STEWARDSHIP OF THE CHILTERN HUNDREDS
1
A Member of the House of Commons cannot freely, on his part, resign
his seat. Nor can he be given a notice to quit by his constituents,
should he repudiate some pledge or disavow some principle, by reason
of which the majority voted for him at his election. The law of the
Constitution says in effect, “Once a Member, always a Member, until the
Parliament to which he is elected comes to an end, or death removes
him from the scene.” There is, however, a way by which the law can be
circumvented--by the Member, but not by the constituency--and the story
makes an interesting chapter of parliamentary theory and practice.
The Journals of the House of Commons do really contain a resolution
that a Member duly chosen by a constituency cannot relinquish his
seat. It was passed so far back as 1628, when country gentlemen
were rather reluctant to undertake the duties and responsibilities
of representatives; and, absurd as it may seem in these days of
eager competition for the letters “M.P.”--costly, troublesome, yet
most alluring and desirable--the Constitution, which never unlearns
anything, but goes on learning a great deal from practical experience,
still in theory supposes that Members of Parliament need to be bound
down to its service.
If a Member be convicted of treason or felony, he is forthwith expelled
from the House. I have seen three expulsions for criminal offences.
Should a Member have the misfortune to lose his reason and be committed
to a lunatic asylum, his seat is declared vacant. If he is made a
peer, he ceases to be a Member of the House of Commons. But if he
should grow tired of his parliamentary duties, or become incapable of
discharging them because of old age or ill-health, or feel himself
unable conscientiously to support the policy of his Party, or desire to
retire to private life upon any pretext or consideration whatever, he
is powerless to do so by the natural and simple expedient of sending
a letter of resignation to the Speaker or to his constituents. On
one condition only are the gates of Westminster thrown open, and an
unwilling representative allowed to depart in peace during the life of
the Parliament. He must obtain “an office of profit under the Crown.” A
Member of Parliament who accepts such a post by that very act vacates
his seat. Now, “an office of profit under the Crown” is usually a cosy
berth, with light duties and a liberal salary. The sole exception,
perhaps, is the “Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds”--it has no
duties and no salary--and that is the position to which a Member of the
House of Commons, wishing to resign, is appointed.
Not until the middle of the eighteenth century was this agency or
expedient provided by which a Member could formally quit the House
before the existence of the Parliament was terminated. Before that,
an M.P., weary of Westminster, had to appeal to the House for his
discharge. “That he shall still serve, and that he shall not be
removed.” Such was the sharp and peremptory order of the House in the
case of John Hassard, one of the Members for Lyme Regis, who in 1605
represented that he was suffering from “sickness by the joint,” and
desired that he might be allowed to resign his seat. Four years passed,
and, as the Parliament--the first of James I--was still in being, John
Hassard was still reluctantly M.P. In 1609 his constituents petitioned
the House that he might be released. Was it not hard on the borough,
they asked, that it should “be deprived of the services of one of its
representatives?” The House yielded so far as to appoint a committee to
inquire into the case. They reported that Hassard was bedridden of an
incurable disease. On this report the House was induced to yield, and
a new writ was issued. Of course, if a representative were unable or
indisposed to attend to his duties and the House refused him release,
he might absent himself until the Parliament was dissolved. But the
House had the power of fining for non-attendance, and, indeed, of
compelling the recalcitrant Member to repair to Westminster forthwith,
and, as the Journals of the House show, these powers were often
exercised.
At last a means of escape to reluctant legislators was afforded by
the famous Place Act of 1705--one of the really great events in that
long process, the evolution of the British Constitution. The House of
Commons, in the first stirrings of a desire for independence, naturally
became jealous of the presence of office-holders and pensioners who
were disposed to be subservient to the Sovereign. The Act passed in
1700, settling the Crown on the House of Hanover, contained the clause:
“That no person who has an office or place of profit under the Crown,
or receives a pension from the Crown, shall be capable of serving
as a Member of the House of Commons.” The clause was never put into
operation. Ministers were covered by the clause, and, of course, it was
found impracticable to exclude Ministers from the House. But the Act of
Queen Anne safeguarded the independence of the House by establishing
the great principle that a Minister should give his constituency the
opportunity of passing judgment on his acceptance of office. “Provided
always,” says the Act of 1705, “that if any person being chosen a
Member of the House of Commons shall at any time after the dissolution
or determination of this present Parliament accept of any office of
profit from the Crown during such time as he shall continue a Member,
his election shall be and is hereby declared to be void, and a new
writ shall issue for a new election as if such person so accepting
was naturally dead; provided, nevertheless, that such person shall be
capable of being again elected as if his place had not become void as
aforesaid.” The object of this provision was twofold: first, to make
it impossible for the Sovereign to appoint a Member of Parliament to a
lucrative post, and retain his services in the House of Commons as a
subservient place-man independently of the wishes of his constituents;
and secondly, to enable a Member of Parliament to accept an office in
the Government and still keep his seat in the House of Commons, if his
constituents were agreeable. But the statute had been forty-five years
in operation before it was ingeniously turned to a purpose for which
originally it was never intended. There was an ancient office-holder
called a Crown Steward. He was the custodian of one of the Manors or
Hundreds belonging to the Royal demesne. Under Charles II most of the
stewardships were abolished. One of the few which survived was that of
“the three Hundreds of Chiltern, in the County of Bucks, that is to
say, Stoke, Desborough and Bodenham,” which from earliest Norman times
had been in the hands of my Lord the King. Sequestrated and sold under
the Commonwealth, it reverted to the Crown at the Restoration, and
appears to have been leased from 1679 to 1710 by one Thomas Doyley, who
was its last _bona fide_ steward.
