Some things happen which
are unobserved at the time but which have great significance later. The arrival of “ the commons” in parliament is one of those things. No one knows in which year or in which
decade it happened. All we do know is
that by the middle of the thirteenth century summons of representatives is
occasionally mentioned and within twenty or thirty years such summons are
normal. In a similar way we began to
see the word “parliamentum” come into
use. For instance in 1236 a case before
the king’s bench was adjourned “to the parliamentum
at Westminster”. The word “parliament” means literally a “talking place” and is derived from the
French word parler, to speak.
The Houses of Parliament
are a Royal palace and are officially known as The Palace of Westminster. This means that it is subject to the law as
it affects a Royal palace as opposed to a public building.
Magna Carta was fine as far as it went, curbing the wilder excesses of
absolute monarchy. Fifty years after
King John had signed it in 1215, however, England still suffered from bullying,
autocratic kings who bled their barons for tax to fund doubtful military
adventures. The battle between the
nobles and the King was a continuing one and exploded fifty years later when a
French born Baron took on the King.
Simon
De Montfort – a French man who married Henry III’s youngest sister Eleanor – is
popularly regarded as the founding father of the English Parliament, but it is
not strictly true. Henry III’s brother,
Richard, Earl of Cornwall, acting as Regent while Henry III was in Gascony, set
up the first recognisable Parliament in 1254, specifically to win consent for
taxation, and including for the first time representatives from beyond the
King’s immediate circle of barons and clergy.
The King promised to consult it.
Sheriffs of counties were instructed to send two Knights from each Shire
to advise the King on finance. The
lesser Barons ceased to attend. By
including representatives from beyond the King’s immediate circle this
gathering distinguished itself from the Royal Council and it is for this reason
that it is regarded as the first parliament.
In
form the representatives of the shires and lower clergy were merely envoys who
“came to the council” to report the
local decision of their shire or diocese.
In reality, since there would be only one grant of aid, service and
monies to enable Henry III to go to the crusades and not many, one reply and
not several, they must from the beginning have been empowered to consult
together and arrive at a common decision.
This was the beginning of the House of Commons.
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1258 was not a good year for Henry
III. He formally surrendered his Rights
to Normandy, Anjou and Poitou to the French King and in the same year was confronted
by an armed confederacy of seven barons including De Montfort. He agreed to the establishment of a
committee of twenty-four (half appointed by himself, half by parliament) to
draft reforms for the government of the realm and report back to Council.
The
main issue here is that of tax raising.
The King can only raise taxes through this body. The King is the Government. To run the Government the King needs
money. The money raised goes to the
King. Henry needed money. This put him in a weak position, which
forced him to concede ground to the Barons.
He is forced to share power. As
yet it does not extend to the people, but the number of taxpayers is growing.
The Council met in Oxford
and its deliberations were so momentous for the long-term future of English
politics it has far more significance than 1215. Essentially they abolished the absolute
monarchy of the Anglo-Norman State. The
Council of twenty-four was replaced by a Council of fifteen, with the royal
delegation reduced to three. At a
stroke the sovereign powers of the Crown were transferred to a standing
committee elected by the barons and the Church. That committee was to have the final say in
the Crown’s choice of ministers and councillors, and also in proposing and disposing
of funds to make war or peace. No less
radical was the devolution of power to the counties, where four knights in each
shire, elected by an elaborate process, were to be made responsible for
collecting complaints and grievances.
These became known as the Provisions
of Oxford. England was no longer an
autocracy. By these provisions the last
vestiges of autocracy were taken away.
Parliament, which had gradually evolved over the first half of the
century, was to meet three times a year.
The precise method of election was not made clear so it was left to the
shires with varying processes to determine how to conduct the election and who
should take part.
This was
the culmination of the development of the Witangemot of Anglo-Saxon times. It had progressed from a council of the
great and the good to the royal family and close friends to the land-owning
barons and senior clergy that were to make up the House of Lords together with
the representatives of the shires which were to make up the House of
Commons. This was the foundation of
Parliament.
Henry
had to agree the Provisions of Oxford
and his son Edward was held hostage to ensure that he kept to his
undertaking. Henry agreed to all of
this but then reneged on his undertaking.
Simon De Montfort gathered the Barons, took arms and seized the Channel
ports to prevent reinforcements landing from Gascony. The King, fearing civil war moved to the
safety of the Tower of London.
He had
to come out and fight in the end. The
two forces met at Lewes in East Sussex in 1264, De Montfort carried the
day. With Henry captured, De Montfort
briefly became the effective ruler of England, summoning a Parliament in 1265
and chairing it himself. It met in
Westminster Hall. It was the true
precursor of the modern institution, for it included not only lords, bishops
and abbots, but four knights from each shire and two burgesses from each large
town – the first time that all England above the class of surf had been
represented
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De Montfort sent out messengers
to each county and to a select list of boroughs, asking each to send two
representatives. As we have seen this was not the first Parliament in England,
but what distinguished it was that de Montfort insisted the representatives be
elected. There were about sixty
boroughs at this time and 36 shires.
With two representatives from each borough and four knights from each
shire the representation totalled about 264.
There were no women and wealth determined who could vote. Many areas were underrepresented, but we are
beginning to see a base for parliament.
It was this act of asking for
representatives that is the sole basis for de Montfort’s popular reputation as
the “Father of Parliament”. This
was a major step forward for democracy.
Why did De Montfort
insist that the representatives be elected?
It is possible that he took his lead from the Provisions of Oxford where he saw that the barons and the church
had elected a standing committee to exercise the sovereign powers of the Crown
and was trying to replicate this elected element in the make up of what was
eventually to become the House of Commons.
Little is known about the detail of this
exercise. There is nothing new in a
monarch sharing power. From the
Anglo-Saxon Kings onwards there has been an element of power sharing, but this
time the power was shared with elected representatives. The right to vote in Parliamentary elections
for county constituencies was uniform throughout the country, granting a vote
to all those who owned the freehold of land.
Whether and to what extent the vote was exercised is unknown. In the Boroughs, the franchise varied and
individual boroughs had different arrangements
For the first time we
know who was summoned to the Parliament for 20th January 1265. The writs summoned:
The Archbishop of York
(Canterbury was abroad),
All the English Bishops
except Hereford who was abroad and Rochester,
Thirteen Deans and Priors
of cathedral chapters,
Sixty-five Abbots and
twenty-six Priors,
The Prior of the Hospitallers,
The Master of the Temple,
The prior of the order of
Sempringham,
Five Earls (Leicester,
Gloucester, Norfolk, Oxford, Derby),
Eighteen Barons,
Two knights from the more
lawful, good and discreet knights of each shire,
The boroughs of England
were commanded to send each “two of the
more discreet, lawful and good citizens and burgesses”,
Later writs were sent to
the barons and bailiffs of the Cinque Ports commanding them to send “four men from each of the Cinque Ports”.
It is not known how many
attended.
De
Montfort’s parliament was short lived.
His barons became riven by petty jealousy, many regarding him as the
King’s equal in autocracy and hubris.
Those nobles loyal to the still imprisoned King regrouped under his son
Prince Edward who had escaped capture, and challenged De Montfort to battle at
Evesham, Worcestershire. De Montfort
was slain, his testicles were cut off and hung around his nose and his head
then sent to the wife of one of his supporters.
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His achievements were not as great as the romantic version of
history suggests, but he demonstrated to Henry III’s successors that a crown in
Parliament operating through the rule of law was far stronger than one to which
virtually the entire nation was opposed.
What he did was to set a precedent for involving far more people than
just the King’s coterie. He gave many
people a taste of power. Having tasted
it they wanted to keep it. The genie
was out of the bottle and although over the centuries there would be many
attempts to put it back it would prove to be a mission impossible. Though, we were still a long way from
treating each person regardless of race or religion as of equal value. The most blatant discrimination at this time
related to the Jews, which lasted until 1858 when they were allowed to sit in
Parliament.
