2025 also saw the 1832-68 Commons project take on a new PhD student, in a similar collaborative PhD partnership to those we have previously run with the University of Warwick (Dr Seth Thevoz) and the Institute of Historical Research (Dr Martin Spychal). The successful candidate was Megan Hall. She is now working at the University of Sheffield on a fascinating study exploring the experiences of 19^th century Irish MPs.

Many of our Victorian Commons posts in 2025 explored themes beyond the remit of the MP biographies and constituency histories we write for the 1832-68 project. Kathryn Rix continued her research into the reporting of parliamentary debates, showing how growing demands for accurate reporting led to major changes in the reporters’ gallery, as famously used by a young Charles Dickens. She also described the often-misunderstood role of Hansard and modifications to both the temporary House of Commons and Charles Barry’s new Victorian Palace. At one point in the 1850s a brand-new roof even had to be rebuilt to improve acoustics.

Martin Spychal, meanwhile, extended his work on the first Black MP to represent a Scottish constituency. He investigated Peter McLagan’s complex heritage and extraordinary wealth as the son of a Demerara slave owner and an enslaved woman. This new series of articles was complemented by a one-day workshop held jointly with Joe Cozens at The National Archives, involving scholars of slavery and colonialism. More posts in this series will follow.

Alongside this political ‘first’, Naomi Lloyd-Jones offered a memorable ‘last’ with her account of the last known political duel involving MPs. One of the combatants was the noted ‘pistoleer’ George Smythe MP (1818-1857), later 7th Viscount Strangford and 2nd Baron Penshurst, who was also notorious for getting a daughter of the earl of Orford pregnant but refusing to marry her. His adversary was his fellow MP for Canterbury Frederick Romilly, with whom he had fallen out over election arrangements. Their exchange of shots in a wood in 1852 captured the attention of the national press and was widely ridiculed, helping both MPs get defeated at the next election.

Electoral corruption is a standard feature in all our research on 19^th century politics. Anyone thinking there was little left to say, however, should read Naomi’s post about the murky world of behind-the-scenes dealing in election petitions. This was especially revealing about the understudied practice of party agents ‘pairing off’ or ‘swapping’ challenges against recently elected MPs accused of bribery or malpractice. This ‘secret’ dealing in corruption allegations between the parties seems to have become rife before the reform of the whole election petition system in 1868. The changing nature of corruption also featured strongly in Kathryn Rix’s post comparing the practices and culture of the 1835 and 1865 general elections – an important reminder that adjustments to the UK’s electoral system were ongoing and not just confined to landmark Reform Acts.

Changes to the electorate between the 1832 and 1867 Reform Acts formed the basis of another article by Martin Spychal, drawing on research undertaken for his recent book. Taking into account the anomalies caused by plural voters, multiple qualifications and inconsistencies in the way ‘returns’ were compiled, this post showed how the large variations in the levels of adult male enfranchisement across the UK’s constituencies narrowed significantly from 1832 to the 1860s. Again this showed that the first reformed electoral system was far from ‘fixed’.

Another type of change was explored in Philip Salmon’s post examining the work of the chairman of ways and means. It was during the 19^th century that this key position in the Commons evolved into its recognisably modern form. The character and impartiality of the men appointed altered significantly. Early 19^th century officeholders – among them a crop of slave owners and fraudsters – were gradually replaced by a series of increasingly high calibre administrators. In 1853 the chairman also began to act as deputy speaker, a move reflected in the growing tendency for retirees to receive a peerage or even be promoted to the Speakership itself. One highlight here was the inclusion of a rare Victorian audio recording of Henry Cecil Raikes MP, the chair of ways and means from 1874-80.

Any idea that the changes outlined in all these posts increased the status or power of the Commons, however, was countered by an article by Philip examining the role and significance of the 19^th century House of Lords, based on a talk given in the River Room, House of Lords. As well as challenging the view that the Lords became subservient to the Commons in the 19^th century, this examined various attempts by Liberals, Radicals and even some Conservatives to reform the Lords. It also charted its perception as a legitimate alternative to the Commons in representing ‘popular opinion’ and the ‘will of the nation’ on key issues.

House of Lords reform, of course, is likely to be a topic that many commentators will be turning their attention to – historical and otherwise – during the new year. We will be continuing our research into 19th century parliamentary politics, MPs and elections, and look forward to sharing more highlights in 2026.

The seminar takes place on 28 October 2025, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

In 2024, the family of J H Whitley, former Speaker of the House of Commons, most generously gave two items to the Parliamentary Art Collection. These were a rosette attached to a medal from Gladstone’s 1884 reform campaign; and a broken chain with padlocks which had been passed down the generations and reputed to be a ‘suffragette chain’.

John Henry Whitley (1866-1935), known as ‘J H’, was Liberal MP for Halifax between 1900 and 1928. His first wife, Marguerita née Marchetti (1872-1925), was President of the Halifax Liberal Women’s Association; her father Guilio fought with Garibaldi in Italy before settling in the UK.

J H Whitley is best known today for giving his name to Whitley Councils, consultative councils between employers and workers, set up following a committee he chaired during the First World War. Whitley Councils continue today in the public sector. In Parliament, he was elected Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means in 1910 and then Chairman of Ways and Means, and therefore also Deputy Speaker, from 1910 to 1921.

As Speaker between 1921 and 1928 he oversaw the decorative scheme for St Stephen’s Hall. On retiring as Speaker, Whitley refused the customary peerage and went on to other public roles until his death in 1935. He married again in 1928 and his second wife, Helen née Clarke (1882-1981), had been a member of the British community in pre-revolutionary Russia.

Whitley was generally known to be a supporter of women’s suffrage, but this had not been researched in detail until I began to investigate the ‘suffragette chain’. As Deputy Speaker, and then Speaker, Whitley had to be politically neutral, of course; and yet office holders have their own personal opinions, and sometimes these may influence political events.

