Parliament and Ministers
The Secretaries of State, 1681-1782. By Mark A. Thomson. (Clarendon Press. 10s. 6d.)
THAT Parliamentary institutions have been widely adopted throughout the world may fairly be attributed to the prestige which our own Parliament enjoys. It is fitting, then, that
the rise and development of the two Houses at Westminster should have attracted an ever-increasing amount of attention from historians, both native and foreign, of whom Professor A. F. Pollard is unquestionably the chief. As the study develops, the difficulties of the subject multiply ; it becomes evident that the older theories, propounded by Hallam or Stubbs, or even later authorities, rest on no sure foundation,
while new hypotheses are put forward only to be refuted by new facts. An excellent example of the sound work that is being done in this field is afforded by Miss McKisack's mono- graph on the mediaeval borough members, the outcome of a research fellowship at Somerville College. By patient study of the borough records she has disposed of some fashionable speculations and pointed the way to fuller inquiry.
It has been suggested that the boroughs tried to evade the duty of electing representatives to Parliament, and that burgesses, when chosen, often stayed away. The suggestions are shown by Miss McKisack to be unfounded. Many of the sheriffs' returns to the writs ordering elections are lost. It is true that the sheriffs' choice of boroughs invited to return members varied widely in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when Parliament was still in an experimental stage. But there is no evidence of reluctance on the part of the boroughs in general to fulfil their duty. The idea that the elected burgesses did not attend arose out of the discovery that the writs enrolled in the Exchequer, ordering payment by the boroughs of their members' wages, usually refer to but a small number of burgesses. Miss McKisack had the good sense to examine the early accounts of a number of towns, such as York, Norwich, Exeter and King's Lynn, and she soon found innumerable cases in which burgesses had been paid wages though no writ relating to them was enrolled. The Exeter members, for instance, attended sixty-three Parlia- ments up to 1414, though wages writs were issued for only thirty-two Parliaments. As time went on, the boroughs realized more fully the value of representation as a means of securing the redress of local grievances and of checking the Crown's demands for money. But the payment of members
was felt as a sore burden, even in London, which treated its members handsomely and paid for their robes and their at- tendants' liveries. When in the fifteenth century a scat in the House of Commons had come to be useful to ambitious courtiers and lawyers or to the followers of this or that great
noble, the smaller boroughs were often glad enough to find representatives who would offer their services free of charge.
Miss McKisack in her extremely interesting chapter on " The Burgess Personnel " shows that the Commons under Henry VI and Edward IV were " a mixed assembly of merchants, gentlemen and lawyers, men bound by partizan loyalties, zealous to retain their seats." The landed gentry were already holding many borough seats, as they continued to do till 1832, and the House was all the stronger for their presence. It may be mentioned that in the course of her researches the author has added at least 200 names to the list of members (from 1213) which was compiled for Parliament in 1878. The Select Committee which was set up some years ago to revise and enlarge that list will find Miss McKisack a useful ally.
Another young Oxford historian., Dr. Thomson, has written an instructive account of the Secretaries of State, two in number, from 1680 to 1782, continuing Miss Evans' history of the office from Elizabeth's time. As every student of eighteenth-century diplomacy knows, the two Secretaries, while undertaking all kind of business, divided foreign affairs into a Southern and a Northern department. The Secretary for the Southern Department dealt with our envoys in the . Mediterranean countries and also with Ireland, the Channel Elands and the Colonies. The Secretary for the Northern Department looked after our envoys in the Empire, Holland, Scandinavia, Poland and Russia. They gave orders to the Army and Navy, each controlling the forces acting in his own sphere of influence. Such an arrangement seems fantastic, but it lasted for a century. Doubtless it accounted for some British reverses in the long French wars, and it led to inter- minable quarrels if both Secretaries were men of spirit. Usually, however, one Secretary dominated the other. New- castle took pains to get a docile colleague. Pitt would brook no interference when he was Secretary of State. Not until the reforms of 1782 did the King rearrange the duties of the office, entrusting one Secretary with the conduct of foreign policy and the other with domestic and Colonial affairs. After the Union of 1707 a third Secretaryship for Scotland was set up, but it lasted only a few years, and, though revived for Tweeddale in 1742, was abolished in consequence of his mishandling of the Jacobite rising. When the American troubles were becoming acute, a third Secretary of State for the Colonial Department was appointed, in 1768, in the person of Hillsborough, followed by Dartmouth and the blundering George Germain, but this experiment ceased in 1782. Mr. Thomson has much of interest to say about the actual practice of the administration, which was clumsy but worked well enough with a very small staff. Incidentally, he discusses the Secretaries' arbitrary power of arrest, especially under general warrants, which was not seriously challenged until the case of John Wilkes and No. 45 of the North Briton enabled the Courts, under Pratt and Mansfield, to declare that general warrants were illegal. Until then the Secretaries had virtually acted as magistrates ; afterwards they were as a rule careful to keep within the law. The book throws new light on the political conflicts of the Hanoverian period and deserves attention. EDWARD HAWKE.
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