Addressing the assembled electors for Cheshire in early February 1624 the county sheriff, Sir Richard Grosvenor, reminded his listeners that the task of choosing knights of the shire was a serious business, as ‘we put into their hands in trust our lives, our states and that which should be dearer to us than both, our religion’.
In most constituencies it was assumed that Members acquired their representative function automatically on election, but in some urban boroughs it was felt that additional authority was needed. The corporation of Hastings habitually issued commissions to its newly elected Members granting them ‘full power and authority’ to ‘do and consent unto such things and matters as at the said Parliament (by God’s permission) shall be ordained’.
Although the Commons consisted exclusively of elected Members, all of whom were capable of giving or withholding their consent, many aspects of their role as representatives remain to be explored. Who precisely did the Commons represent? Did Members speak for the whole country or were they in fact the representatives of sectional interests? To what extent were the activities of Members determined and monitored by those who elected them, and how were the demands of constituents balanced against those of the king, who summoned parliaments primarily to serve his own interests rather than those of his subjects? These and other, associated questions are matters to which we must now turn.
A representative assembly?
Among its Members there was a widespread belief that the House of Commons represented the people of England and Wales. The authors of the 1604 Form of Apology and Satisfaction of the Commons claimed that the common people, amounting to ‘many millions’, were ‘representatively present’ in the lower House and in 1606 Robert Bowyer announced that in the Commons ‘all the realm is intended present’.
It was because they represented others that Members of the Commons, unlike the Lords, were unable to appoint proxies or waive their parliamentary privilege. When Sir Simeon Steward informed the House in April 1628 that he had entered into a £500 bond promising not to claim privilege, having received a subpoena from the attorney-general, he was told by Coke that ‘a knight or burgess cannot renounce his privilege ... because he is trusted for many thousands’.
The view that the Commons spoke for the common man has not gained universal acceptance. To the Marxist historian Christopher Hill, the early Stuart House of Commons ‘represented not the people of England but a small fraction of them’. As Hill pointed out, the Commons, being mainly composed of gentry, lawyers and merchants, actually consisted of a cross-section of the ruling class.
However, early seventeenth century Parliament-men saw no contradiction between the narrowness of the House’s composition and the broadness of its claim to represent the interests of the common people. Sir Francis Bacon’s assertion in February 1610 that ‘we be the gentry’ is often quoted, but less well remarked is the fact that Bacon went on to remind the House of its representative functions and of its duty to speak up for ‘farmers etc.’
One of the few contemporaries to question the view that the Commons spoke for the people at large was James I. Following the disastrous opening session of his reign James was anxious to avoid giving the impression that, in quarrelling with the House of Commons, he had fallen out with his new subjects. In his prorogation speech of 7 July 1604, the king conceded that Members of the Commons were representatives, but he denied that this meant they were, in effect, the shadows of his people. It was impossible for them ‘to know all that would be propounded here’, he declared, much less ‘all those answers that you would make to all propositions’. Consequently, he added, ‘I account not all that to be done by the commons of the land which hath been done by you’.
This idea – that the Commons was apt to express views that were not necessarily held in the country at large – was calculated to enrage the authors of the Form of Apology, who claimed that any wrongs done to the Commons would ‘rebound upon the whole land’. It was also designed to console a king whose international standing and sense of pride had been wounded by his public disagreements with his first Parliament. It was, moreover, a belief to which James clung for the rest of his reign, for in his opening speech to the 1621 Parliament James warned the Commons not to second-guess those whom they represented by inventing grievances where none existed. This note of caution was seconded by Lord Chancellor St. Alban (the former Sir Francis Bacon), who bluntly told the assembled Members that ‘you are to represent the people; you are not to personate them’.
There was one section of the population, aside from the peerage, whom the Commons could not with justice be said to represent. During the middle of the fourteenth century the lesser clergy had forfeited their right to sit in the Commons. Their continued exclusion was justified on the grounds that they had their own representative assemblies, in the form of the Convocations of Canterbury and York. Since the lesser clergy were deemed to have no need of representation in the Commons they were not entitled, unless they were freeholders in their own right, to participate in parliamentary elections.
Among the lower clergy there were clearly some who resented being kept at arms length by the Commons. On being admonished by the committee for privileges ‘for being too busy for a man of his profession’ in the matter of the 1624 Bletchingley election, Dr. Harris, the vicar of Bletchingley, ‘took occasion to say that no honest man would be of the mind that churchmen ought to have no voice in elections to the Commons House of Parliament; and that he would never more come into the pulpit if they should be denied to intermeddle and give voices in such business’.
