particularly in making use for certain purposes of local representatives
as an additional check upon the servants of the Crown. The English shire
was in fact as well as in law a community with a true corporate
character (_communitas_), and possessed a public assembly which was
a law court and a local parliament in one. Though the ordinary suitor
counted for little, the secondary landowners, united by ties of local
sentiment and personal relationship, took a lively interest and an
active share in the business of the shire court, upholding the local
custom against sheriffs and judges, serving as jurors, as assessors of
taxes, as guardians of the peace, and (from the fourteenth century) as
petty magistrates. Whether elected by their fellows or the nominees of
the Crown, these functionaries were unpaid, and regarded themselves as
the defenders of local liberty against official usurpations. In France
the district of the _bailli_, and still more that of his subordinate the
_prevot_, was an arbitrary creation, without natural unity or corporate
sentiment; there was therefore no organised resistance to executive
authority, and no reason why the Crown should court the goodwill of the
landed gentry. In the lower grades of the Plantagenet system a powerful
middle class served a political apprenticeship; under the Capets all
power and responsibility were jealously reserved to the professional
administrator. In England the next step in constitutional development,
the addition to the national assembly of a Third Estate, was brilliantly
successful, since the House of Commons was chiefly recruited from
families which had long been active partners in local administration. In
France the Third Estate, though constantly summoned in the fourteenth
century, proved itself politically impotent.

Both in France and in England (after 1066) the national assembly began
as a feudal council, composed of the prelates and barons who held their
lands and dignities directly from the Crown. But that of France was,