This image is from a report into all Liberal MPs’ attitudes on suffrage from the papers of David Lloyd George, which shows Whitley as a supporter of the first Conciliation Bill in 1910. He expressed support for married women in particular having the vote a year later; and made it clear in 1913 that he had not changed his mind. The Conciliation Bills were unsuccessful cross-party suffrage bills between 1910 and 1912 which would have given a limited measure of women’s suffrage. As private members’ bills they stood little chance of success without government backing.

The Speaker during the years of militant activism before the First World War was James William Lowther, an opponent of women’s suffrage. Lowther had to respond to various suffragette protests in the Palace of Westminster, including at least two known to involve chains. However, Lowther became most infamous in suffrage history for a controversial procedural ruling which scuppered a women’s suffrage amendment to a government bill in 1913. If Whitley had been in the chair, this may not have happened.

In one of history’s ironies, Lowther went on to (reluctantly) chair the Speaker’s Conference on Electoral Reform during the First World War, which under his leadership recommended a measure of votes for women, implemented in the 1918 Representation of the People Act. The Act gave the parliamentary vote to women aged 30 and over who met a property qualification. The battle for equal franchise went on in Parliament for the next ten years. During this time Lowther took the opportunity to scupper another women’s suffrage bill through a Speaker’s ruling in 1920. He stood down as Speaker in 1921, when he was elevated to the House of Lords as Viscount Ullswater.

In 1924 the Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin made a pledge on equal franchise that his party ‘would if returned to power propose that the matter be referred to a Conference of all political Parties on the lines of the Ullswater Committee’. The Conservatives were elected and in due course Baldwin asked Whitley if he would chair another Speaker’s conference. Whitley refused, much to the relief of most of the Cabinet, who wanted to avoid discussion of wider electoral reform issues.

Despite strong opposition led by Winston Churchill, the Cabinet finally agreed to support equal franchise in 1927 and the 1928 Equal Franchise Act was passed the following year. Whitley oversaw all its stages in the Commons, standing down as Speaker shortly before it achieved royal assent in July 1928. It’s impossible to be sure, but it’s entirely possible that the ‘suffragette chain’ had remained in the Speaker’s Office all these years, until the issue received closure and this suffrage-sympathetic Speaker took it home as a retirement souvenir of his long parliamentary career.

The seminar takes place on 28 October 2025, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

MT

Some of this material was first presented by Mari Takayanagi at ‘Breaking the chains: Women’s suffrage and Parliament from the time of J.H. Whitley’, the 12th annual J H Whitley lecture at the University of Huddersfield on 17 October 2024. This year’s lecture will be given by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, on 30 October 2025.

Mari would like to credit Beverley Cook, Curator of Social and Working History at the London Museum; Kathryn Rix, Assistant Editor at the History of Parliament; and Elizabeth Hallam Smith, academic historian and archives consultant, for their assistance with research on the ‘suffragette chain’.

Further reading:

J. Hargreaves, K. Laybourn & R. Toye (eds.), Liberal Reform and Industrial Relations: J.H. Whitley (1866-1935), Halifax Radical and Speaker of the House of Commons (2018).

M. Takayanagi, Votes for Women and the Speaker’s Conference on Electoral Reform 1916-17. History of Parliament blog (2017).

M. Takayanagi, ‘Women and the Vote: The Parliamentary Path to Equal Franchise, 1918–28’, Parliamentary History, 37:1 (2018).

The seminar takes place on 6 May 2025, between 5:30 and 6.30 p.m. It will be hosted online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

There are many ceremonial traditions associated with the Speaker of the House of Commons, but in most cases their origins are obscure.

One thing known for certain is that in 1794 the Speaker acquired an official residence at Westminster for the first time. Speaker Henry Addington was granted a large townhouse within the precincts of the Palace of Westminster, and his successors continued to occupy it until the old Palace was ravaged by fire in 1834. 

My paper for the IHR Parliaments, Politics and People seminar on 6 May explores the political impact of this first Speaker’s House, explaining how successive Speakers used it to support their official duties.

In particular, it demonstrates that the Speaker’s House facilitated political sociability, both formal and informal. It argues that the facilities provided by the house facilitated the continuing development of the Speaker’s role, and the growth of their political stature. 

For more on Speaker’s House you can read Murray’s short article ‘‘A palace within a Palace’: an introduction to the Speaker’s House’ here.

Dr Murray Tremellen graduated from the University of York with a PhD in History of Art in 2023. His interdisciplinary research explored the history of the first Speaker’s House from both political and architectural perspectives.

His wider interests span eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century architecture. He has also published research on the architecture of the Southern Railway. Since completing his PhD, Murray has worked as Curator of Social History at York Museums Trust. 

The seminar takes place on 6 May 2025, between 5:30 and 6.30 p.m. It will be hosted online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

The history of this role – essentially a ‘chair’ of all committees that were not ‘select’ but included all MPs – can be traced to the 17th century, when Parliament’s feuds with the monarch created a need for committees overseeing the nation’s expenditure (supply) and taxation (ways and means) to be chaired by someone independent of the Speaker and not too close to the monarch. The ‘chair of supply and ways and means’, as they became known, presided over the Commons when chancellors of the exchequer outlined their spending, funding and borrowing proposals, including the issue of exchequer bills, in what was effectively a ‘budget’. They also chaired all other committees ‘of the whole House’ and were responsible for sending messages and bills to the House of Lords.

By the end of the 18^th century the wars with America and France had created unprecedented challenges for the nation’s finances, elevating the management of these committees to a new significance. The position attracted a salary for the first time in 1800, when the Speaker Henry Addington, soon to become prime minister, helped his cash-strapped brother-in-law Charles Bragge secure an annual income of £1,200 once in the post.