It was not just the lesser clergy who were unrepresented by a House that purported to speak for all the commoners of England and Wales. As a palatine jurisdiction exempt from parliamentary taxation and administered by the local bishop rather than the Crown, County Durham was not entitled to send Members to Westminster. On the face of it, this meant that the shire occupied a position comparable to that of the newly founded colony of Virginia, which was also not entitled to representation. When Secretary Calvert remarked of Virginia in May 1621 that it would be ‘prejudicious’ to bind the colonists ‘by a law made here when none of them are here’, he might almost have been speaking about County Durham except that Durham, unlike Virginia, was subject to laws made at Westminster.
Prior to 1614 County Durham’s lack of parliamentary representation seems to have been a matter that the Commons preferred not to consider. However, the subject became inescapable after 1610, when for the first time the county was included in the Subsidy Act. Over the ensuing three parliaments various attempts were made to enfranchise the county, but for reasons that are discussed elsewhere each ended in failure.
If the exclusion of County Durham and the lesser clergy undermined the Commons’ claim to be the representative body of the kingdom, the same might also be said of Members’ attitude towards non-residence. By law each Member was meant to dwell in the constituency for which he sat, but in practice this requirement was widely disregarded. Indeed, many never set foot in the constituencies for which they were returned. Sir Edwin Sandys, who lived in east Kent, twice served for the Cornish borough of Penryn, but according to Thomas Scott of Canterbury, he ‘had never seen Penryn, nor knew the name of it’ before he was chosen.
Many contemporaries certainly disapproved of the widespread practice of electing non-residents. In 1571 Thomas Atkins, sitting for Gloucester, declared that unless those chosen ‘know also our own homes’ they were ‘not to be trusted to conclude for our home affairs’. In 1626 Thomas Scott described the election of non-residents as an ‘abomination’ which, if it continued to grow ‘as it does’, would mean that ‘the commonwealth [and] the Church cannot long flourish’. Indeed, ‘the only way to prevent slavery and ruin’, he added, would be to elect residents rather than outsiders who cared little for the concerns of their constituents.
There were undoubtedly several reasons for this reluctance. First and foremost, perhaps, was self-interest: non-residents were hardly likely to press for change. When Serjeant Harris argued in November 1601 that the election of Sir John Harington for Rutland was void, Sir Edward Hoby remarked that ‘if you stand on that, I think there are few knights in this House lawfully chosen; for the words of the writ and statute are that he must be commorant within the county, which but few are’. Following this observation of an uncomfortable truth, the question of Harington’s residential status was swiftly dropped.
Self-interest was not, however, the only consideration. Many Members regarded the legal requirement as either irrelevant or of only secondary importance. Although a bill ‘for the validity of burgesses not resident’ failed to reach the statute book in 1571, a majority of Members, both then and later, appear to have agreed with Thomas Norton, who thought that a Member’s most important attribute was not his ability to represent his constituents but his capacity to serve ‘the whole body of the realm’.
Just as many Members failed to take seriously the legal requirement regarding residence, so too many saw nothing improper about accepting seats from aristocratic patrons. On the surface, it was difficult to see how Members who owed their election to a noble patron could expect to be regarded as in any sense the representatives of their constituents. Shortly after Parliament assembled in 1628, one anonymous former Member complained that many men with seats in the Commons were ‘at the dispose of the Lords of the upper House’, several of whom, being lords lieutenant, allegedly intimidated boroughs with their power to demand men, weapons and horses to gain control of the election of burgesses.
There was certainly some truth behind these claims. Aristocratic patrons did indeed control many borough seats, either because they were the town’s high steward and could demand the right of nomination or because they possessed the power to help or hinder the townsmen’s interests. At Stafford in 1614 the lord privy seal, the earl of Northampton, was obliged with a seat even though one townsman claimed that it was ‘ordinary to deny noblemen’s letters’, because Northampton’s support was needed at Court to secure the grant of a charter against the opposition of the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, Richard Neile.
It was also the case that Members of the lower House often flocked to the Lords to wait on their patrons. In July 1621 the Privy Council demanded to know from the 3rd earl of Southampton ‘whether, in the time of Parliament, some of the lower House did not usually come up into the committee chamber of the upper House, upon design and plot, to receive a direction from him what to do in their House’. In his reply Southampton, although he denied being involved in ‘any design or plot’, confessed that ‘some of the lower House came thither every day, sometimes to him, sometimes to others’, and that, like ‘everyone else’ in the Lords, he went out to speak with them ‘about what was doing in their House, and of other Parliament businesses’.
