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The Rolls of Parliament, 1449–1547
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
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The Roll of Parliament, supposedly the master record of that institution, actually occupied that place until some time in the sixteenth century. Yet it has never been systematically studied for the period after parliament had institutionally emerged in the middle of the fourteenth century. Since the rolls down to 1504 and for several of the parliaments of Henry VIII have been in print for some 200 years, their contents have been used often enough; but no one has subjected the originals to scrutiny, so that the documents themselves have not been made to tell what they can. This paper will consider the rolls for the years 1449–1547, the period covered by the extant early journals of the house of lords which have already been analysed. The manuscripts reveal that the print hides many interesting features, but since the texts as printed are sound enough it will at times be convenient to use them for purposes of reference.
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References
1 R[otuli] P[arliamentorum] (6 vols.; [1767–1768]) go down to 19 Henry, VIIGoogle Scholar; L[ords] J[ournals] vol. 1, prints the rolls for 4, 5, 14 & 15, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 27 Henry VIII for which no Journal survives.
2 [Public Record Office], C65/99–154.
3 Elton, G. R., ‘The early journals of the house of lords,’ English Historical Review, LXXXIX (1974), 481 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 The only earlier attempt at an analysis of the rolls was made by Gray, H. L., The influence of the Commons on early legislation (1932)Google Scholar, but he did not go to the manuscripts. Unfortunately even the severe critique in Chrimes, S. B., English constitutional ideas in the XV century (1936), pp. 236–48Google Scholar, removes only part of the confusion created by Gray's false categories and misunderstandings, though on occasion he gets a point right. Since it seems pointless to argue with him at every turn, I have in the main avoided reference to his book.
5 Cf. Bond, M. F., ‘The formation of the archives of parliament,’ Journal of the Society of Archivists I (1957), 151 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Egerton papers, ed. Collier, J. P. (Camden Society vol. XII, 1840), pp. 1–3Google Scholar.
7 B[ritish] L[ibrary], Harl. MS 94, fos. 43–48, 65r–72v: ‘A perfect calendar of all the records remaining in the Tower of London’; fos. 65r–72v have been misbound and really belong before fo. 44.
8 Stafford made his move, in memorials addressed to Cecil, William, in 03 1564 (PRO, SP 12/33, fos. 2–3Google Scholar; BL, Lansd. MS 113, fos. 103–5). By this time Bowyer was in effect keeper, but his patent was dated 18 June 1567 when Edward Hales, himself appointed in April 1550 in succession to Richard Eton, surrendered his (C[alendar of] P[atent] R[olb] Eliz. IV, no. 496; Letters and papers of Henry VIII, xii, II, 796[16]). In a letter dated only March 1, but addressed to Cecil as secretary and master of the wards (which latter office he obtained in January 1561), Bowyer explained that eight years before he had been urged by Sir Thomas Parry, lately dead, to take the office (BL, Lansd. MS 113, fos. 106–8). Parry died in 1560; before 1558 he had been no more than comptroller of the Princess Elizabeth's Household, and such influence as he had therefore stood higher under Edward VI than Mary. We may therefore suppose that Bowyer's connection with the Tower began in about 1552–3, but that he did not gain formal possession of the office until much later. As he told Cecil, he had for those eight years been busy sorting and cataloguing the Tower archive, but he hinted that his proper reward had not yet come. Presumably Hales held on to the office, and Bowyer can at best have been his deputy. A further complication is introduced by Robert Bowyer's note of 3 Jan. 1605 that he in turn became keeper thirty-seven years ‘and more’ after his father's death (BL, Harl. MS 94, fo. 47v), a timespan which included his father's formal appointment.
9 SP 12/42, fo. 10, Winchester to Cecil, 11 Apr. 1567. Winchester calls Bowyer keeper of the queen's records in the Tower, two months before the delivery of the warrant for his patent into the chancery (see previous note). This was the second letter urging Bowyer's suit upon the secretary. Winchester is now known to have been a champion of conservatism in administration.
10 Ibid. fos. 185A–186; CPR Eliz. IV, no. 659.
11 Ibid. no. 451. But cf. below, p. 22.
12 SP 12/43, fos. 7–16. two appeals of 15 June 1567.
13 Report of the committee appointed to view the Cottonian Library (First Series of Reports, i), pp. 519–20, 525–6; Reports from the select committee appointed to inquire into the state of the public records of the kingdom (ordered to be printed by the house of commons, 4 07 1800), 84Google Scholar.
