The Mother of Parliaments. Graham Harry

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of his parliamentary labours, he has still a minor obstacle to contend with.

      A member cannot resign his seat, nor is it permissible for him to exchange it for any other. Only his own death or the dissolution of Parliament can enable him to cease from being a member, unless the House itself declares his seat to be vacant. Even expulsion from the House does not prevent his immediate re-election by a constituency determined to retain his services, as was shown in the case of Walpole – twice expelled from the House, and re-elected by the voters of Lynn – and of Wilkes and Bradlaugh. The only thing that can prevent a man from sitting in the House, or allow a member to escape from its service, is the fact of his coming within the range of that long list of disqualifications already enumerated.

      How then can a member vacate his seat in the simplest fashion? Many members would think twice before becoming bankrupt or committing a felony in order to avoid parliamentary duty. It is not given to every one to be a Colonial Governor, an Auditor General, or even a Charity Commissioner. But, by the merciful connivance of the powers that be, it is always possible for a member to incapacitate himself by holding a Crown appointment. For this beneficent purpose two ancient stewardships of a purely nominal value are upheld, that by accepting either of these offices a member may be enabled to retire gracefully from Parliament.

      The steward or bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Boneham, and the steward of Northstead, were officers appointed by the Crown in past ages to look after certain Buckinghamshire forests in which brigands abounded. The brigands are long since dead, and the forests themselves have been converted into parks and pasture lands, but the stewardships remain, a convenient city of refuge for members who desire to escape from the active strife of Parliament, to whom they are sometimes presented as often as nine times in one session. "The parliamentary constitution of England," said Disraeli, "was born in the bosom of the Chiltern Hills; as to this day our parliamentary career is terminated among its Hundreds."94 And since no county is fraught with greater historical and political interest than Buckinghamshire, it is perhaps fitting that it should be the means of providing a merciful release for the jaded parliamentarian whose course is run.

      CHAPTER IV

      THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER

      Parliament may be summoned to assemble wherever the king pleases. Westminster, the site of that royal palace which has sheltered so many English sovereigns, from King Canute to Henry VIII., was for centuries the most natural meeting-place for the Great Council of the nation. But many another town, such as Winchester, Bury St. Edmunds, Leicester, Coventry, Reading, Salisbury, and half a dozen more, has at different times been selected as the temporary seat of Parliament, either to suit the royal convenience, or for other reasons.

      Of the twenty Parliaments of Edward II. one met at Ripon, one at Northampton, and three at York and Lincoln. In Stuart days Oxford was the place chosen on two occasions, in 1625 and in 1665, when London was being ravaged by the Plague. Since the Revolution of 1668, however, Parliament has ceased to be nomadic in its habits; in its old age it has definitely settled down at Westminster, and there it is likely to remain.

      The palace in which Canute first resided, within a stone's throw of the Thames, was burnt to the ground somewhere about the year 1040. Edward the Confessor rebuilt it ten years later, and in the days of William Rufus the addition of the Great Hall further enhanced the dignity of the palace. Here William held his first court, on his return from Normandy, and since his day a succession of kings have made it the centre of innumerable scenes of royal pomp and pageantry.

      William Rufus was a man of large ideas. Even the magnificence of the Great Hall did not entirely satisfy his taste for grandeur. In his imagination he had conceived a still more splendid scheme of architecture, and was disappointed with the size of the new building. On first entering to inspect it, accompanied by a large military retinue, he overheard some tactless persons remark that, in their opinion, the Hall was far too large. With a scornful look the King reduced these critics to silence, explaining that, so far from this being the case, the Hall was not half large enough, being, in fact, but a bed-chamber in comparison with the building of which he intended it to form part.95

      By the end of the fourteenth century Westminster Hall had fallen into disrepair, and during the reign of Richard II., when the poet Chaucer was clerk of the works, it was rebuilt, the expense being met by a tax levied upon all foreigners in the kingdom. Richard celebrated the event by keeping Christmas there in a suitably seasonable fashion, "with daily justings and runnings at tilt; whereunto resorted such a number of people that there was every day spent twenty-eight or twenty-six oxen, and three hundred sheep, besides fowl without number."96

      Prior to the days when such feats of engineering as the building of the modern Thames Embankment were possible, the proximity of the Palace to the river necessitated a system of constant repair. Until confined within reasonable limits, the Thames showed a disposition to overflow its banks upon the slightest provocation, much to the inconvenience of the royal residents in the neighbourhood. In 1236 the Palace was completely flooded, so that "men did row with wherries in the midst of it," and six years later a similar fate befell Westminster Hall. In 1579 the river once more trespassed upon the royal domain, fish being afterwards found in a moribund condition on the floor of the Great Hall. The latter, indeed, continued to be visited by periodical floods as late as the year 1841.

      Fire, too, seems to have proved a constant menace to the safety of the palace, though at the time of the Fire of London the Great Hall was one of the few places in which citizens could store their goods out of harm's way. In 1299 part of the palace was burnt to the ground, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century so great a proportion of it fell a prey to a "vehement conflagration" that Henry VIII. decided to forsake it altogether, and removed his court to Whitehall. Since that day royal personages have ceased to lodge at the Palace of Westminster, which is still, however, nominally a royal residence, and as such remains in the custody of an officer of the King's household.97

      The Great Hall still continued to be used as the most appropriate stage for State ceremonies, for coronations and the banquets with which such events were celebrated. It was also the scene of most of the great State trials famous in English history. Such men as William Wallace, the Earls of Arundel, of Essex, and of Strafford, were here arraigned upon a charge of high treason; here Charles I. was condemned to death. In Westminster Hall Titus Oates was stripped of his ecclesiastical habit and exposed to public obloquy, with a placard upon his breast declaring his offence. Beneath this wide oak roof the Duchess of Kingston was tried for bigamy, much to her delight. Here, too, Warren Hastings faced his accusers, and triumphed over them. This is the Hall, as Macaulay says in a well-known passage, which witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers; the Hall where the eloquence of the latter for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment. This, we may now add, is the Hall where the body of Gladstone lay in state, and the mortal remains of King Edward VII. received the homage of his sorrowing subjects.

      No State trial has been held in Westminster Hall since Lord Melville was acquitted there in 1806, and on the only recent occasion on which a member of the House of Lords was tried by his peers, on July 18, 1901, the Royal Gallery of the Lords was fitted up as a court.

      For centuries the coronation feasts, which were held in Westminster Hall, provided the public with a stately and imposing spectacle. Not the least interesting part of the ceremony consisted in the entrance of the King's Champion, clad in armour and mounted upon a fiery charger, who flung down his gauntlet and challenged to mortal combat all who dared to question the monarch's right to the throne. The feat required some personal courage, as well as the possession of a docile steed, for if it were not accomplished successfully the effect might well be ludicrous. Before the coronation of George III., Horace Walpole relates, Lord Talbot had spent much care in training his charger to walk backwards, so that it might make a graceful exit from the Hall without ever exposing its tail to the royal gaze. Unfortunately, the lesson had been too well learnt, and the horse insisted upon entering the Hall backwards, much to the amusement of the spectators.

      Sovereigns are no longer crowned in Westminster

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