Gone Medieval - How Parliament Came to Westminster

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

Parliament is perhaps the single most significant institution in the United Kingdom. Like anything worthwhile, it's a medieval creation. But why did these meetings become settled in Westminster, where Parliament now has its home?Matt Lewis is joined by Dr. Hannes Kleineke from the History of Parliament Project to answer these questions. We also learn about the mischievous medieval practice of hooding...Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and edited by Ella Blaxill. The producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up here for 50% for 3 months using the code ‘MEDIEVAL’.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. Parliament is perhaps the single most significant institution in the United Kingdom. Like anything worthwhile, it's a medieval creation. But why did these meetings become settled in Westminster, where Parliament now has its home? Well, to answer that question, I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Hannes-Klinica,

a medieval historian with a particular interest in Parliament, who is also part of the History of Parliament Project. Welcome to Gone Medieval, Hannes. Thank you. Wonderful to have you here. Some questions I really want to get to the bottom off, so hopefully you can help me answer some of these. When does Parliament begin to emerge as a body

that we might recognise as Parliament today? Well, that's a slightly awkward question to answer, but I suppose the origins of the Parliament that we know today really are found in the reign of King John. You'll obviously know about Magna Carta and all that, but what's at the bottom of it is the king's attempt to raise taxation. And it's in the reign of John that the idea becomes established that even if the subject can't refuse to pay the king taxes, at least they've got the right to be asked for them. So that, I would say, is probably the point at which we recognize Parliament as such.

Now, as for the membership of it, this at this point is obviously the greater landholder. So in a sense what we've got as a house of lords, but there's no concrete representation for the commons. And it's a bit later, I'd say about 50 years later towards the end of Henry III's reign, that we then start getting representation from the shires. And the first instance, that's a case of the king summoning two to four knights of the shire, as they're called, from each county. And then in 1265, in the middle of the barons war, we, suddenly have something happening. And that is that Simon De Montfort, the king's big opponent,

summons representatives from the towns and boroughs. Now, what's behind this? Obviously, the towns and boroughs are the places where the merchants live, and that's where increasingly money is concentrated. So again, we come back to this whole question of raising taxes, and they simply start summoning the sort of people who, at the end of the day, are going to have to pay them. suppose there are a group of people worth talking to at that point. And when Parliament begins to emerge, how powerful is it? It has a mechanism to grant taxation, but does it do much else? Well, it's a question of give and take, really. In return for the tax grant that the King expects from Parliament, he has to give something back. So over the course of the 13th century,

and then even more pronouncedly in the 40, Parliament becomes a mechanism to redress subjects' grievances. So a whole load of the King's subjects, both those who are members of Parliament and others, start petitioning Parliament, coming with all sorts of little niggles or sometimes bigger niggles. This can be a blocked river, this can be the local abbot extorting money, you name it what.

And these petitions are then dealt with by Parliament, and as a result, Parliament becomes a far bigger affair than maybe the King had originally intended. So it starts off as a little bit of a quid pro quo. We'll give you taxation if you give us some reforms of your behaviour that we might want, but we see Parliament kind of clawing it a little bit more power and authority as the decades go by, maybe? Yes, I think that's a fair point to make. I mean, the first real instance of the Commons being able to refuse taxation doesn't actually come till the 1460s, where, you know,

when the king has already dismissed Parliament, but the Commons literally invite themselves back to say, not like this, and change their tax grant in the middle of it. Dear old Edward the fourth. Yeah, fun times. And when Parliament begins, did it have a base or a home or somewhere that it was closely associated with? Well, again, as so many medieval institutions,

Parliament is ultimately a royal creation. So ultimately, Parliament has to turn up wherever the... the king wants it. And medieval parliaments aren't like today when we're sort of, well, I would say we're used to seeing them sitting all the time, but perhaps we don't see them sitting very much at all. But medieval parliaments are affairs of maybe a week or so. And sometimes you have several parliaments, as in separately elected parliaments happening in one year. So as a result, Parliament has to follow the king around. If Edward I is battling the Scots, then Parliament has to biff up there, and try and meet at Carlisle.

And if you've ever been up there, Carlisle is not a nice place to be in January. Really, isn't it? Apologies to listeners in Carlisle. I've got plenty more places to be nasty about. But ultimately, Royal Administration crystallises, if you like, at Westminster. That's where everybody settles. That's where the Exchequer is.

