of this learned “Doctor in Physick.”