The Mother of Parliaments Part 1

The Mother of Parliaments.

by Harry Graham.

PREFACE

The history of England's Parliament is the history of the English people. To the latter it must consequently prove a source of never-failing interest. That it does so is clearly shown by the long list of writers who have sought and found inspiration in the subject.

To add to their number may perhaps seem an unnecessary, even a superfluous, task. This volume may indeed be likened to that "Old Piece in a New Dress" to which Petyt compared his _Lex Parliamentaria_.

"These things, men will say, have been done before; the same Matter, and much the same Form, are to be found in other Writers, and this is but to obtrude upon the World a vain Repet.i.tion of other men's observations." But although the frank use of secondhand matter cannot in this case be denied, it is to be hoped that even the oldest and most threadbare material may be woven into a fresh pattern, suitable to modern taste.

In these democratic days a seat in either House of Parliament is no longer the monopoly of a single privileged cla.s.s: it lies within the reach of all who can afford the luxury of representing either themselves or their fellows at Westminster. It is therefore only natural that the interest in parliamentary affairs should be more widely disseminated to-day than ever. It does not confine itself to actual or potential members of both Houses, but is to be found in the bosom of the humblest const.i.tuent, and even of that shadowy individual vaguely referred to as the Man in the Street. Though, however, the interest in Parliament is widespread, a knowledge of parliamentary forms, of the actual conduct of business in either House, of the working of the parliamentary machine, is less universal.

At the present time the sources of information open to the student of parliamentary history may roughly be regarded as twofold. For the earnest scholar, desirous of examining the basis and groundwork of the Const.i.tution, the birth and growth of Parliament, the gradual extension and development of its power, its privileges and procedure, the writings of all the great English historians, and of such parliamentary experts as Hatsell, May, Palgrave, Sir William Anson, Sir Courtenay Ilbert and Professor Redlich, provide a rich mine of information. That more considerable section of the reading public which seeks to be entertained rather than instructed, can have its needs supplied by less technical but no less able parliamentary writers--Sir Henry W. Lucy, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr. MacDonagh--none of whom, as a rule, attempts to do more than touch lightly upon fundamental Const.i.tutional questions.

The idea of combining instruction with amus.e.m.e.nt is one from which every normal-minded being naturally shrinks: the attempt generally results in the failure either to inform or entertain. There does, however, seem to be room for a volume on the subject of Parliament which shall be sufficiently instructive to appeal to the student, and yet not so technical as to alarm or repel the general reader. It is with the object of supplying the need for such a book that the following pages have been written.

An endeavour to satisfy the tastes of every cla.s.s of reader and at the same time to cover the whole field of parliamentary history within the limits of a single volume, must necessarily lead to many errors of admission as well as of omission. The material at the disposal of the author is so vast, and the difficulties of rejection and selection are equally formidable. Much of the information given must perforce be so familiar as to appear almost hackneyed. Many of the stories with which these pages are sprinkled bear upon them the imprint of extreme old age; they are grey with the cobwebs of antiquity. But while the epigram of the past is too often the commonplace of the present, the witty anecdote of one generation, which seems to another to plumb the uttermost abysses of fatuity, may yet survive to be considered a brilliant example of humour by a third. The reader, therefore, who recognises old favourites scattered here and there about the letterpress, will deride or tolerate them in accordance with the respect or contempt that he entertains for the antique.

I cannot lay claim to the possession of expert parliamentary knowledge, though perhaps, after close upon fifteen years' residence within the precincts of the Palace of Westminster, I may have acquired a certain intimacy with the life and habits of the Mother of Parliaments. For my facts I have to a great extent relied upon the researches of numerous parliamentary writers, past and present, to whom I have endeavoured to express my indebtedness, not only in copious footnotes, but also in the complete list of all sources of information given at the end of this volume. I wish to express my thanks to the many friends and acquaintances who have so kindly a.s.sisted me with their counsel and encouragement; to Mr. Kenyon, Mr.