That's where the Royal Writing Office is. And Westminster is also at the heart of a sort of circuit of royal palaces and hunting lodges where the king will spend a good part of the year. So I suppose ultimately it makes sense that Parliament, like so many other institutions, becomes settled down there. Now, that's obviously not the whole story. Part of the story is that you've got, give or take, 300 odd MPs and a bunch of lords. Now, your average lord doesn't come by himself, he's got a lot of Clingons hanging round with him. So as a result, Parliament needs to meet somewhere where you can put all these people up. And for that, again, the London and its hinterland

are obviously ideally suited. Just to give you an example of how bad things can get in 1377, Parliament meets at Gloucester. And we've got an account by someone who has been shoehorned into that Parliament, who complains that when he turned up they didn't want him, they'd put somebody else instead of him, but he'd already sent his horses home. And that sort of illustrates one of the central points that it's not just you and your servants, it's of course also your horses that have got to be put up, fed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, so it needs a fair bit of infrastructure around wherever Parliament is going to be as it gets bigger and bigger. We've mentioned sort of Carlisle and Gloucester, are there other places that Parliament was frequently held where it was

more regularly seen outside of London? Yeah, I mean, again, it's a case of finding places with accommodation. So as a result, it's usually the big abbey towns. Redding has a fair amount of attendance. Gloucester, St. Peter's Abbey, has also got a fair amount, but otherwise it's really hit and miss. Northampton, as Rob and I discovered earlier, apparently, also got a few sessions in the first half of the 14th century. But even in those periods when Parliament still moves around, it's not a common thing. It really isn't. I mean, Lester gets a certain amount of turnout in the Lancasterian period. Why Lester is an important town within the holdings of the House of Lancaster? But the problem there then is you've summoned a parliament there and you turn up and what's there, not a lot. So there's some lovely financial accounts in the 15th century where the relevant royal servants actually claim back money for, I quote, a chair for the king to sit in.

So that's as extreme as it gets. They don't even have a proper throne. I haven't even got a chair for the king. And I think the Wars of the Roses, obviously, you know, that's where I'm at home in medieval history in particular. and you do see quite often then parliaments in the East Midlands that favour the Lancasterians, one at Berry St Edmonds, because that's kind of the Duke of Suffolk's power base. So you do see them being moved to where the ruling party are most powerful.

And I guess that's because they feel they can get business done in their own heartlands, or is there even an element of threat looming over some of those places that you're going into this guy's back garden and you better do what he wants you to do? I suppose there's to some degree an element. of that, but ultimately we have a tendency to try and overinterpret everything. I think there's a degree of happenstance involved. The 1447 Parliament was originally meant to meet in London and then went to Cambridge, and again, Cambridge didn't happen, so then they really went into the sticks

to Barry St. Edmonds. You can apologise to the good folk of Burryson Edmonds later for that particular remark. But the net result is that people don't want to go there. They really don't. The Londoners have to invest a huge amount of money to put their people up in Bury St Edmunds, and a lot of other places just don't send anybody. So the king ultimately ends up packing Parliament with his own people. Now, whether we accord to Henry VI, enough clout to say he did that deliberately, or whether we just say, well, they wanted someone there. It's a different matter entirely.

But I wouldn't necessarily say that these parliaments in the sticks work. You mentioned the West Midlands, 1459, the last of the Lancashire, if you like, at Coventry. Again, it's a real, real problem. That Parliament is summoned very much at last minute notice. The sheriffs change halfway through. The government realizes this and says, well, can you guys just finish this job and get this parliament together? And half the sheriffs actually say, well, no, we can't.

So there are entire counties, there's Sussex, Hartfordshire. They don't send anyone because they haven't had time to hold an election. Incredible. And I guess we can insult the people of Coventry by saying that that one's called the Parliament of Devils, which may be a reflection on Coventry. So let's see who else we can insult as we go along. Why do we see then a decline in the variation of Parliament's location? Does this reflect a monarch's decreased willingness to travel,

or is it the institution sort of taking on a life of its own? That's a good one. I suppose to some extent it's really a matter of convenience. You want people to turn up for these things. You want them to be relatively happy so they'll give you something. So you're going to be, to some extent, disinclient to move away from the established already largely established venues at Westminster. It's just easier.