It would nevertheless be a distortion to suggest that the Commons was populated with Members whose prime concern was to take instructions from their aristocratic patrons rather than their constituents. While some, like the Barnstaple Member Thomas Hinson, receiver-general of the 3rd earl of Bath, undoubtedly fell into this category, many others were not invariably disposed to follow the directions of their patrons. Take the case of Serjeant Francis Moore. During the first Jacobean Parliament Moore served as the Commons’ unofficial spokesman for Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, to whom he may have been distantly related. However, when Ellesmere clashed with the Commons over the Buckinghamshire election in 1604, Moore sided firmly with his colleagues in the lower House against his patron and the rest of the Privy Council, who threw their weight behind their colleague Sir John Fortescue. Indeed, he not only helped persuade the House to support the outlawed Sir Francis Goodwin rather than Fortescue but also argued that outlaws had previously been permitted to sit.
Another cautionary tale concerns Sir John Eliot, who initially counted himself among the duke of Buckingham’s clients. During the course of the 1625 Parliament, Eliot became disenchanted with Buckingham, and on the morning of 8 July he spent two hours ‘at least’ in arguing with his patron over the wisdom of demanding additional supply from the Commons. On returning to the House later that morning Eliot, having privately resolved that in future ‘no respect of persons’ would induce him to ‘desert his country’, pointedly declined to support the duke’s spokesman for the subsidy, Sir John Coke.
Eliot was by no means the only Member who was prepared to go only so far in accommodating the wishes of his aristocratic patron. During the early stages of the 1614 Parliament Sir James Perrot, Member for Haverfordwest, acted as a spokesman for his patron the earl of Pembroke, one of the chief architects of the Parliament. Pembroke hoped to induce the Commons to loosen its purse strings in return for various bills of grace, and consequently Perrot initially proved vigorous in promoting these measures. However, during the latter stages of the Parliament Perrot found it impossible to remain aloof from the controversy surrounding impositions, a subject which threatened to wreck the Parliament. On 3 June, after James threatened to dissolve the Parliament unless he received an immediate grant of supply, he launched into a bitter attack on the management of the royal finances. After observing that impositions were only needed because James squandered £70,000 each year on lavish Court pensions, he declared that unless royal overspending were curbed it was pointless to vote subsidies.
The cases of Moore, Eliot and Perrot demonstrate that peers often found it difficult, if not impossible, to control their friends and allies in the Commons, many of whom most assuredly had minds of their own. It was an inconvenient truth that had to be explained to the king early in his reign by Robert Cecil after James had rebuked Cecil for failing to control his troublesome kinsman Henry Yelverton.
Just as those Members with close links to individual peers should not be dismissed as mere ciphers, so too it cannot be assumed that those with ties to aristocratic patrons were automatically precluded from representing their constituencies. In May 1614 the borough of Leicester wrote to both its Members requesting their support for all measures designed to prevent ‘depopulation and decay of tillage’ and to suppress the ‘brewing of strong ale and beer’,
At the beginning of the seventeenth century the holding of government office, like the enjoyment of aristocratic patronage, was not regarded as incompatible with the demands of constituency representation. Senior officials with seats in the House were, of course, acutely aware that they served two masters, but either they saw no contradiction between their different responsibilities or they claimed to be able to steer a middle course between them. Speaking during the subsidy debate at Oxford in August 1625, for instance, Solicitor General Heath declared that, ‘having two capacities’, he would express himself ‘without partiality’.
To a degree these attitudes survived into the early seventeenth century. As late as 1624 Kingston-upon-Hull elected the comptroller of the Household, Sir John Suckling, in the hope of gaining an advantage over nearby York, with which city it was in dispute over trading privileges. However, from the middle of James’s reign courtiers found themselves increasingly shunned. On 19 February 1614, the day on which election writs were issued, the king’s private secretary Sir Thomas Lake wrote from Newmarket to a member of the Council in London that James had heard ‘from some of his servants here who have laboured for places that they have received answer from gentlemen of the country of good quality that think all the shires are disposed to take care that none of His Majesty’s servants be chosen’. Lake added that James, alarmed that the Commons might turn out to be composed of men who ‘are not willing to have his servants in their company’, was now unsure whether to allow the Parliament to proceed.
Although the predicted electoral debacle failed to materialize, the number of Household officials returned to Westminster in 1614 was certainly considerably lower than in 1604.
Following the dissolution of the 1614 Parliament the hostility towards courtiers increased. During the 1620s privy councillors were, by and large, excluded from county elections and were forced to look for borough seats instead. In December 1620 the electors of Middlesex rejected Caesar, now master of the Rolls, along with Sir Thomas Edmondes, the treasurer of the Household, despite the fact that both men ‘made all the means they could’.
This hostility reflected a growing belief in the country at large that courtiers owed their first loyalty to the king rather than their constituents.
What had brought about this sea change in electoral attitudes? In the case of the townsmen of Bury St. Edmunds in 1626, the answer probably lies in the disastrous consequences to maritime trade of the war with Spain and the allegedly malign influence of Buckingham on the king. This would certainly help to explain their remark that ‘in general they would give no voice to any courtiers, especially at this time of all others’. However, as we have seen, the general antipathy towards those associated with the Court originated in the middle of James’s reign and so pre-dated the war with Spain.
