THE SERJEANT-AT-ARMS
1
“Order, order!” These are the words that are most frequently heard in
the House of Commons. They run like a refrain, appealing, warning,
and, at times, even menacing, through the babble and confusion of
the Party conflict. “Order, order!” Members shout at each other with
bitterness and defiance across the floor. “Order, order!” cries Mr.
Speaker, when he observes any breach of decorum or rises to intervene
in an altercation.
A conspicuous object in the House of Commons is a large armchair of
heavy oak, upholstered in dark green leather, at the Bar, raised a
few feet above the level of the floor, just inside the swing-doors of
the main entrance to the Chamber. It is the Serjeant-at-Arms’ chair.
The Serjeant-at-Arms is the chief executive officer of the House of
Commons. He it is who is charged with the duty of preserving decorum
in the Chamber and its precincts, of executing the warrants of the
House against persons it has adjudged guilty of breaches of its
privileges or contempt of its dignity; and it is he who backs with
force, when force is necessary, the “Order, order!” of Mr. Speaker.
He sits in his chair, facing the Speaker, picturesquely clad in a
black cutaway coat, open at the breast to show the daintiest of
ruffles in the whitest of cambric (of which fops in the times of the
Georges were so fond), knee-breeches, black silk stockings, and shoes
with silver buckles; and, as the symbol of the power and authority of
his office, a rapier in its scabbard is girt to his side. His voice
is very rarely heard in the House. It is seldom necessary for the
Speaker to give him an order in words, and a reply or explanation
from him is scarcely ever needed.
The Serjeant-at-Arms is appointed by the King personally. An officer
of his Majesty’s Forces—alternately soldier and sailor—usually
gets the position. He is styled “Serjeant-at-Arms in Ordinary to
his Majesty,” and his duty is, as described in the patent of his
appointment, “to attend upon his Majesty when there is no Parliament,
and for the time of every Parliament to attend upon the Speaker of
the House of Commons.” He has a salary of £1,200 and an official
residence in the Palace of Westminster. The Deputy Serjeant-at-Arms,
who, wearing the same official dress as the Serjeant-at-Arms, takes
turns at sitting on guard in the big chair at the Bar, has a salary
of £800 a year, and also lives in the Palace rent free. There is
also an assistant Serjeant-at-Arms, who usually attends to the
administrative work of the office outside the Chamber. He has £500
a year and £150 as an allowance for a house. The department of the
Serjeant-at-Arms costs about £14,000 a year, for, in addition to his
deputy and assistant, there are also two door-keepers and eighteen
messengers (recognized by their brass chains and badges of Mercury),
who are his first reserves in the maintenance of order in the House.
It is not alone to “strangers” who have offended the dignity and
majesty of the House of Commons that the Serjeant-at-Arms is an
awe-inspiring personage. Even the representatives of the people may
have occasion to shiver at the dread touch of his hand on their
shoulder. Of the large number of new Members returned at a General
Election few are probably aware of the fact (which, indeed, is not
generally known even to old Members) that the Clock Tower contains
a suite of rooms for the confinement of representatives who may
be pronounced guilty by the House of some serious breach of its
privileges or some outrage on its decorum. A Member of Parliament
arrested on the warrant of the Speaker was formerly sent, like
strangers guilty of breaches of privilege, to Newgate or to the
Tower. But in the building of the Palace of Westminster prison
accommodation was specially provided for Members and strangers
committed by the House to the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms.
The prison of the House of Commons is not, however, a dungeon vile,
deep down below the vaults of the Palace, a dark and slimy place into
which the light of day never enters. It is situated about half-way up
the Clock Tower, and under the home of that popular London celebrity,
Big Ben, probably the best known clock in the whole world. There are
two suites of apartments, each consisting of two bedrooms—one for the
prisoner and the other for one of the Serjeant-at-Arms’ messengers,
who acts as gaoler—and a sitting-room. There is, therefore,
accommodation for two prisoners and two gaolers in the Clock Tower,
which so far has been found more than sufficient.