If you hold a parliament somewhere else, you've got to clear out chancery and take all the writing officers with you. You're miles away from the exchequer if you want to check something. We often forget that these parliaments aren't just a bunch of people coming together and having a jolly drink. For most of the 15th century, it becomes established that the Lord Treasurer has to appear in front of Parliament and make a statement about the Crown's finances. It does help a lot if he has got some records and rolls with him. And rather than shift those halfway across the country, it's just as well. to meet where they are. It's easy to forget that in the days before working on your laptop on a train, it required an awful lot more organisation to move an entire writing office somewhere else in the

country. Absolutely. And that's not just true of the middle ages. That's true of everywhere up to the last 10 years. Yeah. Does the amount of work that Parliament is taking on, the amount of responsibility that it's sort of clawing towards itself, also make it less portable as a thing because it simply needs more infrastructure around it for it to work? I wouldn't go that far, because I don't subscribe to this idea that certainly while we're still in the Middle Ages, Parliament clause massive amounts of responsibility towards it. I think even in the 16th century, it's very much a case of the king using Parliament for his own ends. And that is equally true in the 15th century when Edward VIII essentially uses it as a clearinghouse to nod through his various

movings around of bits of estate to his own family. So, I wouldn't look at it in that light. If anything, I think Parliament's business changes in character. I've already spoken about the petitions that take up an awful lot of its time in the 14th century. In the 15th century, that declines. After the first couple of decades, there is a lot less that we can see in terms of petitions. Now, another proviso here, the records aren't necessarily that good, and not every petition is necessarily recorded in the roles of Parliament. But I think what we see is the bulk of

what really is there. So I think the nature of business changes to focus more heavily on great matters of states. And at the same time, the sort of private business, the amount of little people turning up with a petition about the local bishop probably rather declines. Why then does Westminster in particular become the home of Parliament? What is it about Westminster that makes it an ideal location if it is an ideal location? Yeah, well, you put it the right way there if indeed it is an ideal location. And I think there is a question mark over that. In the 1450s, when Henry the 6th government is very much in trouble, that's when they really start holding Parliament away from London and Westminster because they don't want the writing mob on their doorstep. Or on other occasions, they

sort of move into a monastery within the town. The Blackfriars is a good example of that because that's got a drawbridge you can pull up if you like. So in a sense, there are good reasons not to hold Parliament there. What's Westminster got to offer? Well, first of all, it's got the massive infrastructure of London and it's hinterland the Royal Law Courts. So there's a a lot of extra business that any member of Parliament can also transact while they're there. And obviously, it's a good opportunity. If you normally live in Yorkshire, you know, if you're getting paid wages to be in Parliament, you're not only going to do your own thing. You're going to do all your neighbours' business as well. So I think it's a convenient place

that members of Parliament and peers, and let's not forget that most peers have London residences even at this point. So there's a lot of stately homes that lords, and their entourage can be put up in, that all of these people can transact while they're down there. I think for the king, it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. He's quite happy to hold Parliament, you know, wherever he happens to be. But it's making it marginally less inconvenient, I suppose, for Parliament. Yeah. And I guess as the medieval period moves on, we do get much less of the peripatetic monarchy who is constantly on the move.

You know, we think of King John in particular right at the beginning of this story. John is never sitting still, you know, the guy's got ants in his pants and is never in one place for very long. But as the medieval period moves on, we do see monarchs becoming much more sedentary and much more based in London. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was Gerald Harris, who famously demonstrated that Henry VI spends most of his life meandering around the Thames Valley, from one of his residences to another. And there really aren't that many places out there where you could hold a parliament. You know, if you're just going up and down the Thames time and time again. Why Westminster, as opposed to say the city of London or the Tower of London, is there a desire to get away from, I mean, Westminster is still a royal palace,

but is there a desire to get away from the Tower as a representation of purely royal authority and the city as a representation of the city's independence and authority? Is there a desire to find a third place that wasn't the home of either of those things? No, I think what it's more about is that Parliament is ultimately an expanded royal council. I know we like to think of it as an institution, but certainly, you know, at its outset, it is just a larger royal council. Where does the King's Council meet? It meets where the King is in the Palace of Westminster. I think one important step there possibly, actually, is that the Commons move, first of all, into the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, and afterwards into the more convenient refectory.

Much to be said about the refectory, but just in short here, that really is a more viable place. They've got room in there. The current seating arrangement is quite possibly in place in the refectory already. So the Great Abbey becomes to form part of the parliamentary infrastructure. London, on the other hand, has got this pesky mob. Londoners, and particularly the lesser Londoners, never do as they're told. They're just a bloody nuisance. They really are. So as a result, you really don't want to be anywhere near where they are. You don't want a mob riding outside the doors. We don't have armoured cars to drive peers and members away. It's fascinating the considerations that are going on in picking a location that we kind of take for granted a little bit today. How much do we know about what the medieval palace of Westminster was like? Obviously what we see now is what we're used to associating with Parliament. but is a much later building.

