Knights of the Shire

From the first Parliaments of England which began in the middle of the medieval period, which started with Simon de Montfort's Parliament, each county sent two Knights of the Shire as members of Parliament to represent the interests of the county, until 1826 when the number of knights from Yorkshire was increased to four. With the Great Reform Act of 1832 county-based electors sent different numbers of knights to Parliament until the complete subdivision of whole-county seats in the Reform Act of 1884.