Access to these rooms is obtained only through the residence of
the Serjeant-at-Arms, who is responsible for the safe keeping of a
prisoner of Parliament. Their windows command a view of the Thames
and Westminster Bridge on one side and of Palace Yard on the other.
Imprisonment under any conditions is, perhaps, an undesirable
position, but it must be said that in the Clock Tower it is deprived
of all its terrors and most of its inconveniences. The prisoner
may rise when he pleases; his meals are supplied from the catering
department of the House of Commons, and he can have what he likes—at
his own expense. After breakfast he is allowed an hour’s recreation
on the terrace, accompanied by his gaoler and a police-officer in
plain clothes, and he may take the air also in the evening. Should
his term of imprisonment extend over Sunday, he may attend service in
St. John’s Church, close to the Palace of Westminster, to which he is
accompanied by his guards.
The practice of the House of Commons, in recent times, was to commit
a person guilty of any violation of its privileges to the custody
of the Serjeant-at-Arms, to be detained during its pleasure. The
imprisonment generally continued until the prisoner expressed
contrition for his offence, or the House in its mercy resolved that
he be discharged. But before he was free to go he had to pay a
substantial fee to the Serjeant-at-Arms for locking him up and seeing
that he did not escape. The House, however, has no power to keep a
person in custody during its recess. If, therefore, the confinement
should last until the prorogation of Parliament, he may not only
claim his release but decline to make good the Serjeant-at-Arms’ bill
of costs. The last occupant of the prison was Charles Bradlaugh, the
Member for Northampton. His confinement for twenty-four hours, in
1880, was an episode in his long contest with the House of Commons
over his claim to be allowed, as an atheist, to take his seat without
having to use, in the oath of allegiance, the expression, “So help
me, God!” Bradlaugh, in a conversation about his prison experiences,
stated that while the rooms were comfortable, and the confinement by
no means irksome, the noisy passage of time as recorded by Big Ben in
booming the quarters and the hours at night allowed him but little
sleep.
2
Contumacy on the part of a Member nowadays would hardly be visited
by imprisonment. Among the expressions which are considered out of
order are treasonable or seditious words, the use of the Sovereign’s
name offensively, or, with a view to influence debate, disparaging
references to the character and proceedings of Parliament, personal
attacks on Members, allusions to matters pending judicial decision
in the courts of law, and insulting reflections on Judges or
other persons in high authority. The Speaker, or the Chairman of
Committees, has also the power, after having called attention three
times to the conduct of a Member who persists in irrelevance, or in
tedious repetition, to direct him to discontinue his speech. If a
Member’s conduct is grossly disorderly, or if he refuses to apologize
for an unparliamentary expression, the Speaker or Chairman orders
him to withdraw immediately from the House and its precincts for
the remainder of the sitting, and should he refuse to leave he may
be forcibly removed by the Serjeant-at-Arms and his messengers. If
suspension for the remainder of the sitting be deemed by the Speaker
an inadequate punishment for the breach of order, the offending
member may be named. The Speaker simply says, “I name you, James
Thomas Millwright.” The motion of suspension which follows the
naming of a Member is moved by the Leader of the House or, in his
absence, by another Minister. It is simply and briefly worded, to
this effect: “I beg to move that James Thomas Millwright, Member for
Little Peddlington, be suspended from the service of the House.”
It is put to the House immediately, no amendment or debate, or
even an explanation by the offending Member, being allowed. If the
offence has been committed in Committee, the proceedings are at
once suspended, the Speaker is sent for, the House resumes, and the
Chairman reports the circumstances. The motion of suspension is
then moved by the Minister and put by the Speaker. The Member thus
suspended must forthwith quit the precincts of the House, a term
officially interpreted as “the area within the walls of the Palace
of Westminster.” It will be noticed that the period of suspension is
not mentioned in the motion. Formerly, the Standing Orders provided
that for the first offence it was to be one week, for the second a
fortnight, and for each further offence one month. But by amendments
to the Orders made in February 1902 the suspension continues in force
till the end of the session, unless previously rescinded. Suspension
involves the forfeiture of the right of entry to the lobby, the
smoking-room and dining-room, the library, the terrace, and indeed
to any portion of the Palace; but it does not exempt the Member from
serving on any committee for the consideration of a Private Bill to
which he has been appointed, and that is considered an additional
hardship.
