Moments in Time: England's Parliament Invents Impeachment

Twice a year, I record a broadcast (or series of broadcasts) for my college's public radio station, WUCX, for their Moment in Time segment. I decided to collect the texts of these together here, as I have not been using this blog for anything else. Bear in mind these are aimed at a popular audience, so they are not the most cutting-edge scholarship. I have oversimplified a little at times, but hope I've avoided any outright errors.

This entry is the first in a pair that were first broadcast in July 2017. The UK general election referred to is that year’s, not the one held in December 2019. When I recorded this broadcast, I did not know the impeachment of Donald Trump would begin two years later.

The audio of this broadcast can be found here.

1376: England's Parliament Invents Impeachment

My home country, the United Kingdom, just had an election and the winner was… well, nobody. The result was a “Hung Parliament”, meaning no single party has a majority. This is the kind of exciting outcome that is possible in a system with more than two parties. It is also a reminder that the British system is a parliamentary democracy; we have no equivalent of the US president, unless you count the queen, who is the official head of state, but whose role is essentially a formal one only.

So, how did Britain get to a situation where governments rise and fall on whether they can keep a majority in Parliament? The story, as with much in British history, begins in the Middle Ages. At some point in the mid-thirteenth century, the royal council of the king of England was expanded on occasions to include representatives of the nobility and church. It was not yet an institution, more a discussion forum – “parliament” literally means “talking” in medieval French. Some people today still accuse Parliament of being a talking shop.

It became a really significant body when the barons fell out with King Henry III. In 1258, tensions were so high that the barons showed up armed to Parliament, and were required to leave their swords outside the chamber. To this day, it is said that the aisle separating the government and opposition benches in the House of Commons is set at a width of two swords’ lengths, preventing the two sides from coming to blows. When a civil war broke out between King Henry and a powerful faction of the barons, the baronial leader, Simon de Montfort, made use of Parliament to legitimize his regime, and extended it to include the knights and middle classes; the basis of today’s ‘House of Commons’ as opposed to the ‘House of Lords’ which contained the nobility and clergy. Simon de Montfort’s rebels lost the war, but the idea that the king should hold regular parliaments stuck.

The Commons really began to show their teeth nearly 100 years later, in the reign of Henry’s great-grandson Edward III. Edward wanted to raises taxes on wool, but the Commons insisted that no taxes could be levied without parliament’s agreement. The king, who needed money for his war, caved, establishing two important constitutional principles: only Parliament can consent to taxation, and money talks.  Later in Edward’s reign the Commons came up with the idea of impeachment (ultimately giving US politics its current word-of-the-month), which was the idea of putting on trial and removing unpopular ministers. This first happened in the so-called ‘Good Parliament on 1376. The “Merciless Parliament” of 1387 impeached no fewer than 5 royal ministers, who were removed from office and made to retire to the countryside. Only joking: they were hanged, drawn and quartered, giving a whole different meaning to the term “hung parliament”.

So, by the end of the Middle Ages England’s Parliament had established itself as a body that could not be ignored; they asserted the right to approve taxes, monitor the king’s ministerial appointments, and do the odd bit of judicial disemboweling. How it evolved from limiting the king’s power to removing it, is a story for part 2 next time.