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I. Attendance in the House of Lords during the Reign of Henry VIII

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2010

Helen Miller
Helen Miller
Affiliation:
University College of North Wales
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Extract

In 1956 Professor Roskell, at the end of his discussion of the attendance of the lords in medieval parliaments, showed very briefly that attendances improved considerably during the reign of Henry VIII. More recently an attempt has been made to demonstrate a political significance in the use made by the Crown of the customary right of absent lords to nominate proctors to speak and vote for them in the House of Lords. The importance of the early sixteenth century for the development of Parliament seems to warrant another approach to the problem of attendance in the House of Lords during the reign of Henry VIII. So far the evidence has not been fully exploited nor have all the relevant questions been asked.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , 1967 , pp. 325 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1967

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References

1 Roskell, J. S., ‘The problem of the attendance of the lords in medieval parliaments’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xxix (1956), 197.Google Scholar

2 Snow, Vernon F., ‘Proctorial representation and conciliar management during the reign of Henry VIII’, Historical Journal, ix (1966).Google Scholar

3 A. F. Pollard, The Evolution of Parliament (2nd edn., 1926), p. 302. The list of those individually summoned to parliament survives in the Public Record Office for eight of the nine parliaments called by Henry VIII, either endorsed on the close roll (for the Parliaments of 1510, 1512, 1515, 1536 and 1542) or in the petty bag office (for the parliaments of 1538 and 1545) or both (for the Parliament of 1529). There is no extant list of summonses to the Parliament of 1523.

4 The only exception was the bishop of St Asaph, omitted from the list of those summoned to the Parliament of 1515; as the Journal of the House of Lords records him as present in this Parliament the omission of his name was probably a clerical error. In 1529 the writ of summons to Thomas Wolsey was sent to him as archbishop of York, bishop of Winchester and commendatarius of St Albans, reducing by one each the number of bishops and abbots summoned at this time.

5 In the fifteenth century the keeper of the spiritualities of a bishopric was usually the archbishop (Wedgwood, J. C., History of Parliament, Register (1938), p. lv)Google Scholar. But Wolsey as papal legate acted as keeper of the spiritualities of all bishoprics during vacancies (Pollard, A. F., Wolsey (1929), p. 173).Google Scholar

6 Except in the case of Wolsey the chancery clerks sent writs of summons even to those abbots who were also summoned as bishops, apparently making no attempt to identify any of the abbots by name.

7 Wedgwood, Register, p. 604, n. 4, thought it unlikely that Willoughby was summoned to the Parliament of 1504; no list of summonses to this Parliament survives.

8 Unless otherwise specified references to the presence of lords in Parliament are from Lords' Journal, i. G.E.C. The Complete Peerage, xii(2), 686–7, cites L[etters and] P[apers. … of Henry VIII], ii(i), 1131 as evidence of a summons to Lord Willoughby to attend the Parliament of 1515, but the document calendared in L.P. is a list of lords in Parliament compiled from the Lords' Journal.

9 L[ords'] J[ournal], 1, 12.

10 L.P. i(i), 1494 g. 45.

11 Wedgwood, Register, p. lxi.

12 Inquisition Post Mortem, C142/25, no. 1. All MSS. cited are at the P.R.O. unless otherwise specified.

13 G.E.C. in, 316–17, where the writ of summons, issued on 23 Nov. 1514, is wrongly assigned to the 7th baron, who died on 4 June 1514.

14 G.E.C. II, 135–6.

15 Ibid. pp. 422–3.

16 G.E.C. vii, 169.

17 SP12/77, fo. 107, in Calendar of] S[tate] P[apers] Dom[estic], 1547–80, p. 410.

18 SP 12/78, fo. 254, in Cal. S.P. Dom. 1547–80, p. 415. Reginald Grey was summoned to Parliament as earl of Kent in 1572.

