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Place Bills and the Separation of Powers: Some Seventeenth-Century Origins of the ‘Non-Political’ Civil Service

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

G. E. Aylmer
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of York

Extract

Montesquieu's misunderstanding of the British constitution has long been notorious among students of political history and theory. In so far as his error influenced the French constitution of 1791 and the American constitution of 1788, it must be accounted one of the most significant—and expensive–scholarly howlers of all time. Somewhat different, because it is avowedly normative whereas Montesquieu's purports to be descriptive, is Harrington's doctrine of separation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1965

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References

1 Notably Dr Robert Shackleton, the latest and most authoritative biographer of Montesquieu.

1 Sheriffs and common-law Judges provided the clearest accepted cases of incompatibility, though for different reasons. See Anson, W. R., The Law and Custom of the Constitution, i (Oxford, 1922), pp. 8485Google Scholar; Adair, E. R. and Evans, F. M. G., ‘Writs of Assistance, 1558–1700’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xxxvi (1921)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hulme, H., ‘The Sheriff as M.P. from Elizabeth to Cromwell’, Journ. of Mod. Hist., i (1929)Google Scholar; Karracker, C. H., The Seventeenth-Century Sheriff, a Comparative Study (Chapel Hill, 1930)Google Scholar; Kemp, B., ‘The Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds’, Essays presented to Sir Lewis Namier, ed. Pares, R. and Taylor, A. J. P. (London, 1956), pp. 204–26.Google Scholar

2 See The Commons Debates of 1621, ed. Notestein, W., Relf, F. H., Simpson, H. (New Haven, 1935)Google Scholar; Aylmer, G. E., The King's Servants (London, 1961), pp. 188–91, 353.Google Scholar

1 The latter were cited by Trenchard, when in the 1690's he dated the origin of the bribing of Members to Charles I's reign (A Short History of Standing Armies in England, in Trenchard, J. and Gordon, T., A Collection of Tracts (London, 1751), i, p. 59).Google Scholar

2 I am grateful to Mrs Valerie Pearl for this description of Tate.

3 That peers and M.P.s ought to be commissioners of the Great Seal, the Admiralty, the Navy and the Revenues (Journals of the House of Lords [cited-henceforth as L.J.], vii, 306Google Scholar; Journals of the House of Commons [cited henceforth as C.J.], iv, 102).Google Scholar

1 See Warwick, P., Memoires (London, 1701), p. 283Google Scholar; North, Francis Lord, ‘A Narrative of some passages in, or relating to, the Long Parliament’ (1670), Somers Tracts (1748–56 edn), 1st Sen, i, p. 24Google Scholar; also L. Whitaker's Parliamen tary Diary, 1642–47, B.M., Add. MS. 31116, fos 178v-179, ‘… to the end that the Scandall lay'd upon the proceedings of Parliament, for conferring Offices on their Members might be stopped’. Contemporary newsp'apers give little help about motives: see Perfect Occurrences and A Perfect Diurnall (B.M., E. 256 and 258).Google Scholar

2 As is argued with great cogency by Hexter, J. H. in his unpublished thesis, ‘The Rise of the Independent Party’ (Harvard, 1936), ch. VIII, pp. 418–23Google Scholar, and App. B, pp. 462–73. I am extremely grateful to Professor Hexter for allowing me to read his thesis, which still provides by far the best discussion of party divisions on the parliamentary side from 1643 to 1645. But despite the force of his arguments, there is a little more to the problem of premeditation than he allows: as will be seen below, pp. 48–52.

3 C.J., iii, 695.Google Scholar

1 For the classification of these M.P.s, I have relied upon Brunton, D. and Pennington, D. H., Members [of the Long Parliament] (London, 1954), App. V, pp. 200–24Google Scholar, App. VI, pp. 225–45; Keeler, M. F., [The] Long Parliament] (Philadelphia, 1954)Google Scholar; and Yule, G., The Independents in the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1958), App. A, pp. 84–127.Google Scholar

2 This is the argument advanced by Miss V. A. Rowe in her Ph.D. thesis on the Younger Sir Henry Vane (London, unpublished); I am extremely grateful to Miss Rowe for sending me an extract from her thesis, and for the references contained in this.

3 C.J., iii, 683.Google Scholar

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1 C.J., iii, 303.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 337.