Partisan and family-based nominations like this were not unusual. Following the introduction of salaries, impecunity quickly began to feature alongside nepotism in deciding many appointments. The selection process in the Commons, like that of the Speaker, occasionally became highly charged, with ministers and opposition backing different candidates. The disputes over the election of Stephen Rumbold Lushington as chairman in 1810, or the reappointment in 1826 of James Brogden following his involvement in a financial scandal, were overtly partisan. Nor were chairs always as ‘impartial’ or ‘non-partisan’ in carrying out their duties as they officially claimed to be. Lushington went out of his way to try and promote his ‘character for impartiality’, but this did not stop him expressing his Ultra-Protestant hostility to Catholic emancipation while chairing Commons committees on the issue.

Victorian changes

One of the most striking expansions in the role of the chairman involved private bills and legislation. The latest edition of How Parliament Works notes that the ‘vast majority’ of laws passed by Parliament ‘and by far the more important, are public’. Throughout the 19th and early 20^th century, however, exactly the opposite was true. Not only did ‘private’ acts of Parliament (not to be confused with private members’ bills) completely transform the physical environment and create Britain’s modern infrastructure – legalising the construction of railways, canals, tramways, docks, sewers, roads, bridges, museums, parks, and essential utilities such as water, gas, and electricity (to name but a few) – but they also outnumbered ‘public’ acts by a factor of more than two to one well into the 20th century (see figure 1 below).

By 1840 the business of private bills, the activity that many diligent Victorian MPs spent the bulk of their time on, was in urgent need of reform. The Lords had already begun to streamline their private bill procedures, leaving the Commons to catch up. In 1840 Ralph Bernal, chairman of ways and means from 1831 until 1841, agreed to take charge of all unopposed private bills, a role inherited and then expanded by his successor Thomas Greene, whose salary was accordingly increased to £1,500.

The appointment of Greene, known for his expertise on procedure and his impartiality, marked an important turning point in the professionalisation and expansion of the chairman’s role. In 1847 he assumed management of all private bills, a huge task given the railway boom of the 1840s, and one which continued to grow as the procedures regulating private legislation evolved. In 1865 the chairman also took over responsibility for presiding over the court of referees, the committee of MPs responsible for deciding the rights of petitioners to challenge private bills.

Another dramatic expansion of the chairman’s responsibilities occurred in 1853, when resolutions were passed enabling the postholder to stand in for the Speaker during temporary absences. This backup role as a ‘deputy Speaker’ was subsequently formally enshrined in the 1855 Deputy Speaker Act and is still in force today.

These additional duties in the second half of the century placed increasing demands on the individuals appointed as chairmen, who had to wait until 1902 to get their own deputy. Average tenure in the post was nearly six years between 1801 and 1852, with James Brodgen and Ralph Bernal clocking up an impressive thirteen and fifteen years respectively. By contrast, the longest length of service between 1852 and 1895 was only seven years, with the average tenure lasting just over three and a half years. Only one chairman in the first half of the 19^th century received a peerage, but five were ennobled for their work in the second half, reflecting the growing importance of this role in the practical operation of Parliament.

19^th century chairmen

Early 19^th century appointees included men such as Henry Alexander, in post from 1801-6. He effectively inherited the role as a sop to the new Irish MPs, having served in the same post in the Irish House of Commons before its abolition. ‘Not the best of all possible chairmen’, he was often absent. His stand-in and successor Benjamin Hobhouse, meanwhile, was a Bristol merchant and shareholder in the Whitbread brewing dynasty, who had purchased his seat in Parliament for £4,000. He only lasted a year as a full-time chair before his health gave out.

Other postholders included Richard Wharton, unseated as an MP for bribing freeman voters in Durham in 1804; Stephen Lushington, who had purchased a seat in Parliament to help get his father-in-law General Harris a peerage; and Robert Peel’s nominee and close friend Sir Alexander Grant, the owner of 700 enslaved people in Jamaica, who famously tried to buy the ‘pocket borough’ of Gatton for the astonishing sum of £130,000 in 1830. The career of Grant’s predecessor James Brodgen, a financial speculator, ended in public disgrace. Having served as chair for thirteen years (1813-26), he was forced to quit after being embroiled in a financial scandal involving fraudulent dividends in one of his mining companies.

Later appointments included the Whig nominee Ralph Bernal, in post for fifteen years, 1831-41 and 1847-52. It was on his watch, the longest of the 19^th century, that the position began to evolve into its more recognisably modern form. Also a slaveowner, Bernal narrowly missed out on becoming the Whig candidate for the Speakership in 1835, in part because of his noisy complaints about ‘destitution’ for slave owners following the abolition of slavery. Bernal’s procedural expertise, though, was widely respected and had a profound influence on the calibre of those selected to succeed him. His tendency to fall asleep, however, made him an easy target for satirists (see below).

Many of the ensuing postholders in the 19^th century served as ministers at some point, reflecting a steady transition to talent-based appointments. Henry Fitzroy held junior office under Aberdeen before his appointment as chair in 1855. No-one seemed to notice the irony of him being a four-times great-grandson of Charles II. Like Bernal he also came close to being nominated for the Speakership in 1857. John George Dodson, who served a seven year stint from 1865-72, subsequently held senior ministerial posts under Gladstone and was rewarded with a peerage in 1884. Henry Cecil Raikes, the chair of ways and means from 1874 until 1880, became postmaster-general under Lord Salisbury. His lasting claim to fame, however, was to be recorded by an early Edison phonograph in 1888, making him one of the first Victorian politicians whose voice can be heard today. (Click here to listen)

The intellectual calibre increasingly required for the post was ultimately reflected in the appointment of two noted academics, both of whom ended up with a peerage. The Indian-born Lyon Playfair, a professor of chemistry and pioneer of modern encryption techniques, served from 1880-83, before becoming a Liberal whip in the House of Lords as Baron Playfair. Leonard Courtney, a leading advocate of proportional representation and author of books on the UK constitution, was in post from 1886 until 1893. His extraordinary efficiency also marked him out for the Speakership in 1895, only for failing eyesight to scupper his claims.