19 SP 1/73, fo. 105, cal. L.P. v, 1727.

20 B.M. Cotton Vespasian F xiii, fo. 222, cal. L.P. vi, 467; SP 1/141, fo. 212, cal. L.P. xiii (2), app. 6.

21 John, Lord Dudley, died in September 1553. His son was not summoned to the first two Parliaments of Mary's reign, but for the third a writ was sent to him on 10 Nov. 1554, two days before the opening of Parliament and six days after the restoration of his lands by letters patent (C[alendar of]P[atent] R[olls], P[hilip and] M[ary], 11, 22–3). G.E.C. iv, 482, says that the castle of Dudley was not restored until 1555 but the evidence cited, letters patent of 31 Dec. 1555 specifically states that by virtue of the patent of 4 Nov. 1554 Lord Dudley was seised of Dudley Castle (C.P.R., P. and M. III, 34–8).

22 G.E.C. vin, 68.

23 SP 1/69, fos. 191–4, cal. L.P. v, 874–5.

24 SP 1/68, fo. 115, cal. ibid. p. 612.

25 These judgments seem both to be derived from Dugdale; there is no direct contemporary evidence for Dudley's mental capacity.

26 G.E.C. x, 34. The list of those summoned to the Parliament of 1539 was re-used for the Parliament of March 1553, suffering much amendment in the process. It seems, though, that the name of Lord Ogle was included in the original list (C218/1, no. 2).

27 Calendar of]S[tate] P[apers], Sp[anish], iv(2), 366, 602, v(i), 26.

28 SP 1/104, fo. 46, cal. L.P. x, 948.

29 SP 1/150, fo. 102, cal. L.P. xiv(i), 722.

30 SP 1/103, fo. 307, cal. L.P. x, 892.

31 SP 1/103, fo. 278, cal. ibid. p. 855.

32 B.M. Cotton Titus B i, fo. 144, cal. ibid. p. 875, printed The Chronicle of Calais (Camden Soc. 1846), p. 166.

33 SP 1/104, fo. 41, cal. L.P. x, 931.

84 SP 1/104, fo. 49v, cal. ibid. 952.

36 27 Henry VIII, c. 63.

36 Lisle was present in the House of Lords for the first time on 27 April and attended every day the House was in session until 11 May, when Parliament adjourned for a fortnight. During the recess, on 19 May, he was arrested and taken to the Tower (L.P. xv, 697).

37 Cal. S.P. Sp. v(i), 26. Chapuys also believed that in Jan. 1532 neither Durham nor Rochester had been called to the Parliament although Rochester, when he arrived, was welcomed by the king; and in Feb. 1533 he reported that three bishops, unnamed, had been ordered to return to their dioceses, leaving proctors approved by Henry VIII (Cal. S.P. Sp. iv(2), 366, 602).

38 Analecta Bollandiana, xii (1893), 272–3, quoted in this translation from the Latin by C. Sturge, Cuthbert Tunstal (1938), 191.

39 Draft licence of absence, quoted by Sturge, op. cit. p. 316; there is more excuse for Elizabeth's action since Tunstal by this time was in his eighties.

40 Ibid. p. 190, n. 6.

41 SC 10/50, no. 2492, 2498. On each occasion the proctors were Nicholas West, bishop of Ely, and John Clerk, bishop of Bath and Wells.

42 Cal. S.P. Sp. iv(2), 366. Although writs of summons were only issued at the beginning of the Parliament, it seems to have been the practice to send out reminders before each session, e.g. letters received by Lord Audeley and Henry, earl of Essex, before the session of 1532 (L.P. v, 612, 741). Tunstal may not have been sent any such letter, but this would not invalidate his writ of summons. Similarly, the bishop of Rochester could have come to this session— and been welcomed by the king, as Chapuys reported—without having received a reminding letter.

43 G. Burnet, History of the Reformation, ed. N. Pocock (1865), in, 206–7. The letter is no longer extant. Burnet ascribed it to Jan. 1534 but this is impossible, as Nicolas West died in April 1533 and the bishopric of Ely was vacant until March 1534.