3 Hexter, J. H., The Reign of King Pym (Cambridge, Mass., 1941)Google Scholar; Brunton, and Pennington, , Members; Keeler, , Long Parl., pp. 165–67.Google Scholar

4 Keeler, , loc. cit.Google Scholar

5 L.J., vi, 338b.Google Scholar

6 L.J., vi, 363a and b.Google Scholar

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8 As was noted by diat perceptive, and sometimes underrated historian of the ‘English Revolution’, Guizot, F. (History of the English Revolution (Bogue edn, 1846), pp. 2, 5657). He did not, however, connect it with the controversy over die Lieutenancy of the Ordnance.Google Scholar

1 L.J., vi, 338a.Google Scholar Of the seven, three were among the only four peers who voted against the rejection of the first self-denying ordinance, when it was sent up from the Commons a little over a year later (Firth, C. H., The House of Lords during the Civil War (London, 1910), p. 147 n.)Google Scholar, and four were amongst those who fled to the Army when the Londoners seized control of Parliament in July 1647 (Ibid., p. 170 n.). Only one, Warwick, was both a committed Presbyterian and a holder of high office from Parliament.

2 Ibid. (L. J., vi, 338a).Google Scholar

3 ‘Memoirs’, in Maseres, F., Select Tracts (London, 1815), pp. 207–8, 210–11.Google Scholar

4 C.J., III, 404–5Google Scholar; L.J., vi, 436–37, 439.Google Scholar

1 See Pennington, D. H., ‘The Accounts of the Kingdom, 1642–49’, Essays in the Econ. and Social Hist, of Tudor and Stuart England, ed. Fisher, F. J. (Cambridge, 1961), p. 187Google Scholar; C.J., iii, 301Google Scholar; Acts and Ord. [of the Inter regnum], ed. Firth, C. H. and Rait, R. S. (London, 1911) i, pp. 387–91.Google Scholar

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3 C.J., iii, 728–29Google Scholar (committee appointed to consider the necessities of Members, 19 Dec. 1644); ibid., iv, 82, 96, 122, 132, 141 (further proceedings in connexion widi the scheme, Mar.-May 1645); ibid., 161, 162, 185 (names of Members to receive the allowance, June 1645).

1 L.J., vii, 499500, 17 07 1645.Google Scholar

2 L.J., vi, 579Google Scholar (Sir William Allanson's appointment to the Hanaper, June 1644); ibid., vii, 499–502 (appointment of his successor, July 1645); P.R.O., Declared Ace, Hanaper, E.351/1677, and A.O.1/1375/127 (showing how this worked from the departmental end; Reynolds, the new clerk, had previ ously been Allanson's deputy); C.J., v, 182Google Scholar, and L.J., ix, 208Google Scholar (Allanson's re appointment, May, 1647); L.J., vii, 354, 360Google Scholar (refers to forthcoming vacancy in place of Erie, May 1645); C.J., v, 182, 186Google Scholar, and L.J., ix, 208 (Erie's re appointment, May 1647).Google Scholar

3 See Cal. State Papers, Dom., 1649–50Google Scholar, 1650, 1651, 1651–51, 1652–53, prefaces for tables of Councillors. Checked against M.P.s listed in Brunton, and Pennington, , Members, pp. 226–45Google Scholar, these show the following numbers of non-parliamentary Councillors: 1st Council of State, 6 (or 7, if Grey of Warke is counted); 2nd, 5; 3rd, 3; 4th, 2; 5th, 2. These differ from the figures given by Mrs Green in the Calendars and by Gardiner, S. R., Hist, of the Commonwealth, and Protectorate, i (London, 1897), pp. 8 and 89, n. 2.Google Scholar

1 Relations and Observations, Historical and Politick, upon the Parliament begun Anno Dom. 1640 (1648), Part I, ‘The Mystery of the Two Juntos’, p. 5Google Scholar; following Part II, ‘The History of Independency’, is ‘A List of the Names of the Members of the House of Commons, Observing which are Officers of the Army, contrary to the self-denying Ordinance: Together with such summes of Money, Offices, and Lands, as they have given to themselves for service done and to be done, against the King and Kingdom. Corrected and augmented The first century', pp. 166 ff. This was also recorded by Thomason as a separate publication, 12 Aug. 1648 (B.M., 669X12 (103)); The Second Centurie followed in October (E.465 (13)).Google Scholar

2 It can, of course, be argued that re-appointment after resignation was not barred by the self-denying Ordinance as it finally passed (the first version of Dec. 1644 was considerably stiffer in its terms), and that therefore only those who never resigned, and unlike Cromwell (or Speaker Lenthall in his capacity as Master of the Rolls) were not excused from doing so, were technically in breach of the Ordinance. I think that this is true but largely beside the point.

