Commons 1604-1629

Addressing the representatives of the Lords at a conference between both Houses in December 1601, Sir Robert Cecil declared that ‘we be all members of one body, and as we cannot be without your lordships, so you cannot be without us’. Ennoblement under James did nothing to alter Cecil in this opinion. During the midst of the debates over the Great Contract, he reminded the Commons that ‘though we be divided in place, yet we [are] all but one lawmaker’. Indeed, ‘if we confer not, we shall spend many days in vain’, as nothing could be accomplished without cooperation.Procs. in Parls.

Law-making was one of the prime functions of parliaments. Before the accession of James I, the future of parliamentary law-making seemed secure. However, in the following chapter it will be shown that this future, already called into question by James’s inappropriate use of proclamations,For a detailed discussion, see Chapter 1. was undermined by a collapse in Parliament’s ability to enact legislation.

Speeches, like legislation and petitions, were the stuff of parliaments. Indeed the very word Parliament, deriving as it does from the French verb ‘parler’, announced that England’s representative assembly was first and foremost a forum for debate. However, since there was no equivalent of Hansard in the early seventeenth century, our knowledge of what was said there is necessarily imperfect. We are the prisoners of sources which vary both in their quality and completeness.

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,Just a few stray remarks appear in W. Notestein, The House of Commons 1604-10, pp. 209, 245, 397, 400.

The Speaker

The most senior of the Commons’ officers was its Speaker. Seated in a raised chair under the royal coat of arms at the east end of St. Stephen’s Chapel, the Speaker presided over the House’s daily business. Unlike the House’s other two chief officers, the clerk and the serjeant-at-arms, the Speaker was chosen from among the Members of the Commons, and for that reason his office automatically ended when Parliament was dissolved.

Ever since the middle of the sixteenth century the House of Commons had assembled in St. Stephen’s Chapel. Located in the heart of the medieval Palace of Westminster, St. Stephen’s was acquired by the Crown in 1547/8 and converted for use by the lower House. Ninety feet long and around 30 feet wide, it was two storeys high with an octagonal tower at each corner. On the ground floor was an undercroft known as St. Mary-in-the-Vaults,J.T. Smith, Antiquities of Westminster, 147-8. while above lay the area occupied by the Commons, consisting of a main chamber and a lobby.

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.

It is a point that deserves more attention than it has received that both James and Charles came to believe that the difficulties they experienced with their parliaments were attributable, in some degree, to the composition of the House of Commons. In the aftermath of the disastrous Addled Parliament the attorney-general, Sir Francis Bacon, encouraged James to believe that if only the Commons were rightly composed it would be ‘a sufficient House, worthy to consult within the great causes of the commonwealth’.Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, v.

Between 1604 and 1629 seven parliaments met, each of which was preceded by nationwide elections in more than 200 constituencies. These assemblies were punctuated at intervals with by-elections to replace those Members who had died, were judged incapable of serving or chose to represent another constituency. Fifty-five per cent of constituencies experienced at least one by-election during these years, with the result that between 1604 and 1629 the number of elections in some constituencies reached double figures.

Few constituencies in the early seventeenth century had any difficulty in finding men ready and willing to stand for election. On the contrary, from time to time many places were inundated with hopeful candidates. At Reading in February 1628 there were eight applicants for two seats, while at Sandwich in December 1620 there were nine, among them Sir Roger Nevinson, who dropped out before the election. At Nottingham in January 1624 there were no less than ten ‘suitors for the burgess’s places’.CD 1621, vii. 568-9; Reading Recs. ed. J.M. Guilding, ii.