44 L.J. i, 58, naming the bishop of Bath and Wells as sole proctor. The original proxy letter has not survived so that it is impossible to recover the date and place of writing.

45 Cal. S.P. Sp. v(i), 159: aim venant yl fust contremandé.

46 Ibid.; L.P. v, 986–7 (misdated, corrected L.P. vii, app. 18–19).

47 Cal. S.P. Sp. v(i), 159–62.

48 State Papers, Henry VIII, 11, 421.

49 It is not known whether Tunstal attended the next session, in Nov. 1534, but he was present in February 1536 (B.M. Harl. 158, fo. 143v).

50 L.J. i, 58. His proctors were the bishops of London (John Stokesley), Winchester (Stephen Gardiner) and Bath and Wells (John Clerk). Other late proxies were entered in this Session.

51 As suggested by Bruce, John, Archaeologia, xxv (1834), 67.Google Scholar

52 B.M. Cotton Vespasian F xiii, fo. 258, printed ibid. 89.

53 B.M. Cotton Cleopatra E vi, fo. 156, printed ibid. 90.

54 B.M. Cotton Cleopatra E vi, fo. 161, printed H. Ellis, Original Letters illustrative of English History, 3rd ser. (1846), 11, 289–90.

55 B.M. Cotton Cleopatra E vi, fo. 156, printed Archaeologia, xxv, 90.

56 SP 1/85, fo. 175v, cal. L.P. vii, 1143.

57 SP 1/122, fo. 126V, cal. L.P. xii(2), 186(63).

58 Granted by signed bill dated 28 Oct. 1534, which was not delivered into chancery until 12 Feb. 1535 (L.P. viii, 291 g. 20).

59 SP 1/122, fos. 126v–7v; cal. L.P. xii(2), 186(63).

60 SP 1/85, fo. 175v, cal. L.P. vii, 1143.

61 Ibid. p. 1206.

62 Deposition of Robert Aske printed in English Historical Review, v (1890), 568.

63 L.P. iv (3), 5749.

64 M. H., and Dodds, Ruth, The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536–37, and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538 (1915), 1, 20.Google Scholar

65 SP 1/102, fo. 5v, cal. L.P. x, 254.

66 For comparison with other sessions see Table 1.

67 A draft licence of 23 Jan. 1536 would have authorized the recipient to be absent ‘duryng every session, contynuance and prorogacion’ of the Parliament (SP 1/101, fo. 144, cal. L.P. x, 159).

68 B.M. Harl. 158, fos. 140–42, printed N. H. Nicolas, Report on the barony of l'Isle (1829), pp. 418–21.

69 B.M. Harl. 158, fos. 143–4, printed ibid. pp. 422–6.

70 E.g. in 1542 the earl of Westmorland who had been told by the Privy Council to stay in the north was marked as present on 20 Jan. Some mistakes were added in the printing of the journal: e.g. the bishop of Exeter marked absent on 16 Jan. 1542 in the MS. journal appears as present in the printed version.

71 The numbers rose from 85 for the Parliament of 1510 to 102 in 1536, fell to 92 in 1539 and settled at 70–72 in the 1540s.

72 Where necessary the numbers of those summoned have been amended to take account of deaths and new appointments or creations between the issue of the writs and the opening of the relevant session of Parliament. The prior of Coventry and the prior of St John of Jerusalem (here and in Table 1) have been included among the abbots. Although the latter was a layman and sat among the lay peers the abolition of his order in England in 1540 meant that he, like the regular clergy, was summoned to Parliament for the last time in 1539.

73 Cf. Roskell, ‘The problem of the attendance of the lords in medieval parliaments’, Bull. I.H.R. xxix (1956).

74 L.J. i, 56. An act of the first session, 6 Henry VIII, cap. 16, attempted to improve attendance in the House of Commons.

75 25 Henry VIII, cap. 19, 20.

