COMMONER make by-laws for the government of the citizens. COMMONER, in Great Britain, a term applied to all citizens except the hereditary nobility. COMMON LAW, the unwritten law, the law that receives its binding force from immemorial usage and universal reception, in distinction from the written or statute law; sometimes from the civil or canon law; and occasionally from the lex mercatoria, or commercial and mari- time jurisprudence. It consists of that body of rules, principles, and customs which have been received from former times, and by which courts have been guided in their judicial decisions. The evidence of this law is to be found in the reports of those decisions and the records of the courts. It is contrasted with the statute law contained in acts of Parliament; equity, which is also an accretion of judicial decisions, but formed by a new tribunal, which first appeared when the common law had reached its full growth ; and the civil law inherited by modern Europe from the Roman Empire. Wherever statute law, however, runs counter to common law, the latter is entirely overruled ; but com- mon law, on the other hand, asserts its pre-eminence where equity is opposed to it. COMMON PLEAS, in law, pleas brought by private persons against pri- vate persons, or by the government, when the cause of action is of a civil nature. In many States of the United States it is a court having jurisdiction generally in civil actions. In England the old Court of Common Pleas is now merged in the High Court of Justice. COMMON PRAYER, BOOK OF, the public form of prayer prescribed by the Church of England to be used in all churches and chapels, and which the clergy are to use under a certain penalty. It dates from the reign of Edward VI., was published in 1549, and again with some changes in 1552. Some slight alterations were made upon it when it was adopted in the reign of Elizabeth. In the reign of James I., and finally soon after the Restoration, it underwent new revisions. COMMONS, the people who have a right to sit or a right to vote for repre- sentatives in the English House of Com- mons, and all who in England are under the rank of peers without reference to their voting privileges. English Honse of Commons is that one of the two Houses of the English Parlia- ment which consists of representatives 87 COMMONS duly elected according to law in pre- scribed numbers by the burgh, county, and university constituencies of the United Kingdom. The name Commons is given to its members to distinguish them from the Peers of the United King- dom who sit in the House of Lords. History. — The earliest traces of the English House of Commons are in A. D. 1265. The year previously (on May 12, 1264) , Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leices- ter, who was of French origin, but brother-in-law to King Henry III., de- feated his sovereign at the Battle of Lewes, and made him prisoner. In 1265 the victor issued writs in the King's name requiring each sheriff of a county to return to a Parliament which he pro- posed to hold, two knights for the shire under his jurisdiction, two citizens for each city within its limits, and two bur- gesses for each borough. A Parliament of lords and other dignitaries had ex- isted previously; county representatives may occasionally have sat almost from the commencement of the 13th century, and an assembly of knights and bur- gesses, nicknamed the Mad Parliament, had met in A. D. 1258, but no writs are extant before De Montfort's, summoning the representatives of cities and bor- oughs to attend. The Parliament thus called together met in London on Jan. 22, 1265, but on Aug. 4, De Montfoi-t was slain at the battle of Evesham, and the royal government restored. The victory was obtained for the king mainly through the military ability of Prince Edward, afterward King Edward I., who, at least as early as 1294, i. e., the 22d year of his reign, himself called to- gether a parliament of the De Mont- fort type. The borough representatives were 246, those from the counties or shires 74. Under Edward III. these members had altered to 282 and 74. Each place represented sent two mem- bers, without reference to its population. There was universal suffrage; members required no property qualification, and were paid. In the eighth year of Henry VI., the county franchise was narrowed in its operation, no one now being al- lowed to vote unless he possessed free- hold worth 40 shillings, a sum the pur- chasing power of which would have been about the equivalent of £12 ($60) at the beginning of the 18th century, and £20 (SlOO) at the beginning of the 19th. The Act 23 Henry VI. c. 14, made it an in- dispensable qualification for election as a member of Parliament that the per- son should be a knight, or eligible to be one, by which was meant that he should have a freehold of £40 ($200) a year. James L, by his royal prerogative, con-
