Constitutional History of England Volume I Part 20

[403] Camden, p. 400.

[404] The courtiers told the house, that the queen intended to marry in order to divert them from their request that they would name her successor. Strype, vol. i. p. 494.

[405] D'Ewes, p. 128.

[406] _Id._ p. 116; Journals, 8th Oct., 25th Nov., 2nd Jan.

[407] D'Ewes, p. 141.

[408] D'Ewes, 156, etc. There is no mention of Strickland's business in the journal.

[409] Something of this sort seems to have occurred in the session of 1566, as may be inferred from the lord keeper's reproof to the speaker for calling her majesty's letters patent in question. _Id._ 115.

[410] _Id._ 158; Journals, 7 Apr.

[411] Journals, 9 and 10 Apr.

[412] D'Ewes, 159.

[413] D'Ewes, 151.

[414] Bell, I suppose, had reconciled himself to the court, which would have approved no speaker chosen without its recommendation. There was always an understanding between this servant of the house and the government. Proofs and presumptions of this are not unfrequent. In Strype's _Annals_, vol. iv. p. 124, we find instructions for the speaker's speech in 1592, drawn up by Lord Burleigh, as might very likely be the case on other occasions.

[415] D'Ewes, 219.

[416] _Id._, 213, 214.

[417] D'Ewes, 236.

[418] D'Ewes, 260.

[419] _Id._ 282.

[420] D'Ewes, 410.

[421] P. 438. Townsend calls this gentleman Davenport, which no doubt was his true name.

[422] D'Ewes, 433.

[423] _Id. 440 et post._

[424] _Id._ 470.

[425] D'Ewes, 474; Townsend, 60.

[426] _Id._ 62.

[427] See the letter in Lodge's _Ill.u.s.trations_, vol. iii. 34. Townsend says he was committed to Sir John Fortescue's keeping, a gentler sort of imprisonment. P. 61.

[428] D'Ewes, 470.

[429] Birch's _Memoirs of Elisabeth_, i. 96.

[430] Strype has published, from Lord Burleigh's ma.n.u.scripts, a speech made in the parliament of 1589 against the subsidy then proposed.

_Annals_, vol. iii. Append. 238. Not a word about this occurs in D'Ewes's Journal; and I mention it as an additional proof how little we can rely on negative inferences as to proceedings in parliament at this period.

[431] D'Ewes, 547.

[432] Their joy and grat.i.tude were rather premature, for her majesty did not revoke all of them; as appears by Rymer, xvi. 540, and Carte, iii.

712. A list of them, dated May 1603 (Lodge, iii. 159), seems to imply that they were still existing.

[433] D'Ewes, 619, 644, etc.

The speeches made in this parliament are reported more fully than usual by Heywood Townsend, from whose journal those of most importance have been transcribed by D'Ewes. Hume has given considerable extracts, for the sole purpose of inferring from this very debate on monopolies, that the royal prerogative was, according to the opinion of the House of Commons itself, hardly subject to any kind of restraint. But the pa.s.sages he selects are so unfairly taken (some of them being the mere language of courtiers, others separated from the context, in order to distort their meaning), that no one who compares them with the original can acquit him of extreme prejudice. The adulatory strain in which it was usual to speak of the sovereign often covered a strong disposition to keep down his authority. Thus when a Mr. Davies says in this debate: "G.o.d hath given that power to absolute princes, which he attributes to himself--Dixi quod dii estis;" it would have been seen, if Hume had quoted the following sentence, that he infers from hence, that justice being a divine attribute, the king can do nothing that is unjust, and consequently cannot grant licences to the injury of his subjects. Strong language was no doubt used in respect of the prerogative. But it is erroneous to a.s.sert, with Hume, that it came equally from the courtiers and country gentlemen, and was admitted by both. It will chiefly be found in the speeches of Secretary Cecil, the official defender of prerogative, and of some lawyers. Hume, after quoting an extravagant speech ascribed to Sergeant Heyle, that "all we have is her majesty's, and she may lawfully at any time take it from us; yea, she hath as much right to all our lands and goods as to any revenue of her crown,"

observes that Heyle was an eminent lawyer, a man of character. That Heyle was high in his profession is beyond doubt; but in that age, as has since, though from the change of times less grossly, continued to be the case, the most distinguished lawyers notoriously considered the court and country as plaintiff and defendant in a great suit, and themselves as their retained advocates. It is not likely, however, that Heyle should have used the exact words imputed to him. He made, no doubt, a strong speech for prerogative, but so grossly to transcend all limits of truth and decency seems even beyond a lawyer seeking office.

Townsend and D'Ewes write with a sort of sarcastic humour, which is not always to be taken according to the letter. D'Ewes, 433; Townsend, 205.

Hume proceeds to tell us, that it was a.s.serted this session, that the speaker might either admit or reject bills in the house; and remarks, that the very proposal of it is a proof at what a low ebb liberty was at that time in England. There cannot be a more complete mistake. No such a.s.sertion was made; but a member suggested that the speaker might, as the consuls in the Roman senate used, appoint the order in which bills should be read; at which speech, it is added, some hissed. D'Ewes, 677.

