1693. Tindal, in his continuation of Rapin, says, " The king let the bill lie on the table for some time, so that men's eyes and expectations were much fixed on the issue of it; but in conclu sion he refused to pass it, so the session ended in an ill humour. The rejecting a bill, though an unquestionable right of the crown, has been so seldom practised, that the two houses are at to think it a hardship when there is a bill denied." But another instance occurred towards the close of the same year, which was more remarkable, in consequence of its being followed by certain proceedings in parliament, which was sitting at the time. This was the rejection of the bill com monly called the Place Bill, the object of which was to exclude all holders of offices of trust and profit under the crown from the House of Commons. It was presented to the king along with the Land-tax Bill ; and the day after he had assented to the one and rejected the other, the House of Commons, having resolved itself into a grand committee on the state of the nation, passed the following reso lution :—" That whoever advised the king not to give the royal assent to the act which was to redress a grievance, and take off a scandal upon the proceedings of the Commons in parliament, is an enemy to their majesties and the king dom ; and that a representation be made to the king, to lay before him how few instances have been in former reigns of denying the royal assent to bills for re dress of grievances ; and the grief of the Commons for his not having given the royal assent to several public bills, and in particular to this bill, which tends so much to the clearing the reputation of this house, after their having so freely voted to supply the public occasions." An address conformable to the resolution was accordingly presented to his Majesty by the whole house. The king returned a polite answer to so much of the address as referred to the confidence that ought to be preserved between himself and the parliament, but took no notice of what was said about the rejection of the bill. When the Commons returned from the royal presence, it was moved in the house That application be made to his Majesty for a further answer;" but the motion was negatived by a majority of 229 to 28.
Mr. Hatsell, in the second volume of his Precedents (edition of 1818), quotes other instances of subsequent date to this. The latest which he discovered was the rejection of a Scotch militia bill by Queen Anne in 1707; and this is also the latest mentioned in Mr. May's recent work. In former times the refusal of the royal assent was a common occurrence. Queen Elizabeth once at the end of a session, out of ninety-one bills which were presented to her, rejected forty-eight.
It is the royal assent which makes a bill an act of parliament, and gives it the force of a law. As by a legal fiction the laws passed throughout a whole session of parliament are considered as forming properly only one statute (of which what are popularly called the separate acts are only so many chapters), it used to be a matter of doubt whether the royal assent, at whatever period of the session it might be given, did not make the act operative from the beginning of the session, when no day was particularly mentioned in the body of it as that on which it should come into effect. In order to settle this
point, it was ordered by 33 George III. o. 13, that the clerk of parliament should for the future endorse on every bill the day on which it received the royal assent, and that from that day, if there was not in it any specification to the contrary, its operation should com mence.
It appears that the several forms of words now in use are not, as has been sometimes stated, exactly the same that have been employed in this ceremony from the first institution of parliaments. For instance, it is recorded that Henry VII. gave his assent to the bill of at tainder passed in the first year of his reign (1485) against the partisans of Richard III. in the more emphatic terms, Le roy le voet, en toutz pointz. On some occasions, of earlier date, the assent is stated to have been given in English. Thus, to a bill of attainder passed against Sir William Oldhall in 1453 (the 31st of Henry VI.), the clerk is recorded in the Rolls of Parliament to have announced his Majesty's assent as follows : " The king voile that it be hadde and doon in maner and forme as it is desired." And in 1459, in the case of an act of attainder against the Duke of York, the Earls of Salisbury, Warwick, and others, the same king gave his assent in the following form :—" The king agreeth to this act, so that by virtue thereof he be not put from his prerogative to show such mercy and grace as shall please his highness, accord ing to his regalie and dignitie, to any person or persons whose names be ex pressed in this act, or to any other that might be hurt by the same." In the time of the Commonwealth, an English form was substituted for those in Norman-French, which had been pre viously and are now in use. On the 1st of October, 1656, the House of Commons resolved "that when the Lord Protector shall pass a bill, the form of words to be used shall be these, The Lord Protector doth consent." In 1706, also, a bill the House of Lords, and was a se cond time in the House of Commons, for abolishing the use of the French tongue in all proceedings in parliament and courts of justice, in which it was directed, "that instead of Le roy le veult, these words be used, The king answers Be it so; instead of Soit fait comme it est desirere, these words be substituted, Be it as is prayed ; where these words, Le roi re mercie sea bons sujets, accepte leer bene volence, et ainsi le veult, have been used, it shall hereafter be, The king thanks his good subjects, accepts their benevolence, and answers Be it so ' • instead of Le roi s'aui sera, these words, The king- will consider of it, be used." " Why this bill was re jected by the Commons," says Hatsell, " or why its provisions with respect to i proceedings in parliament were not adopted in an act which afterwards passed in the year 1731, That all pro ceedings in courts of justice should be in English,' I never heard any reason as signed." For further information on this subject, see Hatsell's Precedents, espe cially vol. ii. pp. 338-351 (edition of 1818); also May's Treatise upon the Law, Proceedings, and Usage of Parliament, 1844.