2
The Chiltern Hundreds are a range of chalk downs that gently undulate
through Buckinghamshire, from Tring in Hertfordshire to Henley-on
Thames in Oxfordshire. Many years ago the Hundreds were partly covered
by a thick forest of beech-trees, in which bands of desperate rogues
and robbers found a secure hiding-place, and it was the dangerous duty
of the steward to protect the surrounding country from the marauding
expeditions of these outlaws, as well as to collect the revenues of
my Lord the King. The revenues are gone. The freebooters have long
disappeared. But the office of Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds
survives, without the duties and without the emoluments, to serve the
singular purpose of enabling Members of Parliament to lay down the
burden of their legislative responsibilities without having to wait
for a dissolution. The first Member appointed to the office, solely to
enable him to resign his seat, was Mr. John Pitt, and the date of the
appointment was January 17, 1750.
The stewardship is in the gift of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The warrant of appointment to the office is not given in any of the
text-books on the Constitution. But looking through the papers of
Lord Broughton, which have been placed in the Manuscript Department
of the British Museum, I discovered the document issued by Viscount
Althorp, Chancellor of the Exchequer, appointing Broughton to the
Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds when, in 1833, as Sir John
Hobhouse, he resigned his seat for Westminster. It is a quaint and
curious document indeed. “To all to whom these Presents shall come,
the Right Honourable Viscount Althorp, Chancellor and Under-Treasurer
of His Majesty’s Exchequer, sendeth Greeting.” Thus it opens, and then
goes on to say: “Know ye that I, the said Viscount Althorp, reposing
especial trust and confidence in the care and fidelity of the Right
Honourable Sir John Hobhouse, have constituted and appointed, and by
these Presents do constitute and appoint, the said Sir John Hobhouse
to be Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern, in the
County of Buckinghamshire, that is to say, Stoke, Desborough and
Bodenham, with the returns of all Writs, Warrants and Executions of the
same (in the room and place of E. B. Portman, Esq., whose constitution
to the said offices I do hereby revoke and determine), together with
all Wages, Fees, Allowances, and other Privileges and Pre-eminences
whatsoever to the said offices of Steward and Bailiff belonging, or in
any wise appertaining, with full power and authority to hold and keep
Courts, and to do all and every other Act and Acts, Thing and Things,
which to the said offices of Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds
aforesaid, or either of them, do belong, or in any wise appertain,
in as full and ample manner as any former Steward or Bailiff of the
said Three Hundreds hath lawfully had, received or enjoyed the same;
to have and to hold the said offices of Steward and Bailiff of the
said Three Hundreds, together with all Wages, Fees, Allowances, and
other Privileges, and Pre-eminences whatsoever, to the said Sir John
Hobhouse, during His Majesty’s pleasure.”
The Warrant thus concludes:
And I do hereby authorize and empower the said Sir John
Hobhouse to demand and receive for His Majesty’s use all Court
Rolls and other writings relating to the said Three Hundreds
from any person or persons having the same in their hands
or custody. And all and every such person and persons having
the same in their hands and custody are hereby required to
deliver up the same to the said Sir John Hobhouse. Provided,
nevertheless, that the said Sir John Hobhouse shall enter these
Presents in the Office of the proper Auditor within forty days
next after the date hereof, and shall yearly return the Court
Rolls of the said Three Hundreds into the said office of the
said Auditor, and account with the said Auditor for all such
sum and sums of money as he, the said Sir John Hobhouse, shall
receive for and to His Majesty’s use within forty days next
after the Feast Day of St. Michael the Archangel, which shall
happen in every year, or else these Presents and everything
herein contained to be void.
