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| | | Background | | |
"England is the ancient country of parliament . . .", said the radical, John Bright, demanding reform in 1865: "England is the mother of parliaments". But the emergence of Parliament in England during the Middle Ages was neither unique nor especially precocious. Throughout Europe from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, similar bodies were being regularly summoned as the notion of a community of each realm began to replace the feudal ties that bound individuals only to their lord. The key to their usefulness for increasingly complex and expensive governments lay in the idea – derived from a combination of ecclesiastical and secular sources – that individuals could by election represent their communities’ views and by their agreement bind them; in consequence, parliamentary assemblies might become a means by which a ruler could tap the wealth and opinion of the whole realm, not merely of the feudal nobility.
| | | The Thirteenth Century | | |
In England, Parliament came into existence in the thirteenth century through the mingling of several practices, new an old. Its basis was the king’s court, the household officers, clerks and a few magnates who were regularly in attendance on the king. Occasionally this might be enlarged into a great council with the addition of the principal baronage, who would be summoned to assist in the judgement of difficult legal cases, to give advice or to assent to the levying of feudal taxes. From the 1230s and 1240s such larger assemblies were commonly known by the title parlamentum, and by the later years of the reign of Henry III were being held fairly regularly.
Members of the lesser nobility – the knights of the shire – and of the merchant classes of the towns – the burgesses – might also be summoned, principally in order to obtain local information and support. Once, in 1254, knights were summoned in order to approve taxation. It was only slowly, however, that their meetings came to be formally linked to the parliaments. The conflicts of the magnates with Henry III from 1258 to 1267 speeded up the integration of the knights into the political process. The magnates’ demands of the Provisions of the Oxford Parliament in 1258 resulted in more regular assemblies, which continued after their defeat in the Civil War of 1264-65. The need for publicity and support persuaded both sides to include knights in some of them: the magnates and their leader, Simon de Montfort, did so in 1258, 1261, 1264 and 1265; de Montfort also summoned representatives of the towns in 1265, and Henry III followed his example in 1268.
In the quieter years which followed, Parliaments continued to be regularly summoned, and their role in providing remedies for government abuses and in promulgating a series of important statutes gave them an important place in the rhythm of administrative life. Knights and burgesses, however, were still only occasionally included, normally when Parliaments were asked to approve grants of taxation; then, although the magnates were assumed to have the power to do this on behalf of the whole realm, knights and burgesses were generally summoned in order to confirm their agreement. In the 1290s, however, the pressure of wars in Scotland, Wales and France brought changes in the relationships of Crown and Parliament. Taxation overcame administrative concerns in parliamentary business. The importance of the Commons at a time when it was essential for the government to secure rapid and sufficient financial supply was reflected in the maxim that "what touches all should be approved by all", and the demand that they should come with full powers from their communities which were included in the summons to knights of the shire in 1295.
During the conflicts of king and baronage in the later years of the reign of Edward I and throughout that of Edward II the representatives of the shires and boroughs were increasingly drawn into politics. The role of the Commons acquired a new definition and importance. The early fourteenth-century legal treatise, the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum, suggests that in taxation, but also in other matters, the Commons were already assumed to have a greater voice that the magnates. Without the Commons, it is explicitly stated, there can be no Parliament.
| | | The Fourteenth Century | | |
During the fourteenth century, the Commons increased their authority over taxation by limiting the king’s opportunity to seek finance from sources other than those approved in Parliament. Meanwhile, Parliament’s judicial role declined with the elaboration of the royal courts, and redress of grievance came to be sought not (as was normal before) through the presentation of individual petitions, but through the common petition, a list of grievances supported by the Commons which was sent to the Lords and the King for action. From the 1350s the contents of these petitions came to be reflected in the statutes promulgated during the meeting of a Parliament.
The structure of Parliament now assumed a more recognisable shape. During the 1350s the Lords and Commons started to meet separately, with the burgesses and knights sitting together in a single chamber. By the later part of the century, when Parliament met at Westminster, the Commons would normally assemble in the Abbey Chapter house, in a body of over 250 (about 70 shire and 180 borough representatives). From 1290 Parliament’s proceedings were formally recorded by clerks of the royal chancery, and from 1363 the appointment of an under-clerk to assist the Commons is regularly recorded.