If too large a number of Members to be coped with effectively by
the force at the command of the Serjeant-at-Arms should disregard
the authority of the Chair, the Speaker, by powers vested in him in
February 1902, may forthwith adjourn the House. The new Standing
Order was designed to cope with such a scene of disorder as that
which occurred a short time previously, when a force of police was
brought into the Chamber by Mr. Speaker Gully to remove some Irish
Members who, as a protest against being closured in debate, refused
to take part in the division that was challenged on the question
under discussion. “In the case of grave disorder arising in the
House,” it runs, “the Speaker may, if he thinks it necessary to do
so, adjourn the House without question put, or suspend any sitting
for a time to be named by him.” In other words, the Speaker can turn
out the lights and the reporters, leaving the disorderly Members to
cool their anger in privacy and in darkness.
The House has also the power of expulsion. This punishment is
resorted to only in the case of a Member guilty of a gross criminal
offence. Strangely enough, it does not disqualify for re-election,
if the expelled Member could persuade a constituency to accept him.
But to name a Member is the highest coercive authority vested in
the Speaker for dealing with disorderly conduct in the House. It
should be a very grave breach of the privileges of the House, or
very indecorous conduct within its walls, that nowadays would land a
Member in the prison of the Clock Tower.
But to see the Serjeant-at-Arms in all his glory one must have the
good fortune to be present on one of those rare occasions when some
outside violator of the privileges of the House is brought to the Bar
for judgment. Parliament can itself redress its wrongs and vindicate
its privileges. It acknowledges no higher authority. It has the
power summarily to punish disobedience of its orders and mandates,
indignities offered to its proceedings, assaults upon the persons or
reflections upon the characters of its Members, or interference with
its officers in the discharge of their duties. The Serjeant-at-Arms
can arrest, under the warrant of the Speaker issued by order of the
House, any person anywhere within the limits of the kingdom. In the
execution of the warrant he can call on the aid of the civil power.
If he thinks it necessary, he can even summon the military to his
assistance. He can break into a private residence between sunrise and
sunset, if he has reason to suspect that the person he is in search
of is inside.
The most famous case of house-breaking in execution of a warrant
of the Commons was the forcible entrance into the residence of Sir
Francis Burdett, in Piccadilly, by the Serjeant-at-Arms, supported
by police and military, and the arrest of the Radical Member for
Westminster and his commitment to the Tower. Burdett was pronounced
guilty of a breach of privilege in April 1810 by declaring in a
letter to his constituents that the Commons had exceeded their
powers in sending to prison John Gale Jones, the revolutionary
orator, and an order for his commitment to the Tower was carried by a
Majority of 38—190 against 152. Burdett barricaded his house against
the Serjeant-at-Arms. An entrance was effected by climbing the area
railings and breaking open the area door. The Serjeant-at-Arms found
Burdett in the drawing-room upstairs. “Sir,” said Burdett, “do you
demand me in the name of the King? In that case I am prepared to
obey.” “No, sir,” replied the Serjeant-at-Arms, “I demand you in
the name and by the authority of the Commons of England.” Burdett
protested that the law of the land was being violated, but he was
carried off and lodged in the Tower. An action which he afterwards
brought against the Speaker for false imprisonment failed on
the ground that the Commons are the supreme guardian of its own
privileges and upholder of its authority. Neither does any suit lie
against the Serjeant-at-Arms. Arising out of proceedings brought in
1884 by Charles Bradlaugh for assault against the Serjeant-at-Arms
in having him removed by force from the House of Commons, Lord Chief
Justice Coleridge laid it down that the Serjeant-at-Arms was not
liable for damages in the execution of his duty, and that the court
had no jurisdiction over him.
