The English parliament in front of the King,
c.1300.
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.
History
The Parliament of England is not an institution which has an exact birth date. It is an institution that evolved out of the governmental structures that advised monarchs in order for them to govern effectively.
Under a monarchical system of government, every monarch needs to seek consultation on the decisions they take, otherwise nobody will obey them. Enough people must agree with what the monarch is doing in order for their laws to be obeyed and enforced. Therefore, monarchs form advisory councils consisting of the most powerful men in their realm.
In England, these advisory councils developed into the Parliament of England. This institution evolved into the central governmental organ of the English state, gradually taking power away from the monarch and sowing the seeds of modern parliamentary democracy in the process. It is for this reason that the modern Parliament of the United Kingdom, which is a descendant of the Parliament of England, is sometimes referred to as the "Mother of all Parliaments".
Origins
The origins of Parliament lie in
Anglo-Saxon times.
Anglo-Saxon kings were advised by a royal council known as the
Witenagemot, loosely translated to mean "meetings of wise men", whose foremost members were the King's sons and brothers. The
Ealdormen, or executive heads of the
shires, also attended the Witenagemot, as did the senior clergymen of the state. The King possessed ultimate authority, but laws were made only after seeking the advice (and later the consent) of the Witenagemot.
The Anglo-Saxon body politic was reformed when
Duke William of Normandy ("William the Conqueror") invaded England in
1066. William brought to
England the
feudal system he was accustomed to in
France. Thus, he granted land to his most important military supporters, who in turn granted land to their supporters, thus creating a feudal hierarchy. Those who held lands directly from the King were known as the tenants-in-chief, and the territories they held were called
manors.
With regard to the government of his new kingdom, William's reforms were largely adaptations of the Anglo-Saxon model. The tenants-in-chief were hugely powerful in their localities. But they were not nearly as powerful as their equivalents on the continent, specifically the Dukes and Princes in the medieval kingdoms of Europe who ran their territories as fiefdoms. This meant that William's England was a largely centralised kingdom supported by the tenants-in-chief who in effect did not hold much more power than the Ealdormen had exercised in the Anglo-Saxon state. However William realised that effective government could only occur with consultation and consent. He thus adapted the Witengamot into the Great Council, or
curia regis, which gathered at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun each year and consisted primarily of the King, his tenants-in-chief and leading clergymen (or ecclesiastics). These were occasions for William to wear his crown (highly significant as before he had been merely a Duke), gather information and exert his authority through his satellites in the localities. Notable meetings include the Great Council of Christmas 1085 held at Gloucester, where the
Domesday survey was planned and initiated.
To emphasise the continuity in his system of government William adopted Anglo-Saxon law as Common Law, uniting England and ending all uprising by 1072. Although he initially retained the Ealdormen personnel of his Anglo-Saxon predecessor,
Harold Godwinson, by 1072 he had replaced all of them with his own Norman kinsmen and thus the Great Council developed into a hugely important Anglo-Norman institution.
The tenants-in-chief often struggled with their spiritual counterparts and with the King for power. In
1215, they secured from
King John the
Magna Carta, which established that the King may not levy or collect any taxes (except the feudal taxes to which they were hitherto accustomed), save with the consent of his council. It was also established that the most important tenants-in-chief (the
earls and the
barons), as well as the ecclesiastics (
archbishops,
bishops and
abbots) be summoned to the council by personal writs from the Sovereign, and that all others be summoned to the council by general writs from the
sheriffs of their counties. John later repealed the Magna Carta, but his son and successor,
Henry III, was forced to reinstate it as a child, albeit in a watered down form.
The Great Council slowly evolved into the Parliament of England. The word itself derived from the French word "parlement" (translated as "speaking" in English) and the Latin word "parliamentum" (meaning "discussion"), terms which highlight the origin of the concept of Parliament as a royal institution which quite literally spoke at the pleasure of the sovereign. One French account of the 1164 Great Council of Northampton referred to the gathering as a "parlement". However, the first time the word Parliament appears in official documents was during Henry III's reign. Specifically, in 1236 the Rolls of the Court of the King's Bench outline the case of a subdean of the chapter of Salisbury named Adam, who could not attend the hearing in question although he "pledged his faith" to appear at the Octave of Hilary Westminster Parliament, which was held on 20 January 1237. The case was thus adjourned to this meeting of Parliament, an event that gives credence to the theories H.G. Richardson and G.O. Sayles that Parliament was initially developed as a judicial institution - a thesis further enforced by the fact that the trial of
Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester in 1252 was held in Parliament. It is perhaps no coincidence that meetings of the law courts and the Great Council came to coincide more and more during the reign of Henry III.