The long-anticipated transition from chair of ways and means to Speaker was finally achieved by James Lowther. In post as chair from 1895 to 1905, he went on to become the longest serving Speaker in modern history, from 1905 until 1921, when he was elevated to the Lords as Viscount Ullswater.

PS

Robert Harley, Speaker of the Commons, secretary of state, earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer and, ultimately, lord treasurer and de facto leader of the government died on 24 May 1724. Just weeks later, on 5 June, Dr Henry Sacheverell died, infamous for his High Church diatribes against Nonconformists and the ‘false brethren’ in government who protected them.

Harley and Sacheverell’s careers were closely intertwined in the year 1710, but they were almost polar opposites. Sacheverell was High Church and ultra Tory; Harley of a Dissenting background and a moderate ‘Country’ Whig. Sacheverell was an outspoken, impetuous firebrand; Harley a subtle, political operator, who gained his moniker ‘Robin the Trickster’ because of his tendency always to hold his cards very close to his chest and to keep his opponents guessing.

By the beginning of 1710, however, both men were facing crises. Harley had been dismissed from his post in February 1708 as the government under Sidney Godolphin, earl of Godolphin, turned increasingly to the ‘Junto’ Whigs for support. From the last years of William III there had developed a strong enmity between the Junto and Harley, who thus found himself at odds with his erstwhile colleague Godolphin. Conflicts between them increased until the queen was persuaded to dismiss Harley. He was still out of office at the beginning of 1710 but looking for a way to strike back against his former colleague.

Matters were worse for Sacheverell, for on 9 Jan. 1710 he was impeached by the Commons for high crimes and misdemeanours, as he had finally gone too far in his anti-Dissenter vitriol. Back in 1702 he had already exhorted his listeners to ‘hang out the bloody flag and banner of defiance’ against those who refused to conform to the Church of England. Now, in a sermon of 5 November 1709 commemorating deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot, Sacheverell lumped Catholics and Protestant Dissenters together as equal threats to the constitution and the Church of England. He insisted that at the ‘Glorious Revolution’, the English people had not resisted against James II legitimately, as John Locke would have it, but had followed the Church’s teachings on non-resistance and passive obedience. Thus, the consequences of the Revolution pushed through by the Whigs, particularly the 1689 Toleration Act, were illegitimate and ought to be rescinded.

To Sacheverell, toleration had allowed the growth of ‘such monsters and vipers in our bosom, that scatter their pestilence at noon-day’. All this invective was disturbing enough for the Whigs in government, who relied heavily on nonconformist support. But it went further, for the sermon’s title, The Perils of False Brethren, made clear that Sacheverell was accusing the ministers who countenanced Dissent of insidiously betraying the Church of England from the very heart of government.

To the ministry’s horror, the sermon was a runaway best-seller when published in winter 1709, selling over 100,000 copies. They decided impeachment was the best way to silence Sacheverell, and charges were presented to the House of Lords on 12 January 1710. The subsequent state trial in Westminster Hall became the main focus of attention in the capital between 27 February and 10 March. It did not go to plan for the prosecution, as Sacheverell, playing the persecuted martyr, became a popular hero, and for two days from 28 February London was convulsed by riots in his favour. Despite the disturbances ‘beyond doors’, on 20 March the Lords voted him guilty by 69 votes to 52. However, while the government wanted him imprisoned and incapacitated from preaching, through the queen’s intervention the House resolved only to ban him from preaching for three years.

Sacheverell’s unexpected popularity was a harbinger of the Tory support the Whigs would face at the next general election, which by statute would take place in 1711. Further indications were not promising, for on 21 March, a motion in the Lords to prohibit Sacheverell from receiving any clerical promotion during his ban was lost by a majority of nine. That preferment came quickly enough, for in May he was presented to a living in Shropshire. He made a slow, triumphal progress through eight counties and twelve parliamentary boroughs on his way to his new rectory, feted enthusiastically throughout.

Harley saw his moment and encouraged the queen’s long-held dislike of the Junto. Throughout the summer of 1710 she rid herself of her Whig ministers, culminating in Godolphin’s dismissal on 8 August. On 21 September she capped off her campaign by dissolving Parliament and calling for an early general election. In the October elections the Tories won an overwhelming majority, inflicting a crushing defeat on the Whigs. Tory numbers were far more than Harley would have wished, and there would always be tension between him and the ultra Tories who had come into Parliament in Sacheverell’s wake.

As soon as they returned to power in 1715 the Whigs impeached Oxford and his associates. This did not go according to plan either and, after spending two years incarcerated in the Tower, Oxford was acquitted on 1 July 1717. Weakened from his confinement, he only lasted a few more years after his release, predeceasing by only a few weeks Sacheverell, the man whose own impeachment had contributed to Oxford’s rise to the premiership.

CGDL

Suggested Readings
Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Dr Sacheverell (1973)
Brian Cowan, ed., The State Trial of Doctor Henry Sacheverell (Parliamentary History: Text and Studies 6) (2012)
Brian Hill, Robert Harley: Speaker, Secretary of State and Premier Minister (1988)

Harley’s family were proud of their roots as an old marcher family based in Herefordshire since the 14th century. More recently, they had embraced nonconformist Protestantism, so after a period of home tuition, Harley went on to be schooled at two famous dissenting establishments: first under Samuel Birch at Shilton in Oxfordshire, and then in London at Monsieur Foubert’s French academy just off Piccadilly. He was a precocious, if sometimes lazy, child. When he was just seven it was said ‘Robin has a good memory and learns apace’ though two years later his mother was concerned at his tendency to socialize with the servants. To this she attributed ‘a strange clownish speech and behaviour’. [Hill, 4-5] The family’s deeply felt Protestant faith also left its mark on him and around the same time that Lady Harley was worrying about him clowning around, he also showed signs of religious anxieties, fretting in particular about the unforgivable ‘sin against the Holy Ghost’. [Hill, 5; HMC Portland, iii. 317]