A Jewish community had
come across from Normandy with William I.
Under William II the Jews were not part of the feudal hierarchy, and so
their position had to be legalised by royal charter. They were formally declared to be “the chattels” of the Crown, responsible
directly to the Throne and belonging to it.
This definition held many advantages, giving Jews rights of residence
and protection. Subsequent kings abused
this special power, levying punitive taxes on the Jews, while Henry III even
mortgaged the entire Jewish population to the Earl of Cornwall to raise moneys
for his wars. Matters reached crisis
point under Edward I when relations between ordinary Jews and Christians
deteriorated badly and in 1290 Edward decided to expel the Jews from England
and they were given three months to leave.
England acquired the distinction of becoming one of the first countries
to expel its Jews and to treat them as if they were a contagious disease. Prodded by the Church, Edward required that
all Jews wear yellow badges of identification, a harbinger of what was to come
under the Nazis in the twentieth century.
It
meant that officially there were no Jews in England for almost four centuries
until their return in 1656 under Cromwell, one of the few Acts by Cromwell
which was not reversed after his death, though by this time the schism between
the Catholics and Protestants dominated religious discrimination. Cromwell reorganised the Church of England
and established Puritanism at the same time.
Quite a feat!
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On the death of Henry III
in 1272, his son Edward I, who was on a crusade in Sicily, became King. It took Edward two years to get home from
the crusades. Despite being a phenomenal
war maker and powerful force Edward continued in the line of de Montfort in
developing and empowering parliamentary institutions. By expanding it he diminished the power of
any one individual, but he made the institution itself more powerful as more
individuals were involved.
When Edward I took the
coronation oath he undertook to “defend
the rights of the crown.”
The first regular
parliament summoned by Edward I in 1275, was generally regarded as the first
representative assembly – 2 Knights from each county, presumably chosen or
appointed in the shire court, 2 Burgesses from each borough, and 2 citizens
from each city. By virtue of their
charters the cities and boroughs lay outside the organisation of the
shires. In feudal theory they were part
of the king’s own “domain”, which he taxed
at will; but as their wealth and importance grew, it was inevitable that they
should be associated with the making of grants to the Crown. These grants were made by the “communities of the realm”, a plural
instead of the older singular. These “communities” were those of the shires
and boroughs whom the knights and burgesses represented, and were later known
as “communes” or “commons”.
There was a constant and
continuous fight going on between the King and the Barons over who had power
and how power was dispersed. On the one
hand the King wanted to accumulate power into his own hands, on the other he
saw the wisdom of expanding the body that held him in check for by expanding
that body its power became more dispersed.
As it becomes more dispersed it is moving towards democracy. As the King acquires more control we are
moving away from democracy.
His activities covered
every aspect of government and continued his predecessors’ efforts to curb
Church and baronial power. The reason
was that this interfered with the unification of the nation under a
monarch. In 1279 he set up the Statute
of Mortmain to prevent landowners giving their lands to the church in order to
avoid taxation, and to ensure their place in heaven. In 1285 he created the positions of Justices
of the Peace, a measure designed to curb banditry and violent crime. He also summoned, in 1295, lords, clergy and
burgesses from each shire thus furthering the concept of a parliament. This was known as the Model Parliament. Edmund Swinglehurst - The History of the Kings and Queens of England and Scotland.
When Edward I summoned
the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Parliament of 1295 he used an old phrase
from Roman Law “What touches all, should
be agreed by all” – a key element of democracy. It is a pity he didn’t stick to it.
By the thirteenth century
the Privy Council was a definite body, having paid members who took an oath to
give the King good advice, though he was not usually present at their
deliberations. Its composition was
decided solely by the King. The Privy
Council is a combination of the Curia
Regis and the council set up by the Provisions
of Oxford except that it is an appointed body rather than an elected body –
a set back for democracy. The King had
regained some power for himself, but this close set of advisers were more like
a government, held in check by Parliament.
Between
1272 and 1307, during the reign of Edward I, “Commons” (Communes) of knights of the shires and townsmen were
present in Parliament with the lords, bishops and great abbots. By the parliament of 1295 the House of
Commons had about 275 members from the boroughs. 137 boroughs returned two members each plus
Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire returned one member. The number of shires had increased to 37
with the addition of Yorkshire, but each shire only had two representatives. By 1307 a further 19 boroughs were
represented in parliament.
At the time of the “Model Parliament” in 1295 the greater
barons and the prelates were summoned individually. The prelates and the barons eventually
formed the House of Lords. The Peers numbered 49. While the knights and the burgesses became
the House of Commons. The motto of the Model Parliament was “What touches all should be approved by all”;
not a bad definition of democracy!
The peerage, still, was
not a hereditary body. Kings did not
consider themselves, having once summoned an individual, bound to summon the
same individual, much less his heirs, to future Parliaments. Thus writs were issued at the whim of the
King. Over time, however, the arbitrary
power of the Crown was fettered by the principles of hereditary right. Since the Crown was itself a hereditary
dignity it seemed natural for seats in the Upper House of Parliament to be so
as well. By the beginning of the
fourteenth century, the Peerage had evolved its hereditary
characteristics. Since under Norman
customs, estates devolved under the principles of primogeniture seats in the
Upper House of Parliament did so also.
Barons sat in Parliament
by a combination of tenure and writs of summons issued to them. If a woman held a barony, her husband was
summoned to Parliament in her right.
We begin to see at this
time the absorption of Wales into the English system of government. In 1282 the Principality of Wales, i.e.
Gwynedd and its dependencies, was divided into the counties of Anglesey,
Caernarvonshire, Merioneth, Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire. In March 1284, the Statute if Rhuddlan
brought Wales under English control.
At the same time as
absorbing Wales, Edward I was creating a single administrative whole in
Ireland.
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There was another
significant change taking place. In
1290 Edward I introduced the Quia
Emptores Act. This Act allowed a
tenant or tenant-in-chief to transfer his responsibilities with the land he
controlled. The effect of this was to
allow the commercial purchase and sale of land. The status of tenant-in-chief could be
bought.
The
barons (tenants-in-chiefs) tried to maintain their closed hereditary oligarchy
but Edward refused to play ball with them.
In addition he occasionally created new barons. The great barons disputed all of this but
there was little they could do about it.
They had a big enough job trying to control the Crown and its Ministries,
but more significantly they were a minority in the Houses of Parliament. Under Edward I and later Edward III the
feudal system was coming to an end. The
heredity principle was under attack, a step forward on the path to democracy.
Ever widening taxation
had made it necessary to summon not only the baronage but also the
representatives of the towns and other landowners to Parliament for as the
wealth of the towns grew so did the demands for them to pay tax grow also. But some of the biggest landowners were the
Church. The cathedral clergy were
occasionally summoned to Parliament throughout the thirteenth century and by
the end of the century the diocesan clergy were also being summoned – a total
of some two hundred clergy.
However the clergy took
little part in Parliament because they were able to plead that they were being
taxed by Royal authority through the synods and convocation of Canterbury and
York. By the beginning of the reign of
Edward I only the bishops and abbots attended Parliament and they did this as
part of the baronage. Here lies the
origin of the bishops sitting in the House of Lords,
Gradually the spoken
language of the rulers changed from French into English and under Edward I the
law changed from Latin to French.
English was by now the language of Parliament – even the Chancellor opened
sessions with a speech in English, but its Acts and the records of the superior
courts continued to be written in French for another century, and law reports
until the seventeenth century.
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In 1307 when Edward II
took his coronation oath he undertook to “defend
laws and righteous customs, which the community of the realm will choose”
and also “to rule by consent with the
nobles.” This was the first
occasion on which it was recognised that the king rules with the consent of the
nobles. The King formally recognises
that he has to keep others on side.
Edward II's coronation
oath demonstrates the barons' distrust of Edward from the beginning. They
compelled their new ruler to accept an addition to his coronation oath in which
the king swore that he would “defend laws
and righteous customs, which the community of the realm will choose”
The exact interpretation
of the oath has led to many debates, in Edward's reign and by later historians,
concerning who constituted the 'community
of the realm' and how it was to choose.