3
The Serjeant-at-Arms brings his prisoner to the House of Commons. A
brass rod is pulled out from the receptacle in which it is telescoped
at the Bar, and stretched across the line which marks the technical
boundary of the Chamber. The fixing of that glittering rod is
almost as fearfully thrilling as the putting on of the black cap
by the Judge to impose the sentence of death, and I have seen both
spectacles. Behind the rod stands the prisoner. To his right is the
Serjeant-at-Arms, carrying the glittering Mace on his shoulder. At
the other end of the Chamber, standing on the dais of the Chair, is
Mr. Speaker in his flowing silk gown, his face sternly set under his
huge wig—an awful figure indeed—delivering in the weightiest words
he can command, amid the dramatic hush of the crowded Chamber, the
sentence or reprimand of the House on the scorner or violator of
its ancient privileges. On such occasions, the Mace being off the
table, no Member can address the House. It would be out of order for
a Member to put a question direct to the prisoner at the Bar. If
therefore a Member desires to put such a question he must write it
down and submit it to the Speaker, who alone has then the right of
speech.
In former times the prisoner at the Bar was compelled to kneel
down while the Speaker delivered the sentence or censure of the
House. In February 1751 a Scottish gentleman named Alexander
Murray (brother of the Master of Elibank), having, in the course
of a contested election at Westminster, under the very shadow of
the House, spoken disrespectfully of the authority of that august
assembly, was brought to the Bar in custody. But so unimpressed was
he by the crowded benches, by Mr. Speaker Onslow in wig and gown, by
the Serjeant-at-Arms with the Mace on his shoulder, that he flatly
declined to kneel, though the Speaker sternly roared at him, “Your
obeisance, sir! You forget yourself! On your knees, sir!” “Sir,”
said Murray, “I beg to be excused; I never kneel but to God.” “On
your knees, sir!” again cried the Speaker. “Your obeisance—you
must kneel.” But down on his knees Murray stoutly declined to go.
“That,” said he, “is an attitude of humbleness which I adopt only
when I confess my sins to the Almighty.” The House declared that
this obstinacy aggravated his original offence. “Having in a most
insolent, audacious manner, at the Bar of the House, absolutely
refused to go upon his knees,” so ran the resolution of the House,
“he is guilty of a high and most dangerous contempt of the authority
and privileges of this House.” Murray was committed to Newgate, and
so close was his confinement that he was denied the visits of friends
and the use of pen, ink and paper. Committal to prison by Parliament
lapses, as I have said, at the end of the session. That being so,
when Parliament was prorogued the doors of Murray’s prison had to
be flung open. The House of Commons, however, was not satisfied
that three or four months’ incarceration had adequately purged the
Scotsman of his impudent offence. It has power to re-arrest when
Parliament meets again. Accordingly, in the new session a fresh
warrant for Murray’s committal was made out, and the Serjeant-at-Arms
went to his house to arrest him; but he had fled, and though a reward
of £500 was offered for his discovery, he was never captured.
Twenty years afterwards the custom requiring prisoners to kneel at
the Bar was abolished. The last prisoner to suffer this indignity
was a journalist—Mr. Baldwin, the publisher of _The St. James’s
Chronicle_. On March 14, 1771, he was arrested for publishing
a report of the proceedings of the House, and was compelled to
prostrate himself abjectly at the Bar while the Speaker scolded
him for having dared to inform the electors of the doings of
their representatives in Parliament. In 1772 a Standing Order was
passed—inspired, as John Hatsell, the Clerk of the House, ingenuously
suggests, by “the humanity of the House”—by which it was ordered that
in future delinquents should receive the Speaker’s judgment standing.
Perhaps the House was moved to take this action by the cutting irony
of a remark made by Baldwin. On rising from his knees, after being
censured, he said, as he brushed the dust from his clothes, “What a
damned dirty House!” Perhaps the House preferred to allow culprits to
stand at the Bar rather than run the risk, by making them kneel, of
exposing its majestic self any longer to such ridicule.