3 See A Narrative of the late Parliament (so called) … With an Account of the Places of Profit, Salaries and Advantages which they hold and receive under the present Power’ (1657), Harleian Miscellany, iii (1809), pp. 449–69Google Scholar; ‘A Second Narrative of the late Parliament (so called) …’ (1658), ibid. pp. 470–89; A True and 1mpartiall Narrative of the most material Debates and Passages in the late Parliament. Together with the rise and dissolution of it, by ‘A Member of that Parliament who is none of the present Parliament’ [Slingsby Bethel, who reprinted this as ‘A Brief Narrative … of … Richard Cromwell's Parliament’, The Interest of Princes and States (London, 1680), with appropriate emendations, e.g. ‘the Commonwealthsmen’ become ‘the Country party’!].Google Scholar

1 Zagorin, P., ‘The Court and the Country: A Note on Political Termino logy in the Earlier Seventeenth Century‘, Eng. Hist. Rev., lxxvii (1962), pp. 306–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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1 12 Car. II, c. xii; see also 13 Car. II, St. I, c. i; Ogg, D., England under Charles II (Oxford, 1934), i, pp. 153–54.Google Scholar

2 Including those who came in at by-elections (calculated from The Return of M.P.s (1878); Brunton, and Pennington, , Members; D.N.B., etc.). I cannot pretend that this is more than a provisional figure.Google Scholar

3 Browning, A., Danby (Glasgow, 19441951), i, ch. IX; iii, pp. 33 ff.Google Scholar, 61 ff.; see also Ogg, D., England under Charles II (Oxford, 1934), ii, ch. XVGoogle Scholar; Feiling, K., The First Tory Party (Oxford, 1924), ch. VI.Google Scholar

1 History, The Reign of Charles II, ed. Airy, O. (Oxford, 1897), i, p. 489.Google Scholar Elsewhere the editor suggests that they go back at least to 1667 (ibid., ii, p. 82 n.); the reference is to Marvell's ‘Last Instructions to a Painter’, lines 105–16.

2 Temple, W., Works (1757 and 1770 edns), ii, pp. 429–30Google Scholar; The Aungervyle Soc. Reprints, 1st Ser. (Edinburgh, 18811882), p. 11Google Scholar, Clifford, ‘Bribe-Master- General’, and other references.Google Scholar

3 Hartmann, C. H., Clifford of the Cabal (London, 1937).Google Scholar I am grateful to the University of Glasgow for making available Shaw, J. J. Sutherland, ‘A Biography of Thomas Clifford, first Lord Clifford of Chudleigh’ (Ph.D. thesis, unpublished, 1935)Google Scholar, where the question is discussed (pp. 141–42, 198). ‘The Alarum’, an anonymous paper of October 1669, attacks Clifford violently, but singles out Arlington as ‘the great instrument’ in the corrup tion of M.P.s (Cal. S.P. Dom., 1668–69, pp. 541–42).Google Scholar

4 Works, ii, pp. 171–74Google Scholar (letter to his father, 22 11 1670).

5 Hartmann, , Clifford, p. 30Google Scholar, and references given there (C.J., viii, 389, 391).Google Scholar

6 The Parliamentary Diary of Sir Edward Dering, 16701–1673, ed. Henning, B. D. (New Haven, 1940), pp. 3940, 5758.Google Scholar

1 Court Dependents in 1664’, Bull. Inst. Hist. Res., xxxiv (1961), pp. 8191.Google Scholar

2 Though the evidence presented by Mr D. T. Witcombe for the previous session suggests that the need for better organization may well have been felt already (ibid., xxxii (1959), pp. 181–91, ‘The Cavalier House of Commons; the Session of 1663’).