At the age of ten Harley’s home tutoring ended and he was packed off to Birch’s school, where he remained until 1680. On 28 August 1671 he sent his father, Sir Edward, his first letter, hoping in time to send him ‘fairer fruites than these first beginings’. [HMC Portland] He was far from alone there. His younger brother, Edward, went with him, and they were later joined by another brother. At least three more future parliamentarian colleagues were also in the school with him: Simon Harcourt, Thomas Trevor, and Thomas Rowney. Under Birch, Harley acquired some knowledge of Classics, though it was a disappointment to his parents that Birch was not proficient in instructing his pupils to dance. [Cliffe] Harley’s instruction was supplemented by tips by his father, advising in one letter that his son read his Greek lexicon and Erasmus’ Adages. [HMC Portland] One lesser-known detail of Birch’s career – a former Parliamentarian officer, and ejected minister, who had been taken under Lord Wharton’s wing – was that he had clearly owned a large hunting dog, kitted out with a metal collar engraved with Birch’s name, address and coat of arms. The collar was subsequently discovered in Somerset.

Sending the boys to Birch had been Lady Harley’s idea, but that theirs was an affectionate family is indicated by her impatience come December 1671 for them to be home again for the holidays. A ‘charet’ [chariot] was dispatched to pick them up and Lady Harley apologized to her husband; ‘if I am a little impatient I am excusable being at the longest I ever thought of without seeing them’. [HMC Portland]

By 1678 Harley’s parents were clearly beginning to think of the next stages of his education. Oxford appears to have been considered, but in October Sir Edward wrote to his son asking him to inform Birch that it was no longer necessary to secure him lodgings there: ‘I have altered my thoughts therein’. The change of plan was the more poignant, as when Harley was eventually raised to the peerage, the title he took was that of Oxford, and as the preamble to his patent emphasized, it was particularly appropriate for such a learned person to be made earl of the university city.

By the summer of 1681 Harley was established in London. The same year, he entered Monsieur Foubert’s Academy, where he seems to have enjoyed some fairly raucous living among his fellow students. However, he also seems to have been busy acting as his father’s agent. There were frequent letters from Sir Edward enquiring after French Protestant exiles (Huguenots), pointing out that he was happy to accommodate them in Herefordshire at very favourable rates. Harley was also supposed to be finishing his education, though, and a year on Lady Harley returned to the theme of her eldest son’s perceived laziness. Writing to her husband, she reported that she had been advised a year was quite long enough to perfect everything learned in an academy: ‘I hope Robin does not lose his time’. [HMC Portland]

Harley’s period of formal education ended when he quit Foubert’s establishment in December 1681. His political education was, however, only just beginning. If he had already taken on some of the qualities later associated with him as a Member of Parliament, he quickly acquired some of his other key characteristics. A busy maker of notes himself, we can perhaps see where some of this came from.

First, from his father, who was accustomed to send around detailed reports of political happenings to the family. Second, in February 1684, an unnamed correspondent sent to Harley just such a list as he was later to compile himself by the bucket-load. It opened with the names of the sureties for a group of lords who had just been bailed and then went on to deliver a detailed exposition of the comings and going at Court: who was in and who was out. In the summer of 1688 it was Harley advising his father of ‘hot talk’ of a new Parliament, rather than the other way around, and he wrote of dining with Lord Chandos and talking ‘freely’ of elections. By September he was recounting to his father details of which candidates were likely to stand where and who was thought sure of being elected.

At the outset of the Convention Parliament in January, though not yet a member himself, Harley was to be found writing to his father from ‘the door of the House of Commons’, filling him in on events at Westminster. In April, his father returned the favour by writing to his son passing on the news of his election for the Cornish borough of Tregony thanks to family intervention and the patronage of the local borough-mongers, the Boscawens. Sir Edward concluded the dispatch with a prayer that God might:

Enable you with every good and perfect gift, that you may with godly sincerity be faithful and serviceable in this great occasion.

HMC Portland, iii. 436

Quickly employed by the Commons as a committee-man, Harley would in time serve as Speaker, as Secretary of State and ultimately as Lord High Treasurer.

RDEE

Further Reading:
Trevor Cliffe, Puritan Gentry Besieged, 1650-1700 (2002)
Brian W. Hill, Robert Harley, Speaker, Secretary of State and Premier Minister (1988)
Historical Manuscripts Commission: Papers of the Duke of Portland, vol. III.

Betty Boothroyd will go down in parliamentary history as the first woman to be elected Speaker of the Commons – she was also the first Speaker to be elected from the ranks of the opposition. Widely considered a kind, fair but tough speaker, when she stood down in 2000 she received plaudits across the House for her handling of the role. In her interview for our oral history project, she reflected on how it could feel:

Boothroyd was born in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. The family often struggled financially as her father faced significant periods of unemployment, but both of her parents were Trade Unionists. Boothroyd remembered being taken by her mother to Labour party women’s section meetings as a young girl, helping to raise money for the party. This included trips to ‘the most marvellous rallies’ in the larger Yorkshire cities on the weekend where ‘the great stars of Westminster came: Attlee, Jim Griffiths, Antony Greenwood, Aneurin Bevan and his wife Jennie Lee.’ Throughout her interview she described a constant interest in politics, but also a reluctance to put herself forward at first and a lack of confidence early on.

In 1947 Boothroyd put aside her good secretarial education to move to London and pursue a career as a dancer – much to her father’s displeasure. She remembered her mother persuaded him to let Boothroyd ‘get it out of her system’: something that quickly happened. Missing home she returned and combined secretarial jobs with Labour League of Youth work. In the late 1950s she moved back to London to work for the Labour party, and later as a parliamentary secretary to MPs Barbara Castle and Geoffrey de Freitas. The early 1960s she spent in the US, working on John F. Kennedy’s Presidential campaign and later for a US Congressman, but ‘the plan was always to come back’. She described this experience as reinforcing her admiration for the British parliamentary system.