Local communities now began to recognise in the Commons a way of registering their own concerns and grievances at the centre of political power. Knights of the shire were elected in the county courts by a comparatively large electorate of freemen; burgesses were elected by much smaller groups, normally the more important men of the town. There was a tendency for both the electorate and the representatives to become more exclusive. In 1430 a statute restricted the county franchise to freeholders with 40 shillings-worth property; in 1445 a property qualification was introduced for knights of the shire. Even the borough seats were now often occupied by the local landed gentry.
For a period at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century the Commons grew quickly in political significance and power. In the Good Parliament of 1376 they demanded more effective and less oppressive government, accusing by impeachment several principal ministers of Edward III of corruption. They frequently attached conditions to the grants that they made, sometimes appropriating them to particular items of expenditure. Occasionally, particularly in the 1380s, kings allowed them to see royal accounts. In 1414 it was (inaccurately) claimed that the Commons had always had the right of assent to every statute or law; certainly, they were becoming more than ever before involved in ordinary legislation.
| | | Scrutiny of Bills | | |
Refinements in procedure followed. By the end of the reign of Henry V there had evolved a routine method of scrutinising the petitions or bills that were received, and the Commons seem also to have begun to give their assent to bills which had already been agreed by the Lords. The principles of majority voting and of amending bills seem to have been established during the course of the fifteenth century. By 1455 it was assumed that the consent of the King, Lords and Commons were equally necessary for the passage of a bill. From at least 1376, when Sir Peter de la Mare was chosen, the Commons regularly elected one of its members to speak for it during its meetings with the King and Lords. From the first, however, the "Speaker" may also have acted as a chairman in the House’s proceedings.
Central though their functions might now be to the process of government, the Commons were still politically dependent on the Lords, particularly after the weakening of royal control which followed the deposition of Richard II in 1399. Magnate factions could use it as an arena in which to continue by proxy their struggles for supremacy. The impeachments of ministers and courtiers such as those of Latimer and Neville in 1376 and Suffolk in 1450 were probably initiated in the Commons by clients of their enemies among peers. The Yorkist kings – Edward IV and Richard III – reasserted royal dominance, and after his coup of 1485, Henry VII continued and consolidated the royal hold over Parliament. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, it was meeting comparatively infrequently: it was not even summoned in the last years of Henry VII’s reign, and it was notably acquiescent when it did meet. During Wolsey’s period of power, from about 1515 to 1529, only one Parliament met.
| | | The Reformation Parliament | | |
A great change in this pattern came with the Parliament summoned at Wolsey’s fall, in 1529, which was to secure the annulment of Henry VIII’s first marriage and the establishment of the royal supremacy over the Church. Between 1529 and 1536 it did much to revive the flagging importance of the institution. The legislation of this, the "Reformation Parliament", introduced far-reaching changes, not only in the relationship of Church and State. Its prominence and its reforms produced a rapid growth in the demand for legislation from official and private sources. More sophisticated procedures were required to deal with it.
| | | Committees | | |
Gradually it became a rule that bills which passed either house received three readings in it. Rules of debate became formalised, with members always addressing the Speaker and speaking only once in each debate. Committees (of which the first in the Commons is recorded in 1529) were used as a means of avoiding precious time being taken up in the House itself with detailed scrutiny of bills. On the other hand, ‘general committees’, when the formal rules of debate were laid aside and the Speaker replaced by a chairman, were also found to be useful before they became more formal, as committees of the whole house in the early seventeenth century. The practice of voting by formal division, with the votes being counted, became common during the reign of Elizabeth.
| | | Tudor and Elizabethan Developments | | |
The Tudor, and in particular the Elizabethan, trend towards standardisation was shown both in the beginning of a formal record of the Commons’ proceedings in the Journal, which was kept from 1547, and in a group of manuals of parliamentary procedure and privileges. John Hooker’s The order and usage of the keeping of a parliament in England (1572) was the first of several such works. The House expanded in size, as well as importance. The union of the principality of Wales and England produced 31 new seats for its boroughs in England as well. By 1601 the House was composed of 462 members, and more were added in the following century. To accommodate them, it moved permanently in 1549-50 to the old St Stephen’s Chapel, within the Palace of Westminster itself.