76 The arrest during the session of 1540 of Lisle, Cromwell (now earl of Essex) and Lord Hungerford helped to lower the number of regular attenders, but even if they had remained in the House only 49 per cent of the lay peers would have been regularly present.

77 Six bishops, 21 abbots and 17 lay peers sent in their proxies for one or more sessions of this Parliament.

78 SP 1/86, fo. iii, cal. L.P. vii, 1324.

79 SP 1/101, fo. 147V, cal. L.P. x, 161.

80 SP 1/101, fo. 62V, cal. ibid. 78.

81 SP 1/86, fo. 97, cal. L.P. vii, 1310.

82 Nevertheless Henry, earl of Northumberland, trying to borrow £100 from Lord Dacre in 1523, declared that it was the cost of staying in London for the Parliament which drove him to this necessity. Dacre refused to help, citing his own need to find money for the subsidy to be granted by this Parliament (B.M. Add. 24,965, fos. 10, 154, cal. L.P. iii(2), 3078, 3106).

83 SP 1/83, fo. 69, cal. L.P. vii, 438.

84 SP 1/82, fo. 10, cal. ibid. 12.

85 SP 1/68, fo. 115, cal. L.P. v, 612.

86 SP 1/101, fo. 76, cal. L.P. x, 83.

87 SP 1/69, fo. cal. ibid. 708.

88 SP 1/86, fo. 23, cal. L.P. vii, 1242.

89 SP 1/82, fo. 41, cal. ibid. 23.

90 B.M. Cotton Titus B i, fo. 371, cal. L.P. v, 625.

91 SP 1/87, fo. 37, cal. L.P. vii, 1439; SP 1/101, fo. 218, cal. L.P. x, 206.

92 SP 1/97, fo. 71, cal. L.P. ix, 489.

93 SP 1/69, fo. 69, cal. L.P. v, 734.

94 L.J. i, 58. Delawarr had previously received a licence in 1532 {L.P. v, 709).

95 B.M. Harl. 158, fo. 144. Essex, thanking Cromwell for his licence, declared that his proxy was ‘in a redy to my lord off Oxenford’ and he did not make out a new one for this session (SP 1/101, fo. 235, cal. L.P. x, 231).

96 L.P. x, 258, 330, 354, 413, 453, 470, 521.

97 SP 1/103, fo. 275, cal. ibid. p. 851.

98 SP 1/103, fo. 300, cal. L.P. x, 884.

99 SP 1/104, fo. 90, cal. ibid. p. 1025; L.J. i, 83–84.

100 SP 1/103, fo. 260, cal. L.P. x, 826.

101 B.M. Cotton Vespasian F xiii, fo. 176, cal. L.P. xiv(I), 663; SP 1/150, fo. 191, cal. ibid. 845; State Papers, Henry VIII, 1, 607.

102 SP 1/146, fo. 253, cal. L.P. xiv(i), 685.

103 B.M. Cotton Vespasian F xiii, fo. 177, cal. ibid. p. 763.

104 SP 1/152, fo. 102, cal. ibid. p. 1157. One of the bishop's servants had had an infectious illness, which might have been used to prevent him from attending.

105 SP 1/153, fo. 198, cal. L.P. xiv(2), 251.

106 SP 1/153, fo. 195, cal. ibid. p. 349; SP 1/152, fo. 119, cal. L.P. xiv(i), 1187, printed Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd ser. in, 97.

107 B.M. Cotton Vespasian F xiii, fo. 221, cal. L.P. xv, 423.

108 Essex was dead before the second session of the 1539 Parliament was held in 1540, but Audeley and Delawarr both attended it.

109 Proceedings of the Privy Council, vii, 285.

110 Suffolk, Lisle, Parr and Hertford all appeared in the House of Lords at some time during the sessions of 1543 and 1544.

111 State Papers, Henry VIII, v, 547.

112 On 21 Feb. Norfolk as treasurer adjourned parliament when the chancellor was absent. During the session of 1543 in the absence of both Audley and Norfolk the lords several times adjourned themselves at the end of the day's proceedings. Audley's increasingly intermittent attendance may have been due to illness; he died on 30 April 1544.