Meanwhile, Boothroyd was trying to become an MP herself. Like many women of her generation she found it hard to be selected for a winnable seat. From the late 1950s she stood in multiple constituencies; each election involved getting to know a new constituency, and preparing three different speeches for election night depending on the outcome of the election. When she was finally elected in 1973 for West Bromwich she had been in tears earlier that night, convinced she had lost again. She held the successor seat – West Bromwich West – until she stood down in 2000.

Boothroyd described taking to life as an MP ‘like a duck to water’ – her previous experience working in Westminster now invaluable. She began by doing most of her own secretarial work. This prior experience didn’t stop her fears over her maiden speech, however:

Aside from her role in Parliament, Boothroyd soon joined the whips’ office and became a member of the European parliament; a period she didn’t enjoy due to the considerable demands on her time divided between Brussels, London, and her constituency back in the Midlands. She described always having two suitcases made up on the spare bed, and finding it simply exhausting.

She continued to work her way up through the Commons, sitting on the Speakers’ panel of Chairmen, meaning much of her time was spent chairing various bill committees. In 1987 the then Speaker, Bernard Weatherill, asked her to stand for election as Deputy Speaker. She described enjoying this position but ‘all you had to do really was sit in the chair’, as important decisions were taken by the Speaker beforehand. When Weatherill stood down she took some convincing to stand as Speaker herself: ‘it wasn’t being female that I was worried about, it was this lack of confidence: could I do it? I might let the side down, I might let down everything I believe in if I wasn’t up to it.’ Boothroyd had cross-party support for her election, the Conservative John Biffen nominated her for the position. ‘I decided in my own mind I would go for it …. If I lost I wanted to lose well, I didn’t want it to be a disaster.’

Throughout her time as Speaker she developed a reputation for being tough, one she put down to the fact that she held high standards over the use of language in the House. She recalled the time she banned DUP leader Iain Paisley from Parliament for a ten days after he called another MP a liar in the Chamber. In the end Paisley thanked her for all the press coverage he got from the incident and the pair became good friends!

Throughout her interview she described herself as a ‘parliamentarian, not a politician’. She also reflected back on her life, stating clearly that she had made a choice not to have a family to pursue her career, and that decision had given her ‘the most interesting and wonderful life.’ It is certainly one that will keep its place in the history books.

Since the announcement of her death yesterday the tributes have come flooding in across the political spectrum, with more due in the Commons today. The current Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, called her ‘groundbreaking’, and by becoming the first female Speaker she had ‘certainly broke that glass ceiling with panache’. Labour’s Alistair Campbell paid tribute to her as ‘one of the kindest, wisest, most loving and loveable women you could ever wish to know’; whilst former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson, described her simply as ‘magnificent’.

EP

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As its name suggests, the direction of the ‘Plot’ was attributed to the notoriously aggressive Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester. From 1716 he was the Pretender’s principal agent in England (not that he was necessarily entirely happy with the role). He was joined in its direction by a number of Jacobite peers sitting in the House of Lords. Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, William North, 6th Baron North (and 2nd Baron Grey), and the Irish peers Charles Butler, earl of Arran, and Charles Boyle, 4th earl of Orrery, had all been military officers, diplomats or statesmen during the reign of Queen Anne, but by 1720 were dedicated servants of the Pretender.

In the last days of 1721 Atterbury, Strafford, North, Arran and Sir Henry Goring pledged themselves to proceed with plans for a Stuart restoration formulated at the Jacobite court at St Germain-en-Laye. They would raise domestic uprisings in England during the general election scheduled for spring 1722, while St Germain would send over a small band of troops from Spain in support. The conspirators quickly became disunited, though. Orrery (who did not sign the letter to St Germain) insisted on the need for a more sizeable foreign invasion force, while North, Strafford and Arran were confident they could personally lead a domestic popular revolt. The plot, or what soon became separate individual plots, began to unravel and its timing had to be postponed to the late summer.

The situation grew worse for the plotters from 19 April 1722, after the death of Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland. As first lord of the Treasury in 1720-21, Sunderland had been deeply implicated in the bribery that allowed the South Sea Company to inflate its ‘Bubble’ and, after it had burst, he had negotiated with Atterbury and the Tories for their support during the parliamentary investigations.

As long as Sunderland had influence Atterbury could be relatively confident of being ‘screened’ from government interference. With him gone, though, Robert Walpole was likely to take the reins of government. Virulently anti-Jacobite, Walpole took action quickly when he learned from the French court, then in alliance with Britain, that the Jacobites were making military preparations on the continent. The correspondence between the English Jacobites and St Germain was intercepted, opened and read. One of the decipherers working on these coded letters was a clerical colleague of Atterbury, Edward Willes, who, after his codebreaking days were over, served as bishop of Bath and Wells. Couriers were taken up and interrogated. One suspect inadvertently revealed Atterbury as the principal addressee of the letters when she blithely chatted away about a little ‘spotted dog’ named Harlequin, which had been sent to Atterbury as a present for the bishop’s dying wife [HMC Portland, vii. 326].

The net was tightening on the Jacobite plotters, and after Goring successfully fled England on 23 August 1722, Atterbury was arrested the following day and sent to the Tower. There he proved ‘very boisterous’, and in one notorious incident scuffled with his gaoler, Colonel Williamson, ‘collared him, struck him, and threw him down’. A commentator thought it ‘pretty odd’ that Williamson would make public that he had been ‘beaten by a gouty bishop’ [HMC Portland, vii. 344].

Walpole’s government was selective in its targets when rounding up the Jacobites and investigating the conspiracy, owing in part to a lack of evidence to prove charges of treason. The principal victims were commoners, such as George Kelly and John Plunkett, both deprived of their estates. Christopher Layer, North’s lawyer and agent, was the only plotter executed, and even his sentence was continuously reprieved in the hope that he would turn king’s evidence. Orrery and North were arrested and imprisoned at about the same time as Atterbury, but proceedings against them were never commenced and they were both eventually discharged. Strafford was never even arrested and continued agitating against the government throughout 1722-23, while his colleagues languished in the Tower.