The greater sophistication of parliamentary procedure was matched by an increasing emphasis on parliamentary privilege. Members of the Commons had long been accustomed to the right to freedom from arrest while on parliamentary business; in the sixteenth century, they claimed their own right to decide on disputed elections, and to take punitive action against their own members. The privilege of free speech was more circumspectly exercised. Because monarchs normally tolerated it, members had become use to a wide latitude in their discussions. Elizabeth’s attempts to prevent discussion of certain topics were challenged by the Wentworth brothers in 1566, 1576 and 1587: but the Queen succeeded for the moment in establishing her narrow interpretation of the privilege.
| | | The Long Parliament | | |
Elizabeth, in fact, for all her flattery of parliaments, was no enthusiast for them. She reverted to an early-Tudor pattern in the frequency with which she summoned Parliament. Her successors, James I and Charles I, were little more enthusiastic. Parliament was not summoned at all between 1614 and 1621, nor between 1629 and 1640. It was only the Scottish rebellion of 1638 that forced Charles I, reluctantly, to call another in 1640; irritated by its criticism of his government, he dismissed it, only to find it necessary to summon a new one a few months later. This, the "Long Parliament", forced a series of concessions from the King, including a Triennial Act, which obliged him to meet Parliament every three years. Radical demands for parliamentary control over the appointment of ministers and the command of the militia brought the relationship of king and the majority in either House to breaking point. By August 1642 they were at war.
| | | The Civil War | | |
The Civil War forced Parliament to become an executive as well as a legislative body, and it performed its new role with surprising confidence. But despite its military victory over the king in 1646, it was crippled by argument between its radical and conservative elements. In 1648 the army it had created took control, purging from the Commons over a hundred of its members to prevent further negotiations with the King. Those who stayed voted for the trial of the King, the abolition of the monarchy and House of Lords, and the establishment of a republic. This "Rump Parliament" in turn, however, succumbed to its disagreements with the army in 1653. Oliver Cromwell, the army’s general, took power himself, trying but failing to stabilise political life. After his death in 1658, events moved inexorably towards a restoration of the monarchy.
| | | The Restoration | | |
With the restoration in 1660 of King Charles II and the House of Lords, the Commons’ experiments in executive power were over. But despite the repeal of the Triennial Act in 1664, the partial reconstruction of the pre-war political system did not mean the end of the influence and importance of the House. As the Restoration Settlement confirmed the limits established before the Civil War on the king’s powers to seek extra-parliamentary taxation, Charles II’s expensive wars against the Dutch had to be paid for almost exclusively with money voted by Parliament. As a result, the Commons could insist on greater accountability, with more grants appropriated to specific uses, and extend their control over taxation by claiming that the bills should neither be introduced by the Lords nor amended by them. They demanded – and in 1668-69 received – greater information on the state of the royal finances.
The government’s need for money encouraged it to try to increase its influence in the Commons. The activities of Lord Treasurer Danby in the late 1670s in organising a court party brought demands that holders of government office be excluded from the House. Concern quickly arose that rather than ignore Parliament, as Charles I had done in 1630s, Charles II intended to tame it by dominating it with his employees. During the arguments of the late 1670s and early 1680s over whether to exclude his brother, James, from the throne because of his conversion to catholicism, the House divided into factions known as Tories and Whigs. This division into parties quickly became, if not accepted, at least recognised as normal, although it did not yet imply the parliamentary discipline and constituency organisation which modern parties enjoy.
| | | The Glorious Revolution | | |
James II was eventually removed from the throne in part because of his casual disregard for parliamentary liberties which Englishmen by now regarded as their birthright. But the "Glorious Revolution" did not of itself establish the dominance of Commons within the constitution. William III and his wife Mary II did receive the Crown at the hands of the Convention Parliament in 1689, and they did accept the Declaration of Rights which disavowed the king’s power of suspending statute, confirmed that Parliament was the only body which might grant taxation and said that Parliaments should be held frequently. But it was only because, like Charles II, William III was involved in long expensive wars that the Commons secured an unassailable position within the constitution. In the 1690s public expenditure increased by between two and three times. The financial arrangements made as a consequence revolutionised the relationship of King and Commons.