113 L.P. xx(2), 272, 302, 326, 354, 424, 531.

114 As suggested by Roskell, loc. cit. p. 200.

115 In the sessions of 1542, 1545 and 1547 equal numbers of Tudor peers and peers of older creation attended regularly in the House of Lords. In 1543 four Tudor peers and two of older creation, in 1544 two Tudor peers (but none of older creation) attended regularly.

116 E.g. the bill of proclamations in 1539 (Elton, G. R., ‘Henry VIII's act of proclamation’, English Historical Review, lxxv, 1960).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

117 Some of the licences requested on grounds of illness, e.g. Hussey's in Jan. 1536, may really have been sought for this reason.

118 SC 10/52, no. 31.

119 SP 1/68, fo. 116, cal. L.P. v, 612; SP 1/69, fo. 69, cal. ibid. p. 734. If the proxy was ‘not in dewe forme as hyt owte to be’, Audeley added in the second letter, ‘I truste by the helpe of the clerke of the parlyament hit shall be amendyd and I will be glad to recompence hyme therfore.’ This proxy has not survived. In April 1532, when Parliament resumed after Easter for what was treated as a new session, Audeley's proctors were Lord Bergavenny and the prior of St John of Jerusalem (SC 10/52, no. 39).

120 SP 1/101, fo. 76, passage omitted in L.P. x, 83.

121 SP 1/101, fo. 131, cal. ibid. p. 145.

122 B.M. Harl. 158, fo. 144; SP 1/97, fo. 71, cal. L.P. ix, 489; SC 10/52, no. 43, Lumley's proxy, endorsed ‘Paid. Mr. Secretorye’.

123 SP 1/101, fo. 62v, cal. L.P. x, 78; SC 10/52, no. 45, endorsed as no. 43.

124 SP 1/101, fo. 147v, passage omitted in L.P. x, 161; SC 10/51, no. 2522, 2543; B.M. Harl. 158, fo. 144. The proxy sent in by Lord Fitzwarren, endorsed ‘Paid. My lord of Norffolk’, was drawn up with a gap in which the name of the proctor, William, Lord Sandys, was apparently inserted by the same hand (SC 10/52, no. 44).

125 Snow, V. F., ‘Proctorial representation and conciliar management during the reign of Henry VIII‘, Historical Journal, ix (1966), hereafter cited as Snow.Google Scholar

126 Snow, p. 25 n., from L.J., date misread as May 1580. The earlier instance given, of Burghley casting five proxy votes in 1571, vanishes on investigation.

127 The only dissentient votes recorded in the Lords' Journal were cast during the sessions of 1543, 1544, and 1545, all on bills of minor importance (L.J. i, 225, 234, 260, 272, 277, 279, 281). In 1532 the imperial ambassador reported that the bill in restraint of annates had passed the lords in spite of the opposition of all the bishops and two abbots, with all the lay peers except the earl of Arundel voting in favour (Cal. S.P. Sp. iv(2), 411).

128 Snow, p. 25.

129 As Husee reported to Lisle (SP 3/4, fo. 118, cal. L.P. x, 994).

130 In Feb. 1536 the abbot of Colchester appointed as his proctors two earls and three abbots, one of whom was also a bishop (B.M. Harl. 158, fo. 144). For the rest of the reign of Henry VIII lay peers appointed lay proctors, spiritual peers clerical proctors. In 1549 and again in 1563 two spiritual peers named a lay proctor, while in every Parliament of Mary's reign for which the Journal survives one or more lay peers named a clerical proctor. There was no cross-representation in the reign of Elizabeth after 1563.

131 SC 10/51, no. 2542.

132 SC 10/50, no. 2487, 2490.

133 Ibid. 2499; L.P. v, 699. In medieval Parliaments the difficulty of knowing which abbots were going to attend meant that they were not chosen as proctors (Roskell, loc. cit. p. 175).

