His election having thus been ratified by the Sovereign, Mr. Speaker “submits himself in all humility to his Majesty’s royal will and pleasure”; and if, says he, in the discharge of his duties, and in maintaining the rights and privileges of the Commons’ House of Parliament, he should fall inadvertently into error, he “entreats that the blame may be imputed to him alone, and not to his Majesty’s faithful Commons.” Assertions of the rights and privileges of the House of Commons follow fast on expressions of loyalty to the Throne during the ten minutes that the Speaker, surrounded by “the faithful Commons,” stands at the Bar of the House of Lords, and holds this significant historical colloquy—which has been repeated at every election of Speaker on the assembling of a new Parliament for many centuries—with the Lord Chancellor, not as the President of the House of Lords, but as the representative of the Sovereign; for the next duty of the Speaker is to request from the Sovereign recognition of all the ancient rights and privileges of Members of Parliament, which are “readily granted” by the Sovereign, speaking through the Lord Chancellor. This ends the ceremonial. The Speaker and the Commons return to their Chamber as they came. But, see, the Mace is now borne high on the shoulder of the Serjeant-at-Arms, and hear the usher announcing “Mr. Speaker” and “Way for Mr. Speaker.” The Speaker passes through the Chamber to his rooms, and in a few minutes comes back arrayed in the complete robes of his office. Then, standing on the dais of the Chair, he reports what took place in the House of Lords. It is one of the curious customs of Parliament that the Speaker always assumes that he has been to the House of Lords alone, and that the Commons are in absolute ignorance of what has happened there. Without the slightest tremor of emotion, or the faintest indication of satisfaction, the Commoners learn that their “ancient rights and undoubted privileges” have been fully confirmed, particularly freedom from arrest and molestation, liberty of speech in their debates, and free access to the Sovereign. They know full well that if they do anything criminal they may feel the dread touch of the policeman on their shoulders—freedom from arrest for debt was abolished long ago—and they know also that even if they would they could not disturb the domestic privacy of the King. So the solemn announcement evokes not a solitary cheer. But there is loud applause upon the Speaker thus finally concluding: “I have now again to make my grateful acknowledgments to the House for the honour done to me in placing me again in the Chair, and to assure it of my complete devotion to its service.” The ancient and picturesque ceremony of the election of Speaker of the House of Commons is completed.
4
At the assembling of every new Parliament the Members for the City of London, in accordance with an ancient custom, have the privilege of sitting on the Treasury Bench with the Ministers, though for the opening day only. I have frequently read in the newspapers that this privilege was given to the City of London by way of commemorating the protection afforded to the Five Members on that historic day, January 4, 1642, when Charles I came down to the House of Commons to arrest them for their opposition to his will, and found to his discomfiture that “the birds had flown,” to use his own words. The statement is not well established. It is a singular thing that no written record of the origin or existence of the custom is to be found at the Guildhall any more than at the House of Commons. But there is authority for saying that the right was exercised in the time of Elizabeth, and over seventy years before the conflict between Charles I and the Parliament.
The earliest reference to it is contained in a Report on the Procedure of the English Parliament prepared in 1568 at the request of the then Speaker of the Irish Parliament by Hooker, a well-known antiquarian of the time, who was a Member both of the English and Irish Parliaments. This report was printed and presented to the Irish Parliament, and was reprinted in London about 1575 under the title of “The Order and Usuage of the Keeping of a Parliament in England.” It is set out fully in Lord Mountmorres’s History of the Principal Transactions in the Irish Parliament from 1634 to 1666, published in 1792. Hooker, describing the seating of Members in the House of Commons, says:
Upon the lower row on both sides the Speaker, sit such personages as be of the King’s Privy Counsel, or of his Chief Officers; but as for any other, none claimeth, or can claim, any place, but sitteth as he cometh, saving that on the right hand of the Speaker next beneath the said Counsels, the Londoners and the citizens of York do sit, and so in order should sit all the citizens accordingly.
It will be noticed that the representatives of York as well as those of London sat, according to Hooker, on the Front Bench to the right of the Speaker. Probably the privilege was conferred upon London and York as being the first and second cities of the Kingdom. But it seems clear that the privilege was not at first confined merely to the opening day of a new Parliament, but was exercised at every sitting of the House of Commons. The only other authoritative statement on this subject which I have found is in Oldfield’s Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland, published in 1816. The passage is as follows: “It (York City) sends two Members to Parliament, who are chosen by the freemen in general, and who enjoy the privilege of sitting in their scarlet gowns next the Members for London on the Privy Councillors’ bench on the first day of the meeting of every new Parliament.” In 1910, the then representatives of York, A. Rowntree and John Butcher, with a view to asserting this privilege in the same manner as it is asserted by the representatives of the City of London, laid the facts before Mr. Speaker Lowther. After a full consideration of the matter he gave it as his opinion that, assuming the right to have once existed, it must be considered, in the absence of any evidence of having been used in modern times, to have lapsed, and could not now be properly claimed or exercised.
5
On the morning of the day that the new Parliament meets for business—the day on which the King’s Speech is read—the corridors, vaults and cellars of the Palace of Westminster are searched to see that all is well with the building and safe for the King, Lords and Commons to assemble within it—a ceremony (for it is now only that) which is repeated on the opening day of every session. It recalls the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes to blow up the Parliament in 1605.
The Commons possess but one memento of Guy, that most notorious of all anti-parliamentarians. In a glass case in the Members’ Library may be seen a long, narrow key with a hinge in the centre for folding it up—so that it might be carried more conveniently in the pocket—which was found on Fawkes when he was captured. It was the key to the cellar of gunpowder extending under the House of Lords, though it was really part of an adjoining empty house which the conspirators had taken for their purpose. The custom of searching the Houses of Parliament is popularly supposed to date from the Gunpowder Plot, but it did not commence until eighty-five years later. According to a document preserved in the House of Lords, an anonymous warning received in 1690 by the Marquess of Carmarthen, setting forth, “There is great cause to judge that there is a second Gunpowder Plot, or some other such great mischief, designing against the King and Parliament by a frequent and great resort of notorious ill-willers at most private hours to the house of one Hutchinson in the Old Palace Yard, Westminster, situate very dangerous for such purpose,” led to a thorough examination of the buildings, and though nothing was then found, from that time to this the search appears to have been regularly made year after year.
The search party consists of twelve Yeomen of the Guard from the Tower in all the picturesque glory of their Tudor uniforms, accompanied by representatives of the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Office of Works, and the two police inspectors of the Houses of Lords and Commons. They tramp through the miles of corridors and lobbies, looking carefully into every nook and corner, and down in the equally extensive basements they examine everything with the utmost minuteness, going among gas pipes, steam pipes, hot-water pipes, electric-light conductors, to make sure that no explosives have been deposited there. When the search was first ordered, years and years ago, the Yeomen of the Guard were directed to carry lanterns to light their way through the dark passages. The corridors and cellars are now flooded with electric light. But the search party, still obeying the old order, march along swinging their lanterns. And still the solemn function ends up with service of cake and wine to the old Beefeaters, and the drinking of long life to the King, with a hip-hip hurrah! Only in one respect is there a departure from the old procedure. At one time it was customary, when the inspection was over, for the Lord Great Chamberlain to send a mounted soldier with the message “All’s well” to the Sovereign. The mounted soldier no longer rides post-haste to the King at Buckingham Palace; but every year the Vice-Chamberlain lets his Majesty know, by private wire, that everything is ready for his coming to meet the Lords and Commons in the House of Lords to announce from the Throne the business for which he has summoned Parliament to meet.