Do we have any idea what the Palace of Westminster was like? And it's interesting that Westminster Abbey is included in the arrangements, the seating locations for Parliament too. Do we have a sense of what that looked like, felt like, in the medieval period? Yes, I mean, in a sense, if you want a good idea of it, the best place to go is, I'm sorry to say, the Tower of London, which does still have, or the 13th century royal apartments, etc. So the Palace of Westminster itself is, again, it's a judge.

of buildings. There's the actual building with the flight of rooms as the royal apartments for the king. There's a flight of rooms that can be the Queen's apartments. Then there's this collegiate church of St. Stephen's Westminster, which is sort of parked right in the middle of it. Now, under Henry VIII, that becomes the House of Commons. And if you go in today, you can still get in, if you're lucky, via St. Stephen's porch. And the location of the old chapel is kind of marked out on the floor of the place. But it's not really a purpose-built accommodation for Parliament. It is a royal palace in which different rooms can be used for different purposes. So the painted chamber, for instance, it's a big room with various sort of frescoes drawn on the walls. That's often used

for the openings of Parliament. The Lords then biff off into something known as the lesser or Whitehall and the Commons essentially get hustled across the road to Westminster Abbey. So none of it purpose-built, whole thing, a bit of a jumble, and it's quite hard to work out how Parliament actually got anything done at all. Yeah, which is quite strange because I guess we would quite often think that the building that they're in today, which is 19th century, it burnt down and was rebuilt. So we kind of think that that needs modernisation now and isn't purpose built. But that really was purpose built for Parliament.

Yeah, absolutely. It's essentially what people in the 19th century thought a Royal Palace ought to look like. But it does have sort of features that work for Parliament, such as a central lobby with both houses coming off it, if you like. In that respect makes an awful lot of sense. I'm afraid that really is not the reality for the Middle Ages. I mean, the other big venue, of course, that people often think about when they think about Parliament is William Rufus's Great Hall. It's probably one of the venues on the Westminster Estate that most people have a sort of sense of, if anything else, but that's ultimately where

the law courts meet. It's nothing to do whatsoever with Parliament. It's a place to make proclamations. So, for instance, that's where the Lord Steward of the household appears at the start of every parliament saying, please be nice to each other, and I'm not even making this up, don't play silly games like trying to pull each other's hoods off your shoulders. This hood game is a real concern for the Westminster Parliament in the 14th century every time. What's the hood game about? Essentially, you know, if you've ever sort of seen a picture of somebody dressed in medieval attire, they all have a detachable hood to their thing. If you've got an image in your mind of a medieval person with something sort of looking a bit like a turban on their head and hanging down

one side. That literally is the hood that's been slung up there. And apparently, and I think this was probably to judge from the proclamations, or the text of the proclamations, as they've come down to us, this is probably something largely done by kids. But people basically sneak up behind you and pull this hood off your shoulder and try and steal it. Great game. So we think of Parliament being a bit of a childish pantomime sometimes today, but it sounds like that's just continuing a long history of childish games in Parliament. I mean, maybe not in the chamber, but we don't know. It's very possible. Yeah. I mean, there are stories of, I think it's the beginning of Henry the Fourth reign, so not long after the deposition of Richard II, where hoods are being thrown into the middle

as a way to challenge people to a duel effectively. So the hoods are thrown in the chamber for more serious reasons, I guess. Yeah. Do we know when was the last time that Parliament was held away from Westminster in the medieval period? Well, held or summoned here is the question. The last time that at Parliament was summoned to meet away from Westminster, I'd say, was 1469, the Earl of Warwick's abortive affair. None of that afterwards.

Richard III holds his Parliament very much at Westminster. Edward the fourth's later ones are all held at Westminster. So, yeah, I think 1469 would be my best answer. to that one. Yeah. I'm staggering slightly here, because I'm trying to remember where the endless Parliament of 1472 to 5 met, but I'm pretty sure none of their sessions were anywhere else either. Yeah, that was a long old one immediately after the readeption, wasn't it? They kind of sat almost continually for about three years dealing with tons and tons of business. And it absolutely baffles everyone. When we've got Italian reports saying that at Westminster, they're holding again,

their Parliament, they're not doing anything, they're just wobbling, as it were. Yeah. Foreigners can't understand Parliament. I was just going to say what do foreigners make of Parliament? Because it is fairly unique in the medieval world in terms of the way that it helps develop and inform and influence policy. That simply doesn't happen everywhere else. So do we see foreign commentators sort of scratching their heads and wondering why England

does things this way? Yes. Foreigners very much scratch their heads and say, can't they just get on? We're supposed to be invading France, and instead they're sitting there talking about it. Really doesn't go down well, particularly with Edward VIII's allies who just wanted to get on with and invade France. But it's not just foreigners, oddly enough. I mean, it's also English people. The great set of letters of the Paston family has stuff in it saying, well, in our country, all we say at the moment is the devil be with you, lest you grant any more taxes.

people in the country don't like it any more than foreigners do, but at least they understand that it has to be done. It's just the way we do things, you know, like pounds, shillings and pens and all that. Yeah, because I guess, you know, France has the Parliament, but it doesn't have any of the kind of power and authority that the English Parliament has. So it might sound like it's something similar, but it's actually doing a very, very different job. So I guess that makes England much more difficult to understand from the outside.

