Unlike their Tudor counterparts, students of early Stuart parliaments have paid scant attention to the attendance of the Commons by its Members. Most studies have generally ignored the subject entirely or treated it only in passing,
If licences of absence fail to provide a reliable guide to the numbers in the House at any one time, divisions of the House are also not entirely helpful. Whenever the Commons divided the clerk normally recorded in his Journal the number of votes cast. From this record the precise number of Members present can easily be calculated, since abstentions were not permitted. However, divisions occurred only rarely, especially in the 1620s. There were none at all in the winter sitting of 1621, the Oxford sitting of 1625 or the 1629 session, and only two each in 1624 and the Westminster sitting of 1625. Moreover, the number of Members who participated in any particular division is no sure guide to peak attendance that day, as divisions often occurred before nine in the morning,
Since Members were ordinarily free to come and go as they pleased, the most that can be said about divisions is that they provide a snapshot of the numbers present at any given moment. Occasionally it is possible to catch sight in the records of a prominent Member entering the Commons midway through a debate. Sir Edward Coke, for instance, arrived late on 24 November 1621.
Borough accounts provide a further source of information on attendance, but like licences of absence and records of divisions they need to be handled with care. Many enfranchised boroughs no longer paid their Members parliamentary wages, and those that did had no formal means of checking that their representatives had attended the Commons as often as they claimed when settling their bills. Christopher Stone evidently received wages for the whole of the 1604-10 Parliament from his Bath constituents, while Robert Wilcocks was allowed 3s. a day for the entire duration of the Addled Parliament by the borough of New Romney, but whether either Member was as assiduous in his attendance as his wage payments suggest is a matter for speculation,
Despite the limitations of the evidence provided by divisions, licences of absence and borough accounts, the study of Commons attendance is far from being a hopeless venture. Used cautiously, all three types of evidence are an invaluable source of information. Supplemented by the accounts of debates, the observations of diarists and newsletter writers and information locked up in local government records, they enable us to reconstruct a surprisingly detailed picture of Commons attendance during the early seventeenth century. It is to this picture that we now turn.
The importance of attendance
Addressing a sparse chamber in March 1606, Robert Bowyer, sitting for Evesham, argued that a thin House was just as competent to handle business as a well-attended one on the grounds that the representative nature of the Commons did not depend upon the numbers present in the chamber at any given time.
Members themselves, alert to the fact that the Commons was an institution representative of the nation as a whole, were equally aware of the need to reach important decisions in a well-attended chamber. In June 1607 Dudley Carleton persuaded the Speaker to defer debate on the Hostile Laws bill on the grounds that it would be better if those who opposed the bill were present ‘that we may satisfy them’.
It was not only matters of national importance which required the attention of a full chamber. Thin attendance might also cause relatively minor business to be deferred. When, on 25 May 1604, Francis Moore sought to establish whether mayors were entitled to serve as Members, the matter was postponed ‘till the House fuller’.
The quality of those present in the chamber was scarcely less important than their quantity. Though all Members were in theory equal, some, by virtue of their particular expertise or talents, were generally regarded as more useful than others. When James tried to stem the flow of Members leaving Westminster in February 1607, he particularly demanded ‘that no lawyer, or other Member of note, might depart the town’.
Patterns of attendance
From the middle of the sixteenth century, when the Commons took up occupancy of the disused chapel of St. Stephen’s in the Palace of Westminster, it was inevitable that the chamber of the lower House would experience occasional overcrowding. At just 54 feet long and 26 feet wide, St. Stephen’s could comfortably seat only about 200,
A crowded House was not necessarily well attended, for even if only half its Members turned up the Commons would be full to bursting. Nevertheless, faced with a sea of occupied benches a Member might be forgiven for thinking that attendance was impressive. On Good Friday 1628 Sir John Strangways observed that he could ‘see no thinness, nor no empty places in the House’ after Sir Walter Earle protested that the House was too thin to permit discussion of the subsidy bill.
If the Commons occasionally bulged at the seams, at other times it was almost deserted. Absenteeism had been endemic under Mary and Elizabeth, and following James’s accession this problem increased in severity. Indeed, during the second session in 1606 attendance plummeted. Division records suggest that during the first half of March around 58-59% of Members were in daily attendance, but by 25 March the Commons had shrunk to half of its membership.
Parliament reassembled in mid October, and following the Christmas recess it resumed business in earnest. It soon became apparent that the slump in attendance that had occurred in March 1606 had not been a mere flash-in-the-pan, for on 27 February 1607 the Speaker reported that the departure of so many Members from Westminster had worried the king, who was anxious to have the Union debated.