One reason that courtiers came to be regarded as unsuitable representatives is that under James puritan writers began to associate the Court with values and beliefs that ran counter to those held in the country at large. The Court was seen as a centre of corruption and wickedness, where favourites helped themselves to the king’s wealth and misrepresented the truth for fear of losing office. It was also perceived as having been undermined by popery: many of James’s leading ministers, such as Henry Howard, earl of Northampton and Edward Somerset, earl of Worcester, were tainted with Catholicism, and under James the penal laws were relaxed as the king sought a Catholic bride for his eldest son. By contrast, the ‘Country’ was regarded as godly, pure and virtuous. In 1620 these stereotypes were set out in print by the best-selling puritan pamphleteer Thomas Scott, who argued that ‘Court’ and ‘Country’ were locked in a constant battle with one another, and that the normal forum for controlling the excesses of the Court was Parliament.
The puritan view of the Court as the centre of iniquity and popery goes a long way towards explaining why courtiers in general and clients of the duke of Buckingham in particular often found it difficult to find seats during the 1620s. Association with Buckingham, coupled with well-founded suspicions about his commitment to doctrinal Calvinism, may well explain why Sir Edwin Sandys, the former darling of the House of Commons, proved unable to find a seat in 1628. However, there were probably other, equally important factors at work that led many voters to conclude that courtiers were ill equipped to represent their interests at Westminster. One was the widespread opposition to impositions, which had soured the political atmosphere in 1610 and was to become the major issue of the 1614 Parliament. Impositions threatened the principle that all taxation should be levied with the consent of the subject in Parliament. Since Members of the Commons were naturally expected by their constituents to uphold this principle, it would be surprising if some voters did not conclude that senior government officials were poorly placed to represent them.
A further likely explanation for the unwillingness of voters to return courtier is the continued hostility towards purveyance. During the first Jacobean Parliament the Commons’ hopes had twice been raised that purveyance would be abolished, only to be dashed on both occasions. Resentment at the demands of the Board of Greencloth continued to smoulder after 1610, both in the Home Counties, where the burden of purveyance was felt the heaviest, and further afield.
The growing belief that courtiers were inherently ill qualified to represent the interests of their constituents was one of the most remarkable developments of the early Stuart period. In part it reflected changing attitudes outside Westminster, but it also mirrored a profound alteration that was taking place among Members of the Commons. During the sixteenth century Members in general felt duty-bound to serve both their constituents and their monarch in equal measure. It was this balancing act to which Sir Fulke Greville was referring during the 1593 subsidy debate: ‘it is said our countries are poor, and we must respect them that sent us hither. So must we remember also who sent for us hither’.
The fullest record we have of this phenomenon is provided by Sir Francis Kynaston, who sat for Shropshire in 1621. Writing at the end of the 1620s, Kynaston observed that many Members believed that in order to discharge their responsibilities to their constituents faithfully
they are to be all for the country, for the liberty of the subject, for the freedom of speech, and to gain as much, and as many privileges for the subject from the king as is possible. And if they stand stiffly out in the denial of subsidies, to save their own and their country’s purses, then they are excellent patriots and commonwealthsmen, [as] they have well and faithfully discharged the trust reposed in them by their city or country.
Other Members, however, including Kynaston himself, continued to cling to the view that they were duty-bound to carry out the wishes of the king. Although representatives, they were ‘still the king’s subjects as they were before’ and ‘the same men in duty and allegiance as those which are not present in Parliament’. They were not entitled to treat the king with contempt, either by employing ‘too great a freedom of speech’, or to treat him as an equal by seeking to deal with him ‘on even terms’.
The emergence of these contrasting attitudes soon gave rise to the impression that there were, in effect, two rival parties or factions in the House of Commons, one consisting of courtiers and the other of spokesmen for ‘the country’, sometimes known by contemporaries as ‘patriots’. As early as December 1610, when Salisbury was feverishly attempting to cajole Members of the Commons behind the scenes to vote supply, John More, the London agent of the absentee diplomat Sir Ralph Winwood, referred to the activities of ‘His Majesty’s party’. In October 1611 Levinus Munck, secretary to Lord Treasurer Salisbury and a seasoned political observer, expressed surprise that Sir Henry Neville was in search of government office because in the last Parliament ‘he did not (like Sir Dudley Carleton) speak in Parliament for the king’s demands, but ranged himself with those Patriots that were accounted of a contrary faction to the courtiers’.
It would be misleading, though, to suggest that the period 1604-29 witnessed the emergence of political parties. To the early seventeenth-century mind, any attempt to create a formal opposition would have smacked of treason. As Conrad Russell observed, the only place for a leader of the opposition in early Stuart England was at the head of an army or in the Tower.
