Parliament of England

The Parliament of England was the legislature of the Kingdom of England. Its roots can be traced back to the early medieval period. In a series of developments, it came increasingly to constrain the power of the monarch, and went on after the Act of Union 1707 to form the main basis of the Parliament of Great Britain, and later the Parliament of the United Kingdom. This makes the modern Parliament of the United Kingdom one of the oldest legislative bodies in the world, arguably the oldest, and for this reason it is sometimes referred to as the "Mother of all Parliaments".

History

The roots of the Parliament of England can be traced back to the reign of Henry III. However the institution does not have an exact founding date and the concept of a king seeking consent for his laws and decisions was not new to this period.

Under a monarchical system of government, monarchs need to seek consultation on the decisions they take, otherwise nobody will obey the monarchs, or their decisions. The English Parliament evolved at a time when the monarchy lacked a police force or a standing army to enforce their laws. Therefore subjects who held any degree of power in the kingdom had to enforce them. The monarchy had agents in every part of the country. However under the feudal system that evolved in England following the Norman invasion of 1066, the laws of the Crown could not have been upheld without the support of the nobility and the clergy. The former had power bases of their own, despite the fact that they held their land as tenants-in-chief of the king. And the Church, which was then still part of the Roman Catholic empire, was virtually a law unto itself in this period. It had its own law courts and it owned substantial amounts of land.

In order for the nobility and clergy to be willing to participate in enforcing the rule of law as laid down by the king, they had to be in agreement with what he was doing. Therefore, post-1066 English monarchs formed Great Councils consisting of the entire nobility and senior members of the clergy from whom they sought consultation and consent when taking major decisions. These Great Councils were loosely based on the structure and concept of the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot, although the importance of the latter institution to the later development of Parliament can be overexaggerated.

These Great Councils evolved into the Parliament of England. The term itself came into use during the 13th century, deriving from the Latin and French words for discussion and speaking - highlighting the origin of Parliament as an institution which met at the king's pleasure. As a result of the work by historians G.O. Sayles and H.G. Richardson, it is widely believed that the early Parliaments had a judicial as well as a legislative function.

During the 12th century, knights of the shires began to be summoned when the monarch saw it as necessary. Then, in 1265, during the Second Barons' War, burgesses from each borough were summoned to a Parliament called by Simon de Montfort. This symbolized the emergence of the gentry class as a force in English politics and eventually led to the creation of the democratically-elected House of Commons.

Initially, Great Councils or Parliaments were mostly summoned when the king needed to raise money through taxes. Following the 1215 Magna Carta agreement between King John and the nobles who had risen in rebellion against him, this became something of a convention, due in no small part to the fact that John died in 1216 and was succeeded by his infant son Henry III. This meant that senior nobles and clergy governed on his behalf until he came of age, giving them a taste of power that they were not going to relinquish.

As the power of the nobility and the gentry increased and that of the monarchy dwindled, more and more decisions came to be taken in Parliament. It evolved into the central governmental organ of the English state, sowing the seeds of modern parliamentary democracy in the process. This development began during the reign of Henry III.

Simon De Montfort and the Parliament of 1265

Once the infancy of Henry III ended and he took full control of the government of his kingdom, many leading nobles became increasingly concerned at his style of government, specifically his unwillingness to consult them on the decisions he took and his perceived willingness to bestow patronage upon his foreign relatives in preference to his native subjects. Henry's decision to support a disastrous papal invasion of Sicily was the last straw. In 1258, seven leading barons forced Henry to agree and swear an oath to the Provisions of Oxford, which effectively abolished the absolutist Anglo-Norman monarchy, giving power to a council of fifteen barons to deal with the business of government and providing for a three-yearly meeting of Parliament to monitor their performance. Parliament assembled 6 times between June 1258 and April 1260, the most notable gathering of which was the Oxford Parliament (1258), which laid the foundations for the construction of the Provisions of Oxford.