From a deliberative
assembly parliament became in 1308 under Edward II a legislative power, without
whose assent no law could be legally constituted, and in 1311 annual
parliaments were ordered. Royal decree
was no longer good enough. The three
great classes of the time were the clergy, the barons and the commons. Since each class was expected to tax itself
separately, it may seem strange that Parliament divided into two chambers
instead of three. The bishops, however,
soon began to disregard that clause in their writ of summons, which required
them to bring representatives of the clergy.
Instead they taxed themselves in their own Convocation, a practice which
continued until 1664 when, in return for the right to vote for MPs, they agreed
to submit to the same taxation as the laity.
The knights of the shires, being new on the scene aligned themselves
with the citizens in the Commons, and they formed the habit of deliberating
together and apart from the clergy and barons.
In the Declaration of
1308 the barons quoted the controversial clause of the coronation oath to
reinforce their united demand that Gaveston be exiled - the king they said
being bound by his oath to obey their decision. 'The
doctrine of capacity' declared that homage was not due to the king in
person but only to the crown as an institution. The Declaration distinguished
between the person and the office of ruler to justify violent opposition to one
if it was in the best interests of the other, and stressed the barons' loyalty
to the crown.
Under Edward II, Wales
was conquered and in 1322, Parliament assembled at York. English boroughs had
risen by a further three to 140. The
boroughs which were summoned were those with a Royal Charter but not
exclusively so. The numbers voting for
their representative varied and were determined within each borough.
Payment of Members of Parliament can be traced back as
far as the 13th century, when the shires and boroughs allowed their
representatives certain wages for attending Parliament; knights received four
shillings a day, and citizens and burgesses two shillings a day for the
duration of the Parliament. These rates were first prescribed in 1322, and
remained in force throughout the Middle Ages, although there were local
variations above and below the set rates. For example, in 1296 the two Aldermen
representing the City of London were paid ten shillings a day and in 1463, the
Borough of Weymouth paid its burgesses with a wage of five hundred mackerel. The payment of parliamentary representatives
and the amount they should be paid has proved to be controversial up to the
present day. The argument becomes
intertwined with that of corruption.
By now we were beginning
to build up Common law based on precedent and Statute Law passed by
Parliament. Together these formed the
basis of English Law. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also in 1322 it was
declared by statute that " the
matters to be established for the estate of the king and of his heirs, and for
the estate of the realm and of the people, should be treated, accorded, and
established in parliament, by the king, and by the assent of the prelates,
earls and barons, and the commonalty of the realm, according as had been before
accustomed." The constitutional powers of parliament as a legislature
were here amply recognised not by royal charter, or by the occasional exercise
of prerogative, but by an authoritative statute.
Towards the end of his
reign Edward II had Articles of Accusation levelled against him. He was accused of breaking his coronation
oath of a contract with the people. He
was deposed and then brutally murdered.
Edward III succeeded him in 1327.
England in the 14th
century was a consultative monarchy.
The King was required to rule in accordance with law and custom, and
with the advice and consent of his prelates and magnates. His freedom of action was further
circumscribed by a growing volume of statutory law, which bound him as well as
his subjects. While the King was not a
free agent, he was expected to be a chief executive in every sense of the word:
head of government, fountain of justice, commander-in-chief and arbiter of
economic policy.
the presence in Parliament
of representatives originally summoned to make grants of money gradually
altered the character of legislation.
The Commons met not only prepared to grant taxes if need be, but
bringing reports of grievances and petitions for their amendment. Statutes came to be made not only “with the assent of the prelates and barons”
but “at the request of the Commons” - Biography of a Nation by Enoch Powell and Angus Maude
Taxation was the driving
force for the development of Parliament.
The King needed it to govern or to finance war. Parliament in its different bodies provided
it. How much was the subject of debate.
During the reigns of
Edward I and Edward II the number of towns sending members to Parliament
declined, as the wealthier communities consolidated their place in Parliament
to the exclusion of the poorer. The
House of Commons membership had fallen to about 250.
The merging of the knights
of the shire, citizens and burgesses into the one body of “Commons” was
assisted by a change taking place in the character of the baronage summoned to
Parliament. The duty of attendance at
court had rarely or never been exacted from every single tenant-in-chief. The King would be concerned only with the
consent and opinions of the more important of his barons; and the less
important would not be sorry to avoid the expense and responsibility of
obedience to the King’s writ.
Throughout the thirteenth century the number of barons called to
Parliament fluctuated enormously, according to the conditions of the moment and
the purpose of the particular summons.
The summonses to Parliament were rarely as numerous as the summonses to
render military service but, apart from the earls (who were always summoned),
any list would do which included a decent number of the sort of people called
for service. Early in the fourteenth
century, however, a great change occurred.
The baronage in Parliament ceased to be an arbitrary and varying selection
of the tenants in chiefs and others.
The lists became stereotyped, and the shrinking number who could point
to a precedent for summons began to assume the character of a closed order,
consisting of certain families who claimed the right of attendance for
themselves and denied the right of the King to summon others. Biography of a Nation - Enoch Powell and Angus Maude
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By the end of the 13th
century there were about 12 families holding earldoms. Their wealth and power was consolidated by
inter-marriage. e.g. On the death of his father-in-law in 1311, Thomas, Earl of
Lancaster became Earl of Lincoln and Earl of Salisbury. Kings occasionally promoted their wealthiest
barons to earldoms. During the reigns
of Edward III (reigned 1327 to 1377) and Richard II (reigned 1377 to 1399)
several earldoms were created, usually to reward successful war commanders and
royal servants.
At the time of Edward III
the House of Lords consisted of no more than about 40 earls and barons who were
mainly connected with the family or under the King’s influence. Increasingly, the least significant barons,
who were no wealthier than the greater knights, were summoned to Parliament
infrequently or never. The result was
an increasing social differentiation within the ranks of the nobility. By the fifteenth century, barons who did not
sit in Parliament were no longer called Lords and had subsided socially into
the ranks of the commons.
Between
1338 and 1339 parliament finally crystallised physically into two separate “houses”. The Lords sat in a separate House from the
Commons. Members of the House of Lords
were drawn from the Church (Lords Spiritual) and from magnates chosen by the
Monarch (Lords Temporal), whilst Commons members represented the shires and
boroughs.
The population of England
and Wales in 1348 was about 3.5 million but by 1350 it had fallen to 2.25
million as a result of plague in the “Black
Death”. This period around the “Black Death” was one of significant
social evolution, which ultimately impacted on the operation of power and
parliament.
The increased importance
of mercantile and movable wealth, as opposed to that in the form of land, the
accompanying rise in the partly self governing guilds in the towns and cities,
the immense movements of population which followed the decimation of the Black
Death in the years after 1348, all made it easier for the members of society to
view themselves as individuals. It was
in the same period that Englishmen acquired surnames. [4]
The “opening” of Parliament was conducted in English instead of French
for the first time in 1356. We were
moving towards one language.
The series of wars known
as the Hundred Years War, which was to dominate Edward III's reign began in
1337. Edward III claimed the French throne through his mother. The French disputed the right to inherit
through a woman. The result was a war,
which was to last effectively for over one hundred years. By 1362 Parliament had become so fed up with
the continuous demands for more and varied taxation a statute was established
that Parliament, both Houses, must assent to all lay taxation. In theory and to a certain extent in
practise this had been the case for some time, but now it was given the
strength of law.
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The next significant parliamentary
development took place in the “Good
Parliament” (as it called itself) of 1376.
Sitting in London from April 28 to July 10, it was the longest
Parliament up until that time. It took
place during a time when the English court was perceived by much of the
population to be corrupt. The traditional name of the “Good Parliament” was due to the sincere efforts by its members to
reform the government. Parliament had
not met since November 1373, two and a half years previously.