In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal the
First Day of May in the Third Year of the Reign of His Majesty
King William the Fourth, and in the Year of our Lord One
thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty-Three.
Sealed and delivered (being first duly stampt) in the presence
of T. Drummond.
ALTHORP.
At first, the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds was treated as a
piece of Government patronage to which the Opposition had no claim.
Its gift was made a matter of Party favour. It was readily bestowed
on a supporter of the Government when an advantage was to be gained
at a bye-election. To harass a political opponent by refusing it
was considered quite a legitimate move in Party tactics. In order
to deprive the Government of this power to prevent a Member of the
Opposition from resigning his seat, on March 15, 1775, in the House of
Commons, George Grenville asked for leave to bring in a Bill to enable
a Member to vacate his seat by simply sending a letter of resignation
to the Speaker. Nathaniel Bayly, who supported the Bill, told a curious
story. He sat for Westbury. He had first contested Abingdon, but was
defeated. The victor was a supporter of the Government, named Mayor,
who was subsequently disqualified on the ground that he was the high
sheriff of the county. Bayly applied to Lord North, the Prime Minister
and Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the Stewardship of the Chiltern
Hundreds in respect of his seat for Westbury, in order that he might
be set free to again contest Abingdon with Mayor, who had resigned the
shrievalty. Lord North refused the stewardship, saying he wished to
save a political supporter from being opposed. “The cases,” he wrote,
“have certainly been very few in which I have excused myself from
granting vacated offices to Members of Parliament; but I have made it
my constant rule to resist every application of that kind where any
gentleman entitled to my friendship would have been prejudiced by my
compliance. Mr. Mayor would, therefore, have just reason to complain
of my conduct towards him if I should make his case an exception to my
general rule.”
Lord North was very indignant that Bayly should have read in debate
this letter, which, he said, was intended to be private. He denounced
the hon. gentleman’s conduct as “a breach of common decency and
confidence.” Still, he did not think there was anything blameable in
the letter. “I am not personally known to Mr. Mayor,” said he with
engaging frankness, “but then that gentleman has entitled himself to my
friendship by showing himself a strenuous supporter of the honour and
dignity of this country in concurring with the Government’s measures
in respect to the American Colonies.” “I see,” said Edmund Burke, “the
noble Lord holds out the granting or refusal of the Stewardship of the
Chiltern Hundreds as one more _douceur_ for those who will support him
in that ruinous and mad career of violence which tends to alienate the
Colonies of America.” Grenville’s motion was refused by 178 votes to
126. Rigby, a prominent politician, then Paymaster of the Land Forces,
contended that if the Bill were passed it would be possible for the
Opposition, by withdrawing in large numbers from the House of Commons,
to force the Government to dissolve Parliament. However, the ingenuity
of the Opposition discovered a means of outwitting the Government.
Under the Place Act of 1705, office-holders called agents of regiments
were excluded from the House of Commons. In 1779 a vacancy occurred in
the representation of Hampshire. Jervoise Clarke Jervoise, a member
of the Opposition who sat for the borough of Yarmouth, Isle of Wight,
desiring to contest Hampshire in the interests of the Opposition, asked
Lord North for the Chiltern Hundreds. The Chancellor of the Exchequer
replied in effect that the office was not for the likes of him.
Jervoise then got himself appointed agent of the Sussex Militia, and
lo! the gates of Westminster were thrown open to him, and he was free
to go down and woo the electors of Hampshire. Since then the liberating
stewardship is granted as a matter of course to any Member of the
House of Commons who desires an honourable discharge from the House,
without any regard being paid to Party or political considerations. The
stewardship is retained only until a fresh application for the office
is made to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Each new warrant expressly
revokes the grant to the previous occupant of the post, and the new
steward in turn continues in office till the time comes for him to make
way for another.
3
It was stated by Sir Robert Peel, as Chancellor of the Exchequer,
on February 1846, that the office cannot be conferred twice on the
same day. If there is a second application for the position on the
same day recourse is had to two other stewardships of an identically
nominal character--those of the Manors of East Hendred in Berkshire
and of Northstead and Hempholme in Yorkshire. There was still another
office used for the same purpose, the Escheator of Munster, a survival
of the Irish Parliament and confined to Irish representatives, but
it was abolished in 1838. Since 1850, the statement of Sir Robert
Peel in 1846 notwithstanding, there have been four instances of the
stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds having been granted twice on the
same day--the cases are set forth in a list of the Stewards since 1850,
issued by Parliament in 1893--but, of course, two men did not hold the
position at the same time, as the second appointment, in each instance,
cancelled the first.