The present regularity of parliamentary forms, so justly valued by the house, was yet unknown; and the members called confusedly for the business they wished to have brought forward.

[434] _Parl. Hist._ 958. In the session of 1571, a committee was appointed to confer with the attorney and solicitor-general about the return of burgesses from nine places which had not been presented in the last parliament. But in the end it was "ordered, by Mr. Attorney's a.s.sent, that the burgesses shall remain according to their returns; for that the validity of the charters of their towns is elsewhere to be examined, if cause be." D'Ewes p. 156, 159.

D'Ewes observes that it was very common in former times, in order to avoid the charge of paying wages to their burgesses, that a borough which had fallen into poverty or decay, either got licence of the sovereign for the time being to be discharged from electing members, or discontinued it of themselves; but that of late the members for the most part bearing their own charges, many of those towns which had thus discontinued their privilege, renewed it both in Elizabeth's reign and that of James. P. 80. This could only have been, it is hardly necessary to say, by obtaining writs out of chancery for that purpose. As to the payment of wages, the words of D'Ewes intimate that it was not entirely disused. In the session of 1586, the borough of Grantham complained that Arthur Hall (whose name now appears for the last time) had sued them for wages due to him as their representative in the preceding parliament; alleging that, as well by reason of his negligent attendance and some other offences by him committed in some of its sessions, as of his promise not to require any such wages, they ought not to be charged; and a committee having been appointed to enquire into this, reported that they had requested Mr. Hall to remit his claim for wages, which he had freely done. D'Ewes, p. 417.

[435] Strype mentions letters from the council to Mildmay, Sheriff of Ess.e.x, in 1559, about the choice of knights. _Annals_, v. i. p. 32. And other instances of interference may be found in the Lansdowne and Harleian collections. Thus we read that a Mr. Copley used to nominate burgesses for Gatton, "for that there were no burgesses in the borough."

The present proprietor being a minor in custody of the court of wards, Lord Burleigh directs the Sheriff of Surrey to make no return without instructions from himself; and afterwards orders him to cancel the name of Francis Bacon in his indenture, he being returned for another place, and to subst.i.tute Edward Brown. Harl. MSS. DCCIII. 16.

I will introduce in this place, though not belonging to the present reign, a proof that Henry VIII. did not trust altogether to the intimidating effects of his despotism for the obedience of parliament, and that his ministers looked to the management of elections, as their successors have always done. Sir Robert Sadler writes to some one, whose name does not appear, to inform him that the Duke of Norfolk had spoken to the king, who was well content he should be a burgess of Oxford; and that he should "order himself in the said _room_ according to such instructions as the said Duke of Norfolk should give him from the king:"

if he is not elected at Oxford, the writer will recommend him to some of "my lord's towns of his bishopric of Winchester." Cotton MSS. Cleopatra E. iv. 178. Thus we see that the practice of our government has always been alike; and we may add the same of the n.o.bility, who interfered with elections full as continually, and far more openly, than in modern times. The difference is, that a secretary of the treasury, or peer's agent, does that with some precaution of secrecy, which the council board, or the peer himself, under the Tudors, did by express letters to the returning officer; and that the operating motive is the prospect of a good place in the excise or customs for compliance, rather than that of lying some months in the Fleet for disobedience.

A very late writer has a.s.serted, as an undoubted fact, which "historic truth requires to be mentioned," that for the first parliament of Elizabeth, "five candidates were nominated by the court for each borough, and three for each county; and by the authority of the sheriffs, the members were chosen from among the candidates." Butler's _Book of the Roman Catholic Church_, p. 225. I never met with any tolerable authority for this, and believe it to be a mere fabrication; not certainly of Mr. Butler, who is utterly incapable of a wilful deviation from truth, but of some of those whom he too implicitly follows.

[436] D'Ewes, 168.

[437] Journals, p. 88.

[438] Holingshed, vol. iii. p. 824 (4to edit.); Hatsell's _Precedents_, vol. i. p. 53. Mr. Hatsell inclines too much, in my opinion, to depreciate the authority of this case, imagining that it was rather as the king's servant, than as a member of the house, that Ferrers was delivered. But, though Henry artfully endeavours to rest it chiefly on this ground, it appears to me that the Commons claim the privilege as belonging to themselves, without the least reference to this circ.u.mstance. If they did not always a.s.sert it afterwards, this negative presumption is very weak, when we consider how common it was to overlook or recede from precedents, before the const.i.tution had been reduced into a system. Carte, vol. iii. p. 164, endeavours to discredit the case of Ferrers as an absolute fable, and certainly points out some inaccuracy as to dates; but it is highly improbable that the whole should be an invention. He returns to the subject afterwards (p. 541), and, with a folly almost inconceivable even in a Jacobite, supposes the puritans to have fabricated the tale, and prevailed on Holingshed to insert it in his history.

[439] Journals, Feb. 22nd and 27th.

[440] Hatsell, 73, 92, 119.

[441] _Id._ 90.

[442] _Id._ 97.

[443] _Id._ 96.

[444] _Id._ 119.