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The Authenticity of the ‘Lords’ Journals' in the Sixteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

A. F. Pollard
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Extract

In a brilliant chapter in the ‘Cambridge Modern History’ the late Professor Maitland, dealing with the circumstances of the passage of Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity through the House of Lords, remarks: ‘Unfortunately, at an exciting moment there is a gap, perhaps a significant gap, in the official record, and we cease to know what lords were present in the House.’ This is a summary of a more detailed examination contributed by Maitland to the English Historical Review which reads as follows:—

‘It is well known that the Journal of the House of Lords becomes suddenly silent at the most exciting moment of this momentous session. It leaps from Saturday, April 22, to Monday, May 1; in other words, it leaps over the days on which the Supremacy Bill (No. 3) and the Uniformity Bill were receiving the assent of the House of Lords. Is this due to accident or is it due to fraud? The question springs to our lips, for we have every reason to believe that the journal ought to have recorded the fact that not one lord spiritual voted for these bills, and that every prelate who was present voted against them. This fact might indeed be notorious; but notoriety is not evidence, and in the then state of constitutional doctrine the Queen's ministers may have wished to deprive their adversaries of the means of “averring by matter of record” that the first estate of the realm was no party to the religious settlement. With some slight hope that the handwriting might be more eloquent than print, I obtained permission to see the original journal. It made no disclosure. In the first place, the work is so neat and regular that it looks, not like a journal kept day by day, but like a fair text made at the end of the session from notes that had been taken as the session proceeded. In the second place, the practice was to devote one page—or rather one side of a page—to every day, whether there was much or little to record. The session of Saturday, April 22, is described on the back of a page and ends with an adjournment to the next Tuesday; the session of Monday, May 1, is described on the front of the next page. Even if the book were unbound it would, I fear, reveal no more; for, as we apparently have to deal with a clean text made at the end of the session, any inference that we might be disposed to draw from the distribution of quires and sheets would be highly precarious, and “This may or may not have been an accident” would have to be our last word.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 8 , December 1914 , pp. 17 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1914

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References

page 17 note 1 Cambridge Modern History, ii. 570.Google Scholar

page 17 note 2 English Historical Review, xviii. 531Google Scholar; Collected Papers, iii.: 208.Google Scholar

page 18 note 1 D'Eives, , Journals, p. 350.Google Scholar

page 19 note 1 Petyt MSS. (Inner Temple) 537, vol. i. ff. 85–6Google Scholar, vol. vi. f. 1.

page 20 note 1 Preface, pp. vi.–vii.Google Scholar

page 20 note 2 Vol. 1 deals with Henry VIII's reign, vol. 2 with Edward VI's, vol. 3 with Mary's, and vol. 4 begins Elizabeth's.

page 20 note 3 The clerk of the Parliaments kept both the Rolls of Parliament and the Lords' Journals; he sat in the Parliament chamber (now called the House of Lords), and the official who is now responsible for the Journals of the House of Lords is still styled the clerk of the Parliaments. The clerk of the House of Commons was originally the second clerk of the Parliaments. Bowyer took the oaths as clerk of the Parliaments on Jan. 30, 1609–10. D'Ewes is mistaken in saying that he was clerk ‘ab an. 6 Jacobi Regis’ (E.H.R. xxviii. 532)Google Scholar; Smith was still clerk on Nov. 9, 1609, 7 James I (Lords' Journals, ii. 545).Google Scholar

page 21 note 1 D'Ewes, , Autobiography, i. 411–36Google Scholar, ii. 4–53, passim.

page 22 note 1 D'Ewes, Journals, pp. 28–9.Google Scholar

page 22 note 2 Usher, , The Rise and Fall of the High Commission, pp. 38–40.Google Scholar

page 23 note 1 Commons' Journals, i. 670–715 and 715–798Google Scholar; one version is nearly double the length of the other. These two are conveniently placed in juxtaposition; but a second Journal covering the sessions 1604–7 is printed at the end of vol. i. of the Commons' Journals after 1628–1629Google Scholar (ib PP. 933–1057).Google Scholar

page 23 note 2 Sir John Pollard had also been Speaker of the Commons in Mary, 's first Parliament, for which no Lords' JournalGoogle Scholar is extant.

page 24 note 1 Petyt MS. 537, vol. vi. p. 10.Google Scholar

page 25 note 1 See D'Ewes, , Journals, p. 359.Google Scholar

page 25 note 2 Wolsey is accused in the letter prefixed to the MS. vohinie iv. of having made away with statutes and other documents, but the unfortunate cardinal cannot have been responsible for the disappearance of the Journals of the Reformation Parliament.