There was no improvement after Easter. The House reassembled on 20 April, yet by 10 a.m. there were ‘not above three-score’ Members in the chamber, and those present felt compelled to abandon their sitting until the following day.
The last two sessions of James’s first Parliament were as bedevilled by poor attendance as their immediate predecessors. In late February 1610 the Commons mustered a respectable 65% of its strength, but by 10 March this figure had fallen by half. Symptomatic of this sudden slump were two calls of the House, held on 3 and 17 March, and the reintroduction of legislation to compel attendance.
The dramatic falls in attendance that occurred between 1606 and 1610 were among the worst of the early seventeenth century, but they were by no means isolated events. The entire winter sitting of the 1621 Parliament suffered from sparse attendance. Just 200 Members assembled in the chamber on 14 November, and six days later attendance remained so poor that it was proposed to call the House the following day ‘that we may know every man’s particular reason of absence’.
Widespread absenteeism was clearly commonplace during the early seventeenth century, and yet, as has been seen, there were periods when members flocked to the Commons in great numbers. How is it possible to account for such wide fluctuations? What caused a previously crowded chamber to become denuded of Members? Were attendance levels merely a matter of chance, or were there good reasons why the lower House was better attended at some times than at others? To answer these questions it is necessary to look beyond the House of Commons itself to the wider society from which it was drawn.
Factors influencing attendance
For many newly elected Members, the state opening of Parliament was a spectacle too grand to miss. Large numbers witnessed the ceremonies of 1614 and 1624, while in 1604 the added attraction of a new king caused a higher turnout ‘than was ever seen on the first day of a Parliament in any man’s memory’.
In any Parliament it was inevitable that some Members would be kept away by illness or by the sickness of a close relative. However, only twenty-one individuals – less than five per cent of the House’s total membership – excused themselves from the roll call of 5 April 1626 on these grounds.
The 1625 assembly was not alone in meeting in the shadow of the plague. Between 1606 and 1610 London experienced a lengthy period of infection which accounted for ten per cent of all recorded burials.
The collapse in attendance that occurred in May and June 1607 may have been related to the plague, but it probably owed more to the disorders known collectively as the Midlands Rising, which began at the end of April and lasted until mid-June. Although the rioters’ activities were mainly confined to three counties – Northamptonshire, Warwickshire and Leicestershire – there were also disturbances in five others,
Local affairs were among the most important determinants of Commons attendance. Most Members of the Commons held local office, and since local government did not cease while Parliament was in session, those involved in its administration found themselves pulled in opposite directions simultaneously. Members who wished to perform their local duties while serving in Parliament had no choice but to limit the time they spent at Westminster. Sir John Boys, who represented Canterbury, twice attended meetings of the east Kent sewer commission in 1604 on days when the House was sitting.
Occasional falls in House attendance sometimes reflected the fact that a large proportion of Members were magistrates. By law the justices of each county were required to assemble four times a year at prescribed times, and although by the early seventeenth century only about half of all shires strictly observed this rigid timetable the effect on Commons attendance was nevertheless noticeable. On 18 April 1604, for instance, only 47% of Members were in the House by mid-morning. Among the absentees were Sir Edward Littleton, Walter Chetwynd and Thomas Lawton, all of whom had attended the Staffordshire quarter sessions the previous day.
Few positions in local government were incompatible with a Member’s presence in the Commons. The most conspicuous exception to this rule was the sheriff, whose oath of office required him to be permanently resident within his bailiwick unless licensed to be absent by the king. Under normal circumstances, sheriffs were barred from membership of the Commons because, as returning officers, they were prohibited from returning themselves. Yet although a sheriff could not become a Member of the Commons, a Member of the Commons could become a sheriff. Indeed, it was almost inevitable that some Members would be appointed to the shrievalty in a Parliament as long as that of 1604-10. Four Members of the first Jacobean Parliament – Alban Stepneth, Sir John Peyton, Sir William Bulstrode and Sir John Townshend – were pricked as sheriffs in November 1604, while a fifth – Sir Gamaliel Capell – served as sheriff of Essex in 1606/7. Stepneth, Peyton, Bulstrode and Townshend all seem to have stayed away from Westminster until their term of office expired, but Capell attended the House despite his office after the Commons, seizing upon the king’s message of 27 February 1607, demanded the presence of all Members to debate the Union.
Like sheriffs, the holders of Crown office with seats in the Commons were sometimes prevented from attending the House by their official duties. As clerk of the Signet, Sir Thomas Lake periodically absented himself from the chamber during the first Jacobean Parliament in order to accompany the king on his frequent hunting trips to Royston and Newmarket. In June 1604 the keeper of Waltham Forest, Sir Robert Wroth, requested one week’s leave from the Commons after the king began hunting near his home.