134 SC 10/51, no. 2520.

135 L.J. i, 58; SC 10/51, no. 2521.

136 Sir Edward Coke, 4th Institute, pp. 12–13, described a vote in 1559 in which three joint proctors disagreed—one ‘gave consent to a bill, and the two others said, not content’. After discussion by the legal assistants it was agreed that ‘this was no voice’. There is no reference to this incident in the Lords' Journal.

137 Pollard, Wolsey, 43; L.J. i, 19, 20, 22, 23.

138 L.J. i, 58.

139 Snow, pp. 11–12, 20–1.

140 The bishop of Bangor, who remained abbot of Hyde, held one single proxy and three joint proxies, one of them shared with Holme and others (B.M. Harl. 158, fo. 144).

141 SP 1/102, fo. 5v, cal. L.P. x, 254.

142 B.M. Harl. 158, fo. 144; L.J. i, 58. Rochford held only one proxy at the opening of the session in Jan. 1534; the others were entered later, the last two early in March when the peers concerned were licensed to go home before the prorogation.

143 SC 10/51, no. 2522, 2543; SC 10/52, no. 43; B.M. Harl. 158, fo. 144.

144 SC 10/52, no. 32–34 (all held jointly with one other lay peer).

145 Ibid. no. 31; SP 1/69, fos. 56, 72, cal. L.P. v, 728, 741; SP 1/82, fo. 41, cal. L.P. vii, 23; SP 1/101, fo. 235, cal. L.P. x, 231.

146 Cal. S.P. Sp. iv(2), 602.

147 L.J. i, 83–4, 103. A blank proxy sent to Cromwell in 1536 by the abbot of St Mary's near York was not registered (L.P. x, 1025).

148 Snow, p. 12, states that Cromwell held a proxy in 1536, although he did not take his seat in the House of Lords until the last day of the Parliament; this appears to be based on a misreading of the blank proxy sent in by Lord Daubeney, which was attested by Cromwell.

149 SP 3/4, fo. 118, cal. L.P. x, 994.

150 L.J. 1, 103, 128.

151 As suggested by Snow, p. 4. The first two extant lists, for Jan. 1534 (L.J. i, 58) and Feb. 1536 (B.M. Harl. 158, fo. 144) are both annotated to indicate payment. For the fees charged see Husee's letters to Lisle in 1536 and 1539 (L.P. x, 994, xiv(i), 1181).

152 MS. L.J. fos. 641 (1543), 695 (1545, printed L.J. i, 291, misplaced after the session of 1547). The list of proxies printed ibid. p. 267, at the beginning of the Parliament of 1545, belongs to the second session, held in 1547.

153 For the session of Feb. 1536, the only one for which both a list of proxies and original proxy letters survive the list includes all those proxies known from the letters and others besides. There are no proxy letters in SC 10 for any later session of parliament.

154 L.J. i, 164,266,267,291.

155 Of the proctors named, only Burgh and Conyers were not privy councillors.

156 Snow, p. 22.

157 Eleven councillors and four proxy votes (including one held by the bishop of Winchester jointly with two bishops who were not councillors). Snow, pp. 13, 23, assigns the earl of Huntingdon's proxy first to Southampton and then to Russell, apparently assuming that the proctor was the lord admiral whoever he might be, although the clerk only recorded Huntingdon's licence of absence without entering the proxy (L.J. i, 128).

158 Ibid. p. 266. The bishop of Oxford sent in a blank proxy, the last to be registered in the Tudor period.

159 Ibid. p. 267.

160 Lehmberg, S. E., ‘Supremacy and viceregency: a re-examination’, English Historical Review, lxxxi (1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues for the lasting effect on the English church of Cromwell's exercise of the royal supremacy.

161 Between 1536 and 1540 seven lay peers were attainted and executed, five of them peers of Tudor creation, as well as two heirs to peerages.