The Mother of Parliaments

by Harry Graham

This practice is fortunately extinct, but one other custom of Henry VIII.'s time still obtains. To-day the Speaker, on receipt of the royal approbation, takes the opportunity of at once demanding the "ancient and undoubted rights and privileges of the Commons"—freedom from arrest, liberty of speech, access to the royal person, and that a favourable construction be put upon their proceedings—and on his own behalf begs that whatever error may occur in the discharge of his duties shall be imputed to him alone, and not to His Majesty's faithful Commons.

These ancient rights and privileges having been confirmed by the King, through his Lords Commissioners and by the mouth of his Lord Chancellor, the Speaker withdraws to the Lower House. There he acquaints the Commons of the result of his recent pilgrimage, and gratefully assures them once more of his complete devotion to their service. After retiring for a few moments to make the necessary alterations in his costume, he returns, clad in his robe and wearing his full-bottomed wig, and is now a complete and perfect Speaker.

While this is going on, the Upper House has temporarily adjourned to unrobe, and afterwards resumes to enable the Lords to continue taking the Oath, which is meanwhile being administered to the Commons.

Prior to the sixteenth century, members of Parliament were not required to swear; the Lords did not do so until 1678. But the Act of Supremacy of 1563 made it necessary for all members of the Commons to take the oath, and in 1610 were introduced further oaths of Allegiance and Abjuration which were maintained until 1829. The old oaths aimed at excluding Roman Catholics from Parliament, and the regulation which in 1614 ordered every member to take the sacrament in St. Margaret's Church on the Opening Day was but another means of ensuring the religious loyalty of the Commons.

Members of the Lower House cannot take the oath until their Speaker has been approved and sworn; the Lords may do so as soon as Parliament opens. In the Upper House the oath may be taken at any convenient time when the House is sitting; in the House of Commons likewise it may be taken whenever a full House is sitting at any hour before business has begun.

The Lord Chancellor leads the way in the House of Lords. When he has presented his writ of summons, repeated the formal words of the Oath of Allegiance after the Clerk, kissed the New Testament, and subscribed to the Test Roll, he resumes his seat on the Woolsack. The peers then succeed one another in rapid rotation at the table, handing their writs of summons to the Clerk, and following the Chancellor's example.

In the Commons the Speaker first takes the oath in a very similar fashion, and writes his name in the Roll of Members. After this ceremony is accomplished, members come up to the table in batches of five, and are sworn simultaneously. They then shake hands with the Speaker, and can now consider themselves full-fledged members of Parliament.

Up to the middle of the last century three oaths had to be taken by every member of either House: the oaths of Allegiance, of Supremacy, and Abjuration. There was further a declaration against transubstantiation which effectually excluded Roman Catholics. But in 1829 these last received relief, though the final words of the Oath of Abjuration still kept out the Jews.[223] In 1849 Baron Lionel de Rothschild was excluded from the Commons because of his failure to swear on "the true faith of a Christian." He accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, but was again returned to Parliament by the City of London. And though he once more failed to obtain permission to vote in the House, he was allowed to sit there until 1857.[224] Six years before this latter date another Jew, Alderman Salomons, insisted upon taking his seat and voting in a division. He was forcibly ejected by the Sergeant-at-Arms, and subsequently fined £500 in the Exchequer Court as a penalty for voting without having previously taken the oath. In 1858 an Act was passed substituting a single oath for the former three, and giving both Houses power to deal with the Jewish difficulty by resolution, but it was not until 1866 that the words referring to Christianity were finally omitted from the oath.

The refusal of Quakers and atheists to take the oath disturbed for many years the peace of mind of Parliament, and was the subject of frequent legislation. In 1832 the Quaker Pease was elected for a Durham division, and claimed the right of affirming instead of taking the oath. A Committee was appointed to consider the validity of such an affirmation, and came to the conclusion that this form might be substituted harmlessly for the more usual oath.

The case of the atheist Bradlaugh, which lasted for nearly ten years, was a much more complicated affair, and presented endless difficulties to the parliamentary mind.