AN

ANECDOTAL HISTORY

OF THE

BRITISH PARLIAMENT.

PART I.

RISE AND PROGRESS OF PARLIAMENTARY
INSTITUTIONS.

Antiquity of Parliaments.-Parliaments or General. Councils (writes Blackstone) are coeval with the kingdom itself. How those Parliaments were constituted and composed is another question, which has been matter of great dispute among our learned antiquaries, and, particularly, whether the Commons were summoned at all; or, if summoned, at what period they began to form a distinct assembly. In the main, the constitution of Parliament, as it now stands, was marked out so long ago as the seventeenth year of King John, A.D. 1215, in the great charter granted by that prince; wherein he promises to summon all archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons, personally; and all other tenants-in-chief under the Crown, by the sheriff and bailiffs, to meet at a certain place, with forty, days' notice, to assess aids and scutages when necessary. And this constitution has subsisted in fact at least from 49 Henry III., there being still extant writs of that date to summon knights, citizens, and burgesses to Parliament.

The "Omnipotence of Parliament."—The power and jurisdiction of Parliament (says Sir Edward Coke) is so transcendent and absolute that it cannot be confined, either for causes or persons, within any bounds. Parliament can regulate or new model the succession to the Crown; as was done in the reigns of Henry VIII. and William III. It can alter the established religion of the land; as was done in a variety of instances in the reigns of King Henry VIII. and his three children. It can change and create afresh even the constitution of the kingdom and of Parliaments themselves; as was done by the Act of Union, and the several statutes for triennial and septennial elections. It can, in short,

B

do everything that is not naturally impossible; and therefore some have not scrupled to call its power, by a figure rather too bold, the omnipotence of Parliament. True it is, that what the Parliament doth, no authority upon earth can undo. So that it is a matter most essential to the liberties of this kingdom that such members be delegated to this important trust as are most eminent for their probity, their fortitude, and their knowledge.-Blackstone's Commentaries.

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England can never be Ruined but by a Parliament.”It was a known apothegm of the great Lord Treasurer Burleigh that "England could never be ruined but by a Parliament;" and, as Sir Matthew Hale observes, this being the highest and greatest court, over which none other can have jurisdiction in the kingdom, if by any means a misgovernment should any way fall upon it, the subjects of this kingdom are left without all manner of remedy. To the same purpose Montesquieu- though, I trust, too hastily-presages that as Rome, Sparta, and Carthage have lost their liberty and perished, so the constitution of England will, in time, lose its liberty-will perish it will perish whenever the legislative power shall become more corrupt than the executive.-Ibid.

Constitution of the Early Councils.-Hume thus classifies the various orders which composed the great councils of the nation under the Norman kings. "The supreme legislative power of England was lodged in the king and great council, or what was afterwards called the Parliament. It is not doubted but the archbishops, bishops, and most considerable abbots were constituent members of the council. They sat by a double title; by prescription, as having always possessed that privilege, through the whole Saxon period, from the first establishment of Christianity; and by their right of baronage, as holding of the king in capite by military service. The barons were another constituent part of the great council of the nation. These held immediately of the crown by a military tenure; they were the most honourable members of the state, and had a right to be consulted in all public deliberations; they were the immediate vassals of the crown, and owed as a service their attendance in the court of their supreme lord. But there was another class of the immediate military tenants of the crown, no less, or probably more, numerous than the barons-the tenants in capite by knight's service; and these, however inferior in power or property, held by a tenure which was equally honourable with that of the others. Where a man held of the king only one or two knight's fees, he was still an immediate vassal of the crown, and as such had a title to have a seat in the general councils. The only question seems to be with regard to the commons, or the representatives of counties or boroughs, whether they were also, in more early times, constituent parts of Parliament. It is now agreed that the commons were no part of the great council till some ages after the Conquest, and that the military tenants alone of the crown composed that supreme and legislative assembly."

The First Council after the Conquest.-The principle of election appears to have operated in this council, which was called together

in the fourth year of William I. (1070). Twelve representatives (says Oldfield) were elected in each county in the whole kingdom, and were sworn before the King. In this Parliament or council the laws of Edward the Confessor (by which is probably meant the common law as it prevailed during his reign) were adopted and confirmed.

The Name of "Parliament."-Professor Stubbs remarks that "the name given to the sessions of council (under the early Norman kings) was often expressed by the Latin colloquium; and it is by no means unlikely that the name of Parliament, which is used as early as 1175 by Jordan Fantosme ('sun plenier parlement'), may have been in common use. But of this we have no distinct instance in the Latin Chroniclers for some years further, although when the term comes into use it is applied retrospectively; and in a record of the twenty-eighth year of Henry III., the assembly in which the Great Charter was granted is mentioned as the 'Parliamentum Runimedæ.' . . It is first used in England by a contemporary writer in 1246, namely, by Matthew Paris. It is a word of Italian origin, and may have been introduced either through the Normans, or through intercourse with the French kingdom."