The government’s principal target was Atterbury, who already had a reputation as a disruptive troublemaker. Despite Atterbury’s forceful two-hour speech in his defence on 11 May, the House passed a bill of ‘pains and penalties’ against him four days later. While Layer, no longer useful as a potential witness, was executed shortly afterwards, Atterbury was allowed to go into exile. He died on the continent in 1732. Orrery, the nominal and ineffectual leader of a weakened Tory party, had died the previous year and North died in Spain in 1734, having converted to Catholicism and been commissioned an officer in the Spanish army. Strafford lasted until 1739, a Tory opponent to Walpole’s Whig ministry to the end. As he described himself in 1737, ‘he was bad with the last ministry, worse with this, and he did not doubt but he should be worse with the next’ [HMC Carlisle, 179]. By the end of the 1730s the Jacobite wing of the Tory party was hollowed out, and the party itself was left adrift until its next reshaping in the 1760s.

While the parliamentary proceedings of 1722-23 destroyed the Jacobites, and seriously damaged the larger Tory party by association, it only strengthened Walpole in his early years as prime minister. Arthur Onslow, the long-serving Speaker of the Commons, thought that the discovery and prosecution of the Jacobite plot was ‘the most fortunate and the greatest circumstance of Mr Walpole’s life. It fixed him with the King, and united for a time the whole body of Whigs to him, and gave him the universal credit of an able and vigilant Minister’ [HMC Onslow, 513].

CGDL

Further reading:

E. Cruickshanks and H. Erskine-Hill, The Atterbury Plot (2004)

G. V. Bennet, The Tory Crisis in Church and State, 1688-1730: The Career of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester (1976)

E. Cruickshanks, ‘Lord North, Christopher Layer and the Atterbury Plot, 1720-3’, in The Jacobite Challenge, ed. E. Cruickshanks and J. Black (1988)

The seminar takes place on 15 November 2022, between 5:30 and 7:00 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here

Nobody visiting the Palace of Westminster can fail to notice the lavish adornment of its corridors, ceilings and exteriors with coats of arms and heraldic devices. This attests to the long association between heraldry and political power. Both Parliament and heraldry first developed in the Middle Ages, although originally heraldry was an indicator of military service.

Coats of arms are personal property, granted by the Crown through either the College of Arms in London (pictured) or the Court of the Lord Lyon in Edinburgh. The Heralds of the College of Arms, particularly Garter King of Arms, also play a role in certain parliamentary ceremonial.

Arms can be inherited through the male line, although it is a common misconception that ‘family crests’ can be used by anyone with a particular surname, and there are laws governing the use and misuse of arms. The earliest coats of arms, such as those of the Magna Carta barons, bore simple, basic designs which did not necessarily have any particular significance. However, eventually coats of arms came to assume more meaning and became more elaborate. They can represent one’s family name, hometown, schooling, ancestors, hobbies or achievements.

As men in Parliament increasingly had to apply for arms, rather than inheriting them, the designs came to include symbols representing Parliament. Some rare early examples date from the 16^th and 17^th centuries, although it became much more common in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

The most widely-used parliamentary symbol in personal heraldry is the portcullis, which had different heraldic meanings over the centuries but became especially identified with Parliament after the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster. Shown here are the arms of John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon (1751-1838), showing portcullises, which appear on a House of Lords window.

Another common legislative symbol in heraldry is the mace. Starting in the 19^th century Speakers in particular have included maces on their arms, either granted while in office or after they retire and become peers. Pictured below are the arms of Speaker Charles Shaw-Lefevre (1794-1888), with maces on the supporters he was granted as Viscount Eversley.

Speakers’ arms are displayed in Speaker’s House and the need to maintain such commemorations created expectations that certain office-holders who lacked arms should apply for them. In some cases this prompted questions of who should pay, if arms were deemed an unavoidable part of holding certain offices similar to wigs, uniforms and robes. In 1915, for example, a new grant of personal arms from the College cost £76 while today they cost £7100.

As well as commemorative panels and windows in public buildings, politicians’ arms, like heraldry in general, were previously used in a wide range of ways. Personal arms could feature in election campaigning, on gifts from constituents or colleagues and on all manner of official documents.

During the 20^th century the changing social backgrounds of parliamentarians meant that fewer MPs came to Parliament having inherited arms. According to one source, 89 per cent of MPs had arms in 1867 but this had fallen to 20 percent by 1931. The cost was one factor in this decline, yet there was also increasingly a sense that heraldry was somewhat anachronistic. This view was more prevalent on the left, although some Labour politicians did adopt arms often reflecting trade union, co-operative or labouring backgrounds.

Nonetheless, the 20^th century saw a great expansion in the range of symbols used to represent Parliament in heraldry. The Black Rod, the Despatch Box, scrolls of parchment, red and green for the Lords and Commons chambers and even uniforms have all been included on arms granted to parliamentarians or officials. In several Commonwealth countries and dependent territories, Speakers have adopted arms depicting the mace of their legislative assemblies, adding to the richness of the heraldic record.

My forthcoming presentation to the Parliament, Politics and People seminar will discuss the use and decline of heraldry in public life before showcasing a selection of over 20 coats of arms, spanning 500 years, which commemorate parliamentary service and celebrate parliamentary traditions.