Once the members were
assembled, they were determined to clean up the corrupt Royal Council, which
consisted of paid Privy Councillors appointed by the King.
For the first time the
knights and burgesses elected a Speaker, Peter de la Mare, a knight
representing Hereford, who presided over what we, would recognise as a genuine
debate. The seats were set around four sides of a
lectern in effect a primitive dispatch box.
At the beginning of the meeting it was suggested that they all took an
oath to keep secret what was spoken and agreed among themselves so that they
could give their opinions frankly for the good of the nation. The Commons let it be known in no uncertain
terms that henceforth they expected King Edward III to trim his ambitions and
expenses to his revenues. The Good
Parliament was very critical of royal government, accusing officials of
corruption. Now they developed a
mechanism to enable them to do something about it. They introduced the use of impeachment, a
procedure whereby the Commons as a body prosecuted offenders before the
Lords. Richard Lyons and Baron Latimer,
who were believed to be robbing the treasury, were called before Parliament and
then imprisoned. This process had
reverberations down the ages leading to the impeachment of Charles I. The House of Lords is now taking on its role
of a Court of Appeal. The debates in
Parliament were not as yet recorded so we only know what went on from
contemporary records.
Internally
in the deliberations of the Commons among themselves the Speaker guides and
governs their proceedings; externally he is the mouthpiece of the House
itself. Two aspects of the Speaker were
established right at the beginning.
When he received the royal approval at the bar of the House of Lords he
stated: “As I told you three days ago, it
was agreed by common consent that I should be spokesman on this occasion. Nevertheless I do protest before all here
present that if I mistake in any point, I submit to be corrected and put right
by my companions; for I am not so foolish as to be unaware that the wisest can
go astray in great matters”.
Parliament
was dissolved in July, and the following autumn, John of Gaunt, fourth son of
Edward III and the effective ruler of England at the time, attempted to undo
its work. He barred the admission of
new councillors assigned to the King.
He threw Peter de la Mare into prison at Nottingham. He dismissed the new council and recalled
Latimer.
In
a fit of arrogant temper Gaunt had the Parliament declared unconstitutional and
its acts removed from the books. This
was the act of a dictator and it was not to last. Despite this, the public treasured the
memory of the reforming Parliament thus preserving for all time its name of the
“Good Parliament”.
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The 14th-century saw Parliament take
large strides towards becoming a structured organisation, so much so that by
the start of King Richard II's reign in 1377, the division of Parliament into
the House of Lords and the totally separate Common House (as the House of
Commons was then generally known), was well established. The structure was being assembled on which
democracy could be developed. At the
heart was the requirement for taxation, which could only now be provided to the
King (government) through the Houses of Parliament.
To begin with the Lords,
the House was made up of the Lords Spiritual and the Lords Temporal. The Lords Spiritual were a more settled
body, and consisted of the 2 Archbishops, the 19 Bishops, 25 Abbots of such
monasteries who had the right to sit in Parliament (not all did), and the Prior
of the Knights of the Hospital, altogether 45-50 in all. Less certainty
attended the Lords Temporal. Dukes and
Marquises were recent creations, the first Duke being appointed only in 1337,
and the first Marquis (Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford) being raised in 1385 to
the dignity of Marquis of Dublin. They had the right to sit (although they were
not always sent summonses) as did the Earls whose history was much older. There were some 1300 baronies, and it would
have been impractical to summon all the Barons. Many were not entitled to sit,
whilst others, who may have been able to assert some claim to do so, were
deliberately left out of any summons.
Some were repeatedly summoned, and it would appear that the right to sit
depended more on ancient custom and tradition than anything else did. Moreover, when the right to sit attached to
any particular Barony, successors to the title were summoned to sit. This did not prevent some that had not been
summoned from attending Parliament, and only rarely were they turned away once
they were there.
Officially it was the
King that summoned Parliament but tradition to a large extent determined the
list. The summons was a powerful weapon
in the hands of the King. He could delay
using it and in so doing effectively govern without Parliament, but the need
for taxation always eventually brought Parliament back.
It was one thing to issue
summonses, but it was quite another to ensure attendance. Not all of them
answered each and every call. Frequently both spiritual and temporal lords were
engaged on government service elsewhere, on embassies, on campaigns at home or
abroad, or on business of their own which would allow no interruption. There were inevitably unfilled vacancies to
their offices or titles at any one time, and even when they were filled, some
of the temporal lords would be young children.
This goes a long way to explaining why sometimes so few and at other
times so many, Dukes and Earls were summoned.
Some of them (and the Lords Temporal were particular offenders) simply
ignored the summons when it arrived or invented some excuse to avoid a tiresome
and sometimes dangerous journey. The
average attendance in the House of Lords for any one Parliament was in the
region of 40 to 50 with a balance in favour of the clergy. Because so few attended, those that did,
often found themselves with considerable power.
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With regard to the House
of Commons the records show that Writs were issued "to the Sherrifs" or "to all the Sherrifs". (Chief law enforcement officer in the
County). These required them to arrange
for the election of two "knights of
the shire" for each of the 37 shires (excluding Cheshire and Durham
which were not represented), and for two "burgesses" ("citizens"
if the town was not incorporated as a borough) from each town to sit in the
Common House. The right to return
members to Parliament was not enjoyed by every town and was restricted to some
80 in all, although new towns, such as Coventry and Southampton, were at various
times added to this privileged elite.
Nor could they always count upon a writ being issued to them. There were instances of towns being
deliberately excluded, and even York suffered this fate on more than one
occasion. Sometimes the right to return
members was contained in the town's charter, the Cinque Ports being an
example. On other occasions the town
acquired this right in a favourable answer to a petition, or as a reward for
some particular service rendered to the Crown, or had "traditionally" enjoyed it. There was no systematic method of extending
the right to each and every town of importance, and towns, which did not have
the right to return members, simply went unrepresented
The elections were
anything but fair and proper, and the electorate seems to have consisted only
of those whom the Sheriff thought should be electors.
Richard II succeeded
Edward and in 1381 at the age of fourteen faced the “Peasants Revolt” led by Wat Tyler from Essex, who was chosen by a
mob of peasants to be their spokesman.
A Poll Tax had been imposed which aggravated the peasant’s conditions
and finally stirred them to protest by marching to London under the leadership
of Wat Tyler. The resulting
demonstration lead to burning of houses, the incineration of the lists of those
subject to the Poll Tax and the murders of Chancellor Sudbury, Archbishop of
Canterbury and Sir Robert Hales, the King’s Treasurer.
There was a face to face
meeting at Smithfield between Richard and Wat Tyler where Tyler demanded a new Magna Carta, this time for the common
people, formally ending serfdom, pardoning all outlaws, liquidating the
property of the Church and declaring the equality of all men below the
king. Richard replied in the
affirmative. Tyler climbed on his horse
and at that moment a young boy shouted that Tyler was a thief. Tyler turned on the boy with his dagger, a
fight broke out, he fell to the ground and the king’s men lead by Mayor
Walworth finished him off. Richard took
control and calmed down the rebels by promising that the Poll Tax would be
repealed. This was only a ruse for
within days the leaders of the rebellion were killed and soon their swinging
bodies were put on display. Though a
failure, the Peasant’s revolt was a warning of things to come. It was the first time that the “power of the people” had shown
itself. When Wat Tyler demanded a new
Charter it demonstrated the extent to which the Magna Carta had impinged on the
consciousness of the people.
Because
the King needed additional revenue, the power of the Commons was gradually
increasing, whereas the summons of the Lords to parliament was based on their
feudal claim to be the King’s advisors.
The
concept of barony as a personal dignity not tied to land arose when in about
1388 Richard II created John Beauchamp a baron by letters patent. The Lord de Beauchamp was a baron not by
tenure but rather the will of the Crown.
The Peerage was being separated from the necessity to hold land. Richard set out to create a majority in the
Lords that was favourable to himself.
Elections to the House of Commons were also beginning to be manipulated.
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From the fourteenth century onwards,
the history of the House of Lords is chiefly a study of its gradual surrender
of authority to the Commons.