Yeah, that's a law court. Yeah. Does Parliament change Westminster in any way, and vice versa? Does Westminster change the way that Parliament works at all? Do the two things influence each other in what we see of Parliament and Westminster today? Well, ultimately, as far as the medieval period is concerned, I think the answer is largely no, unless you want to go down the route of the rioting commons who smash up the monks' refectory on repeated occasions. I mean, there are annual accounts of the expenditure needed after the commons have visited the Abbey. But that aside, I would say no. The Parliament has no real impact on the way that the quite fossilised royal administration were.

That just chugs along essentially till the Civil War and beyond. I mean, even in the 18th, 19th century, the Westminster law courts still operate not only in Latin, but they sort of mock up their documentation to look like as though it was medieval, ultimately. Does Westminster influence how Parliament works? That's a more interesting question. Over the course of the 15th century, we see the evolution of very large. practices we know to this day. So, for instance, bills to this day get given three readings in Parliament, and that is very much something that comes into vogue in the 15th century. Having said that,

in the 15th century, there is one, maybe two copies of a bill, so if you haven't heard it read, you've missed out. There's no real cause for that with the advent of printing and the mass production of documentation anymore. But I suppose it is worth noting that, again, in the sense of the fossilized nature of English public life, and I mean that in the nicest possible way, because I do like all these nice medieval practices. The modern parliament is heavily influenced by the way things were done in the Middle Ages. I mean, you will remember me saying at the last Richard III schools conference about the dissolution ceremony. Many of your listeners have potentially watched this in recent days.

When the clerks get up, bow, read out the title of the bill, another clerk bows back and announces in Norman French, L'Rois Le Vurt. I'm sure L'Rois Le Vult, but the Roire L'Rois probably hasn't got a clue what it is that he vote. Yes, that's the King Wills It, which was the traditional sort of medieval ascent to the passing of a law, and we still do that today. Yeah, in Norman Fredge.

very, very good reason. I mean, we don't want anybody to understand, do we? Yeah, the mistier and mercury, it can be the better. Absolutely. I'm fascinated that the three-reading thing is sort of a hangover from pre-printing where you would literally have to read it out in front of everyone and give them three opportunities to hear it, and yet we still retain that for no good reason. Yeah, I mean, I think there is an argument that even today there should be at least two possible debates over a bill, but one of the readings is already a false. It's basically announcing future potential business if the government then allows it. So in a sense, one could do away with it,

but it's the way that things are done. This is England. I think it's incredible. If you ever watched the opening of Parliament and the way that it works today, there is a lot of it that is still pomp and spectacle and all of that kind of thing that looks really medieval. But it's interesting that some of that real detail, the Le Reuille-Levoix and the three readings are still medieval hangovers that are sort of hidden away there in the everyday work of 21st century Parliament? No, absolutely. And it's quite striking, really, if you watch the state opening, to the extent to which this mirrors what we see in early 16th century manuscripts. You know, about the earliest depiction we have as Henry VIII in procession to the mass that

traditionally opens Parliament, and it's very much like today. It's amazing how little it changes, despite the fact that it's doing very different work in a very different world today. Absolutely fascinating. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Hannes, to talk a little bit about why Parliament found its home at Westminster. Where can people find out more about this kind of thing from the History of Parliament project? Absolutely. Well, well, we're funded by the two houses of Parliament is very much a wider one. So histpal online, if you Google that, you will find an awful lot of it there. Most of our published work is there, more coming up almost every week, as it were.

We have blog series for the entire history with dedicated ones for the Georgian Lords and the Victorian Commons, and we run a series of events that anybody can come and join. So visit our website and do join. I couldn't recommend it more. Many, many rabbit holes there to fall down, I think, isn't there in exploring the rich history of Parliament. Mostly the medieval is obviously the most interesting part. Well, obviously. There's other stuff as well.

I can agree on that. There are other things available to. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Hannes. It's been fantastic to talk to you. My pleasure. There are new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please join us next time for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts from and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval.

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