Coke was not alone in being kept from Westminster by naval duties in 1628. Sir James Bagg, sitting for Plympton Erle, attended the House for less than three of the fourteen weeks’ session because he was busy victualling the Navy’s ships at Plymouth, and he would probably not have come up at all had he not been summoned for questioning by the Commons.
The weather undoubtedly influenced levels of attendance. The afternoon of 22 March 1610 ‘fell out so foul’ that Robert Bowyer chose not to return to the House after lunch.
Another significant influence on Commons’ attendance was the holiday period. It was customary for the House to break for Easter, Whitsun and Christmas, but the approach of these festivals frequently caused attendance to dwindle as Members anxious to return home tended to anticipate the adjournment by a few days. Shortly before the House broke up for Whitsun in May 1604, it was reported that ‘many of the Members of the House were gone home, and many were ready to go home’. Among those champing at the bit was the Calne Member John Noyes, who remained at Westminster only because he feared that if he went early he might be fined.
Just as it was normal for Members to anticipate their holidays, so too it was usual for them to extend their breaks. Time and again they drifted slowly back to Westminster after Easter. Two days after the end of the Easter recess in 1621, the king postponed his address to the Commons, scheduled for later that day, ‘because the House [is] not now full’.
Such tardiness was understandable, as the holiday period was often all too short. In 1604 and 1606 just five days were allowed for Easter, while in 1624 the number was only six. Whitsun was even shorter: a mere three days were allotted in 1604, 1610 and 1624. Breaks of this duration were simply not long enough for a Member like Sir Richard Paulet to make the round trip to his Hampshire home and back. Instead of coming up for the start of the new sitting on 30 May, Paulet delayed returning until 4 June, the day of Prince Henry’s investiture as prince of Wales. Many of his colleagues seem to have done the same, because on 31 May the Speaker decided to abandon the day’s sitting, partly because of the noisiness of the preparations being made by those outside for the prince’s creation, but also because the chamber was so thin.
The holidays were not always brief, though. In 1607 the Easter recess lasted nearly three weeks, quite long enough for most Members to return home from Westminster and get back again. Yet by 10 a.m. on 20 April, the day on which the Commons reconvened, only 53 Members were to be found in the chamber.
The failure of most Members to return to Westminster after an interval lasting almost three weeks is so striking that it demands an explanation. One possibility is that Members were gripped by fear of plague. On 22 April, the day after the Commons adjourned its proceedings, the Venetian ambassador recorded that the king and queen were preparing to leave the capital as the plague was showing signs of spreading. Indeed, there had already been plague-related deaths in Westminster.
There were few more serious causes of absenteeism than the workloads of the professional lawyers. Like local government, the judicial system continued to function when Parliament sat. This was inconvenient for the Commons, as lawyers constituted a large proportion of its membership and their expertise in drafting legislation and debating matters of law made their presence invaluable. During the law terms, lawyer-Members faced with competing demands on their time and energy tried to square the circle by flitting between the House and the central law courts, which were conveniently situated in Westminster Hall and elsewhere within the Palace of Westminster. In consequence, many were frequently absent from the Commons, much to the irritation of their colleagues, who often ordered the serjeant-at-arms to fetch them from the law courts.
In general the lawyers resented all attempts to compel their regular attendance. In 1606 the recorder of Canterbury, Sir John Boys, argued that the House lacked the power to fine absentees, while in 1607 the recorder of London, Sir Henry Montagu, termed Alford’s legislative solution to unauthorized absenteeism ‘a scandalous, idle, needless bill’.
The proximity of the law courts to the Commons chamber did not only serve to lure away the lawyer-Members, of course. During the first two months of 1606 Sir John Leveson spent several days in the Court of Wards when he should have been in the Commons.
One solution to the problem posed by the law terms was to avoid them wherever possible. In July 1612 Sir Henry Neville, a diplomat by training rather than a lawyer, told James that if he wished to summon a Parliament that autumn he should either postpone Michaelmas term or defer the meeting ‘till that time [when] there is little business done so that the lawyers may well attend the Parliament, whose absence will otherwise breed delay’.
The disruption to Commons business caused by the law terms should not, perhaps, be exaggerated. Only once during the early seventeenth century – in the second half of November 1621 – did the law term coincide with a period of exceptionally poor attendance,
Although the law terms caused disruption to the Commons, they were not responsible for the worst collapses in attendance of the early Stuart period. This is not as surprising as it may seem, as the law courts were so close at hand that it was easy for absentees to return to the chamber when their business was completed. Attendance fell most sharply when the lawyers could not return to the House rather than when they could, a point that has previously escaped notice.