It would be equally mistaken to suppose that those with Court or central government office invariably sided with the Crown’s ministers. If anything, the first Jacobean Parliament witnessed the breakdown of the unity that had once existed among courtiers and the holders of central government office. On recommending in 1613 that James call a Parliament, Sir Francis Bacon advised that something be done ‘for the drawing of that body of the House which consisteth of courtiers and the king’s servants to be, as they have ever been in former times (except the last Parliament) used to be ... sure and zealous for the king and not (as they were then) fearful or popular’.
The truth of the matter is that for much of the early Stuart period the courtiers and central government officials in the Commons were often deeply divided among themselves. In July 1625 some of them called for an additional grant of supply while others sat on their hands, and in 1626 the quarrel at Court between Buckingham and Pembroke was fought out in the Commons between the partisans of both men. Divisions among government officials and courtiers often ran so deep that it is sometimes not easy to see how parliamentary politics can be reduced to a clash between Court and Country. It is a striking yet little noticed fact that while Bacon believed firmly in the existence of an ‘opposite party’, he did not mean by this a Country party but a ‘popular party’, whose members were drawn from the ranks of three distinct elements: country gentry, urban representatives and disaffected courtiers.
Clearly the contemporary perception of a Commons divided along the lines of Court and Country is highly problematic. However, it is unlikely to have been as false as is sometimes supposed,
Although the divide between Court and Country was most visible in the 1620s, it originated in the first Parliament of James’s reign. To some extent the author of this division was James himself. During the first Jacobean Parliament the sharp decline in conciliar control of the Commons created a vacuum into which official spokesmen were replaced by unofficial ones. It was around these ‘Tribunes of the People’, as they were sometimes known, that those hostile to the Court coalesced. While there were certainly Members with Court positions or central government office among this group, others – men like Edward Alford, Nicholas Fuller and Thomas Wentworth of Henley – were typical ‘Country’ Members and would, as has sometimes been observed, in all likelihood have refused central government office had it been offered to them.
If, by neglecting Council control of the Commons, James helped to call into existence an alternative Commons’ leadership, he also contributed to the subsequent polarization of parliamentary politics along Court and Country lines. As we have seen, James was used to a Scottish Parliament that was amenable to noble and royal control and consequently,
Instructions
As representatives, Members of the Commons were expected to keep a weather eye out for any item of business that had a bearing on their constituents, and if necessary to speak accordingly. During a debate in 1601 on the damage inflicted by the privateers operating out of Dunkirk, Peter Peake interjected that ‘I must needs show unto this House (upon so good an occasion offered) how grievously the town of Sandwich (for which I serve) is vexed and almost undone, in so much as in that town there is neither owner, master nor mariner that hath not felt it’.
In many instances, however, Members were not left to exercise their own initiative but were instead issued with instructions before the start of each Parliament. In general borough Members received their instructions in the days and weeks following their election, since borough corporations met frequently. However, it seems likely that knights of the shire, elected as they were at the county court which assembled only once every twenty-eight days, were normally briefed before the voters dispersed. Thus at the Cheshire election of 1624, Sir Richard Grosvenor, the county sheriff, not only urged the assembled voters to choose two able candidates but also advised them to ‘go a little further and ... command your knights that if there be occasion offered they shall in the name of their country, and as by special command of the country, make public protestation against a toleration of religion or the repealing of laws formerly made against recusants’.
In those boroughs with a settled form of municipal government, the task of drawing up parliamentary instructions fell to the ruling body. In London, which possessed the most sophisticated municipal government in the kingdom, the court of aldermen appointed a committee to which all four London Members were automatically named to agree a legislative agenda.
Those constituencies with legislation to bring before Parliament, or that wished to obstruct or amend the bills of others, naturally turned in the first instance to their Members, who would be given detailed instructions and perhaps also ancillary paperwork to help them frame their arguments, draft any required legislation or provide evidence in case of inquiry. Moreover, as a Parliament progressed, a constituency that kept tabs on events at Westminster might issue fresh instructions to its Members. During the course of the 1624 Parliament Sir William Masham, sitting for Maldon, received a packet of letters sent by the bailiffs and a visit from the town’s serjeant of the mace, as did Sir Henry Mildmay in 1625.
In the absence of a legislative agenda, many boroughs either issued no instructions at all or gave only general guidance to their Members. At Rochester the corporation required the Members elected in 1586, and perhaps also those returned on subsequent occasions, not only to swear that they would ‘be willing to put forth and prefer to pass … all and every such motions and bills as shall be thought meet and requested to be preferred by Mr. Mayor and the citizens of this city’, but also to avoid giving their ‘assent or consent to any motion or bill therein which shall tend to the overthrow, loss or prejudice’ of the city’s charters and liberties.