Sidney Colvin and the officials of the Print Room and Reading Room at the British Museum; to Sir Alfred Scott-Gatty, Garter King-at-Arms; to Mr. Edmund Gosse, Librarian of the House of Lords, and other officers of both Houses. My thanks are particularly due to Sir Henry Graham, Clerk of the Parliaments, who placed his unique parliamentary experience at my disposal, and whose invaluable advice and a.s.sistance have so greatly tended to lighten and facilitate my literary labours.

H. G.

CHAPTER I

PARLIAMENT AND PARTY

It has been a.s.serted that the different social conditions of various peoples have their origin, not so much in climate or parentage, as in the character of their governments. If that be true, there is little doubt that the social conditions of England should compare most favourably with those of sister nations. But the admirable form of Government to which Englishmen have now long been accustomed, did not come into existence in the course of a single night. "The resemblance between the present Const.i.tution and that from which it originally sprang," says an eighteenth-century writer, "is not much nearer than that between the most beautiful fly and the abject worm from which it arose."[1] And the conversion of the chrysalis into the b.u.t.terfly has been a slow and troublesome process.

[1] King's "Essay on the English Const.i.tution," p. 17.

Montesquieu, who was an earnest student of the English Const.i.tution, after reading the treatise of Tacitus on the manners of the early Germans, declared that it was from them that England had borrowed her idea of political government. Whether or no this "beautiful system was first invented in the woods,"[2] as he says, it is certain that we owe the primary principles of our existing const.i.tution to German sources. They date back to the earliest days of the first settlements of Teutons on the Kentish sh.o.r.es.

[2] "The Spirit of Laws." "Works," vol. i. p. 212.

To the word "parliament" many derivations have been a.s.signed. Petyt explains the name as suggesting that every member of the a.s.sembly which it designates should _parler le ment_ or speak his mind.[3]

Another authority derives it from two Celtic words, signifying to "speak abundantly"--a meaning which is more applicable in these garrulous times than it was in days when debate was often punctuated by lengthy intervals of complete silence.

[3] "Lex Parliamentaria" (1690), p. 1.

Whatever its derivation, the word no doubt referred originally to the "deep speech" which the kings of old held with their councillors. The first mention of it, in connexion with a national a.s.sembly, occurs in 1246, when it was used by Matthew Prior of a general convocation of English barons. About thirty years later it appears again in the preamble to the First Statute of Westminster. It has now come to be employed entirely to describe that combination of the Three Estates, the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons, which with the Crown form the supreme legislative government of the country.

The ancient Britons possessed a Parliament of a kind, called the _Commune Concilium_. Under the Heptarchy each king in England enjoyed the services of an a.s.sembly of wise men--or Witenagemot, as it was called--which advised him upon matters of national importance. The Witan sat as a court of justice, formed the Council of the chiefs, and could impose taxes and even depose the King, though the latter too often took the whole of their powers into his own hands. When the separate kingdoms became united, their different Councils were absorbed into the one great Gemot of Wess.e.x. This, in Anglo-Saxon times, was a small body, consisting of less than a score of Bishops, a number of Ealdormen (or heads of the different shires), and certain va.s.sal members. This senate was undoubtedly the germ of all future systems of Parliamentary government; and though for the first two hundred years after the Conquest there is no historical record of the meeting of any body corresponding to our present Parliament, from the days of the Witenagemot to our own times the continuity of our national a.s.semblies has never been broken.

The parliamentary historian suffers much from the lack of early records. None were kept in Anglo-Saxon times, the judgments of the Witan being only recorded in the memory of the judges themselves. The Rolls of Parliament begin with the year 1278--though the first mention of the Commons does not occur until 1304--and somewhere about Edward III.'s reign was written a volume called the "Vetus Codex" or "Black Book" which contains transcripts of various parliamentary proceedings.