There were two periods in the English legal calendar when the majority of the lawyer-Members were unwilling or unable to attend Parliament – the winter and summer assizes. By the early seventeenth century most barristers earned the greater part of their livelihood from circuit work.
The impact of the assizes on attendance was exacerbated by the fact that it was not only barristers who were affected. Many gentry Members had suits before the circuit judges, while others like Thomas Remchinge, who in 1607 wished to give evidence against a seminary priest, were needed as witnesses.
There is a striking correlation between the assizes and the sudden, dramatic falls in attendance that marked the sessions of 1606, 1607 and 1610. This is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by reference to the events of February 1607. On 12 February, two days after the House reconvened following Christmas, Hilary term came to an end. This was the signal for the lawyers and those with suits before the justices of assize to begin leaving London. Two weeks later the king sent the Commons his irate message demanding that Members remain in town until the Union was ‘brought to more ripeness and perfection’. Four days after that, it was reported that the barrister-Member Lawrence Hyde, ‘pleading certain business of his clients and other his private occasions of profit and necessity’ had left town ‘without the assent or leave of the House’. Four other lawyer-Members were also said to have ‘gone down in the same circuit’.
Absenteeism caused by the assizes pre-dated the first Jacobean Parliament, but has largely gone unnoticed.
Although the assizes continued to have a noticeable effect on Commons attendance after 1610, the 1620s witnessed something of a sea change. From 1621 it ceased to be axiomatic that whenever the assizes coincided with Parliament the Commons would suffer a sharp fall in attendance. Members themselves were taken by surprise by this development. In February 1621 the House sought to avoid the anticipated exodus,
It seems clear that, in general, those who sat in the Commons during the 1620s were more conscientious about attending than their predecessors. Much may have depended on whether Members felt sufficiently motivated to turn up. During the 1606 and 1607 sessions few could muster much enthusiasm for the Union. Only a handful troubled to attend the committee for the bill to abolish Hostile Laws on 9 May 1607, for instance, and those who came arrived late, tardiness which Thomas Wilson ascribed to ‘unwilling proceeding’.
As many Members came to realize that active opposition to royal policies or the king’s chief minister required their physical presence, so they became more intolerant of unauthorized absenteeism in their own ranks. In 1626 fines were imposed for the first time since 1610, but whereas on the latter occasion Members who missed a roll call without good reason were required to pay a mere 30s. for their offence, they were now ordered to pay £10. In all, twenty-five Members were subjected to this draconian penalty, although several culprits had their fines remitted after tendering their excuses.
In 1628 the House not only attempted to compel attendance but also, during the debates surrounding the Petition of Right, to prevent its Members from leaving the chamber. On 1 and 2 May Members were actually locked in.
Like their Tudor and medieval forbears, Members of the early Stuart House of Commons pursued outside interests which frequently impinged upon their parliamentary activities. Official duties, professional obligations and personal business all intruded upon the life of the House to a greater or lesser extent, taking many Members away from the Commons’ chamber, often when they were needed there the most. The legal calendar, in particular, was a considerable enemy of Commons attendance. During the law terms the professional lawyers curtailed the amount of time they spent in the Commons in order to practise at the bar, while during assizes they were generally unavailable at all. Even Members who were not lawyers were often obliged to spend time away from the Commons to help administer justice since many of them were active magistrates. A Parliament that avoided the legal calendar was a practical impossibility. Even so, unlike the Midlands Rising or the plague epidemic of 1625, the course of the law year was predictable and so, therefore, were its likely effects on Commons business. It is a measure of the poor advice that he received from his Council that in 1607 James I ordered the Union to be debated as the winter assizes approached.
Members’ outside interests, though, comprise only one part of the story. A vital element in determining levels of attendance was the importance Members attached to their presence. On the face of it the sharp decline in attendance that occurred in March 1606 and March 1607 was mainly down to the assizes, but this is not an entirely satisfactory explanation, for during the 1620s the assizes did not result in widescale absenteeism. Many Members undoubtedly stayed away from the Commons in 1606 and 1607, not because they wished to attend the assizes, but because they wanted to avoid debating the Union, which was widely unpopular in the Commons. In other words, in 1606 and 1607 passive opposition to royal policy was translated into poor attendance.
Of course, turnout did not have to be abnormally low for attendance to serve as an indicator of political discord. Writing in the aftermath of the passage of the Petition of Right, Sir Edward Coke claimed that ‘when there is best appearance, there is the best success in Parliament’,