The instructions issued to Berwick’s Members provide a neat illustration of the fact that many corporations, while they naturally regarded their own Members as their advocates, understood that alliances had to be forged in Parliament with Members sitting for other constituencies if their interests were to be protected and furthered. Indeed, many constituencies did not operate exclusively through their own Members, but approached men sitting for other seats with whom they were closely connected and who might, at a pinch, be regarded as their honorary representatives. In 1607 the corporation of Southampton not only enlisted the aid of its two Members in pursuit of a bill to confirm the town’s fifteenth century charter, but also the assistance of William Brocke, who sat for St. Ives and served as recorder of Southampton. This sort of unofficial honorary representation was a phenomenon most closely associated with London, many of whose leading figures commonly found seats elsewhere. The case of the London alderman Sir John Swinarton, who ostensibly served for East Grinstead during the first Jacobean Parliament, was not untypical. A member of London’s parliamentary legislation committee, Swinarton was expressly instructed by the corporation in 1606 to lobby the Commons on behalf of the City. Men like Swinarton meant that London enjoyed a scale of representation far greater than its official quota of four seats would suggest.
Ironically, this additional representation may have meant that some of London’s official Members were less assiduous in responding to the concerns of their constituents than they might otherwise have been. In 1606 the London Member Nicholas Fuller, despite being an ex officio member of the City’s legislative committee, spoke against a cloth bill in ignorance of the fact that it was sponsored by the City of London, to the embarrassment of his fellow London Member Richard Gore. A lawyer rather than a merchant, Fuller was more interested in the state of the Church and the proposed union with Scotland than he was in the cloth trade.
Most enfranchised boroughs, of course, did not have access to men who could be regarded as their honorary representatives. For the larger boroughs this was unfortunate, as they often had so much business to transact that their parliamentary representatives were overburdened. Changes in the Commons’ working patterns accentuated this problem, for now that the House sat most of the day Members were frequently obliged to choose between sitting in the chamber and attending bill committees. ‘I cannot’, explained the assiduous and experienced Hull Member John Lister to his constituents in February 1621, ‘both attend the House [in] the afternoons and the committee’. In order to avoid overloading their Members many boroughs, explained Lister, considered it expedient to send one or two of their leading townsmen to Westminster to assist their elected representatives. Lister himself asked to be joined by James Watkinson, the weighmaster of the Hull woolhouse, ‘not for my own ease but for preventing ensuing damage to our town’.
The borough that most often employed assistants to support the work of its elected representatives was London, which normally had a far larger legislative programme than any other town or city. The City Solicitor drafted corporation bills, preferred them to the Speaker and paid the appropriate fees.
Another borough that frequently sent assistants to Westminster was York. In January 1621, having drawn up its legislative programme for the forthcoming assembly, the York corporation ordered Robert Belt ‘to go to London this Parliament to solicit the occasions which may concern the city according to certain instructions to him delivered’. In March 1626 the city’s junior Member, Christopher Brooke, was asked ‘whether he think fit to send up a solicitor this Parliament’. Two weeks later Robert Belt and Robert Hemsworth were dispatched with instructions to oppose the navigation project for the rivers Aire and Calder, a scheme which would ‘impoverish this city’ if implemented. In order to achieve this objective, they were to forge alliances with Members from other constituencies and petition the king, the Parliament or the Privy Council if necessary. Both men took to Westminster various maps and written instructions, which they proposed to leave with the town’s parliamentary representatives on returning home. During their time in the capital they succeeded in making common cause with John Lister, who once again sat for Hull and who proposed putting in a bill if negotiations with the Londoners over their monopoly of the Greenland whaling trade broke down. As they themselves were not intimately familiar with the whaling dispute, Belt and Hemsworth asked the mayor of York ‘to make choice of some one man by the consent of the company to come up presently to join with Mr Lister in that business and to follow the bill’.
Aside from reducing a Member’s workload, one advantage of employing assistants was that a borough’s official representatives were provided with an immediately available source of expert advice. Another consideration, perhaps, was that it helped overcome the problem that more and more boroughs were electing as their representatives men who were outsiders and therefore unfamiliar with the concerns of their constituents. One borough that certainly employed assistants to bridge the gap between its Members’ insufficient local knowledge and its parliamentary requirements was the Sussex port of Rye. Shortly after the 1621 Parliament opened John Angell, who lived with his father in London, wrote to the borough corporation on behalf of himself and his fellow Rye Member, the courtier Emmanuel Giffard. The borough wished to lay before the Commons a bill for the repair of its haven, and Angell realizing that neither he nor Giffard were sufficiently versed in this matter, proposed that the corporation should ‘send someone up to London ... that Mr Giffard and myself may be strengthened with some good reasons in behalf of that cause’.