At the time of the restoration of Charles II., Prynne, the antiquarian, set himself the task of exhuming old records, and catalogued nearly a hundred parcels of ancient writs, private pet.i.tions, and returns. The MSS. which he worked upon were so dirty that he could not induce any one else to clean them, and was forced to labour alone. Wearing a nightcap over his eyes, to keep out the dust, and fortified by continual draughts of ale, he proceeded cheerfully with this laborious undertaking upon which he finally based the book which has made him famous.[4]

[4] "A Brief Register of Parliamentary Writs" (1664).

The House of Commons Journals begin with Edward VI. those of the Lords at the accession of Henry VIII. And though during the early part of the seventeenth century speeches were reported at some length in the Commons Journals, in the Lords only the Bills read and such matters are recorded.[5] The material to work upon is consequently of an exiguous nature, until we reach the later days of freedom of the Press and publicity of debates.

[5] Elsynge, Clerk of the Parliaments in the seventeenth century, took notes of the Lords' speeches, which have been published by the Camden Society (1870-1879).

The history of Parliament proper divides itself naturally into four distinct periods. The first may be said to stretch from the middle of the thirteenth to nearly the end of the fifteenth century; the second dates from the accession of Henry VII., and extends to the Revolution of 1688. The remaining century and a half, up to the Reform Bill of 1832, forms the third period; and with the pa.s.sing of that momentous Act commences the last and most important epoch of all.

During the first two periods of parliamentary history, the whole authority of government was vested in the Crown; during the third it gradually pa.s.sed into the possession of the aristocracy: and it is only within the last century that the people, through their representatives in the House of Commons, have gained a complete political ascendency.

From the days of the absolute monarchy of Norman sovereigns until the reign of King John, the Crown, the Church, the Barons, and the people, were always struggling with each other; in that reign the three last forces combined against the King. The struggle was never subsequently relaxed, but it took over six centuries to transfer the governing power of the country from the hands of one individual to that of the whole people.

Prior to the reign of Henry III., no regular legislative a.s.sembly existed, though the King would occasionally summon councils of the great men of the land for consultative purposes. In William the Conqueror's time the ownership of land became the qualification for the Witenagemot, and the National Council which succeeded that a.s.sembly thus became a Council of the King's feudal va.s.sals, and not necessarily an a.s.sembly of wise men. When, however, Simon de Montford overthrew Henry III. at Lewes, he summoned a convocation which included representative knights and burgesses, and the parliamentary system, thus inst.i.tuted, was subsequently adopted by Edward I. "Many things have changed," says Dr. Gardiner in his "History of England,"

"but in all main points the Parliament of England, as it exists at this day, is the same as that which gathered around the great Plantagenet." The first full Parliament in English history may, therefore, be said to have been summoned by Edward I. on November 13, 1295, and represented every cla.s.s of the people.

Parliament thereafter gradually resolved itself into two separate groups; on the one hand the barons and prelates, representing the aristocracy and the Church, on the other the knights and burgesses, representing the county freeholders, citizens and boroughfolk. The former const.i.tuted a High Court of Justice and final Court of Appeal; the chief duty of the latter lay in levying taxes, and they were not usually summoned unless the Crown were in need of money. These two component groups originally sat together, forming a collective a.s.sembly from which the modern Parliament has gradually developed.

In the early days of Parliament the Lords came to be regarded as the King's Council, over which he presided in person; the Commons occupied a secondary and insignificant position. The power of legislating was entirely in the hands of the King, who framed whatever laws he deemed expedient, acting on the humble pet.i.tion of his people. The Crown thus exercised absolute control over Parliament, and the royal yoke was not destined to be thrown off for many hundreds of years.

In the reign of Edward III., the meetings of Parliament were uncertain and infrequent; its duration was brief. Three or four Parliaments would be held every year, and only sat for a few weeks at a time. The King's prerogative to dissolve Parliament whenever he so desired--"of all trusts vested in his majesty," as Burke says, "the most critical and delicate"[6] was one of which mediaeval monarchs freely availed themselves in the days when Parliament had not yet found, nor indeed realised, its potential strength.