3 An argument from silence can never be conclusive, and this statement rests only on the standard printed sources.

4 See above, p. 54, n. 3. There is also The Present Interest of England Stated (London, 1671)Google Scholar, anon, but supposedly by Bethel, to show his line of thought at this date. On Marvell and the Flagellum, compare Grosart, A. B., The Complete Works of Andrew Marvell (1875)Google Scholar; Margoliouth, H. M., The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell (Oxford, 1937)Google Scholar; de Beer, E. S., ‘Mem bers of the Court Party in the House of Commons, 1670–78’, Bull. Inst. Hist. Res., xi (19331934), pp. 123Google Scholar; Robbins, C., The Eighteenth-Century Common-wealthman (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), ch. II; D.N.B. (article by C. H. Firth).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

1 See in particular, Thomson, M. A., [A] Constitutional] Hist[ory of Eng land 1642 to 1801] (London, 1938), pp. 117–18, 187–88, 238–45, 326, 378–80Google Scholar; Kemp, B., The King and the Commons 1660–1832 (London, 1957), pp. 22, 5253, 585987, 95, 97, 100, 103, 108–9.Google Scholar

2 C.J., ix, 321, 326–27Google Scholar; Grey, A., Debates of the House of Commons from … 1667 to… 1694, III (1769), pp. 6974 (theseare numbered pp. 53–58, repeated a second time, in the B.M., State Paper Room copy).Google Scholar

3 C.J., ix, 609.Google Scholar There does not seem to be any further mention of this Bill before the end of the session just under four weeks later.

4 C.J., ix, 695–96Google Scholar; Cobbett, W., Pari. Hist., iv (1808), pp. 1264–70.Google Scholar

5 Ogg, , England under Charles II, ii, p. 484 (references from printed and MS. Lauderdale Papers).Google Scholar

6 Hatton Correspondence, i (Camden Soc, New Ser., xxii, 1878), pp. 166, 167.Google Scholar

1 Luttrell, N., A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs (Oxford, 1857), i, pp. 67Google Scholar2; Hist. MSS Comm., Ormonde, New Ser., iv, pp. 290–91, Fox to Ormonde, 28 Dec. 1678; Hid., iv, p. 496, Southwell to Ormonde, 31 Dec. 1678. The D.N.B. says that Winnington was deprived for supporting Ex clusion; but there seems to be no doubt from the dating that it was because he failed to oppose the attack on Danby.

2 See Feiling, , Tory Party, ch. VIIGoogle Scholar; Jones, J. R., The First Whigs (Oxford and Durham, 1961), pp. 120–21.Google Scholar

3 I am grateful to Mr John Sainty, Assistant Clerk of the House of Lords, for this point.

4 Based again on standard printed sources and secondary works, e.g. Feiling, , Tory Party, pp. 210–12.Google Scholar

1 King and Commons, ch. IV.

2 Const. Hist., p. 241.Google Scholar

3 One could go a certain distance by counting the proportion of office holders speaking and acting as tellers against the Crown in different parlia ments, but the fallibility of this method is obvious. In the earlier parliaments, as already mentioned, it is often quite hard to tell what was Crown policy or a Crown measure. And in some respects, relevant to this, the divided minis tries of 1662–73 perhaps have more in common with the time of James and Charles I than with the period which followed.

4 Flag. Pari.’, Aungervyle Soc. Repr., i, p. 10.Google Scholar

5 Grey, , Debates, iii, p. 72.Google Scholar

6 According to Firth (D.N.B.); The Return of M.P.s (1878) has no entry for Hull in this Parliament. See Grosart, , Complete Works of Marvell, ii, p. 14Google Scholar, quoted in Davies, G., ‘The Election of Richard Cromwell's Parliament, 1658–59’, Eng. Hist. Rev., lxiii (1948), p. 498 and n. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

1 Locke, J., Works (1823 and republ. Darmstadt, 1963), x, pp. 175–99.Google Scholar Who actually wrote the Constitutions is for this point quite secondary; since they are otherwise steeped in Harringtonian ideas, the absence of separation from them is striking. See also Andrews, C. M., The Colonial Period of American History, iii (New Haven, 1937)Google Scholar, ch. V. It is debatable whether or not Locke ever favoured complete separation in the Harrington-Montesquieu sense (see Second Treatise, ch. XII and ch. XIV, s. 159; see also Brown, L. F., ‘Ideas of Representation from Elizabeth to Charles II’, Journal of Mod. Hist., xi (1939), pp. 2340CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gough, J. W., Locke's Political Philosophy. Eight Studies (Oxford, 1950), ch. V, esp. pp. 93103Google Scholar; Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, P. (Cambridge, 2nd edn, 1964), Introduction, pp. 116–19).Google Scholar Harrington, like other neo-classical theorists, favoured division of the legislative power into two houses, one proposing and one resolving (Works, ed. Toland, (1737), pp. 541–45Google Scholar, ‘Petition to Parliament’, July 1659).Google Scholar

2 Somers Tracts (1748–51 edn), 1st Ser., i, pp. 6372, esp. p. 70.Google Scholar

1 About Halifax's own support for separation there can be little doubt. See Foxcroft, H. C., The Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, Bart, 1st Marquis of Halifax. With a new edn. of his Works (London, 1898), i, p. 121 (on Coventry), ii, pp. 160–61Google Scholar (on the 1692–93 Bill); ii, pp. 466–88, ‘Some Cautions offered to the consideration of those who are to choose Members to serve in the ensuing Parliament’, anon. [Halifax] 1695, cc. xvii and xix, on the exclusion from Parliament of all army officers and all placemen.

