Speaker

The place of the Speaker in the scale of social precedence has been defined by order in council so recently as 1919, as ranking next after the prime minister and the lord president of the council and coming before all peers of the realm except the archbishops. Unlike the lord chancellor who, in his capacity of the Speaker of the House of Lords, is entitled to take part in debate and speak in favour of the Government of which he is a member, the Speaker of the Commons, free from all party ties during his tenure of the chair, takes no part in the discussions upon bills or motions and only gives his casting vote in the event of the numbers in a division being equal.

The Middle Ages.

The ancient office of Speaker, the Parlour or Moderator of the House, does not emerge from the twilight which shrouds its origin until the last of Edward III.'s many par liaments. Yet it would seem that some corresponding official charged with the duty of reporting to the Crown the decisions of the Commons existed at least half a century earlier though, as yet, he is nowhere definitely described as their presiding officer. In 1327 the Commons had demanded, no doubt by some accredited agent of their own choice, that their petitions should thenceforth be enrolled as statutes and in 1329, growing bolder still, they refused to assent to a levy equivalent to that already voted by the Lords until the parliament should be dissolved and another one summoned (Rot. part, vol. p. 504), a request to which the king was graciously pleased to accede. The intermediary on this occasion between the elected representative of the people and the Crown would appear to have been Monsieur William Trussell who in 1346 found honourable burial in Westminster Abbey. In 1340 he announced a naval victory to the Commons and undertook on their behalf to raise wools for the king's aid, whilst in 1343 the Rolls relate that the knights of the shire and the borough members replied in the White hall of the palace of Westminster, by the mark of the same presiding officer, to a message from the pope.

In 1363, though the Commons then had their own clerk—one Robert de Melton, whose annual salary was loos., it has not been possible to ascertain who filled the chair thus early. The name of a Speaker is first recorded in the Rolls of Parliament for Jan. 1377. Sir Thomas Hungerford, knight of the shire for Wilts, who died Dec. 3, 1397, is then described as the "Chivaler qui avoit les paroles pour les Communes d'Engleterre en cest Parle ment." (Rot. Parl., vol. ii., P. 374.) In a house mainly controlled by John of Gaunt, for the king was now in his dotage and near ing his end, the Speaker composed a daring speech to the throne at the close of the session, calling attention to various grievances and alleged infringements of the liberties of the king's subjects, both male and female. He also delivered seven "Billes to the clerk of the Parliaments, to which, however, no reply was vouch safed. 'A cause q le dit Parlement s'estoit de partir et finir a mesme le jour devant q rien y fust plus fait en ycelles.' "

A surprisingly large number of Speakers died a violent death. Sir John Bussey, the last of the Plantagenet Speakers, was be headed in 1399 after the surrender of Bristol to Henry, duke of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV. William Tresham was murdered in 145o, Thomas Thorpe beheaded in 1461, Sir John Wenlock killed at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 ; Sir Thomas Tresham, son of William, was beheaded at the same place. William Catesby shared a like fate after the battle of Bosworth in 1485, Empson and Dudley paid the penalty of their crimes on the scaffold in isio, but since Sir Thomas More was foully done to death on the per jured evidence of Rich in 1535, no occupant of the chair has been either killed in battle or brought to the block. Sir John Trevor was expelled from the house for taking bribes in 1695.

Tudor Period.

With the close of mediaeval monarchy and the advent of a more personal element in the relations of the throne towards parliament much of the sturdy independence which had animated the earlier occupants of the chair disappeared, at all events for a time. Patriots like de la Mare who used their position in the house to call attention to the urgent necessity of maritime defence, independent leaders like Arnold Savage and Tiptoft, who did not shrink on occasion from admonishing the sovereign on his shortcomings, compare not unfavourably with the servile tribe of Speakers who monopolized the chairs in the Tudor period.

The Dudleys and Empsons of Henry VII., the Riches and Aud leys of his successor on the throne and the Snagges and Puck erings of Elizabethan memory would have been impossible under the Plantagenets. The opening of the Black or Reformation parliament in Nov. 1529, the longest known to that date, extend ing as it did over six and a half years, synchronized with a period of degradation of the House of Commons unparalleled before or since that time, although under Speaker Audley (whose promo tion coincided with Wolsey's disgrace) only the outworks of the Church were laid siege to, after his transference to the woolsack in 1533, when the chair was filled by Sir Humphrey Wingfield and, in the next parliament by the despicable Richard Rich, a series of confiscatory Acts designed to ensure the final breach with Rome were drawn up by the privy council, acquiesced in by a subservient House of Lords and forced through the House of Commons. Speakers Audley, Wingfield and Rich eventually ben efited largely by the dissolution of the monasteries, Audley acquir ing Christ Church priory in London and the abbey of Walden in Essex, Rich being rewarded with the spoils of St. Bartholomew's priory at Smithfield, whilst Wingfield obtained large grants of Church lands. To such a degree of subserviency to the Crown was the house reduced under Henry VIII. that when Wingfield was committed to the Tower during the session of for advis ing Sir John Skelton how to evade the Statutes of Uses in his will, his imprisonment passed without remonstrance by the house at large.