The "unreformed House of Commons" is a name given to the House of Commons of Great Britain (after 1800 the House of Commons of the United Kingdom) before it was reformed by the Reform Act 1832, the Irish Reform Act 1832, and the Scottish Reform Act 1832.
Until the Act of Union of 1707, which united the Kingdoms of Scotland and England to form Great Britain, Scotland had its own Parliament, and the term can be used to refer to the House of Commons of England (which included representatives from Wales from the 16th century). From 1707 to 1801 the term refers to the House of Commons of Great Britain. Until the Act of Union of 1800 joining the Kingdom of Ireland to Great Britain (to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland), Ireland also had its own Parliament. From 1801 to 1832, therefore, the term refers to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
Medieval background
6th century to 1066
The Witenagemot was the forerunner political institution (that of Anglo-Saxon England) which operated from before the 7th century in at least the Kingdom of Wessex until the 11th century by which time the Kingdom of England was long-established. It was an assembly of the ruling class whose main function was to advise the king; composed of the most key noblemen in England, ecclesiastic and secular. The institution is thought to represent an aristocratic development of the ancient Germanic general assemblies, or folkmoots. In England, by the 7th century, these ancient folkmoots had developed into convocations of the land's most powerful and important people: ealdormen, thegns, and senior clergy, to discuss matters of national and local significance.
Through missionaries (later made saints) sent by Gregory the Great (such as Augustine of Canterbury and Paulinus of York) the seven Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, mainly with quasi-Witenagemots, officially converted to the church, by the mid-7th century. The panoply of Anglo-Saxon monarchs were then free to arrange marriages into European royalty, which were likewise, from then, became more autocratic while feudal. The role of a consulting forum, overall, declined. In England, cross-sea Viking Kingdoms made raids and soon invasions – such times and places of conflict favoured stronger leadership, and effective autocracy. None more so than the Danelaw, among whose rulers were Cnut the Great, Sveyn Forkbeard and Cnut of Northumbria.
1066 to 1265 The latter's semi-relatives, being the people (predominantly men) of the Norman Conquest, swept aside the remnants of the witenagemots and replaced most of the nobility, while continuing to seize and defend settled lands, vassal states, abroad. These early Norman monarchs thus had an invasive military state ethos, and as conquerors, did not wish to consult with those conquered.
The Normans regularly seized on an orthodoxy of medieval times which ended with ascendant Roundhead philosophies at the start of the Age of Enlightenment. This was, as taught and professed by established people, that sovereignty (including the rulers of ancient tribes and modern kingdoms) was a birthright, by divine grace. Reciting the more worldly origin of kingship: upward from the people, seeing a King's glorification, crowning and ongoing assent to his rulership by successful men-of-arms, most transparent in the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, became High Treason. The divine narrative is seized upon in sermons, the practice of orders of chivalry and the words and symbolism throughout coronation ceremonies. Leaders of the church preached that every true and Christian King, who would thus obey God's will and never irreparably defy God, had God's strong blessing. The King (or Queen) was "the Lord's anointed", due obedience from the people.W Ullmann, A History of Political Thought in the Middle Ages (Penguin 1965) p. 90 The King however had a duty to act as good shepherd of his people to avoid misery and ruin. Such events were often cited as proof of an evil, illegitimate King by a challenging foreign- or nobility-sponsored kinsman pretender to the throne. Such power struggles placed de facto, but not de jure limits on monarchy. At such times there were few trite constitutional conventions and the calling of a counsel or parliament was no longer routine.
Very wealthy nobility aligned with foreign powers, for example, completely thwarted a cross-kingdom powerhold for the -year reign of Stephen, King of England. This period, the much later-dubbed Anarchy of the 12th century, was foremost among semi-coups and great compromises. These confirmed practical limits on the non-church wealth and power a monarch could seize. From the Magna Carta of 1215 it was becoming accepted, in writing that could be construed as binding law, that a King's duties included the duty to respect and take counsel from feudal magnates.W Ullmann, A History of Political Thought in the Middle Ages (Penguin 1965) p. 148
1265 to 1649 Parliament emerged from such consultations (or parleys), representatives of local communities (the Commons) being added to those of the Lords (peers; senior bishops and all those ennobled, whether for loyalty or gallantry, who generally already had wealth and influence) – a process aided by the practical consideration that it was easier for the King to collect the taxes he needed if the people consented to pay them.E Miller, The Origins of Parliament (London 1960) p. 12-16
The emergence of petitioning in the reign of Edward I of England (1272–1307) contributed to beginnings of legislative power for the Parliament of England.