Ironically, it was the French-born noble Montfort who emerged as the leader of this characteristically English rebellion. In the following years, those supporting Montfort and those supporting the king grew more and more polarised. Henry obtained a papal bull in 1262 exempting him from his oath and both sides began to raise armies. At the Battle of Lewes on 14 May 1264, Henry was defeated and taken prisoner by Montfort's army. However many of the barons who had initially supported Montfort began to suspect that he had gone too far with his reforming zeal. His support amongst the nobility rapidly declined. So in 1264, Montfort summoned the first elected parliament in English history without any prior royal authorisation. The archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls and barons were summoned, as were two knights from each shire and two burgesses from each borough. Knights had been summoned to previous councils, but the representation of the boroughs was unprecedented. Their process of selection varied from borough to borough, but there is little doubt that some form of democratic election was used in many cases. This was purely a move to consolidate Montfort's position as the legitimate governor of the kingdom, seeing as he had captured Henry and his son Prince Edward (later Edward I) at the Battle of Lewes. A Parliament consisting of representatives of the realm was the logical way to establish his authority. In calling this Parliament he exploited the fact that most of the nobility had abandoned his movement by summoning knights and burgesses from the emerging gentry class in a bid to garner their support. This Parliament was summoned on 14 December 1264. It first met on 20 January 1265 in Leicester and was dissolved on 15 February 1265. It is not certain as to who actually turned up to this Parliament. Nonetheless, Montfort's scheme was formally adopted by Edward I in the so-called "Model Parliament" of 1295. The attendance at Parliament of knights and burgesses historically became known as the summoning of "the Commons".

Following Edward's escape from captivity, Montfort was defeated and killed at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. Henry's authority was restored and the Provisions of Oxford were forgotten, but this was nonetheless a turning point in the history of the Parliament of England. Although he was not obliged by statute to do so, the Commons were summoned to Parliament 3 times between September 1268 and April 1270. This was not a significant turning point in the history of parliamentary decmocracy. It is worth remembering that being sent to Parliament to be coerced in to granting taxes for the government and then returning to explain this to your constituents was by no means an enviable task! Subsequently very little is known about how representatives were selected because at this time being sent to Parliament was not a prestigious undertaking. However Montfort's decision to summon knights and burgesses to his Parliament did mark the irreversible emergence of the gentry class as a force in politics. From then on, monarchs could not ignore them, which explains Henry's decision to summon the Commons to several of his post-1265 Parliaments. Even though many nobles who had supported the Provisions of Oxford remained active in English politics throughout Henry's reign, the conditions it laid down for regular Parliaments were largely forgotten, as if to symbolise the historical development of the English Parliament via convention rather than statutes and written constitutions.

The emergence of Parliament as an institution: 1272-1485

During the reign of Edward I, which began in 1272, the role of Parliament in the government of the English kingdom increased via the determination of Edward to unite England, Wales and Scotland under his rule by force. He was also keen to unite his subjects in order to restore his authority and not face rebellion as his father had done. It was in this period that Parliament became a focus for petitions from subjects of the realm from all sectors of society. This is a development that went hand in hand with Edward's willingness to unite the nation under his authority, seemingly giving all his subjects a role in government. As the number of petitions being submitted to Parliament increased they came to be dealt with, and often ignored, more and more by ministers of the Crown so as not to block the passage of government business through Parliament. This development symbolises the fact that government and Parliament were by no means the same thing in this stage of the evolution of the latter. It became increasingly obvious to monarchs that they would have to control it, and not be subservient to it, if they were to govern effectively. However the emergence of petitioning was significant as it forged links between Parliament and the people.

One of the moments that marked Parliament's emergence as a true institution in England was the deposition of Edward II. Even though it is debatable as to whether Edward II was deposed in Parliament or by Parliament, this remarkable sequence of events consolidated the importance of Parliament in the English unwritten constitution. Parliament was also crucial in establishing the legitimacy of the king who replaced Edward II: his son Edward III.