14 BL, Harl. MS 94, fo. 47V.
15 Reports etc., p. 52.
16 Handbook of British chronology (ed. Powicke, F. M. and Fryde, E. B.; 2nd edn; 1961), pp. 531–4Google Scholar. I have tried to count only actual meetings.
17 C65/99–113.
18 Guide to the records of parliament (1971), p. 303Google Scholar. Baldwin Hyde, who held office between Fawkes and Gunthorpe, never had a parliament to serve.
19 English Historical Review LXXXVII (1974), 482–7Google Scholar.
20 C65/100, 107.
21 C65/99, mm. 3–4.
22 C65/102, mm. 17–19.
23 RP V, 250–4, 295–7. Such enrolment was at the suit of the party: Chrimes, Constitutional ideas, p. 252.
24 The extant bills with the royal response, printed as ‘Petitions’ in RP after the sessional rolls, show that such private acts passed all right.
25 No common petitions were presented in the parliament of 39 Henry VI (1460) which yielded two acts. One voided the doings of the preceding parliament: this appears on the roll as the first business, after the presentation of the Speaker (C65/105). The other, a very short law-reform measure, resulted from a private petition(RP V, 387–8).
26 Below, p. 8.
27 C65/109–11.
28 Cf. RP VI, 153b for the dissolution followed by the public acts (the last three of which are crown bills, not communes peticiones). According to the Statute Roll, of the thirteen acts of this parliament nine belonged to 12 Edward IV and four to 14 Edward IV.
29 I am not aware of any evidence for the payment of any bill fees in pre-Tudor parliaments, but that may be only my ignorance. Seeing what happened in all government departments, it is hard to believe that the parliamentary officers served private interests for nothing.
30 C65/112–13.
31 Gray, Commons' influence, pp. 179–80. He made an invalid distinction between earlier ‘cedule’ and later ‘bille’ like that of 1483 for the royal Household (RP VI, 198). The marginal title there, ‘Pro Hospicio Regis’, is one of the not infrequent editorial additions in RP to the truth of the manuscript. Marginal titles might be worth studying, but there is too little profit to repay prolonged exposition. In general it would appear that virtually all those placed against entries before the common petitions were written by the enrolling clerk, while all those written against items in the communes peticiones were added later.
32 E.g. Gray, Commons' influence, p. 98. Gray's category of ‘official bills’ makes no sense, and his attempt to classify by ‘importance’ is pointless, but he has proved that bills in the communes section could originate in either Commons or Lords.
33 This is what Chrimes meant (Constitutional ideas, p. 249) when he said that statute signified ‘any act of parliament of which the courts had cognizance’ – the correct definition of public acts as against private (W. S. Holdsworth, History of English Law, XI, 290).
34 The exception of the 1460 parliament, whose roll misses out the section, has been noted (above, n. 25).
35 Gray, Commons' influence, p. 399; I have amended his case endings, falsely extended from the manuscript abbreviations.
36 RP V, 155.
37 Proceedings of the Privy Council (ed. N. H. Nicolas), III, 22. See Gray, Commons' influence, p. 389 (who invents yet another false case ending for statuta), and Chrimes, Constitutional ideas, p. 228 (who mistranslates ‘redigantur in mudum’ – to make a fair copy – as ‘rendered into clear language’, and more distortingly ‘simul’, at the same time, as ‘as soon as’).
38 Chrimes, Constitutional ideas, pp. 293–5.
39 As did Hengham C. J. in Edward I's reign, addressing counsel: ‘do not gloss the statute for we know better than you; we made it’ (Plucknett, T. F. T., Statutes and their interpretation in the first half of the fourteenth century [1922], p. 50)Google Scholar.
40 Below, p. 12.
41 Gray, Commons' influence, pp. 396–7. My earlier failure to regard Gray led me to postulate as a likely conjecture the production of such engrossed statutes of which in fact a number survive (my ‘The sessional printing of statutes, 1484–1547,’ in Wealth and power in Tudor England (ed. Ives, E. W., Knecht, R. J., Scarisbrick, J. J., 1978), p. 74Google Scholar.
42 Pilkington's Case has been twice reprinted from the Year Book: Chrimes, Constitutional ideas, pp. 360–2, and The Fane fragment of the 1461 Lords Journal (ed. Dunham, W. H., 1935), pp. 99–102Google Scholar.