The seminar takes place on 15 November 2022, between 5:30 and 7:00 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here

Further reading

Heraldry Society, ‘Frequently Asked Questions about Heraldry‘ (2022)

D. Sutherland, ‘Arms and the Woman: The Heraldry of Women Parliamentarians’, The Coat of Arms, iii. (2020)

D. Sutherland, ‘Commonwealth Parliamentary Maces and their Symbolic Use on Coats of Arms‘, The Parliamentarian, ciii. (2022)

Speakers of the Commons in the seventeenth century were, though notionally elected by the House, effectively government appointees. At the beginning of a new Parliament, or whenever a vacancy arose through the speaker’s death, or his appointment to a different office (usually as a judge, for they were generally prominent lawyers), it was always a senior government official who was expected to propose the new speaker. Sometimes there would be some opposition, or at least a feeling of distaste for its choice, but it was rare that there was much of a dispute. The speaker was usually regarded as the king, or the queen’s man, who would do what they could to advance government business. They would always need to temper that, though, with the need to maintain the broad confidence of the House. A House that distrusted the speaker could become impossible to manage.

It is rare to find a document that records the discussion within government of who should be nominated. It’s the sort of discussion of personalities and tactics that is usually conducted in person, rather than by correspondence, and rarely minuted. But there is a note of a discussion held in 1672 by the inner circle of the king’s advisers, with the king present, in which they chewed over the question of who should take over the speakership of the Commons following the appointment of the previous speaker, Sir Edward Turnor, as a senior judge. Turnor had been speaker since 1661, in the Parliament which had been elected that year.

The parliament had already been in existence for longer than any other apart from the Long Parliament – the body that had fought and defeated Charles I in the Civil War. Elected about a year after the Restoration of the monarchy, it was thought of as still full of the royalist enthusiasm of that time; certainly Charles was reluctant to dissolve it, on the assumption that any new parliament was likely to reflect the huge decline in the popularity of the government that had taken place since then. Its members, though, were also regarded as keen supporters of the Church of England, and hostile to the quite large numbers of dissenters who wanted to be able to worship in their own chapels and meeting-houses, outside a religious framework that they regarded as ‘Popish’: the king himself was less committed to the Church, and even found the idea of greater religious freedom quite attractive – at least if it enabled him to give Catholics the same freedom. The king’s dilemma was worsened by his decision to wage war against the Dutch republic, in concert with King Louis XIV of France. He had tried to neutralise the discontent of those who felt that the Dutch – a strongly Protestant country – should be an ally, not an enemy by conceding in the 1672 Declaration of Indulgence a measure of toleration for dissenters. But that was unlikely to go down well in the House of Commons. And the Commons’ attitude towards the war was untested. The war had been started – deliberately – while parliament was adjourned; but sooner or later it was almost inevitable that the king would need to ask it for money, if he was to be able to continue fighting for long.

In these circumstances, every aspect of the management of a forthcoming session of parliament was going to be crucial. In November 1672, about three months before the meeting was expected, the inner circle – the so-called ‘Foreign Affairs Committee’ – met to consider the options. The meeting was minuted by the under-secretary of state, Sir Joseph Williamson, in his scrappy and barely legible handwriting. All agreed to start with that the best option was Robert Milward. A senior lawyer, a member of the Commons who had served in the chair in the committees of ways and means and supply, he was throroughly experienced and a safe pair of hands. He was already a key manager for the government in the House. The only problem was he didn’t want to do it. Milward was at the meeting, and he hastily told everyone that ‘by reasons of his indispositions of body’ he couldn’t do it. The speakership was a notoriously punishing job: he had to spend long periods in the chair, without being able to leave at all, even to answer ‘the usual calls of nature’ as a newspaper put it reporting a discussion on the provision of a deputy speaker a hundred years later. In the eighteenth century the problem was far worse, as the House was increasingly sitting far into the night. But it was bad enough in the 1670s.

The meeting in November 1672 struggled to find an alternative to Milward. Various of those present tried to persuade him, including both Thomas Osborne, the future earl of Danby, and the lord chancellor, the earl of Shaftesbury (an unusual pairing). Milward vehemently insisted that he could not do it: ‘before God by his great infirmities he cannot serve in that place’. One of the two secretaries of state, Lord Arlington, suggested that he might occupy the chair on a purely temorary basis. Milward, sensibly, was having none of it. They considered, and dismissed, several other options – Edward Thurland, Sir Thomas Meres, Sir John Maynard, and Edward Seymour. There was much to recommend all of them. But Meres and Seymour were not practising lawyers: both were powerful personalities, who might easily get out of hand. Meres, a great supporter of the Church, might ‘boggle the Declaration’, the king thought: he ‘loves his own opinion’. One official present responded that that was not a problem – ‘he’ll be of yours’. But those present at the meeting kept returning to what was probably the most obvious choice, Sir Job Charlton. Like Milward, Charlton was a Welsh judge, very experienced in the chair, having chaired the committee of privileges and elections and also the committee of ways and means. But there was a problem with Charlton: he was one of the strongest advocates of the Church of England in the Commons. He was unlikely to be much enamoured of the king’s latest policy on toleration of dissenters and the Declaration of Indulgence. Shaftesbury fretted about Charlton’s ‘zeal’ and ‘his own opinion against the king’s measures’; others weighed in complaining about Charlton’s ferocious temper. The other secretary of state, Henry Coventry, a friend and ally of Charlton’s, responded that Charlton would ‘submit to the king in this great conjuncture’.

It took another meeting to decide finally on Charlton; and Charlton, rather to everyone’s surprise, accepted. But Charlton’s encounter with the House when it finally met in February 1673 was a real baptism of fire. Before any other business was entered into, he had to deal with a torrent of complaints against the action of the lord chancellor in issuing writs for new elections before the House had met – generally regarded as a blatant attempt to manipulate the membership. Within ten days the speaker declared himself indisposed, and shortly after a letter of resignation of the office was read by the Clerk to the House. Did Charlton jump or was he pushed? Charlton’s illness was probably genuine, and his acceptance of the post probably a mistake. But it was widely assumed that he had been given some sort of payment for quitting. If so, it suggests that the king at least decided that the appointment had been a mistake too; though given the subsequent history of the session, in which the government spent weeks trying to defend the Declaration before abandoning it, it might have been better to have used Charlton to effect a more graceful climbdown than the one it eventually managed.

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