In
the first place, since the representation in the House of Commons consisted
mainly of those persons, notably the merchants, whose wealth was increasing
most rapidly, the bulk of taxation eventually fell on them. Hence, they became the dominant partners in
the common grant to the King, and their power was strengthened when they began
to deliberate as a separate body. Soon
they claimed to be the sole originators of taxation, and this was expressed in
the formula appearing in 1395 that grants were made “by the Commons, with the advice of the Lords spiritual and temporal”. Their pre-eminence was confirmed in 1407,
when Henry IV accepted that “any grant by
the Commons granted and by the Lords assented to” should be reported only
by the Speaker of the Commons, a principle which is still enshrined in modern
practice.
Secondly,
the Commons used their power to obtain redress of grievances and eventually,
with the Lords, to become legislators.
Parliament’s control of
the purse strings was used to good effect.
Supplies were granted for a limited period only, so that Parliament had
to be called at fairly frequent intervals.
Consequently its political power increased considerably during the
fourteenth century.
Richard's unwise generosity to his
favourites - Michael de la Pole, Robert de Vere and others - led Thomas, Duke
of Gloucester and four other magnates to form the Lords Appellant. The five Lords Appellants tried and
convicted five of Richard's closest advisors for treason. In 1397, Richard arrested three of the five
Lords, coerced Parliament to sentence them to death and banished the other
two. One of the exiles was Henry
Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV.
Richard travelled to Ireland in 1399 to quell warring chieftains,
allowing Bolingboke to return to England and be elected King by Parliament. Richard II was deposed by the Parliament he
summoned. Henceforth English kings enjoyed their
thrones only by the sanction of Parliament. Richard lacked support and was quickly
captured by Henry IV. (Reigned 1399 to 1413).
Deposed in 1399, Richard was murdered
while in prison, the first casualty of the Wars of the Roses between the Houses
of Lancaster and York. Henry IV was the
first King of England since Harold whose mother tongue was English.
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In 1400, Owain Glyndwr - proclaimed Prince of
Wales in 1404 - summoned a Welsh parliament at Machynlleth. However, in 1413, the English defeated
Glyndwr and his followers and any national aspirations were thwarted.
By 1404 the Privy Council was not a large body, consisting of only
19 persons.
Opportunities for gerrymandering were legion, and
were fully exploited. The Sheriffs
often had firm instructions on who should be elected, either by name or those
of a certain opinion. In 1404, the
Sheriff of Rutland was caught out in certifying that William 0ndeby had been
elected whereas the truly elected person was Thomas Thorp. The Lords, to whom the matter had been
referred for judgement, duly declared that Thorp was properly elected, and
committed the Sheriff to the Fleet Prison to consider his misdeeds at leisure
and be fined at the King's pleasure.
In 1406 the Indenture Act was passed with the declared aim of
putting a stop to some of the ranker abuses involved in electing the members to
the House of Commons. Although
reinforced by subsequent Statutes, it clearly failed in its object. Each of the electors was required to add his
signature and seal to the Sheriffs return certifying the names of the persons
elected. Was this the first case of
individual voter registration? Today,
there is an increasing demand for voter registration to combat fraud in postal
voting.
In 1407 12 persons elected the knights for the county of Cambridge
and also the burgesses for the city.
Eight persons elected the knights for the county of Huntingdon and also
the burgesses for the town. All of this
was done at the same meeting in each case, and the same procedure was followed
in 1411.
Also in 1407 the Lords and Commons assembled to transact business
in the Sovereign’s absence. Henry IV
acknowledged that taxes must originate in the Commons. By 1413 members were obliged to reside at
the places they represented and a residential qualification was introduced for
the electors of those members. In 1414
Henry V undertook that “nothing be
enacted to the Petition of the Commons contrary to their asking.” There was full equality of the Commons and
Lords on legislation.
In 1414, eight attorneys of seven lords "and one lady" elected the knights for the county of
Yorkshire. 19 persons elected the
knights for the county of Surrey, and the burgesses for four towns all at the
same meeting. Four persons were the
electors for Yarmouth. Why the “one lady”? – the first case of women’s
suffrage?
Also
in 1414 Henry V undertook that “nothing
be enacted to the petition of the Commons contrary to their asking”. In other words, there was now full
equality between the House of Commons and the House of Lords on legislation.
In
1418 the mayor and three citizens made the election for Bath.
In 1446 the mayor and ten others elected the burgesses for
Bedford. The mayor and two bailiffs
"of common consent" elected
the two burgesses for Northampton.
It is not easy to accept that there were so few electors in such
prosperous areas. Who decided who
should be the electorate? Was it just
the powerful? The total franchise in
England in the mid 15th century was about 700. Elections were vulnerable to pressure from
the Royal court, the King himself, and individual landowners with preferred
candidates.
There were however some
provisions which prevented the unfit from being elected. All infants, idiots,
ladies, lawyers, lunatics, the infirm, the aged, and the sick were excluded
from sitting as members. If
nevertheless they appeared in Parliament, they were liable to be discharged by
the King and a fresh election would be ordered. Lawyers, an unpopular species at any time,
were thought to be too busy with their practices to give proper attention to
Parliament. A distinct bias is
noticeable against "ladies",
even when they only appeared for the elections. Their presence there was deplored, but they
were not excluded from the election itself.
Equality for women was centuries away.
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By means of these
singularly dubious processes, which from time to time led to violent protests
and sometimes even riots, some 74 knights of the shires and 174 burgesses
including 14 from the Cinque Ports (a group of ports in Southeast England
consisting of Dover, Hastings, Hythe, Romney and Sandwich, which were allowed
trading privileges in return for providing the bulk of England’s Navy.) were
elected to serve as members of the Common House. Unlike the Lords, they were bound to attend
on pain of severe penalties. One
instance appears in the records where the knights of the shire had to provide
sureties that they would dutifully attend Parliament. To say that the House was "packed" would be an
understatement. To our eyes, the whole
procedure was corrupt and objectionable beyond belief. A body assembled by a process, which has
little to be said in its favour, should not logically be a good assembly. Yet by one of those contradictions which are
so often found in English life, both then and since, the Common House worked
supremely well in the early part of the 15th century. Packed it may have been, but it did not do
the King's bidding in a mindless fashion when it was allowed to sit. It did speak for the country as a whole, and
as the story of the 15th-century unfolded, we can see how independently minded
it could be, and how insistent it frequently was on matters, which required
reform. We also see how weak it still
was when challenged by powerful Kings.
The
Commons had lost their stalwart leaders, the armed barons and outspoken
prelates, but they had themselves advanced in numbers, riches and
enlightenment; they had overspread the land as knights and freeholders, or
dwelt in populous towns enriched by merchandise. Why could they not find leaders of their
own? Because they had lost the liberal
franchises of an earlier age. All
freeholders, or suitors present at the county court, were formerly entitled to
vote for knights of the shire; but under Henry VI in 1429, an Act was passed by
which this right was confined to 40 shilling freeholders, resident in the
county. Its declared purpose was to
exclude those lesser beings that, even then, were clamouring for a say in
public affairs. The statute provided
that only those persons with a “freehold estate the annual income from which
was forty shillings” could elect members of the House of Commons. Forty shillings was the amount that in 1429
supposedly would “furnish all the
necessaries of life, and render the freeholder, if he pleased, an independent
man.” Large numbers of electors
were thus disfranchised. In the view of
parliament they were "of no value,"
and complaints had been made that they were under the influence of the nobles
and greater landowners; but a popular element had been withdrawn from the
county representation, and the restricted franchise cannot have impaired the
influence of the nobles. This
demonstrated that the right to vote could easily be reversed.