Not the least remarkable feature of this strange business is that the
tie between the constituency and the Member can only be severed by
the Member with the help of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Once a
constituency elects a representative, it cannot get rid of him until
the General Election, if he be unwilling to go. In the warrant of
1833 the Chancellor of the Exchequer declares that he reposes in the
steward’s “care and fidelity” “especial trust and confidence.” Now,
it has occasionally happened that a Member of Parliament has been
compelled by the fear of outraged public opinion hastily to retire
into private life because of some act which, while it did not bring
him within the meshes of the law, was morally wrong or socially
disgraceful. To meet the cases of these black sheep, Gladstone, in
1861, while Chancellor of the Exchequer, made an alteration in the
phraseology of the warrant so as to remove any misconception that the
granting of the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds conferred either
honour or credit. In that year a Member of the House of Commons,
and a conspicuous lawyer, Edwin James, suddenly applied for and was
granted the Chiltern Hundreds, and a new writ for his constituency
was immediately issued. It subsequently transpired that his patent of
Q.C. was revoked, and he was disbarred for unprofessional conduct.
It was this case of an escape, as it were, by the back door that led
Gladstone to omit from the warrant of appointment to the Chilterns
and similar stewardships the words expressing “special trust and
confidence in the care and fidelity” of the office-holder, but for some
reason, presumably because no official record was kept of the change,
the omitted words were subsequently replaced. In 1877 Sir Stafford
Northcote, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, again omitted them, and
since then the warrant has been issued without the halo of honour which
the original phraseology imparted.
The warrant was issued, as I have said, in all cases as a matter of
course, save where it was known that the applicant was liable to
expulsion from the House for a criminal offence, or deprivation of
his seat on an election petition for bribery or corruption. In these
cases it was refused, so that the House might retain the control over
the offender with a view to censuring him or expelling him. Gladstone
laid it down that the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on
receiving an application for the stewardship, was “to consider whether
the gentleman who asks for the office can, by any possibility, be
escaping from any duty he owes to Parliament, or any law under which
he has come by his election to Parliament; and, unless there is some
ground or colour of positive objection of this nature, to grant the
office without making further inquiry.” The office was refused in 1842.
The applicant was Lord Chelsea, against whose election for Reading
a petition had been lodged. During the trial of the petition Lord
Chelsea, as a compromise, entered into an agreement--in order, it was
said, to avoid a bribery and corruption inquiry--to vacate his seat
and to obtain it for the petitioner (his opponent at the election), or
forfeit £2,000. But his application to Goulburn, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, for the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds was rejected.
“I consider,” wrote Goulburn, “that by lending my assistance to the
fulfilment of any engagements which may have been entered into, as
arising out of such compromise, I should, in some sort, make myself a
party to transactions which I do not approve, and of which the House of
Commons has implied its condemnation.” Lord Chelsea was thus compelled
against his will to remain a Member of Parliament.
According to a memorandum submitted to the Select Committee on the
House of Commons (Vacating of Seats) Bill in July 1894, by Sir W.
Harcourt (then Chancellor of the Exchequer), the general principles
applying to applications for the Chilterns were stated as follows: The
stewardship should be granted immediately, and as a matter of course,
except in very extreme cases, the argument being that to withhold the
appointment, on the assumption that at some future date the seat may
be vacated by other means is unfair--(1) to the applicant himself,
who, even in the most suspicious circumstances, has a claim to be
considered innocent until he is actually proved guilty; (2) to the
House in general, which desires to purge itself as soon as possible of
doubtful characters; (3) to the political Party to which the applicant
belongs, whose reputation is injured and whose numerical strength may
be diminished by his retaining his seat without appearing in the House;
(4) to the constituency he represents, which, for the same reason, may
be practically disfranchised; and finally (5) to the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, who might lay himself open to the charge of opposing a
Member’s retirement for partisan motives. The memorandum went on to
say, however, that it is the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
to refuse to grant the appointment, either if the House directly
enjoins him to do so, or if the Member’s resignation would anticipate
proceedings, whether imminent or actually pending, either in the House
for censuring or punishing him, or before the Election Judges for
voiding his election.
4
Every appointment to the Stewardship is immediately “gazetted.” That is
to say, a notice, of which the following is an example, is published in
the _London Gazette_:
TREASURY CHAMBERS,
_February 1907_.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has appointed the Right Hon.
James Bryce, M.P., to be Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern
Hundreds.
This notice having been brought to the attention of the House of
Commons, a new writ of election was issued, and in the Journals of the
House the following record appears:
New Writ for Aberdeen South in the room of the Right Hon.
James Bryce, who since his election has accepted the office of
Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds.
