Over the course of the early seventeenth century a silent and hitherto unnoticed revolution took place in respect of the Commons’ working arrangements. At the beginning of James’s reign the House generally met only in the mornings, since the afternoons were reserved for committees. However this traditional arrangement soon began to break down, and by the 1620s it was not uncommon for the House to sit for the entire House day. Whereas under Elizabeth a Member could reasonably expect the working day to last as little as three hours (not including time spent in committee), his counterpart in the 1620s was faced with the prospect of spending up to eight or nine hours each day in the chamber, not to mention further time in bill committees. How and why this dramatic shift in the working day of Members took place requires explanation but before this is done, something more needs to be said about the general working pattern of the Commons.
Days of sitting
To a very large extent the Commons’ working rhythm was dictated by the Christian calendar. Except for a single occasion in October 1566, when a committee met on the Sabbath to consider petitioning the queen over the succession, no meeting ever took place on a Sunday. When, in May 1604, the Lords proposed conferring with the Commons on a Sunday they were politely rebuffed by the lower House, which offered ‘any other day’ instead.
In addition to these customary adjournments, the Jacobean House of Commons habitually observed the anniversary of James’s accession (24 March 1603), cutting short its morning proceedings to allow Members to attend a service in Westminster Abbey. Afternoon committee meetings were also abandoned, at least in 1621. This brief adjournment to celebrate the monarch’s accession, misleadingly known to contemporaries as ‘Coronation Day’, was said in 1610 to have begun under Elizabeth, though the surviving records for 1597 and 1601 suggest otherwise.
Although the main religious feasts were the cause of regular adjournments, the Commons claimed the right to adjourn itself, as did the Lords, and so in theory could interrupt its proceedings whenever it wished.
In general the Commons were loath to abandon their holidays. When the Lords asked for a meeting on Whit Monday 1604, the request was declined as ‘it had never been usual for the Parliament to sit on those days’.
Before the 1620s the advent of a holiday normally signalled the suspension of all business, including all committee work. No committees sat during Easter 1606: indeed, the House’s legislative committees could not meet, because Members had been instructed to surrender all unreported bills to the clerk before the adjournment for safekeeping.
The Commons’ reluctance to allow committees to sit during an adjournment evaporated in 1621 when the House, meeting after an interval of more than six years, was overwhelmed with business. Faced with this surge in demand, Sir Robert Phelips proposed that any Member intending to stay in London over Easter should report to the clerk, so that three committees could be established to continue the work of the grand committees. At the same time moves were made to permit several legislative committees to meet. Both suggestions aroused some disquiet. Sir Edward Giles desired that part of the holiday be kept free of committees so that Members might have ‘vacant times to refresh themselves’, while Sir George More, overlooking the precedent of 1604, averred that bill committees had never met during a holiday. Edward Alford, too, argued that legislative committees could not function during a recess as bills were to be surrendered to the clerk whenever the House adjourned. However, William Hakewill, overlooking the evidence of 1606, maintained that bills were only handed to the clerk when the Parliament was dissolved or prorogued.
Although committees were generally forbidden from meeting during an adjournment, they enjoyed considerable scope to determine their own times of meeting. The House determined the time and place of the first meeting of a committee, but thereafter committees were usually at liberty to decide when and where they should next meet.
Morning sittings of the House
Before the 1620s the House normally assembled at eight in the morning.
As a session wore on the backlog of business tended to grow, causing many Members to become anxious that they would not be able to complete their business before the Parliament was dissolved. Under such circumstances there was a natural tendency to convene earlier than eight o’clock. Seven weeks into the 1614 Parliament Members were henceforth ordered to assemble at 7am, while nine weeks after the opening of the 1624 Parliament they were instructed to attend ‘by half an hour after seven of the clock; and bills to be put to passage by eight’.
Lengthening the morning sitting not only created extra time but also helped to make up lost time. On 23 March 1610 the House, contemplating the hour which would be spent in attending the Coronation Day sermon at Westminster Abbey the following morning, resolved to meet an hour earlier than usual.
Although before the 1620s committee meetings were normally confined to the afternoons, it was not unknown for committees to intrude upon the morning schedule. In April 1610, for instance, three committees (on the preservation of woods and game, and on religion) were allowed to sit until nine o’clock.