43 BL, Harl. MS 94, fo. 47V.
44 Ibid.
45 Occasional lapses are only minor clerical errors. In 1453 (C65/102) one bill slipped out of sequence; in 1463–4 (C65/107) the bill for 4 Edward IV c. 1 was entered twice, at the beginning of the communes peticiones for each session. The multiple sessions of Edward IV's parliaments did lead to discrepancies in the order, presumably because the work was not done immediately after the making of the statute.
46 C65/107, m. 15; RP V, 516–17. The letters were addressed jointly to the master of the rolls and the clerk of the parliaments.
47 C65/110, m. 17; RP VI, 92.
48 The first act of resumption in our period (1450: RP V, 300–20) took the form of a Commons' petition assented to by the king with the reservation that his duty to his subjects called for exceptions ‘contained in certain schedules’ (Gray, Commons' influence, p. 186, n. 57). Later acts, claiming to emanate from the crown, became routine, but the assents specified that the king wished to make exceptions (e.g. RP V, 517). Cf. in general Wolffe, B. P., ‘Acts of resumption in Lancastrian parliaments,’ English Historical Review LXXIII (1958), 583–613CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Gray, in his chapter on ‘the amending of bills’ (Commons' influence, pp. 164–200), makes heavy weather of allegedly earlier and later methods. Since the amendments undoubtedly represent responses to individual suits it does not matter in what manner they came to be attached to the bill: they were always signs of royal favour to suitors. Gray held (pp. 172–3) that the evidence of enrolment ceased to be reliable in 1478 when allegedly two bills treated identically at the assent were given different treatment on the roll, in that in one attached to the bill they are not there now; it may be that they were lost, or dropped from the bill as prematurely enacted, before enrolment.
50 C65/107, m. 43 (RP V, 566–7). The proviso was in fact entered twice, being also attached to an act of the same session for the treasurer of Calais (ibid. p. 510). Perhaps it really belonged there, though it does not make much better sense in that place.
51 RP VI, 221–5.
52 Gray, Commons' influence, p. 171; RP V, 494; Fane fragment, p. 22.
53 C65/114, 123–37. Nos. 115–22 were non-parliamentary rolls, since placed elsewhere at the PRO.
54 C65/137.
55 RP VI, 278, 287–8.
56 C65/126, mm. 16–17.
57 LJ I, p. cxlviii.
58 C65/136, mm. 4–10.
59 C65/137, mm. 24–35.
60 One bill vetoed in 1510 exists among the original acts at the Record Office, house of lords. It is not on the roll.
61 These marginal titles cannot be analysed with confidence. Handwriting proves that on many rolls they were added later, one man going over a long run of them, but contemporary notes also occur. Thus the famous Star Chamber Act (3 Henry VII, c. 1) bears two – a contemporary title reading ‘pro Camera Stellata’ and a later addition reading ‘An Acte geving the Court of Starchamber authority to punnyshe dyvers mysdemeanors’. The other public acts on that roll have only later titles. On the other hand, in 1485 the writing clerk himself added the titles of the public acts.
62 My ‘Sessional printing’, p. 82.
63 Cf. English Historical Review LXXXIX (1974), 506–7Google Scholar.
64 RP VI, 478–9.
65 C65/125.
66 C65/137.
67 My ‘Sessional printing’, p. 85.
68 See my Studies in Tudor and Stuart politics and government (1974), II, 54Google Scholar.
69 I Henry VII c. 10; the bill is RP VI, 289.
70 My ‘Sessional printing’, p. 72.
71 One common petition of this session (touching the County Palatine of Lancaster) was not printed (RP VI, 456). It was thus either relegated to the private sector before printing, or else included among the communes peticiones by error.
72 In 1610, Robert Bowyer recorded that the roll (which by then included only the public acts) was written by an officer in the parliament office or the Petty Bag Office, at the clerk's discretion. He copied the statutes from the sessional print, but the roll was then checked by the clerk of the parliaments against the original (parchment) acts. Bowyer added that he himself preferred to use an underclerk of the Petty Bag because these were more skilful at writing the chancery hand (Inner Temple, Petyt MS 538/12, fo. 359V).
73 This is established by comparing the form of the following acts on the roll and in the print: r Richard III c. II, 1 Henry VII c. 3, 3 Henry VII cc. 10 and 12, 4 Henry VII c. 3, 7 Henry VII c. 3, II Henry VII cc. 4 and 19, 12 Henry VII c. 6.