The Earliest Recorded Parliaments.—In a return presented to the House of Commons by order in 1879, giving the names of members of the Lower House and their constituencies "from so remote a period as it can be obtained," the earliest Parliaments mentioned are the following: 1. 15th John (1213), summoned to meet at Oxford. Writs addressed to all the sheriffs, requiring them each to send all the knights of their bailiwicks in arms; and also four knights from their counties ad loquendum nobiscum de negotiis regni nostri." 2. 10th Henry III. (1226), summoned to meet at Lincoln. Writs addressed to the sheriffs of eight counties, requiring them each to send four knights, elected by the "milites et probi homines" of their bailiwicks, to set forth certain disputes with the sheriffs. 3. 38th Henry III. (1254), summoned to meet at Westminster. Every sheriff required to send two knights to be elected by each county, to provide aid towards carrying on the war in Gascony. 4. 45th Henry III. (1261), summoned to meet at Windsor. The Bishop of Worcester, the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester, and other magnates, having ordered three knights from each county to attend an assembly at St. Alban's, the King enjoins the sheriffs to send the above-mentioned knights also to him at Windsor. 5. 49th Henry III. (1264-5), summoned to meet at London. This appears (says the return) to have been the first complete Parliament consisting of elected knights, citizens, and burgesses. In each of these cases no returns of names could be found.

The Commons summoned by Simon de Montfort. Leicester (says Hume) summoned a new Parliament in London (20th January, 1265), “and he fixed this assembly on a more democratical basis than any which had ever been summoned since the foundation of the monarchy. Besides the barons of his own party, and several ecclesiastics, who were not immediate tenants of the crown, he ordered returns to be made of two knights from each shire, and, what is more remarkable, of deputies from the boroughs-an order of men which, in former ages, had

always been regarded as too mean to enjoy a place in the national council. This period is commonly esteemed the epoch of the House of Commons in England."

The Writ of Summons to Parliament.-Henry Elsynge, clerk to the House of Commons, writes, in his "Ancient Method and Manner of Holding of Parliaments" (1660): "It doth not appear by the first record of summons now extant, Anno 49 Henry III., by what warrant the Lord Chancellor caused the writ of summons to be made. The King was then prisoner unto Mountford. But surely none but the King can summon the Parliament; and this is the reason that Henry IV., having taken his liege lord, King Richard II., prisoner, on the 20th of August, Anno Rich. 23, did cause the writs of summons for the Parliament, wherein he obtained the crown, to bear date the 19th day of the same month, and the warrant to be per ipsum Regem et consilium, and himself to be summoned by the name of Henry Duke of Lancaster."

The Three Estates Sitting by Themselves. Elsynge records: "6th Edward III., at the Parliament held at York, the cause of summons being touching Scotland, the prelates with the clergy (sat) by themselves, the dukes and barons by themselves, and afterwards they delivered their joint answer to the King. In the former Parliament of that year at Westminster the cause was touching Ireland: the prelates consulted by themselves, and after they gave a joint answer, and they all joined in one grant of a subsidy to the King. Anno 6th Edward III., Octabis Hillarii, the prelates treated by themselves, so did the Lords, and so did the Commons, and afterwards their joint answer was reported to the King by the Bishop of Winchester... Anno 50 Edward III., the cause of summons ended, the Commons were willed to withdraw themselves to their ancient place in the Chapter House of the Abbot of Westminster, and there to treat and consult among themselves."

Peculiar Designations given to Parliaments.-Many of the early as well as the later Parliaments acquired special names, by which they are still distinguished. The following list (in which some of the later pages of this section are anticipated) comprises all such designations as are of historical interest :

The Mad Parliament.-One of the last of the great councils summoned before the calling up of the Commons by Simon de Montfort was afterwards known by this name, given to it by the Royalists. "In the year 1258 (says Gurdon), on April 10th, a Parliament met which was called insanum Parliamentum. Simon Montfort, Earl of Leicester, complained very boldly to the King (Henry III.), appealing to the Parliament for justice; upbraided the King that he promoted and enriched strangers, and despised and wasted his own people; neglected his subjects that faithfully served him, as he had charged the King six years before; that he had not performed his promise of rewarding him for his services and expenses in Gascoigny. To which the King answered, that he would not stand to any