Despite Alford’s objections, committees were never forbidden from meeting while the House was sitting. The closest the Commons came to issuing such a ban was on 1 May 1624, when it ordered that ‘no committee shall sit after eight o’clock’. Significantly, the reservation ‘without special order’ was added to this ruling, and just three weeks later, on 22 May, the House issued just such a dispensation in respect of the committee regarding the Fleet prison, which was ordered to meet at eight o’clock on the 25th.
One way to allow bill committees to meet in the mornings without forcing Members to decide between attending either the House or a committee was to permit them to convene before the House assembled. Prior to the 1620s this certainly happened. On 12 May 1604, for instance, the committee for the bill to naturalize the family of Sir Roger Aston was instructed to meet at seven on the 14th, and on 23 January 1606 the committee for the thanksgiving bill sought permission to reassemble the next morning ‘before the sitting of the court’.
The popularity of early morning committee meetings – meaning those held before eight o’clock – rose sharply in 1624, when at least 11 committees were instructed to assemble at seven.
Rising for dinner
The House normally rose each morning at eleven o’clock after a three-hour sitting. For those who had been up since the crack of dawn a hearty midday meal (known to contemporaries as dinner rather than lunch) beckoned, and woe betide any Member who kept his colleagues from their food by delivering an untimely speech. As Sir Robert Wingfield observed in 1607, it was ‘a great disadvantage to speak after a wise man or after eleven a clock’.
Under normal circumstances it was the House, rather than the Speaker, that determined when the House should rise. However, since the Speaker served the king as well as the House, he was sometimes required to curtail unwelcome debates, to the dismay of his fellow Members. On 9 March 1621 Speaker Richardson, acting on instructions from James, attempted to cut short discussion of the referees by rising from his chair, only to be prevented from leaving by Sir William Herbert, who declared that ‘he was required by the greatest voice of the House to sit still’.
Inevitably, as Elizabethan experience showed,
Before the 1640s it was rare for the House to sit through dinner, which normally lasted until two.
Though the House was reluctant to sit during the time reserved for dinner, committees were sometimes encouraged to do so. On 19 May 1604 the committee for religion was ordered to assemble in the Exchequer Chamber between one and two in order to appoint a subcommittee, and in March 1610 the subcommittees of the grand committee for grievances were ordered to sit ‘from one till three’. Whenever the Commons’ schedule was overcrowded it was almost inevitable that some committees had to meet during the dinner break. In 1626, for instance, the attempt to impeach Buckingham so dominated the Commons’ timetable that two committees were instructed to assemble at one o’clock.
Afternoon sittings and the lengthening of the Commons’ day
The Elizabethan commentator John Hooker observed that neither the Commons nor the Lords ‘sit at after noons’, since these were reserved for committee meetings.
Since the House was reluctant to surrender debating time to the reading of bills, the only way for it to keep up with its legislative business was to meet occasionally in the afternoon. However, many Members, especially those who lived busy lives outside the chamber, may have resented having to attend afternoon meetings, which were often arranged at extremely short notice.
These conflicting priorities meant that the popularity of afternoon sittings tended to wax and wane from one Parliament to another, as the evidence from Elizabeth’s reign demonstrates. In 1563 the Commons sat on 21 afternoons out of a 12-week session, but in 1566 Members proved reluctant to repeat the experience, and the number of afternoon sittings fell to just two. The practice of assembling the whole House after dinner was nevertheless revived in 1571 at the suggestion of Thomas Norton who, perhaps exploiting the fact that more than 60% of his colleagues were new to the Commons, persuaded the House to sit every afternoon to read bills. These regular gatherings, described by Neale as ‘the sixteenth-century equivalent of our all night sittings’, were repeated in 1576, but thereafter their frequency again dwindled. Indeed, it was not until 1601 that afternoon meetings began once more to increase in frequency. In a session lasting 39 working days, the House assembled after lunch eight times. The driving force behind these meetings was Sir Robert Cecil, who was anxious to bring the Parliament to a speedy conclusion.
This pattern – spasmodic bouts of afternoon sessions punctuated by long periods without them – was initially repeated under James. In 1604, when 88 days of business were transacted, ten afternoon sittings were held, mostly to clear a growing backlog of bills.
