‘Theise private bills benefitt yow, Mr. Speaker’, said Sir Henry Poole in 1621. Indeed they did, to the tune of £200 in 1597, and £500 a year by the 1730s; and not only the speaker, but every official in both Houses from the chancellor down to the doorkeepers.

This being so, the first thing to be decided by the promoters of a bill was whether to proceed with it as a public or a private measure. In many cases they had no choice. As Sir John Neale remarked, the problem of distinguishing between public and private bills in the sixteenth century was solved by the officials ‘in a very simple way. Could they extract fees from someone? If so, it was a private bill.’ But on the border line, if the promoters had the cash, they were well advised to proceed by the private method, otherwise they might well find their bill jammed in the clerical machinery with the session drawing rapidly to an end. It was in 1607 that the speaker ruled a bill to amend the highways of 'only three shires’ to be a private bill, a dictum upon which Hatsell was still relying heavily in 1781.

Professor Neale's chapters on the officers and on procedure give a vivid picture of the importance of fees in the promotion of business in the sixteenth-century House of Commons and, in particular, his examples show how Elizabethan speakers exerted themselves to defend the financial rights of themselves and the officials of the House.