| | | Powers of Taxation | | |
All taxation, including indirect taxation, came under parliamentary control: an amount for the household and administrative expenses of the Crown was fixed by Parliament and granted for the life of the monarch. The creation of a Bank of England guaranteed by statute in 1694 meant that Parliament became the guarantor of the ‘National Debt’. The appropriation of taxes became routine. The need each year to approve the continuance of the land tax meant that Parliament had de facto to sit every year. In 1694 the King assented to a bill which meant that a new Parliament would have to be elected every three years.
| | | English and Scottish Union | | |
The eventual union of England and Scotland concluded this period of rapid change. After years of resistance on both sides of the border, the two nations finally accepted a union in 1707. The Scottish Estates were absorbed, as 45 Scottish members were added to the 513 who already sat at Westminster representing England and Wales: in all other respects, the procedures and conventions of Parliament stuck firmly to the English pattern.
The remainder of the eighteenth century was a time of consolidation, as procedures and conventions evolved to cope with the Commons’ enhanced role. The replacement of three-year with seven-year Parliaments in 1716 considerably reduced the high degree of political excitement which had existed since 1689. The pressure for legislation continued to grow: during the reign of George III, an average of 254 acts were passed each session. In William III’s reign the average had been 58. Financial procedure became more formal and elaborate: a standing order of 1713 determined that only the government might propose money bills; the practice of an annual report by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on government finance – the Budget – appears to have begun in the 1750s. The practice had also begun by the middle of the century of questioning ministers in the House. By the end of the century, it was becoming normal to give notice of motions, and for the leader of a ministry to sit in the Commons as the Leader of the House, spending a considerable amount of his time attending to the passage of government business.
It was in fact the growing influence of the government in the Commons that rekindled an interest in parliamentary reform in the later half of the century. Demands for a reduction in the influence of the Crown in Parliament were joined to the need for fairer representation of the new industrial towns of the North.
| | | Irish Union | | |
The chance for reform was missed when in 1800 the British government responded to rebellion in Ireland by uniting it with England and Scotland. The addition of 100 Irish members was accompanied by a partial reform of the Irish franchise. But on the mainland, it was not until after the wars with France and the struggle over Catholic Emancipation that the pressure of radical reformers finally paid off. The Reform Act which Lord Grey pressed through Parliament in 1832 after intense debate showed a recognition that the old system had lost its credibility. Fifty-six boroughs lost both of their seats; a further thirty lost one. Their representation was transferred to the Northern towns, countries, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The total electorate expanded by about 80 per cent, to some 650,000.
| | | Charles Barry's New Palace | | |
The destruction of much of the old palace of Westminster by fire in 1834 created the opportunity to modernise the facilities of the Commons as the electoral system had been. The building that was erected to the design of Charles Barry between 1840 and 1852 expressed in its medievalism a pride in the country’s parliamentary past, but in its engineering the achievements of its present. The demands of the expanding Victorian state were to accelerate change in procedure as well. There were more bills, more questions to ministers (129 in the session of 1847; 4,407 in that of 1890), and (eventually) longer sessions to accommodate them all. Government business demanded more and more parliamentary time, while the Irish Home Rule agitation of 1881 showed up how easily essential business could be blocked. The consequence was to accelerate a trend towards greater government control of the Commons’ timetable: in 1887 the closure motion was added to the Standing Orders, and the use of the guillotine dates from about the same time. Time in the chamber was saved by the establishment of standing committees to deal with the committee stage of most bills, a development formalised in 1907. The proportion of time occupied by private members’ bills and motions correspondingly declined.
| | | Whips | | |
The growing dominance of party organisation made itself felt in the expansion of the whips’ offices and roles. Whips had existed since the late seventeenth century; but it was only in the late nineteenth century that they came to exercise a wide degree of control over the timetable of the House, and considerable powers of discipline over members. A revival of interest in exercising regular scrutiny of the government accounts finally bore fruit in the 1866 Exchequer and Audit Departments Act which established the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Public Accounts Committee.
| | | Sir Thomas Erskine May | | |
Meanwhile the increasing complexity of procedure demanded more expert assistance and a more systematic codification of the rules and practice of the House. The Clerk’s department was reorganised in 1848-50 following the work of a select committee; and Sir Thomas Erskine May gradually came to supersede all previous works on procedure with his Treatise on the Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament, first published in 1844. The production of an official verbatim account of debates from 1909 satisfied the need for a reliable, accurate record which had been felt since at least the middle of the nineteenth century.