One of the chief disadvantages of employing solicitors to augment the borough’s elected Members was the cost involved. Boroughs that elected outsiders to Parliament often did so to avoid paying parliamentary wages, but if the services of a solicitor were needed for any length of time the financial benefits of returning non-residents would soon start to diminish. (The amount spent by Rye on its solicitors in 1621 is not entirely clear, but Gibberidge, who was promised a daily allowance of 4s., may have been employed for around six weeks, while Palmer is known to have received £1 10s. in expenses).
In many parliamentary boroughs the constituency interest and the wishes of the borough’s governing body were often seen as more or less synonymous. However, private individuals or corporations often had their own agendas, and were perfectly at liberty to approach their parliamentary representatives directly if they wished. In February 1610 the Colchester Members Edward Alford and Robert Barker were lobbied by the ketchmen living in their constituency with a request to support a bill limiting Great Yarmouth’s ability to prevent others from fishing on the Norfolk coast.
Private individuals or organizations wishing to call upon the services of their constituency’s Members sometimes found it expedient to work through the town or city council. When Exeter’s merchants decided to protest to Parliament against provisions in the Book of Rates in 1624, they proceeded via the borough corporation, which instructed Exeter’s Members ‘to prefer such grievances as are now sent up by John Chappell from the merchants, … together with some other grievances touching the state of the city’.
Like borough corporations, some private companies or groups sent ‘solicitors’ to Westminster. Some were employed with the full knowledge and consent of the local municipal authorities and were effectively assistants to the borough Members. John Chappell, the representative of the Exeter merchant community in 1624, certainly fell into this category,
Among the London livery companies the arrangements made in respect of solicitors were bewilderingly diverse. Often companies enlisted the services of the City Solicitor or one of the mayor’s officers to act on their behalf, but many preferred to use their own officers. Still others hired men especially for the purpose. In 1604 the Brewers retained George Whitton, a minor Oxfordshire gentleman and a veteran of three Elizabethan parliaments, to lobby on its behalf, at a cost of £5.
Not all private corporations considered it necessary to work exclusively through their constituency Members. In May 1624 the London Fruiterers’ Company asked the knights for Kent to lobby on their behalf for ‘some good law’ to curb Dutch imports, as they represented the county ‘in which is the greatest plantation’ of fruit.
Accountability and communication
Unless they represented pocket boroughs like Old Sarum in Wiltshire or Gatton in Surrey, both of which were controlled by powerful local patrons and had less than a dozen voters, Members of the Commons were well aware that they would ultimately be required to justify the time spent at Westminster to their constituents. At the start of the 1621 Parliament Sir Edward Coke reminded his colleagues that they were to give ‘a good account of our doings to our country for whom we are entrusted’.
It was not only constituencies that expected to receive an account of events at Westminster. Fathers with sons in the Commons – especially fathers who had experience of sitting themselves – sometimes expected to receive reports from their offspring. Sir John Wynn, who had represented Caernarvonshire in 1586, was provided with a steady stream of news from Westminster in 1624 and 1625 by his eldest son Sir Richard and by Sir Richard’s younger brother Henry, both of whom had seats in the Commons. Some fathers even expected their sons to account to them for their conduct in Parliament. On hearing unfavourable reports of his carriage in 1614, the former Speaker Sir Edward Phelips warned his son Sir Robert that unless he applied himself to ‘the furtherance of His Majesty’s business’ he would ‘assuredly feel the effects’ of his displeasure.
Many Members feared heavy criticism from their constituents if they failed to protect the latter’s interests. This anxiety, never far from the surface when subsidies were debated, was sometimes acute. During the midst of the Great Contract negotiations, for instance, one Member reportedly cautioned his colleagues against giving the king too much for fear that an over-generous settlement would place their ‘throats ... in danger of cutting’ on returning home.
Voting subsidies was not the only issue that aroused anxiety among Members with one eye fixed firmly on their constituents. In late May 1621, following the king’s announcement that he shortly intended to bring the session to a close, the Commons was thrown into a panic as horrified Members realized that in the brief time available they would be unable to complete their legislative business. ‘Let us debate how we may best report in the country our employments here’, advised Sir Edwin Sandys, who added three days later that, on returning home, they should ‘palliate, and excuse the best we can’.
However, it was the fear of arousing the wrath of their fellow subjects by imposing upon them a greater financial burden than they were able or willing to bear that gave the Commons the greatest cause for concern. One way around this difficulty was to refrain from voting supply until such times as Members had canvassed the views of their constituents. If, after consultation, it was found that the electorate was content to pay the sums demanded then Members need not fear being reproached by their neighbours, but if it was clear from the reaction of their local communities that there was no appetite to proceed then they would be obliged to withhold their consent.
