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Parliament in the Sixteenth Century: Functions and Fortunes*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

G. R. Elton
G. R. Elton
Affiliation:
Clare College, Cambridge
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Extract

Even though so much has so often been done, the study of parliament remains active, not least so for the sixteenth century. A fresh look at the present state of the question seems appropriate on this occasion when we are assembled to commemorate Sir John Neale, the foremost historian of the Tudor House of Commons. It is now nearly twenty years since Neale completed his life's work, and those twenty years have not been without further study and thought, sometimes assisted by the discovery of new evidence. No one, we may be sure, would have been better pleased than today's honorand to find that what so fully engaged his interest and his labours should continue to attract his successors – to know that he had not closed a book but opened a window.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 1979 , pp. 255 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 E.g. the York material edited by Raine, A. (York Civic Records, vols. VI–VIII [1948–1953])Google Scholar contains interesting sidelights on parliamentary procedure and the fortunes of bills.

2 Roskell, J. S., ‘Perspectives in English parliamentary history’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XLVI (1964), 448–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Neale, J. E., ‘The Elizabethan political scene’, Proceedings of the British Academy, XXXIV (1948), 97–117Google Scholar.

4 SirSmith, Thomas, De Republica Anglorum, ed. Alston, L. (1906), p. 49Google Scholar.

5 Robinson, R., ‘A brief collection of the queen's majesty's high and most honourable courts of record,’ Camden Miscellany, XX (1963), 2–3Google Scholar.

6 Neale, J. E., Elizabeth I and her parliaments, I (London, 1953), 313–68Google Scholar.

7 Ibid. p. 339.

8 C[ommons] J[oumals,] 1, 108.

9 Ibid. pp. 54, 66, 79, 88.

10 See my ‘The Rolls of Parliament, 1449–1547,’ Historical Journal, XXII (1979), 1–29Google Scholar.

11 H[ouse of] L[ords] R[ecord] O[ffice], Original Acts, 18 Eliz. 1, no. 30. CJ, 1, 110–13, 115; L[ords] J[oumals] 1, 746–9.

12 LJ, 1, 597, 696.

13 [Public Record Office], SP 12/40, fo. 149; LJ, 1, 696, 698; CJ, 1, 93.

14 Corporation of London Records Office, Repertories 15, fo. 188.

15 Ibid. 13(1), fo. 251; Miller, Helen, ‘London and parliament in the reign of Henry VIII,’ Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xxxv (1962), at p. 139Google Scholar. Most sessions under Elizabeth seem to have yielded no reward for either clerk.

16 Neale, J. E., ‘The Commons Journals of the Tudor period,’ Transactions [of the Royal Historical Society 4th series, III] (1920), 136–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This contains the most charming howler in Neale's whole corpus: he read the clerk's addition of the conventional JHS (Jesus Hominum Salvator) to the year date as an inscription of the clerk's first name, Johannes.

17 British Library, Cotton MSS, Tiberius, D. i, fo. 4 v. This is the original of Bowyer's transcript of the Lords Journals for Henry VIII and Edward VI; the volume at the Inner Temple, Petyt MS 537/1, from which this passage is usually cited, is a later copy.

18 This becomes clear from an inspection of the MS. That the hand that wrote the book is Seymour's is confirmed from his annotations on bills in the Original Acts.

19 For all this cf. Lambert, Sheila, ‘The clerks and records of the House of Commons, 1600–1640’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XLIII (1970), 215–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 The suggestion is A. F. Pollard's: ibid, XVII (1940), 78–85.

21 Transactions (1920), pp. 146–8.

22 I am grateful to Miss Norah Fuidge for this information.

23 Inner Temple, Petyt MS 537/18, contains the remnants of this book.

24 Lambert, ‘Clerks and records of the House of Commons’, pp. 221–2: on the supposition, quite plausible in itself, that the date 1610 is a scribe's error for 1601.

25 HLRO, MS 3186, printed in Manuscripts of the House of Lords, XI, 6–15.

26 Neale, , Elizabeth I and her parliaments, I, 379, referring to Simonds d'Ewes, The journals of all the parliaments during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1682), 282–3Google Scholar, where we find details of debate otherwise absent from both CJ and D'Ewes.

27 Cf. Neale, , Transactions (1920), 120Google Scholar; unaware of the then unknown Braye MS, he was unable to make the identification.

28 On May 29, CJ, 1, 99, lists two bills against vagabonds, one rejected on second reading and the other read a third time; the Braye MS (Manuscripts of the House of Lords, XI, 7) shows that the first was really one for building cottages on wastes and commons.

29 The statement, ibid. p. x, that Onslow began to insert speeches in 1581 is mistaken. Though his extant Journals show some increase in longwindedness, they never altered in the principles which governed what was included.