page 26 note 1 Hobart, 's Reports, 1650, f. 109Google Scholar. Petyt, , Jus Parliamentarium, 1739, p. 223Google Scholar, quotes Hobart, but infers the existence of Commons' Journals before 1547 from 6 Hen. VIII, c. xvi. (Statutes of the Realm, iii. 134).Google Scholar

page 26 note 2 For instance, in 1544 Ormeston, Robert was ‘clerk of the Common House of Parliament and weigher of wool in the port of London’ (Letters and Papers, 1544, ii. 166 [14]).Google Scholar

page 27 note 1 Petyt MS. 537, vol. i. ff. 85–6Google Scholaret passim. Hakewill, , The MannerGoogle Scholar, etc., pref. Elsynge's numerous references In his Manner of holding Parliaments, ed. 1768Google Scholar, are limited in the same way; his book was written in 1624–5.

page 27 note 2 Cottoni Posthuma, 1672, pp. 53–4.Google Scholar

page 28 note 1 This order including all days from the beginning of the Parliament, e.g. Sundays, whether there was a sitting or not. After 33 Henry VIII the day of the week, month, and regnal year is given, but not the day of the session. In James I's reign the year of the Christian era supplanted the regnal year.

page 28 note 2 The Rolls, of course, continued after 1510. Considerable extracts from them, designed to fill the gaps in the Lords' Journals, were printed and prefixed to some copies of vol. i. of the Lords' Journals. The extracts cease with the first year of Mary.

page 29 note 1 Lords' Journals, i. 57.Google Scholar

page 29 note 2 Letters and Papers, i. 611, 673.Google Scholar

page 29 note 3 Lords' journals, i. 11a.Google Scholar

page 29 note 4 Ibid. i. 20.

page 31 note 1 This can be verified by comparing the printed Lords' Journals with Bowyer's transcripts published by MissJeffries-Davis, E. in the English Historical Review for 07 1913Google Scholar. Miss Davis examined the Lords' MSS. Journals and the Petyt MSS. in the Inner Temple with me, and I have had the advantage of using her notes on both sources.

page 32 note 1 A proclamation was actually issued on March 22 assuming that Parliament had come to an end. (Steele, , Proclamations, i. 53.)Google Scholar

page 32 note 2 Spanish Cal. i. 52.Google Scholar

page 32 note 3 Possibly Bowes was generalising from this gap. Hakewill speaks of the deplorable defects in the Commons' Journals. If the Commons, he says, would imitate the measures taken by the Lords, their Journals' would not (as now they may) come to the hands of Executors or Administrators, and be removed to and fro in hazard of being lost, or corrupted and defaced, as is well known that some of them have been, and that in passages of the greatest moment, whereby the Commonwealth may receive great prejudice if it be not prevented.’ (The Manner how Statutes are enacted, 1659, pref.)Google Scholar

page 33 note 1 Petyt MS. 537. vol. i.Google Scholar, quoted in Engl. Hist. Rev. xxviii. 533.Google Scholar

page 33 note 2 Townshend, , Journals, p. 83.Google Scholar

page 34 note 1 Hakewill, , The Manner, etc., 1659, pref.Google Scholar

page 35 note 1 English Hist. Rev. xviii. 572.Google Scholar

page 35 note 2 Petyt MS. 537, vol. vi. pp. 1–3.Google Scholar

page 35 note 3 D'Ewes, , Autobiogr., ii. 239–40Google Scholar. D'Ewes is always very careful to explain that he returned the Journals lent him. He seems to have been able to borrow the Commons' Journals but not the Lords'.

page 36 note 1 The earliest known use of the phrase ‘House of Lords’ occurs in 1544 (Parry, , Parliaments and Councils of England, p. xliiGoogle Scholar., though the ‘Parliament Chamber’ is also referred to as ‘the said house’ in Stat. 31 Henry, VIII, c. 10)Google Scholar. It did not become common until long after Henry VIII's reign.

page 36 note 2 The Manner, etc., 1659, pref.Google Scholar

page 38 note 1 Lords' Journals, i. 41.Google Scholar

page 38 note 2 The greatest collection of these outside the House of Lords is among the Petyt MSS. in the Inner Temple Library, baldly described in Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep., pt. vii. p. 236Google Scholar as ‘537 Journals of Parliament, Henry VIII-Charles II, 46 vols, folio.’ Then follow 56 vols, folio of Proceedings in Parliament and Miscellanies (cf. Engl. Hist. Rev. xxviii. 531–42)Google Scholar. In Harleian MS. 2235Google Scholar is a transcript of the Lords' Journals, 1510–15Google Scholar, made about 1625, probably by W. Collet, deputy to Sir John Borough, keeper of the Records. There are also ‘collections from the Journals in B.M. Add. MS. 26634Google Scholar, Stowe MSS. 357–60, 362–3Google Scholar, Egerion MS. 2222.Google Scholar