2 See Jones, , First Whigs, pp. 5, 1112, 36, for the Country element in exclusionist Whiggery.Google Scholar

3 Cobbett, , Pari. Hist., iv, p. 1265 (ref. back to the Cavalier Parliament).Google Scholar

1 See notably Balogh, T., ‘The Apotheosis of the Dilettante: the Establish ment of Mandarins’, in The Establishment, ed. Thomas, H. (London, 1959).Google Scholar

2 A wide range of revenue and tax-collecting offices were made incom patible with Membership of Parliament by Acts of 1694–95, 1700 and 1701 (5–6 William, & Mary, , c. vii, s. 59Google Scholar; 11 William III, c. ii; 11–12 William III, c. x. See also Hughes, E., Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558–1825 (Manchester, 1934), p. 281Google Scholar). The two latter seem to have been quite inde pendent of the Act of Settlement; that of 1701 was to take effect at the end of the then parliament, not-as was the Act of Settlementat the end of the next reign. It is somewhat unclear whether the Acts of 1705 and 1707, amend ing the Act of Settlement, were meant to affect these Acts too.

3 In this the Accounts Committee was exceptional (see above, pp. 51–52). Local Commissioners, of Peace, Sewers, etc., are excepted in the text of the Ordinance itself (Acts and Ordinances, i, p. 664Google Scholar); central commissioners of the Great Seal, Admiralty, Navy and Revenue, were added at the request of the Lords (see above, p. 47, n. 3).

4 See Aylmer, G. E., ‘Charles Fs Commission on Fees, 1627–40’, Bull. Inst. Hist. Res., xxxi (1958), pp. 5867CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also King's Servants, 136–43Google Scholar

5 Members of the Councils of the North and the Marches of Wales, Masters of Requests, even the Lord Chancellor and other Privy Councillors could all be said—in our contemporary jargon—to have ‘worn two hats’, one judicial and one executive.

1 Diary of John Milward… 1666 to … 1668, ed. Robbins, C. (Cambridge, 1938), App. I, pp. 309, 322.Google Scholar

2 As well as standard secondary works (Thomson, , Const. Hist.; Kemp, King and Commons)Google Scholar, see Marvell, , ‘An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England’, Works, ed. Grosart, , iv, pp. 247424, esp. pp. 323–32Google Scholar, and the attacks on Excise and Secret Service pensioners in the 2nd and 3rd Exclusion parliaments (see C.J., ix, 695–96Google Scholar, the first of the three resolutions carried on 30 Dec. 1680; Hist, and Proc. of the House of Commons, ed. Chandler, R., ii (1742), pp. 160–64Google Scholar, Hen. Booth's speech, ? Mar. 1680/81). It is extremely difficult to find a contemporary statement pinning the increased parliamentary corruption specifically on to the larger revenue services, though the statutes of the 1690's and 1700's, already cited, point clearly to this belief.

3 Toland, J., The State-Anatomy of Great Britain (London, 1717)Google Scholar, comes nearest to this concept. I do not know when it was first grasped in the form I have stated it.

1 Eighteenth-century Commonwealthman, ch. IV.

2 Shackleton, R., ‘Montesquieu, Bolingbroke, and the Separation of Powers’, French Studies, iii (Oxford, 1949), pp. 2538Google Scholar; and Montesquieu, , A Critical Biography (Oxford, 1961), ch. XIII.Google Scholar

1 See Aristotle, , The Constitution of Athens; Polybius, HistoryGoogle Scholar, Bk VI; Fritz, K. von, The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity (New York, 1954).Google Scholar

2 The Early History of the Ballot in England’, Amer. Hist. Rev., iii (18971898), pp. 456–63.Google Scholar

3 The Federalists (New York, 1948)Google Scholar; The Jeffersonians (New York, 1951).Google Scholar