The Act which was in
French read as follows:
Whereas in many counties the elections of knights of the shires, those chosen to attend the king's parliaments, have of late been carried out by too great and excessive a number of people dwelling within those same counties, of whom the larger part have been people of little substance or of no worth, each pretending to have the same voice in such elections as the most worthy knights or squires dwelling in the same counties,
Whereby homicides, riots, assaults, and feuds are very likely to arise among the gentlefolk and other people of the same counties unless a suitable remedy is provided in this connection:
Our lord the king, considering the premises, has provided and ordained by the authority of this parliament that knights of the shires, elected to attend parliaments hereafter to be held in the kingdom of England, shall be chosen in each county by persons dwelling and resident therein, each of whom shall have a freehold to the value of at least 40s. a year [Was this the first case of individual voter registration] and that every sheriff of England shall, by the aforesaid authority, have power to examine on the Holy Gospels each such elector, [to determine]how much he is able to spend annually
One of the most interesting points in this Act was
that “persons” i.e. including women
had the right to vote if they met the criteria. Of course few women met the criteria and
they could not stand for Parliament.
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From the middle of the fifteenth century, Parliament
began to lose some of its power. It
allowed the King to dispense with summoning Parliament annually, demonstrating
how parliament can be a party to its demise.
A powerful King with certainty of revenue had no time for
Parliament. The King set the agenda and
Parliament was supposed to act as a check on him. This demonstrates the need in any
constitution for checks and balances.
As for the cities and boroughs, they had
virtually renounced their electoral privileges. They had never valued them very highly; and
now by royal charters, or by the usurpation of small self-elected bodies of
burgesses, the choice of members had fallen into the hands of town councils and
neighbouring landowners. The anomalous
system of close and nomination boroughs, which had arisen thus early in English
history, was allowed to continue without a check for four centuries, as a
notorious blot upon a democratic constitution.
All these changes exalted
the prerogatives of the Crown. Amid the
clash of arms and the strife of hostile parties the voice of parliament had
been stifled; and, when peace was restored, a powerful king could dispense with
an assembly which might prove troublesome, and from whom he rarely needed
help. Hence, for a period of over one
hundred years, from the reign of Henry VI to that of Elizabeth, the free
parliaments of England were effectively in abeyance.
Under Henry VI (reigned 1422 to 1461) the House of Commons had
about 300 members. In the early years
of Henry VI’s reign annual parliaments were the norm, but after 1433 gaps of
two years became normal, and sometimes these extended for 3 years or even more;
no Parliaments were held between 1439 and 1442, 1442 to 1445, and 1455 to 1459.
When they were held, it was commonly indicative of some more than usually acute
crisis during these troubled years.
King Edward IV, (reigned 1461 to 1483) in spite of his professed care in
the way he said he would handle Parliament, frequently allowed 4 or even 5
years to pass before he summoned it, although he often kept his Parliaments in
being by frequent prorogation. In other
words, instead of dissolving Parliament he adjourned it to a later date. We can see from this the impact, which the
passing of the 1430 Act reducing the franchise had on the power of
Parliament. Henry VI treated it with
contempt by effectively ignoring it, but this could not last. War and the requirement for funds to finance
war would eventually force Kings to treat Parliament with more respect and to
allow it to meet on a more regular basis.
The length of sessions varied enormously but gradually increased
from a few weeks until under Edward IV after the battle of Tewkesbury 1471, the
1472 Parliament lasted from 0ctober 1472 until March 1475; there were 45
sitting weeks and 5 prorogation’s.
Parliament seems to have been co-operative and uncomplaining. It passed an Act allowing the King to
re-summon it on 20 days notice irrespective of the date to which it had been
prorogued.
In
earlier times the Church had often stood forth against the domination of kings,
but by the end of the fifteenth century it was in passive submission to the
Throne. The prelates were attracted to
the court, and sought the highest offices of state; the inferior clergy had
long been losing their influence over the laity by their ignorance and want of
moral elevation at a period of increasing enlightenment; while the Church at large
was weakened by schisms and a wider freedom of thought. Hence the Church had ceased to be a check
upon the Crown even though its Leaders sat in the House of Lords.
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Parliamentary statutes were written down in English
for the first time in 1484. This was another
step towards a common language. In the
same year Richard III abolished the custom of obligatory gifts for the
monarchy, which were called “benevolence.” The Monarch was the effective government
of the country. By abolishing gifts to
the government this Act was part of a long process to try to eliminate bribery
and corruption from government.
Richard
III was defeated on the battlefield, at the Battle of Bosworth Field, in
Leicestershire, on 22 Aug. 1485. It was
here that Henry VII and his forces met with Richard III and Henry won the
crown. It was truly through the defeat
of Richard and the 'right of conquest'
that Henry claimed the throne. He would
need more than luck, however, to keep it there. Once again, sheer brute force dominated.
Henry had to show that he had become King already -
whether by heredity or conquest was immaterial - and summon Parliament as
undisputed sovereign. Having sent out
his writs to Members, he had himself crowned at Westminster Abbey on 30
October, a week before Parliament met on 7 November 1485. There was thus no possibility of
Parliament's claiming to have made Henry, King by their consent, by agreeing to
honour his right by conquest or descent. All the Members were required to do
was to pass a brief statute which
"ordained, established and enacted" that the crown "be, rest, remain and abide in the most royal
person of our now sovereign lord King Henry VII and in the heirs of his body". This left Henry’s title open to no lawful
challenge. It was solidified however,
by his marriage at Westminster Abbey on 18 Jan 1486, to Elizabeth of York, the
eldest child of the late King Edward IV.
This was a setback for democracy.
Once again, force ruled, Parliament was effectively ignored.
What does shine through
the pages of history is that, in spite of all the difficulties under which it
laboured, and the extraordinary methods by which its members were chosen
Parliament, and particularly the Common House was a strong, independently
minded, and very effective institution which really tried to represent the
country as a whole. The well informed
and objective views which it expressed are most remarkable, particularly
bearing in mind the narrow classes from which its members came, the lack of
continuity from one Parliament to the next, and the difficulties which it faced
in obtaining the facts and figures which it needed for its discussions. Then, as since, there were outstanding
people and great servants of Parliament in the 15th-century assemblies.
If in certain respects
Parliament was a strong institution, there were others in which it was weak,
and over the main one it had no ready control. This was the personality and
character of the King himself. The King
summoned and dismissed Parliament and these facts alone gave him considerable
power over it. Where the King was a
strong character, well in control of himself and his Council, who recognised,
however reluctantly, the necessity of working with the representatives of his
subjects, great things could be achieved by Parliament. Where the King was
autocratic or weak, frustrations, then as now, would lead to dispute and
confrontation. That is why the
Parliaments of the Kings Edward III, Henry IV, Henry V, and later Edward IV,
were so often successful in spite of their disputatious and some-times
acrimonious nature. That is why King
Richard II, with his haughty and despotic outlook which led him to regard
Parliament as an impertinence, was less successful with his. That also explains why King Henry VI, who
had no character or firmness of spirit, and who allowed himself to be misguided
and mislead by bad, selfish and greedy people, failed time and again with the
Parliaments summoned during his reign.
During the 15th century the number of temporal peers
(excluding the clergy) summoned to parliament rarely exceeded fifty, and no
more than twenty-nine received writs of summons to the first parliament of
Henry VII. There were only fifty-nine
at the death of Queen Elizabeth (reigned 1558 to 1603).
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Tournai was created in 1513 as a Borough in France
(now Belgium) and had a seat in the House of Commons. It was abolished on its return to French
rule in 1519
Henry
VIII, like his father found very little work or need for Parliament. It had met only thrice in the past thirty-
three years. Now it was the implement
he needed. At the close of 1529, in a
brief session, Parliament passed three statutes limiting the financial
privileges and fees of the clergy. The
following year the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, to whom the King had
appealed for an opinion, declared his marriage null, and the King’s plan moved
a further stage forward. Wolsey had
been found guilty under the Statute of Praemunire of exercising, albeit with the King’s licence, the authority of legate derived
from the Pope; but the whole clergy, by recognising him as legate were
implicated in the offence. The
Convocations bought pardon by paying heavy fines and by specifically
acknowledging the King as “Sole protector
and supreme head of the Church and Clergy in England”. Enoch Powell and Angus Maude - Biography of A Nation
In 1523, Thomas More was chosen
to be Speaker of the House of Commons.