Representative men summoned by emerging custom, thus convention, fixed upon two to be selected by each (Parliamentary) borough and two knights of each shire (county). The latter evolved into any two men whom the fairly wealthy of the county selected. The latter electorate became standardised to forty shilling freeholders. Immediately from this, there followed a relative elite who could vote for and lobby both types of representative, so enjoyed plural voting, a relative elite who had single voting, and most other men with no right to vote.
Court-attending or royally invested nobles and the Western church created and perpetuated much historiography – including shrines and hagiography of "good kings" – such as to Edward the Confessor and Edmund the Martyr. Elaborate royal tombs and regular prayers for the dead were features of Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey and Bury St Edmunds. Until about 1350, King Edmund the Martyr, (pope) Gregory the Great, and King Edward the Confessor were regarded as English national saints, but Edward III preferred the more war-like figure of Saint George, and in 1348 he established the Order of the Garter, him as its patron. At Windsor Castle, its chapel of Saint Edward the Confessor was re-dedicated to Saint George, who was acclaimed three years later patron of the English race or people, where he was revered in later stories and folklore. Such a narrative was orthodoxy in the semi-autocratic reign of Henry VIII – who executed a series of his leading advisors and is used today as a slur for any excessive power, "Henry VIII power", in statute. Laden with wealth from the disappropriated church, he avoided Parliamentary dissent.
The limits of this stance were reached by Charles I of England. Found to be a "tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of the nation", his 67 Commissioner-strong trial ordered his beheading after the Civil War, following much Parliamentary sidelining, particularly taxing the people against Parliamentary will. When given the opportunity to speak, Charles refused to enter a plea, claiming that no court had jurisdiction over a monarch. He believed that his own authority to rule had been due to the divine right of kings given to him by God, and by the traditions and laws of England when he was crowned and anointed, and that the power wielded by those trying him was simply that of force of arms. Charles insisted that the trial was illegal, explaining, "No learnèd lawyer will affirm that an impeachment can lie against the King ... one of their maxims is, that the King can do no wrong."
Composition of the House
The House of Commons consisted entirely of men, increasingly of great wealth only, and from 1688 until reform entirely of Anglicans, except in Scotland. Women could neither vote nor stand for election. Members were not paid, which meant that only men of wealth could represent their counties or boroughs. Candidates had to be electors, which meant that in most places they had to have land, mills or businesses.
Virtually all members representing county seats were landed gentry. Many were relatives or dependants of peers. Others were squires with little or no blood relation to other members. These independent country gentlemen were often the chief source of opposition to government and royal edict, since they had little motivation to gain government favour through their votes.
Boroughs also sometimes selected local squires, but more were merchants or urban professionals such as lawyers. A large number of borough members were sponsored into office by the government and thus gave it support: these cronies were known as "placemen", and it was a long-standing objective of parliamentary reformers to eliminate them in the House of Commons. Some were men of little means, in debt or insolvent, who agreed to become placemen for government funds. All 18th century governments depended on this corrupt element to maintain their majorities. Some boroughs were under the control of particular ministers or government departments. Thus those representing the Cinque Ports were, by custom, dependants of the Admiralty and spoke for the interests of the Royal Navy.
There was no direct religious restriction on the right to vote. In practice most Catholics were prevented between the reign of Elizabeth I and the Papists Act 1778, as they could not own or inherit land, making them unable to meet the property requirement. Prominent "recusant" Catholic families such as that of the Duke of Norfolk, until this rule became redundant, circumvented this.
Even after 1778, eligibility for election to the House was restricted by the fact that members had to take an Anglican oath to take their seats. This excluded Catholics, non-Anglican Protestants (English Dissenters), Jews and atheists (This restriction did not apply to Presbyterians in Scotland, where the Church of Scotland was the established church.).
It is a widely held view that the quality of members of the Commons declined over the 250 years before its reform in 1832. This view was one of the stimulants for reform. Sir John Neale could say of the county members in the reign of Elizabeth I: "It was not sufficient for candidates to belong to the more substantial families ... They usually had to show some initiative and will." In the boroughs, he wrote, "competition tended to eliminate the less vigorous, less intelligent and unambitious." This would not be accepted as a description of the situation in the reign of George III, when it was frequently said that the Commons was full of lazy time-servers, talentless dependants of peers, and corrupt placemen and government agents.
The numerical dominance of country gentlemen pervaded. In 1584 they comprised 240 members in a House of 460. Two hundred years later this proportion had hardly changed, even though the social composition of Britain had changed greatly.
The proportion of non-affiliated by blood members declined; sons or close relatives of peers rose at least fourfold. In 1584 only 24 members were sons of peers; by the end of the 18th century this number had risen to about 130 (out of 659, i.e. 19.7%), a fourfold rise in percentage.