[6] "Works and Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 525. (The power to dissolve Parliament is still theoretically in the hands of the Sovereign; practically it is in those of the Cabinet. Parliament has only been dissolved once by the Sovereign since the beginning of the eighteenth century.)

During the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts, the power of the Crown was still supreme, though many attempts were made to weaken it. This second period of history, between 1485 and 1688, was a time of peculiar political stress, in which Parliament and the Crown were engaged in a perpetual conflict. Kings maintained their influence by a mixture of threats and cajolery which long proved effective. In 1536, for instance, we find Henry VIII. warning the House of Commons that, unless some measure in which he was interested were pa.s.sed, certain members of that a.s.sembly would undoubtedly lose their heads.[7]

[7] Oldfield's "History of Great Britain and Ireland," vol. i.

p. 280.

The Stuart kings were in the habit of suborning members of both Houses, by the gift of various lucrative posts or the lavish distribution of bribes. It was ever the royal desire to weaken Parliament, and this end was attained in a variety of ways. In the early part of the seventeenth century, we hear of Charles I. summoning to Hampton Court certain members whose loyalty he distrusted or whose absence from Parliament he desired. On one such occasion the Earls of Ess.e.x and Holland refused to obey his command, saying that their parliamentary writ had precedence of any royal summons--an expression of independence for which they were dismissed from the Court.[8]

[8] May's "A Breviary of the History of Parliament" (1680), p. 21.

In the time of Charles II. a definite system of influencing members of Parliament by gifts of money was first framed, Lord Clifford, the Lord Treasurer, being allowed a sum of 10,000 for the purpose. The fact of holding an appointment in the pay of the Crown was in itself considered sufficient to bind a member to vote in accordance with the royal will. In 1685, when many members who were in the Government service threatened to vote against the Court, Middleton, the Secretary of State, bitterly reproached them with breach of faith. "Have you not a troop of horse in his Majesty's service?" he asked of a certain Captain Kendall. "Yes, my lord," was the reply, "but my brother died last night and left me 700 a year!"[9]

[9] Burnet's "History of His Own Times," vol. iii. p. 92 n.

Andrew Marvell has drawn a vivid but disagreeable picture of the Parliament which was summoned immediately after the Restoration. Half the members of the House of Commons he described as "court cullies"--the word "to cully" meaning apparently to befool or cheat--and in "A list of the Princ.i.p.al Labourers in the great Design of Popery and Arbitrary Law," gives a catalogue of the names of over two hundred members of Parliament who received presents from the Court at this time.[10]

[10] _E.g._, "Sir Edward Turner, who for a secret service had lately a bribe of 4000, as in the Exchequer may be seen, and about 2000 before; and made Lord Chief Baron.

"Sir Stephen Fox--once a link boy; then a singing boy at Salisbury; then a serving man; and permitting his wife to be common beyond sea, at the Restoration was made Paymaster of the Guards, where he has cheated 100,000, and is one of the Green Cloth." "Flagellum Parliamentarium," pp. 10 and 24.

The independence of Parliament was first a.s.serted by that staunch old patriot Sir John Eliot, who, during the reign of Charles I., declared to the Commons that they "came not thither either to do what the King should command them, nor to abstain when he forbade them; they came to continue constant, and to maintain their privileges."[11] But in spite of such brave words, the power of the Crown was not finally subdued until the Revolution.

[11] Forster's "Life of Sir John Eliot," vol. i. p. 529.

The downfall of the Monarchy at the time of the Commonwealth was followed by the temporary abolition of both Lords and Commons, the latter disappearing in company with Cromwell's famous "bauble." The Protector then proceeded to call together a body of "nominees," one hundred and forty in number, who represented the various counties in proportion to the amount of taxes each of these contributed. Of the seven nominees supplied by London, Praise G.o.d Barebones, a Fleet Street leather merchant, gave his name to the Parliament thus a.s.sembled. Cromwell also created a new House of Lords, numbering about sixty.[12]