Very hesitant to accept the post, he asked King Henry VIII to release
him from the duty. The King refused his
request, so More made a second request to the King: a request for free speech,
the first such request ever known to be made.
His petition was the first time that parliamentary privilege was
requested. It reads as follows:
It may therefore please your most abundant Grace, our most benign and
godly King, to give to all your commoners here assembled your most gracious
permission and allowance for every man freely, without fear of your dreaded
displeasure, to speak his conscience and boldly declare his advice concerning
everything that comes up among us. Whatever any man may happen to say, may it
please your noble Majesty, in your inestimable goodness, to take it all with no
offense, interpreting every man’s words, however badly they may be phrased, to
proceed nonetheless from a good zeal toward the profit of your realm and honor
of your royal person, the prosperous condition and preservation of which, most
excellent Sovereign, is the thing which we all, your most humble and loving
subjects, according to that most binding duty of our heartfelt allegiance, most
highly desire and pray for.
Today Parliamentary
privilege is under attack in a Parliament which owes more loyalty to the
Government rather than to the institution.
It must be defended.
“This realm of England is an Empire…governed by one Supreme Head and
King”. So proclaimed Thomas
Cromwell, in his most critical piece of legislation - the Act in Restraint of Appeals, in 1533. By calling England an empire, he designated
it a sovereign state, with a king who owed no submission to any other human
ruler and who was invested with plenary power to give his people justice in all
causes. The Pope laid claim to the
ultimate divine right. Thomas Cromwell
lost favour with the King after negotiating his disastrous marriage with Anne
of Cleaves. He was sent to the Tower,
condemned by Parliament under an Act of Attainder and executed. It didn’t do to fall out with the King!
What is interesting is
that at this point in time the King sees the need for Parliament when he wants
to make major important changes.
Powerful as he is he cannot act alone.
In 1533 Henry VIII
secured the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and declared
himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England on Earth. The ramifications from this reverberated
through the centuries. In the same year
Henry introduced the first legislation against homosexuals with the Buggery
Act, making “buggery” punishable by
hanging, a penalty not finally lifted until 1861. Of course morality was different in these
sometime gruesome times and one cannot judge them by today’s standards. This was a blatant case of discrimination.
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In the spring of 1534,
Parliament proceeded to eliminate the Pope from the creation of prelates, to
suspend all remaining payments from England to the papacy, and to enact the
submission of the clergy. Biography of a Nation by Enoch Powell and Angus Maude.
A great breech had now
opened up between Henry and the Pope.
The breech was unreconcilable.
In addition Convocation lost its power to refuse any tax granted by
Parliament to the King.
This divide was initially
seen as temporary, but the split was to become a wide permanent schism. It was to be the source for much religious
discrimination in the centuries to come.
The Reformation in England was a revolution in the way the state was governed,
in the power structure of the Church and its influence on the life of the
nation. Henry VIII established himself
as head of the Church of England in 1534 and began the dissolution of the
monasteries. Opposed by Sir Thomas More
– a former Speaker of the House of Commons and Lord Chancellor - Henry had him
beheaded. Another one who learnt too
late not to fall out with the King!
Just before his execution on 6th July 1535 More said: “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s
first”.
Wales despite being
conquered by England in 1284 did not return members to parliament until Henry
VIII decided in 1543 to incorporate the principality into his realm. It was given the small number of 24 seats. Welsh counties returned only one member each
(compared to two in England), and several of the borough constituencies were
made up of small boroughs which banded together to jointly elect one member.
The mixture of English and
Welsh law, and the indirect method of subordination of almost half the country
through the “marcher lordships” were anachronisms, which attracted the
attention of Henry VIII’s servants. An
investigation by Bishop Roland Lee in 1534 led to an Act of 1536 which provided
for the lordships to be “shired” like the Principality, and for the English
system of administration to be extended to the whole of Wales. Accordingly, the counties of Pembroke and
Glamorgan, Brecon and Radnor, Denbigh and Montgomery were demarcated, the
English shire administration was set up, and judicial circuits were established
on the same basis as those in England.
From each of the shires of Wales, one knight and one burgess were to be
sent to Parliament. This
reorganisation, completely assimilating Wales with the rest of the kingdom, was
embodied in a comprehensive Act of 1543, which also gave statutory recognition
to the Council of Wales. This body,
appointed by the King and responsible to him and the Privy Council, exercised
both judicial and administrative supervision over Wales. Biography of a Nation by Enoch Powell and Angus Maude
The Statute of 1536 provided
for Wales to “stand and continue for ever
from henceforth incorporated united and annexed to and with" the realm
of England.
The “marcher lordships”
had been set up in the Welsh marshes, which is an area along the border of
England and Wales. They were defensive
mechanisms to protect the English. The
Council of Wales survived until its abolition in 1689. In addition the number of Welsh MPs was
increased from 24 to 27 by granting of a member to the borough of
Haverfordwest. The 27 include two from
Monmouthshire, which Henry transferred to England (in later years this was
recognised as a mistake and it was reversed in 1974)
Most of the
elections for the seats in Wales were uncontested and the persons sent to the
House of Commons were usually selected by a few wealthy families in the area.
One aspect of the Welsh Act of Union upset a large
number of people in Wales. The Act stated that all people that were chosen to
represent Wales as officials or Members of Parliament had to be able to speak
English. It also stated that the
law-courts in Wales had to use the English language. So complete was the annexation of Wales,
that in the future Acts of Parliament which mentioned England were deemed to
also include Wales. This was not
changed until 1967.
Henry VIII was accorded the title King of Ireland by
the Irish Parliament in 1541, having previously been styled Lord of Ireland.
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In December 1541
Catherine, Henry’s first wife, was condemned not by a trial, but by an Act of
Attainder passed by Parliament. An Act of Attainder is like an Act of
Impeachment but does not have to be proved.
The Act recited the evidence against the Queen, and Henry would have
been obliged to listen to the entire text before granting the Royal
Assent. Because "the repetition of so grievous a Story and
the recital of so infamous a crime" in the King's presence "might reopen a Wound already closing in the
Royal Bosom", a special clause permitting Commissioners to grant the
Royal Assent on the King's behalf was inserted in the Act. This method of granting the Royal Assent had
never been used before, but, in later reigns, it came to replace the
traditional personal appearance of the Sovereign in Parliament.
In 1542, England's remaining monasteries were all
dissolved, and their property transferred to the Crown. Abbots and priors lost
their seats in the House of Lords; only archbishops and bishops came to
comprise the ecclesiastical element of the body. The Lords Spiritual, as members of the
clergy with seats in the House of Lords, were for the first time
outnumbered by the Lords Temporal.
There were two major events effecting democracy in
the reign of Henry VIII. One was
negative and the other was positive. By
declaring himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England he made England a
religious state. The people of England
were subjects of the King owing their allegiance to him. Regardless of which faith they belonged to
they were forced to owe their allegiance to the King. This created conflict and in democratic
terms discrimination setting back democracy as we have defined it. How can a citizen of England of a different
faith than Church of England owe allegiance to their Monarch when that same
Monarch is also the Supreme Head of the Church of England? The problem still exists today. Henry ensured that religion would be a
dominant factor in the politics of the United Kingdom for the centuries to
come. One of his main claims to infamy
was that he executed Roman Catholics for believing in the Pope and Protestants
for believing in the Catholic faith.
The second major event
was Henry’s insistence on the right of a female to succeed him as Monarch. Henry named all three of his children as his
heirs. His son Edward would succeed
him, but if he died childless Edward’s sister Mary would inherit the throne and
if she died childless Elizabeth would become Queen. This was a small step in helping to break
down sexual discrimination and was a step forward on the road to
democracy. Although it only effected
his own family it set a precedent for the future. Within a short time after Henry’s death Mary
and Elizabeth I became Monarchs in their own right. Since Henry we have had six female
Monarchs.