The composition of Parliaments in this period varied depending on the decisions that needed to be taken in them. From 1265 onwards, when the monarch needed to raise money through taxes, it was usual for tenants-in-chief, ecclesiastics, knights and burgesses to be summoned. However when the king was merely seeking advice he often only summoned the tenants-in-chief and the ecclesiastics, sometimes with and sometimes without the knights of the shires. It was not until the mid-fourteenth century that summoning representatives of the shires and boroughs became the norm.

In 1341 the nobility and clergy were summoned separately for the first time, creating what was effectively an Upper Chamber and a Lower Chamber, with the knights and burgesses sitting in the latter. This Upper Chamber became known as the House of Lords from 1544 and the Lower Chamber became known as the House of Commons, collectively known as the Houses of Parliament.

The authority of Parliament grew under Edward III; it was established that no law could be made, nor any tax levied, without the consent of both Houses and the Sovereign. This was a development during the reign of Edward III; he was involved in the Hundred Years' War and needed finances. Edward tried to circumvent Parliament as much as possible, which caused this edict to be passed.

Though they remained subordinate to both the Crown and the Lords, the Commons came to act with increasing boldness in this period. During the Good Parliament (1376), the Presiding Officer of the lower chamber, Sir Peter de la Mare, complained of heavy taxes, demanded an accounting of the royal expenditures, and criticised the King's management of the military. The Commons even proceeded to impeach some of the King's ministers. The bold Speaker was imprisoned, but was soon released after the death of Edward III. During the reign of the next monarch, Richard II, the Commons once again began to impeach errant ministers of the Crown. They insisted that they could not only control taxation, but also public expenditures. Despite such gains in authority, however, the Commons still remained much less powerful than the House of Lords and the Crown.

Although the Parliament of England was always a royal institution, the aforementioned events that occurred in this period show that Parliament could act both with and against the king, and this was a development of which monarchs became increasingly aware.

King, Lords and Commons: 1485-1603

It was during the reign of the Tudor monarchs that the modern structure of the English Parliament began to assert itself. Although Henry VII was powerful enough to act in breach of Magna Carta several times when levying taxes, he was astute enough to realise that he needed Parliament to legitimise many of his decisions. His successors abided by the same principles, mostly out of a need to raise money through taxation legitimately without causing discontent. Thus they consolidated the state of affairs whereby monarchs would call and close Parliament as and when they needed it.

By 1485 the monarch was a member of neither the Upper Chamber nor the Lower Chamber. Instead, monarchs implemented their will through their supporters in either House, who would introduce "bills", and proceedings were regulated by the presiding officer in either chamber. From the 1540s the presiding officer in the House of Commons became formally known as the "Speaker", having previously been referred to as the "prolocutor" or "parlour" (a semi-official position, often nominated by the monarch, that had existed ever since Peter de Montfort had acted as the presiding officer of the Oxford Parliament of 1258). The presiding officer in the House of Lords was the Lord Chancellor. Once a bill was accepted by a majority in the Lower Chamber it became an "Act of Parliament". Once an Act was accepted by a majority in the Upper Chamber it became an "Ordinace". And once an Ordinance was accepted by the monarch it became law, the latter process becoming known as the royal assent. A member of either Chamber could introduce a bill, although a majority in both Houses would have to accept it before it passed to the monarch for royal assent. In theory, this gave the bill the approval of each estate of the realm: the King, Lords and Commons. In reality this was not accurate. The Parliament of England was far from being an independent institution in this period. Although it was possible to assemble the entire nobility and senior clergy of the realm in one place to form the estate of the Upper Chamber, the voting franchise for the House of Commons was still very small and elections to it were usually controlled by local grandees. Many members understandably didn't relish the prospect of having to act in the interests of others. So a rule was enacted, still on the statute book today, whereby it became illegal for members of the House of Commons to resign unless they were granted a position directly within the patronage of the monarchy. These aforementioned grandees were often members of the royal council, which became commonly known as the Privy Council in this period. Therefore Tudor monarchs held huge influence over the composition and agenda of both Houses of Parliament and there would often be gaps of several years between the gathering of Parliaments. Sometimes the monarch's consent to a bill was not given, a circumstance known as the royal veto. It is still the right of the monarch of the United Kingdom to veto legislation today, although it has not been exercised since 1706.