The peers, however, have never formally renounced this custom by
Standing Order. Warren Hastings was obliged to kneel at the Bar
of the House of Lords on being admitted to bail, in 1787, on his
impeachment; and again, at the opening of his trial in the following
year, he remained on his knees until directed to rise by the
Lord Chancellor. “I can,” he afterwards wrote, half pathetically
and half indignantly, “with truth affirm that I have borne with
indifference all the base treatment I have had dealt to me—all
except the ignominious ceremonial of kneeling before the House.”
Even on being called to the Bar to hear his acquittal announced by
the Lord Chancellor, eight years subsequently, he had to undergo the
same humiliating ordeal. But the Lords have not for many years now
required a prisoner at the Bar to kneel.
4
Persons of all sorts and descriptions, as the Journals of the House
show, have stood at the Bar of the Commons not only for disobedience
of the orders of the House, for indignities offered to it, for
insults to Members, for reflections on their character and conduct in
Parliament, for interference with the officers of the House in the
discharge of their duties, but also to give evidence in inquiries
instituted by the House, to plead some cause, or to receive the
thanks of the House for services to the State. In each case the
Serjeant-at-Arms, with the Mace on his shoulder, was a prominent
figure in the scene. Samuel Pepys stood at the Bar to defend himself
against charges of dereliction of duty as registrar of the Navy
Board. To fortify himself for the ordeal he drank at home a half-pint
of mulled sack, and just before being called to the Bar he added a
dram of brandy. So completely did he answer the accusations that he
and his fellow-officials were acquitted of all blame. Titus Oates,
the perjurer, stood there to relate the particulars of his Popish
Plot. Dr. Sacheverell, the Jacobite divine, stood there in 1709 to
answer the charge of preaching “a scurrilous and seditious libel” in
St. Paul’s Cathedral—that famous sermon in which he asserted that
it was sinful for subjects to resist the authority of the King.
Wellington sat on a chair, set for him within the Bar, in 1814,
to receive the thanks of the House of Commons for his services
in the Peninsular campaign. Mrs. Clarke, the discarded mistress
of the Duke of York, appeared there in 1809, to give evidence in
support of the charge brought against his Royal Highness of having,
as Commander-in-Chief, corruptly bartered in the sale of Army
Commissions, an accusation that was declared not proven, though it
led to the Duke’s resignation. Warren Hastings stood there as a
witness, close on thirty years after his impeachment. Members cheered
him on his appearance, and when he retired they rose and uncovered.
Daniel O’Connell, the first Roman Catholic elected to Parliament
since the Revolution, stood there is 1828 to plead, and plead in
vain, that he should be allowed to take his seat without having to
subscribe to the oath which declared his faith to be idolatrous
and blasphemous, an abjuration, however, that was abolished by the
Catholic Emancipation Act which was passed in the following year.
Persons not so distinguished or notorious have also stood at
the Bar, in the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms, charged with
whimsical breaches of privilege. A man named Hyde, who tried to
obtain admission to Westminster Hall at the impeachment of Warren
Hastings, was rudely jostled into Palace Yard by a policeman. Hyde
had the constable served with a summons for assault. For this Hyde
was arrested by the Serjeant-at-Arms, on the order of the House,
brought to the Bar, and actually committed to prison for a breach
of privilege in having attempted to bring an officer of the House
before the ordinary legal tribunals of the land. But perhaps the
most amusing instance remains to be told. Dick Martin, a well-known
Irish Member in the early years of the nineteenth century (founder
of the excellent Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals),
was greatly perturbed to find in a London newspaper some passages
of his speech in the House, the previous night, printed in italics.
He complained to the House of having been misrepresented, and the
reporter (who happened to be a fellow-countryman of Mr. Martin) was
brought to the Bar for a breach of privilege. The journalist pleaded
that the report was absolutely correct. “It may be,” replied the
indignant Irish representative, “but I defy the gentleman to prove
that I spoke in italics!” In this case the culprit was dismissed amid
the laughter of the House.