Not
until the reign of Henry VIII did the term “House
of Lords” come into existence to describe the meetings of the lay and
ecclesiastical peers.
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The young Protestant Edward succeeded
his father Henry VIII as King in 1547.
He tried to ensure a Protestant succession by proclaiming that Mary, a
strong Catholic and Elizabeth were bastards so could not succeed him. Instead he left the throne to a cousin Lady
Jane Grey, great granddaughter of Henry VII, completely flouting his father’s
will and the Act of Succession which Henry had got Parliament to pass. Lady Jane Grey lasted nine days on the
throne before Mary proclaimed herself, in 1553, the rightful Queen of
England. Lady Jane was subsequently
executed together with her husband.
With Mary on the throne religion dominated the political agenda, for she
was a Roman Catholic.
Mary
consolidated her position within the year by marrying Philip, the heir to the
Spanish throne and another devout Catholic.
A few months later Mary announced that she was pregnant and taking
advantage of the people’s joy got Parliament to vote for a return of the Church
of England to obedience to the Pope.
Unfortunately for Mary her pregnancy was an illusion and as the reality
became known her power diminished and Parliament began to assert itself.
Mary
suppressed Protestantism and brought back the heretic laws, which condemned to
death by burning anyone declared a heretic.
Over three hundred souls lost their lives in a short time.
Crucial to the government’s plans for
the final suppression of Protestantism was a Bill to confiscate the landed
estates of the Protestant exiles. If
the Bill passed, the economic foundations of their resistance would be
destroyed. The government strained
every nerve, but so too did the opposition, led by Sir Anthony Kingston. With the connivance of the sergeant-at-arms
the doors of the House were locked from the inside. Kingston thundered his protests and the Bill
was defeated. Monarchy from the Middle Ages to Modernity David Starkey Calais
was created in 1372 as a Borough in France and had a seat in the House of
Commons. The seat was abolished when Calais was re-conquered by the French in
1558.In 1558 Mary became seriously ill and died
leaving the throne to Elizabeth I.
Elizabeth found herself as the pig in the middle between the extremes of
the Catholics that had come to prominence under Mary and the Protestants who
did not think reform of the Church had gone far enough and whose zeal for
revenge was hardened by the burning of “heretics”
that Mary had ordered during her reign.
She had no alternative but to turn to Parliament for support:
to overcome her Catholic
peers and bishops, Elizabeth had to join forces with her Protestant Commons and
councillors. She duly got the
settlement and the Supremacy, though with the narrowest of majorities in the
Lords of three votes. The price,
however, was her acceptance of Cranmer’s second, much more radically Protestant
Book of Common Prayer of 1552.Monarchy from the Middle Ages to Modernity David Starkey
Cranmer’s Book of Common
Prayer converted the mass into communion.
At the end of his life he recanted what he had done and just as he was
about to be burnt at the stake he thrust his right hand into the flames saying
“This hath offended! Oh this unworthy hand!”
By 1558 the House of
Commons had 398 members. Religious
discrimination percolated through every walk of life. The Second Act of Uniformity 1559 required
everyone to assent to a particular view, that of the established church. It required that there should be outward
conformity to the Established Religion but opinion should be left free! It was a setback for democracy.
The issue of succession
would bedevil Elizabeth’s entire reign.
Parliament was terrified that they would be faced with an interregnum on
the queen’s death. As history made
clear, a throne with no known heir guaranteed civil war and bloodshed when the
monarch died. What would become of the
monarchy? Would the absence of a known
heir turn England into an elective monarchy?
Would the religion of the country have to change once more depending on
who emerged as the successor?
During the reign of Elizabeth
I the parliamentary committee system was inaugurated. She also introduced the first parliamentary
oath of allegiance in 1563. This was
done to exclude Roman Catholics. In 1570 the Italian Pope Pius V excommunicated
Elizabeth thereby exacerbating the problem relating to religion and leading to
Roman Catholic plots. By this act of
religious discrimination democracy suffered a serious setback.
By the time of the death
of Elizabeth there were only fifty-nine peers in the House of Lords. From early in the reign of Elizabeth
I, whose Parliaments sat for only thirty-five months out of her forty-five
years reign, the relations between Parliament and Crown trod repeatedly the
same vicious circle. Parliament was summoned
to grant supply; it betook itself to the examination of matters, such as
dynastic, foreign, or religious policy, which were “too high” for it; and it
was either browbeaten or dissolved. Biography of A Nation J.Enoch Powell and Angus Maude
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In the early days of the
representative system the obligation of sending members to parliament was
regarded as a burden instead of a privilege by many boroughs and exemption from
this duty was a boon for which sacrifices were cheerfully made. One of the earliest recorded instances of bribery in electioneering matters
occurred in 1571. In the “Parliamentary History” it is stated that
one Thomas Long was returned for the borough of Westbury, Wilts, who, “Being found to be a very simple man, and not
fit to serve in that place, was questioned how he came to be elected.” Thomas Long acted up to his reputation, and
replied with a frankness not commonly exhibited in the admissions made before
election committees: “The poor man
immediately confessed to the House that he gave to Anthony Garland, mayor of
the said town of Westbury, and one Watts of the same, £4.00 for his place in
parliament.” Though he forfeited
his bargain, he did not lose his money; “an
order was made that the said Garland and Watts should repay the said Thomas
Long the £4.00 they had of him.”
The corporation and inhabitants of Westbury were fined £20.00 for their
scandalous attempt.
1586
saw the beginning of the custom to appoint Standing Committees at the opening
of each Parliament to decide disputed elections. The House of Commons consisted of 462
members.
By
the end of the sixteenth century the number of members of the House of Commons
had risen to 495 consisting of the following:
Members
185
Two member seats 370
3 One member seat 3
London 4
8 Cinque Ports two member seats 16
12 Wales boroughs 12
12 Wales Counties 12
Total 495 In
1603 James I decided that the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge should
be enfranchised with two seats each adding a further four seats making a total
of 499. King James I brought to the English Parliament a
practice, which had been used in the Scottish Parliament of allowing the
Universities to elect members. The King believed that the Universities were
often affected by the decisions of Parliament and ought therefore to have
representation in it.
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One of the great-unanswered questions
in the development of democracy in the United Kingdom is why there were two
member seats? After all, the two member
seats lasted for six centuries. It may
well have been a simple case of common sense.
If one member is ill or indisposed the area is still represented by the
other member. When travelling to the
House of Commons it is more enjoyable to have a companion and it is thus more
likely that those summoned will turn up.
With two member seats a wider range of views from a particular area can
be represented. It is also possible
that inertia explains why we had two member seats. Having started under the de Montfort
Parliament it just continued. Single
member seats were the exception and not the rule.
Although
parliamentary representation had been increased over the centuries the
electorate was based on wealth. The Act
of 1430 had disenfranchised a large number of people, who did not own freehold
land with a value above 40 shillings.
There were no women Members of Parliament and religious discrimination
had raised its head. The Jews had been
forced to emigrate in 1290 by Edward I.
Roman Catholics were excluded from Parliament because members had to
take the oath introduced by Elizabeth I.
The size of the electorate is unknown, but could only have been a tiny
fraction of the population, which was approaching six million. There was no secret ballot.
Democracy both as a
concept and as a reality had made little if any progress and clearly under
Elizabeth I when Parliament sat for such a short period of time, had suffered a
severe setback and yet the foundations for many of the institutions and
practises of Government were being established. Magna Carta, restraint on the power of the
Monarch, tax-raising through Parliament, two separate Houses in Parliament,
voting for Members as representatives – all were now part of custom which would
be very difficult to change. The story
of Parliament is one of evolution into the situation and mechanisms we see
today, even when the original rationale for the mechanisms has long ago
disappeared. It is an insight into the
history of all institutions. It is a
history of the shifting nature of power back and forth between people,
parliament and the Monarch.
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