It was in this period that the Palace of Westminster was established as the seat of the English Parliament. In 1548 the House of Commons was granted a regular meeting place by the Crown, St Stephen's Chapel. This had been a royal chapel. It was made into a debating chamber after Henry VIII became the last monarch to use the Palace of Westminster as a place of residence and following the suppression of the college there. This room became the home of the House of Commons until it was destroyed by fire in 1834, although the interior was altered several times up until then. The structure of this room was incredibly important in the development of the Parliament of England. Whilst most modern Parliaments sit in a circlular chamber, the benches of the British Houses of Parliament are laid out in the form of choir stalls in a chapel, simply because this is the part of the original chapel that the members of the House of Commons utilised when they were granted use of the chamber. This structure took on a new significance with the emergence of political parties in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, as the tradition began whereby the members of the governing party would sit on the benches to the right of the Speaker and the opposition members on the benches to the left.

The numbers of the Lords Spiritual diminished under Henry VIII, who commanded the Dissolution of the Monasteries, thereby depriving the abbots and priors of their seats in the Upper House. For the first time, the Lords Temporal were more numerous than the Lords Spiritual.

The Laws in Wales Acts of 1535–42 annexed Wales as part of England and brought Welsh representatives to the Parliament of England.

The early Stuart monarchs and the Commonwealth of England: 1603-1660

Parliament had not always submitted to the wishes of the Tudor monarchs. But Parliamentary criticism of the monarchy reached new levels in the 17th century.

In 1628, alarmed by the arbitrary exercise of royal power, the House of Commons submitted to Charles I the Petition of Right, demanding the restoration of their liberties. Though he accepted the petition, Charles later dissolved Parliament and ruled without them for eleven years. It was only after the financial disaster of the Scottish Bishops' Wars (1639–1640) that he was forced to recall Parliament so that they could authorise new taxes.

This resulted in the calling of the assemblies known historically as the Short Parliament of 1640 and the Long Parliament, which sat with several breaks and in various forms between 1640 and 1660. Tensions between a group of rebel Members of Parliament in the Long Parliament, led by John Pym, and the King reached boiling point when Charles unsuccessfully entered the House of Commons to try to arrest Pym and his supporters. Pym and his allies had been tipped off about this and when Charles entered the chamber with a group of soldiers they had disappeared. Charles was further humiliated when he asked the Speaker, William Lenthall, to give their whereabouts. Lenthall famously refused to do so. From then on relations between Crown and Parliament deteriorated further. When trouble started to brew in Ireland, both Charles and his Parliament raised armies to quell the uprisings by native Catholics there. It was not long before it was clear that these forces would end up fighting each other, leading to the English Civil War which began with the Battle of Edgehill in October 1642: those supporting the cause of Parliament were called Parliamentarians (or Roundheads).

The final victory of the Parliamentary forces was a turning point in the history of the Parliament of England. This marked the point when Parliament replaced the monarchy as the supreme source of power in England. Battles between Crown and Parliament would continue throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, but Parliament was no longer subservient to the English monarchy. This change was symbolised in the execution of Charles I in January 1649. It is somewhat ironic that this event was not instigated by the elected representatives of the realm. In Pride's Purge of December 1648, the New Model Army (which by then had emerged as the leading force in the Parliamentary alliance) purged Parliament of members that did not support them. The remaining "Rump Parliament", as it was later referred to by critics, enacted legislation to put the King on trial for treason, on the grounds that he had severed the contract with his subjects by starting a war with their representatives in Parliament. This trial, the outcome of which was a foregone conclusion, led to the execution of the king and the start of an 11 year republic. The House of Lords was abolished and the purged House of Commons governed England until April 1653, when army chief Oliver Cromwell dissolved it following disagreements over religious policy and how to carry out elections to Parliament. Cromwell later convened a Parliament of religious radicals in 1653, commonly known as the Barebone's Parliament, followed by a unicameral Parliament that sat in 1655 and a two chamber Parliament that sat between 1656 and 1658.

