Excerpt from Library of Universal History and Popular Science, Vol. 11 of 25: Containing a Record of the Human Race From the Earliest Historical Period to the Present Time This condition of things had its origin in the efi'orts of the Tudor sovereigns to estab lish a court party in the House of Com mons by a profuse creation of boroughs, most of which were mere villages then at the disposal of the crown, and resulted in the appropriation of these seats by the neighboring land-owners, who bought and sold them as they did their own estates. Even in towns which had a real claim to representation the restriction of municipal privileges ever since the fourteenth century to a small proportion of the inhabitants of such towns, and in many instances the limi tation of the elective franchise to members of the governing corporation, rendered their representation simply nominal. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.