Simon De Montfort and the Parliament of 1265
In
1264, Montfort, who was in rebellion against Henry III, summoned the first elected parliament without any prior royal authorisation. In Montfort's system, the right to vote in Parliamentary elections for
county constituencies was uniform throughout the country, granting a vote to all those who owned the
freehold of land to an annual rent of 40 shillings (
Forty-shilling Freeholders). In the
boroughs, the franchise varied and individual boroughs had varying arrangements. 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. This was 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 in 1264 and since then his support among the nobility had dwindled. 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 of the
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.
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.
Although the Parliament of England was always a royal institution, these events showed that Parliament could act both with and against the king, and this was a development of which monarchs became increasingly aware.
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.
King, Lords and Commons: 1485-1603 (including the annexation of Wales)
The growing influence of Parliament was restrained by numerous
civil wars. By the end of the
Wars of the Roses, royal supremacy had been restored. The Crown was at the height of its power during the reign of
Henry VIII. The numbers of the
Lords Spiritual diminished under Henry, 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.
However, 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 the reign of
Henry VII the monarch was a member of neither the Upper Chamber nor the Lower Chamber. Instead, monarchs inplemented 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 that had existed ever since
Peter de Montfort had acted as the presiding officer of the Parliament of 1259). 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 this Chamber were usually controlled by local grandees. Therefore the 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 Kingodm to veto legislation today, although it has not been exercised used 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
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
Parliaments continued to behave submissively under the
Tudor monarchs who followed Henry, but began to display an unusual sense of independence under
Elizabeth I. As England evolved into a world power, members of both Houses actively discussed succession to the Crown (the Queen never married) and condemned various royal policies. Their new-found boldness proved intolerable to Elizabeth's
Scottish successor,
James I (who was simultaneously King in Scotland as James VI). The great struggle between the Crown and Parliament occurred under James I's successor,
Charles I. Alarmed by the arbitrary exercise of royal power, the House of Commons submitted to Charles the
Petition of Right, demanding the restoration of their liberties, in
1628. 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 in order 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 supportes. Pym and his allies had been tipped off about this and when Charles entered the chamber with a group of soliders they had disappeared. From then on relations between Crown and Parliament deteriorated further. When trouble started to brew in Ireland, both Charles and the 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 in 1649 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 with 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, known as the
Commonwealth of England. The House of Lords was abolished and the purged House of Commons governed England until 1653, when army chief
Oliver Cromwell dissolved it following disagreements over 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 in 1658, all for relatively short periods of time.
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, it must be emphasised that Cromwell gave a huge degree of freedom to his Parliaments, although royalists were barred from sitting in all but a handful of cases - most of which occurred due to bad intelligence. His vision of Parliament appears to have been largely based on the example of the Elizabethan Parliaments. However he underestimated the extent to which Elizabth I and her ministers had directly and indirectly indluenced the decision making of her Parliaments. He was thus always surprised when they became troublesome towards his regime and he ended up dissolving each one 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.
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, by calling the Third Protectorate Parliament in 1658. When this Parliament was dissolved following pressure from the army in 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
Covention 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 forever 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 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
Main articles: 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 is the
English Democrats.
Places where Parliament has been held other than London
★ Acton Burnell Castle, 1283
Virtual Shropshire
★ Leicester, 1426 (see
Parliament of Bats) and other dates.
See also
★
History of democracy
★
List of Parliaments of England
★
List of Acts of Parliament of the English Parliament
★
Member of 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.
External links
★
The Parliament of the United Kingdom. Official website.
★
The Parliament of the United Kingdom. Parliament Live TV.
★
The British Broadcasting Corporation. (2005). "A–Z of Parliament."
★
''The Guardian.'' (2005). "Special Report: House of Commons."
★
''The Guardian.'' (2005). "Special Report: House of Lords."
★
Parliamentary procedure site at Leeds University
★
The Campaign for an English Parliament
★
Mori Poll - Views on English Devolution - 41% support English Parliament
★
English Democrats - web site
★
Witanagemot Club
★
David Davis on an English Parliament
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