30 British Library, Lansdowne MS 43, fos. 164–75.

31 Cf. the remarks made in 1584 (Northants. Record Office, MS F(M).P.2, fo. 35 v): ‘It was by one said that as precedents were necessary to instruct the House what had been done and thereby did give the better light how to proceed in matters adoing, so were they in no sort binding the House what should be done: for, being a free council, it cannot be concluded but hath still a power remaining in it…according to the necessity of the causes in handling, either to alter, make new or continue any precedent’ (spelling modernized).

32 Neale, J. E., The Elizabethan House of Commons (London, 1948), p. 376Google Scholar.

33 Ibid. p. 370; CJ, 1, 3, 4, 19, 21, 23, 30, 31, 38, 41.

34 Ibid. pp. 5, 7, 10, 16, 22, 39, 41, 45.

35 Ibid. pp. 25, and 26 (a committal numbered as a separate reading); 15 (a repeat reading on the same day, probably to facilitate understanding, counted as a formal reading); 22, 41, 45 (where the confusion seems to hide replacement bills).

36 Neale, House of Commons, pp. 377–81.

37 Ibid. p. 380.

38 This discussion of committees rests on the work of Miss Sheila Lambert, forthcoming in the English Historical Review.

39 E.g. Essays in Elizabethan history (London, 1958), 118–19Google Scholar.

40 Ibid. p. 121.

41 Jones, N. L., ‘Faith by statute: the politics of religion in the parliament of 1559’, unpublished dissertation (Cambridge, 1978)Google Scholar.

42 Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. 5.14, fos. 81 v to 84 v. Neale made the ‘choir’ puritan by selective citation; the Latin jokes would repay more attention than he gave them.

43 Neale, Elizabeth I and her parliaments, 1, 95.

44 SP 12/148, fo. 171.

45 Neale, Elizabeth I and her parliaments, 1, 196.

46 Ibid. pp. 192 ff., 212 ff.

47 As his letters show: e.g. Wright, T. (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her times (London, 1838), 11, 17–21, 244Google Scholar.

48 Neale, Elizabeth I and her parliaments, 1, 216.

49 Ibid. p. 304.

50 LJ, 1, 731; 11, 29. SP 12/147, fos. 121–2. Strype, John (Life of Grindal [Oxford 1821], pp. 478–81Google Scholar; Annals of the Reformation [Oxford 1824], 1, 460–1Google Scholar) printed an early draft which he claimed was in the hand of Bishop Aylmer. He found it in William Petyt's collections, but I have been unable to trace it either at Inner Temple or in the Public Record Office, the two locations where Petyt material is now to be found.

51 CJ, 1, 83.

52 My doubts about Neale's interpretation are shared by Ward, P. L., William Lambarde's notes on the procedures and privileges of the House of Commons (House of Commons Library Document no. 10, 1977), p. 10Google Scholar.

53 Eliz. I, c. 2 (letters patent) and 23 Eliz. I, c. 3 (fines).

54 5 Eliz. I, c. 6, a very brief act drawn by Cecil himself. If the 1566 bill went counter to his intention, why did Cecil let it pass so readily in the Lower House? The bill was said to be in explanation of the act, no more; the Lords' refusal to proceed is, in the circumstances, likely to reflect a superfluity rather than an unwanted purpose in it.

55 Dashed: bankrupts, ironworks at Wonersh (Surrey), assizes in Lancashire and Durham. Lost: engraving of ulnagers' seals.

56 There is nothing in the evidence to support Conyers Read's conjecture (Mr Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth [London, 1955], p. 359Google Scholar) that this bill was connected with the vestiarian controversy.

57 Neale, Elizabeth I and her parliaments, 1, 169.

58 SP 12/41, fo. 100. Cf. Neale, Elizabeth I and her parliaments, 1, 168.

59 The supposition is supported by a piece of evidence which at first sight seems to contradict it. In September 1573, writing to Burghley, Lord Keeper Bacon reported that the clerk of the parliament had the failed bills of the last session in his keeping, a session in which seven bills appear to have been vetoed (Hist. MSS Commission, Calendar of Salisbury MSS, 11 58). Yet Bacon went on to say that only one of them might justify the recalling of parliament – the one concerning which the queen had said she would be advised of. Since la reine s' avisera was the formula of the veto one might suppose that Bacon knew of only one bill vetoed in 1572. However, what he had in mind was the bill against the queen of Scots. When refusing it, Elizabeth went out of her way to appear conciliatory by explaining that on this occasion she would take the words of the formula seriously: she claimed that she really wanted further advice in the matter (Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 1. 309–10). Thus Bacon was distinguishing between the bills truly vetoed and the one ostensibly reserved for future action.

60 8 Eliz. I, c. 16, made permanent by 13 Eliz. I, c. 22.

61 SP 12/107, fos. 207–8.

62 HLRO, Original Acts, 23 Eliz. I, no. 19.