There was nothing new in the proposition that Members of the Commons should sound out their constituents before voting money, but prior to James’s accession it had not been heard since the middle ages. This is hardly surprising, as ordinarily Members were expected to exercise their own judgments in relation to supply rather than send back to their constituents for instructions. However, during the first Jacobean Parliament the Commons was twice asked to vote the king a permanent addition to his annual income. These requests were considerably more far-reaching than a demand for a one-off payment and caused many Members to worry that unless they deferred to their constituents they would lack sufficient authority to enter into such an agreement.
These doubts first surfaced in June 1604, after the king’s chief minister, Robert, Lord Cecil failed to reach agreement with the Commons over abolishing purveyance in return for an annual, nationwide composition. Discussing Cecil’s proposal for composition, the authors of the Form of Apology and Satisfaction of the Commons remarked that the House dared not impose such a legally binding arrangement upon the people ‘without first acquainting them and having their consents unto’.
Members again deferred to their constituents in 1610, when the Commons considered whether to provide the king with an annual income in return for the abolition of wardship and purveyance. By the beginning of May many Members were not only reeling at the scale of the Crown’s financial demands but were also worried about committing themselves to any agreement in case the people were ‘offended and moved thereby’.
According to Salisbury, James endorsed this suggestion. This is not inherently improbable, for less than two months earlier the king had conceded that Members had to beware of giving ‘more than is fit for good and loving subjects’ in case they ‘abuse the king and hurt the people’.
Over the course of the summer many Members did indeed consult their constituents, and what they found undoubtedly helps to explain why the Contract negotiations subsequently collapsed. On returning to his home in Leicestershire, Sir Thomas Beaumont, the senior knight of the shire, certainly found that his constituents, while ‘glad that the sunshine of His Majesty’s favour should come so far as to reach them’ were unwilling to proceed unless James first abandoned his claim to be entitled to levy impositions.
Many Members who expressed apprehension about accounting to their constituents were contemplating the end of a session or a long period of adjournment, when they would be expected to return home. For the county Members this was particularly true, for while they remained at Westminster it was difficult to see how they could send reports back, there being no organization or body within their constituencies with whom they could correspond. In 1604 the knights of the shire were ordered to take copies of the king’s letter declining a subsidy and ‘publish it in their countries’, but that was in the dying days of the session, as Members were about to return home.
To an extent, the problem facing the knights of the shire was more apparent than real, as it was not unusual for Members to spread news of Parliament’s proceedings to their friends and relatives. Thomas Smyth, sitting for Bridgwater, posted regular reports to his mother at her home in Somerset in 1628, for instance.
Although Members often sent their friends and relatives news of proceedings at Westminster, this was not, of course, the same as reporting directly to their constituents. Sir George More, the senior knight for Surrey, may have been correct when he boasted in April 1614 that ‘the commonwealth ... continually speaketh to us’, but how often he and his fellow county representatives spoke to the commonwealth in return is far from clear.
For those not fortunate enough to live near someone with a close relative in Parliament, often the only way to discover what was going on at Westminster was to obtain a copy of one of the many newsletters that circulated in increasing numbers during this period. In 1610 John Drake of Ash, in Devon, received a newsletter concerning proceedings in the Commons that he passed on to his friend William Pole of Colyton. Pole in turn read the contents to his friend and neighbour William Yonge.
It was easier for enfranchised boroughs than the counties to keep in touch with their Members while Parliament was sitting. Corporate boroughs in particular possessed municipal officers to whom their Members could write, such as a mayor or a bailiff, and the universities had recognized officials. Those boroughs that charged their representatives with the task of carrying out particular legislative duties certainly expected to be kept informed of their Members’ activities as a Parliament unfolded. Indeed, the corporation of London in February 1624 explicitly instructed its four Members to ‘acquaint and certify this court from time to time of their proceedings and opinions’.
Only by receiving a steady stream of reports from Westminster could a borough or university decide whether to issue fresh instructions to its representatives. On hearing that a fen drainage bill was likely to receive a reading in the Commons, the registrary of the University of Cambridge wrote to one of the university’s Members requesting more information, for ‘if I heard of the particulars of the bill I doubt not but I could acquaint you with some material points to be stood upon for us’.
Many boroughs were not solely interested in learning from their Members the fate of their own parliamentary business as they also wished to hear of wider developments, both at Westminster and elsewhere. Some of Hull’s Members were particularly assiduous in keeping their constituents briefed. In March 1606, for instance, Anthony Cole, sent the mayor of Hull copies of the articles against recusants agreed on by Commons in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot; news of ‘divers good bills’ of a godly nature; an account of the panic that had ensued after it was rumoured that James had been assassinated; and the information that the lower House had voted three subsidies and three fifteenths.