So up until 1607, then, the Elizabethan pattern prevailed: while afternoon meetings occasionally proved necessary there seems to have been a quiet consensus that they were best avoided if possible. However, beginning in 1610 the shape of the Commons’ day underwent a dramatic transformation. In the first session of 1610 the pressure for more afternoon meetings increased sharply, largely as a result of the volume of business generated by the negotiations over the Great Contract and the Commons’ concern to dispute the legality of impositions. The steepness of the increase is not readily apparent from the clerk’s Journal, which records just ten afternoon meetings, mostly in July, during the final two weeks of the session.
Committees composed of most Members had begun to appear towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, and in November 1606, during the Union debates, a committee that apparently consisted of every Member was set up.
The grand committees of 1610 represent a dramatic break with the Elizabethan past. Thereafter it became common for all Members to sit together in the afternoon. In 1614 a grand committee for considering petitions was established, and though it initially met for just one afternoon a week, by the middle of May it took up three.
It was not only the grand committees which began to colonize the afternoons after 1610. During the 1620s the Speaker was required to preside over afternoon sittings of the House more frequently than ever before. Over the course of the first sitting of the 1621 Parliament, which lasted 76 working days, the Speaker sat in the afternoon 19 times, equivalent to one afternoon in every four. In 1624 and 1626 he presided over an afternoon sitting one day in every five.
One reason that Speaker-led afternoon sittings became a settled and regular feature of the Commons’ day is that grand committees served to encourage them. All that was needed for the grand committee to transform itself into the House was for the Speaker to take the chair, and this was usually easily accomplished as the Speaker was often in the House at the time, sitting as an ordinary Member. Even if he were absent he might be summoned to the chamber, or warned in advance that his presence would be needed when the committee had wound up its business. The ease with which the Commons could switch from grand committee to the House, and vice versa, meant that Speaker-led meetings frequently followed afternoon sittings of the grand committee. This necessarily gave rise to some very late meetings. Following the regular Wednesday afternoon meeting of the grand committee for grievances on 7 June 1626, for instance, the House reassembled at five, while on the afternoon of Thursday, 12 March 1624, after the grand committee for trade had completed its business, the Speaker took the chair at ‘about six o’clock’.
Another reason for the increase in Speaker-led afternoon sittings was that grand committees proved so popular that they also invaded the mornings. During the 1620s it became increasingly common for the House to resolve itself into a grand committee to debate matters of general importance which, for one reason or another, fell outside the remit of the standing committees (such as messages from the king, the subsidy bill or the expiring laws continuance bill). In 1626 these ad hoc committees were joined by a fourth standing grand committee – the committee for evils, causes and remedies – and this body lacked an afternoon slot. Since the standing grand committees usually took up the time after dinner, these ad hoc grand committees were generally forced to assemble in the mornings. The frequency with which they did so was sometimes astonishing. In the week beginning Monday 10 May 1624, for example, a grand committee met three mornings out of six, and on the morning of 18 December 1621 a committee of the whole House sat not once but twice.
The vast increase in the number and length of afternoon sittings, whether under the Speaker or the chairman of the committee of the whole House, had several serious consequences, quite apart from the effect it had on the length of the working day. In the first place, it put pressure on the smaller (mainly legislative) committees, whose customary afternoon timeslot was now under threat. Since no Member could be in two places at once, grand and smaller committees were forced to compete with one another for members. In this competition, the grand committees often had the advantage, as they frequently dealt with issues of general interest to all Members, whereas most bill committees, for instance, were more limited in scope, debating subjects that must often have seemed dull by comparison. The poor levels of attendance that afflicted many legislative committees during the 1620s to which Chris Kyle has drawn attention must surely have owed something to the emergence of grand committees.
The smaller committees did not always lose out to meetings of the entire membership, of course. Where the general assembly was discussing a matter as unpopular as the proposed union with Scotland, many individuals preferred to attend the smaller committees. Thus on the afternoon of 29 April 1606, finding the benches only sparsely occupied, the serjeant-at-arms was sent to round up additional Members from the various committees which were then meeting.