Further reforms to the franchise and to the qualifications for membership were introduced during the course of the century. In 1867 the Second Reform Act introduced a household suffrage in the boroughs, increasing the electorate to a total of about 2,500,000. In 1884, a third act extended the household franchise to the counties, and in 1885 most of the remaining small boroughs were disfranchised and the old counties and larger boroughs broken up into a series of single-member constituencies. In 1872 the Ballot Act had introduced secret voting. The abolition of the property qualification for members in 1858 and the gradual removal of restrictions on non-anglicans helped to alter the character of the House from the haunt of country gentlemen to the busy workplace of professional politicians.
| | | The Twentieth Century | | |
These trends continued into the twentieth century. The creation of a democratic electorate was furthered with the Representation of the People Act of 1918 giving the vote to all men over 21 and women over 30. In 1928 the qualifying age for women was made the same as that for men. A further act of 1948 abolished the traditional seats for representatives of the universities and the extra franchise enjoyed by those occupying business premises. The more professional nature of the Commons’ membership was recognised from 1911 with the payment of a salary to all members. Throughout the twentieth century and before, widely-felt unhappiness with the House’s work practices and lengthy sitting hours have brought fitful attempts at reform, but few of them have had a significant impact on the latter. The latest, and most determined, attempt has come since 1997, with the introduction of more systematic timetabling arrangements for bills and other initiatives.
Parliamentary parties have become steadily more organised and more prominent in the day-to-day business of the House. And the dominance of the lower House was more thoroughly established when, in the aftermath of the Lords’ rejection of the 1909 budget, the Parliament Act of 1911 destroyed the Upper House’s absolute veto over legislation; the Parliament Act of 1948 reduced the length of time it can delay a bill to a year. The relationship between the two Houses is likely to change again, however, following the removal of most of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords in 1999, and widely-reported discussions over further alterations to the membership and functions of the Upper House. The achievement of proper accountability for government expenditure has continued to be a concern of reformers. Reforms of supply procedure in 1896 strictly regulated the amount of time allowed for consideration for the estimates. In part to compensate for the lack of effective scrutiny in the chamber a select committee on the estimates was established in 1912. Similar bodies have succeeded it, most recently the system of departmental select committees, each covering the responsibility of a principal government department which was set up in 1979. Information on Parliament and its debates has become much more readily available for the public. Proceedings were regularly broadcast by sound from 1978, and by television since 1989.
Precisely how the relationship between the constituent elements of the United Kingdom should be reflected in Parliament has been one of the most vexed questions in twentieth century British politics. From well before the agitation of the 1880s, the representation of Ireland in the union was a highly contentious issue; following the Easter Rising of 1916 the 1920 Government of Ireland Act provided for separate Parliaments in Northern and Southern Ireland and paved the way for the eventual independence of the Republic. In 1972 the Northern Ireland Parliament was suspended and the authority devolved to it was returned to Westminster. But interest in devolving power was sustained and after the election of the Labour government in 1997 a new Parliament was set up in Scotland, and new assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland, with varying degrees of power.
The other main cause of institutional change and development has been Britain’s entry in 1972 into the European Communities, then the European Union. The growing body of legislation resulting from European Community directives resulted in the establishment of the select committee on European Legislation in 1974, and three standing committees on European Legislation. Constitutional change in Ireland has had its effect in Westminster.
| | | Conclusion | | |
While not unique in its origins, the British Parliament had been unusual in its long survival. Much of the shape and fundamental procedure of the House of Commons as it is known today was visible at Westminster in the sixteenth century or before; onto these have been grafted a sometimes bewildering series of changes designed to make it answer the particular needs of the time. Throughout its existence of almost seven hundred years, the longevity of the House of Commons has been largely due to the flexibility of its procedures which have enabled gradual change to take place within a framework of continuity.
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