Although it is easy to dismiss the English Republic of 1649-60 as nothing more than a Cromwellian military dictatorship, the events that took place in this decade were hugely important in determining the future of Parliament. Firstly, it was during the sitting of the first Rump Parliament that members of the House of Commons became known as "MPs" (Members of Parliament). Secondly, Cromwell gave a huge degree of freedom to his Parliaments, although royalists were barred from sitting in all but a handful of cases. His vision of Parliament appears to have been largely based on the example of the Elizabethan Parliaments. However he underestimated the extent to which Elizabeth I and her ministers had directly and indirectly influenced the decision making process of her Parliaments. He was thus always surprised when they became troublesome towards his regime. He ended up dissolving each Parliament he convened. Yet it is worth noting that the structure of the Second Protectorate Parliament of 1658, which offered Cromwell the Crown in the original version of the Humble Petition and Advice, was almost identical to the Parliamentary structure consolidated in the Glorious Revolution Settlement of 1689. Cromwell rejected their offer of the Crown, but the governmental structure embodied in the final version of the Humble Petition and Advice was undoubtedly the basis for the post-Glorious Revolution Parliaments, with an elected House of Commons as the Lower Chamber, a House of Lords containing peers of the realm as the Upper Chamber, and a constitutional monarchy subservient to Parliament and the laws of the nation as the executive arm of the state at the top of the tree, assisted in carrying out their duties with a Privy Council. Oliver Cromwell had thus inadvertently created the basis for future Parliamentary government and Parliamentary democracy in England.

In terms of the evolution of Parliament as an institution, by far the most important development during the republic was the sitting of the Rump Parliament between 1649 and 1653. This proved that Parliament could survive without a monarchy and a House of Lords if it needed to. Future English monarchs would never forget this. Charles I was the last English monarch ever to enter the House of Commons. Even to this day, a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom is sent to Buckingham Palace as a ceremonial hostage during the State Opening of Parliament, in order to ensure the safe return of the sovereign from a potentially hostile Parliament. During the ceremony the monarch sits on the throne in the House of Lords and signals for the Lord Great Chamberlain to summon the House of Commons to the Lords Chamber from there. The Lord Great Chamberlain then raises his wand of office to signal to the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, who has been waiting in the central lobby. Black Rod turns and, under the escort of the doorkeeper of the House of Lords and an inspector of police, approaches the doors to the chamber of the Commons. The doors are slammed in his face – symbolizing the right of the Commons to debate without the presence of the Queen's representative. He then strikes three times with his staff (the Black Rod), and is then admitted.

Parliament from the Restoration to the Glorious Revolution: 1660-1688

The revolutionary events that occurred between 1640 and 1660 all took place in the name of Parliament, even though its composition was not always true to its origins - almost as if the name of the institution itself had taken on a significance beyond its original concept. This new status of Parliament as the central organ of the English state was consolidated during the events surrounding the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Following the death of Cromwell in September 1658, his son Richard unsuccessfully tried to continue his father's Protectorate system of government, summoning the 1658 Third Protectorate Parliament in the process. When this Parliament was dissolved following pressure from the army in April 1659, the Rump Parliament was recalled at the insistence of the surviving army grandees. This in turn was dissolved in a coup led by army general John Lambert, leading to the formation of the Committee of Public Safety, dominated by Lambert and his supporters. When the breakaway forces of George Monck invaded England from Scotland where they had been stationed - without Lambert's supporters putting up a fight - Monck temporarily recalled the Rump Parliament and reversed Pride's Purge by recalling the entireity of the Long Parliament in 1660. They then voted to dissolve themselves and call new elections, which were arguably the most democractic for 20 years although the franchise was still very small. This led to the calling of the Convention Parliament which was dominated by royalists. This Parliament voted to reinstate the monarchy and the House of Lords. Charles II returned to England as its King in May 1660.