74 C65/130.
75 C65/131.
76 C65/132.
77 C65/133. The bills for financing the Great Wardrobe (mm. 11–12), for the general surveyors (mm. 13–17), and for the subsidy (mm. 18–27). Whether they were left out because they all touched the finances of the Crown or because they were exceptionally long cannot be determined; my guess is the latter, though some sort of precedent exists in the private king's acts of the fifteenth century. For subsidy acts see below, p. 27.
78 C65/134. It is noteworthy that the sessional printing of these three sessions of parliament was also confused and confusing; perhaps the difference in the sequence arose, as it had done in 1487–9, from the fact that the print appeared late.
79 C65/-35–6.
80 RP VI, 462, 465.
81 Ibid. p. 521.
82 Letter in Record Office, house of lords, Original Acts for 12 Henry VII.
83 RP VI, 407.
84 C65/128, m. 20; 130, m. 22.
85 In 1495: RP VI, 471. The original acts of 1497 and 1504 carry the king's sign manual in monogram on every bill and every scheduled proviso, except on bills vetoed, which proves that it was added after passage. Thus Henry VII, true to his nature, signified his assent in person and with his pen. No later king did so: the sign manual became a signification of royal approval before introduction, though the details of the practice remained confused in the following reign (cf. a forthcoming article by J. I. Miklovich in Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research).
86 C65/138–54. There are duplicates for the sessions of 34 & 35, and 37, Henry VIII. The roll for 27 Henry VIII, being very long, is in two parts. Although the parliament of 1539–40 really comprised three sessions, the first two were dealt with in one roll because only one Statute resulted from them, it having been agreed in parliament that the first prorogation, should not affect the passage of bills started in the first session. The second session of Henry VIII's last parliament (1547), terminated by the king's death, produced neither acts nor a roll.
87 CPR Eliz.IV, no. 451.
88 The manuscripts of the house of lords, XI (1962), 2–3Google Scholar. This council order, if correctly copied, used confused and confusing language; it miscalled the clerk William Spilman; and it was signed for the council by one Washington of whom nothing else seems to be known.
89 Ericson, C. G., ‘Parliament as a legislative institution in the reign of Edward VI and Mary’ (unpublished dissertation, London, 1973), 154–8Google Scholar.
90 E.g. C65/161, 163.
91 C65/150, the duplicate roll for 1542, mentions only the kingship of England, France and Ireland, omitting both the papal ‘defender of the faith’ and the anti-papal ‘supreme head’. It is altogether less perfected than no. 149 and also much worse worn, so that 149 might be thought of as a replacement made before delivery into chancery, but no interpretation of these two rolls that has occurred to me makes much sense.
92 Taylor ceased signing after 5 Henry VIII (1514); he always simply put his name and tide. By contrast, when Spilman resumed the practice he used the formula ‘examinatum et certificatum per me’ (C65/161).
93 C65/151, also more old-style than new, recorded a prorogued session and had no occasion to mention the king at the head.
94 C65/142.
95 In 1536, the last printed act (28 Henry VIII c. 16) was left out, unless a membrane recording it got detached and lost.
96 The acts are missing at the house of lords for 21 Henry VIII (1529); those for 27, 28 and 31 Henry VIII (1536, 1536, 1539) bear no record of the assent.
97 C65/140.
98 Above, n. 96; for the assent in 28 Henry VIII (1536) see LJ 1, 101.
99 Ibid. p. 83.
100 6 Henry VIII c. 16 (Statutes of the Realm, in, 143), the act for licence of absence from the Commons. Since only the Commons were involved, it is manifest that the phrase ‘clerk of the Parliament appointed or to be appointed for the Common House’ refers only to the clerk of the Lower House (underclerk of the parliament).
101 On the face of it, the order is confused, that of the public acts differing in places from the print, and some private ones intervening in the sequence of the public ones. However, if mm. 21–22, 25–30, and 37–40 are inserted in different places, a perfect order results.
102 In 1610, Bowyer complained that he was ordered by the attorney-general (Francis Bacon) to enroll the general pardon, whereupon the lord chancellor (Ellesmere) added that he should likewise enroll the two subsidy acts of the session (Inner Temple, Petyt MS 538/12, fo. 358V). As Bowyer noted, this was contrary to the precedents.
103 I owe this information to Mr A. L. Jenkins.
104 For all this see the facts collected by Elizabeth Read Foster, The painful labour of MrElsyng, (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1972), pp. 29ffGoogle Scholar.