It was nevertheless unusual for afternoon committee meetings to be suspended in favour of the House’s own gatherings. In general, Members baulked at such a drastic solution and instead attempted to fit the work of the smaller committees around the work of the whole assembly. One method of doing this – having bill committees meet before the House assembled in the morning – has already been discussed. Another way of fitting the smaller committees around their larger brethren was to push them to the end of the afternoon, so that they sat after the grand committees had met. However, this approach was uncommon: in 1624 the early morning solution prevailed to such an extent that only four bill committees were instructed to meet at three or four in the afternoon, and in 1628 the number of smaller committees given late afternoon time slots was about the same.
There was a third solution to the problem posed by afternoon meetings of the general assembly. Instead of forcing the smaller committees to work around their larger brethren, the grand committees could be fitted round their smaller cousins. The smaller committees would meet for an hour or so after two o’clock, and the grand committees would sit at three or four. This approach was certainly adopted in 1614, when the House, unwilling to allow it to meet immediately after dinner, required the grand committee for petitions to assemble at either three or four.
None of these solutions to the problem caused by the displacement of the lesser committees by the grand committee necessarily excluded the others. Indeed, sometimes it was a mixed approach that was adopted. In 1621, for instance, the grand committee for the courts of justice was required to meet every Wednesday at two. This meant that each Wednesday the smaller committees, if they were not to compete for members with the grand committee, were forced to assemble either after the grand committee had completed its deliberations or at the start of the day. However, the grand committee for grievances, which sat every Monday and Friday, was required to assemble for its first meeting at three, giving time for the lesser committees to meet after dinner.
Despite the best efforts of the Commons, it was inevitable that afternoon meetings of the grand committees would coincide with some of the smaller committees. The most conspicuous example of just such an overlap was with the committee for privileges and returns, a body which normally consisted of around fifty or sixty Members. During the 1620s, almost without exception, the privileges committee was required to meet every Tuesday and Thursday at two, but except in 1629, when Tuesday was kept free, these afternoons were also reserved for meetings of various grand committees.
In general, though, the House found ways of reconciling the competing demands for afternoon time, and where conflicts arose it quickly resolved them. A case in point concerned Saturday afternoon meetings of the House, which were never very frequent, and the committee for inspecting the clerk’s Journal, which customarily met at this time. The conflict between the two came to a head in April 1624 after the Commons assembled under the Speaker on two consecutive Saturday afternoons. On the morning of the second of these Saturdays (10 April), William Mallory proposed that the Journal should henceforward be inspected every morning between six and seven o’clock, before the House assembled. His intervention seems to have provided the solution, for although the House met again under the Speaker on the afternoon of Saturday 22 May there is no further evidence of tension. In 1626, however, the House, anticipating that conflict might recur, adopted an alternative solution to the problem than the one proposed by Mallory. It restored the Journals committee to its regular Saturday slot but ordered it to assemble between the hours of four and five, thereby working around any sittings of the House earlier in the afternoon.
Whereas the colonization of the afternoons by the grand committees forced the Commons to develop more flexible working arrangements in respect of bill committees, it may, paradoxically, have also caused the development of fixed arrangements with regard to the committee for privileges and returns. Before the emergence of the committee of the whole House the time allotted to the privileges committee was something of a moving feast. In 1605/6 and 1606/7, for example, the committee appears to have assembled on Wednesday afternoons, whereas in 1610 it met every Saturday.
The establishment of fixed and transferable time slots for both the privileges committee and the grand committees was almost as significant as the extension of the Commons’ working day. It suggests that during the 1620s the Commons developed the rhythms of working associated with a body that increasingly regarded itself as a semi-permanent institution. Yet, despite this development, the Commons never traded fixed patterns of working for flexibility. Arrangements that suited one Parliament did not always suit another. The grand committee for the courts of justice moved from sitting on Wednesday afternoons in 1621 and 1624 to Tuesday afternoons in 1626 and 1628, while the grievances committee exchanged Monday afternoons, which it enjoyed in 1621 and 1624, for Wednesday afternoons between 1626 and 1629 inclusive. Moreover, when urgent business intervened, such as the impeachment of Buckingham, even the grandest of grand committees might find themselves temporarily elbowed aside.