Every single regime from 1649 onwards looked to a form of Parliament for legitimacy. Significantly, it was a full Parliament that restored the monarchy, thus ensuring that the monarchy would be subservient to it.

The Cavalier Parliament, elected in 1661, sat until January 1679. Charles ruled without Parliament for the last four years of his reign. But events that occurred from then on ensured that this would be nothing more than a temporary blip in the ascendancy of Parliament. In 1688 James II, an unpopular Catholic ruler, was forced to flee the country. Parliament then offered the Crown to his Protestant daughter Mary, instead of his Roman Catholic son (James Francis Edward Stuart). Mary II ruled jointly with her husband, William III. The 1689 Declaration of Rights and the 1701 Act of Settlement were statutes that lawfully upheld the prominence of Parliament for the first time in English history. The reign of William III also saw the passing of the Triennial Act, guaranteeing regular elections. These events marked the beginning of the English constitutional monarchy and its subservience to Parliament.

Union: the Parliament of Great Britain

Following the Treaty of Union in 1707, Acts of Parliament passed in the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland created a new Kingdom of Great Britain and dissolved both parliaments, replacing them with a new Parliament of Great Britain based in the former home of the English parliament. The Parliament of Great Britain would later become the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1801 when the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was formed through the Act of Union 1800.

Future

The reestablishment of a devolved English parliament, giving separate decision-making powers to representatives for voters in England similar to the representation given by the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly, is an issue in British politics, due to the anomaly of Scottish MPs having a say in English issues, whereas English MPs are unable to vote on issues that affect Scotland exclusively. The question of a devolved English parliament was considered a minor issue until the Conservative Party announced policy proposals to ban Scottish MPs from voting on English issues, thus raising the profile of the issue. The only political party actively campaigning for an English Parliament are the English Democrats.

Regarding parliamentary matters, a long-standing anomaly called the West Lothian Question has come to the fore. Before Scottish devolution, purely-Scottish matters were debated at Westminster, but subject to a convention that only Scottish MPs could vote on them. The "Question" was that there was no "reverse" convention: Scottish MPs could and did vote on issues relating only to England and Wales and Northern Ireland. Welsh devolution has removed most of the anomaly for Wales, but not for England: Scottish and Welsh MPs can vote on English issues, but many Scottish and Welsh issues are not debated at Westminster at all.

English MPs are elected at the same time as the rest of the UK's MPs. There are 529 English constituencies. Because of their large number, they form an inbuilt majority in the House of Commons. As the British Government considered Scotland to be over-represented in relation to the other components of the UK, Clause 81 of the Scotland Act 1998 equalised the English and Scottish electoral quota, and London alone now provides more MPs than Scotland does.

Places where Parliament has been held other than London

York, various.
Lincoln, various.
Acton Burnell Castle, 1283 Virtual Shropshire.
Shrewsbury, 1283 (trial of Dafydd ap Gruffydd, last free Welsh ruler of Wales).
Leicester, 1426 (see Parliament of Bats) and the first ever official English parliament.

References

Blackstone, Sir William. (1765). Commentaries on the Laws of England. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Davies, M. (2003). Companion to the Standing Orders and guide to the Proceedings of the House of Lords, 19th ed.
Farnborough, Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron. (1896). Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George the Third, 11th ed. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
"Parliament." (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. London: Cambridge University Press.

Parliament of England
Preceded by Curia Regis 1066-c1215	Parliament of England c1215-1707	Succeeded by Parliament of Great Britain 1707-1800

External links

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