I mention this case because the real cause of the resignation of Mr.
Bryce was his appointment as Ambassador to the United States. But
it is a curious circumstance, illustrative of the anomalies of the
Constitution, that the office of an Ambassador or other Minister to
a foreign country, though undoubtedly an office of profit under the
Crown, is yet a position the acceptance of which does not vacate a seat
in the House of Commons. Mr. Bryce, therefore, was obliged to apply for
the purely nominal office of Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds in order
to be enabled to get away from Westminster.
The principle that the office of Ambassador or Minister to a foreign
Court does not disqualify, nor its acceptance vacate the seat of, a
Member was formally affirmed by the House of Commons in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth. It was resolved on February 9, 1575, “that any person
being a Member, and in service of Ambassade, shall not be amoved during
such service.” Some thirty years later, in the time of James I, a
committee having been appointed to consider the case of several persons
“who had received employments from the King,” it was adjudged, on their
report, that Sir Charles Cornwallis, Ambassador in Spain, Sir George
Carew, Ambassador in France, and Sir Thomas Edmunds, Ambassador with
the Archduke of Austria, “should still stand in their several places”
in the Commons House of Parliament; and after George I came to the
Throne it was decided (July 7, 1715) that Mr. Carpenter, who had been
appointed Envoy to the Court of Vienna, was not thereby included in the
disability of the Act of Queen Anne.
When, in the recess of 1850-51, Richard Lalor Sheil was appointed
Minister Plenipotentiary to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the fact was
at first overlooked that his seat was not thereby vacated, and on
the opening day of the session a new writ for Dungarvan was, on the
motion of Hayter, the Chief Whip, ordered to be made out. At the
next sitting, however, Hayter informed the House that he had acted
under a misconception; and he submitted a motion of supersedeas, with
a view to putting matters on a proper footing. In the course of a
brief discussion which preceded the adoption of this action, Sir John
Romilly, the then Attorney-General, recalled that Canning retained his
seat for Liverpool while acting as British Ambassador in Portugal,
and that, similarly, Lord Burghersh continued to represent Lyme Regis
in Parliament while discharging ambassadorial duties abroad. Sheil
promptly applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, and the new writ for
Dungarvan was ordered on March 11, 1851. This lesson was borne in mind
when, in the recess of 1869-70, Austen Henry Layard, at that time Chief
Commissioner of Works and Liberal Member for Southwark, went as British
Ambassador to Madrid. Layard accepted the Chiltern Hundreds without
delay, and the new writ for Southwark was issued at the beginning of
the session of 1870.
5
The assumption that the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds is an
office of profit under the Crown is one of the most amusing of the many
amusing pretences which meet one in exploring the byways of the British
Constitution. There are no official duties of any sort attached to
the office. The steward is said to be an agent for property belonging
to the Crown. But the Crown has no proprietorial rights whatever in
the Hundreds of Chiltern in the county of Buckingham. As agent for
this non-existent estate, the steward is required to receive moneys
which are never paid, and to preside in Courts which are never held.
The duties of the office are, therefore, extremely light, but it
cannot be said the emoluments are so tempting. It is true that the
warrant of appointment prescribes that the Steward of the Chiltern
Hundreds is to enjoy “all Wages, Fees, Allowances and other Privileges
and Pre-eminences whatsoever” appertaining to the position; but
notwithstanding the initial capital letters which give to these good
things a convincing appearance of reality--as they are set forth in the
official document under the hand and seal of that master of the public
purse, the Chancellor of the Exchequer--they are all purely imaginary.
The Chiltern Hundreds in Bucks is not only a place of great rural
charm, but of haunting literary and political memories. Burnham Beeches
survive to tell of its forests once infested with the knaves who made
things troublesome for the Crown Steward. In the delightful village of
Chalfont St. Giles blind Milton completed “Paradise Lost.” Gray, in the
churchyard of Stoke Pogis, speculated that among the rude forefathers
of the hamlet at rest in the surrounding graves there were “hands
that the rod of Empire might have swayed” had fortune been kind. But
not far off is Eton, the undoubted nursery of statesmen of the past.
Two of the mightiest Members of Parliament lived among these pleasant
hills. At Beaconsfield, Edmund Burke, the political philosopher and
sentimentalist, endeavoured “God willing,” as he expressed it, “to
become a farmer in good earnest”; and at Hughenden, the practical
politician, Benjamin Disraeli, romantic and fantastic to the last,
fed his gorgeous peacocks. They sleep, too, in these sylvan retreats.
Surely these splendid phantoms may well be described as the immortal
Stewards of the Chiltern Hundreds.