Great Britain. Parliament; Great Britain. Parliament -- History; Representative government and representation
Prior to the sixteenth century, members of Parliament were not
required to swear; the Lords did not do so until 1678. But the Act of
Supremacy of 1563 made it necessary for all members of the Commons to
take the oath, and in 1610 were introduced further oaths of Allegiance
and Abjuration which were maintained until 1829. The old oaths aimed
at excluding Roman Catholics from Parliament, and the regulation which
in 1614 ordered every member to take the sacrament in St. Margaret's
Church on the Opening Day was but another means of ensuring the
religious loyalty of the Commons.
Members of the Lower House cannot take the oath until their Speaker
has been approved and sworn; the Lords may do so as soon as Parliament
opens. In the Upper House the oath may be taken at any convenient time
when the House is sitting; in the House of Commons likewise it may be
taken whenever a full House is sitting at any hour before business has
begun.
The Lord Chancellor leads the way in the House of Lords. When he has
presented his writ of summons, repeated the formal words of the Oath
of Allegiance after the Clerk, kissed the New Testament, and
subscribed to the Test Roll, he resumes his seat on the Woolsack. The
peers then succeed one another in rapid rotation at the table, handing
their writs of summons to the Clerk, and following the Chancellor's
example.
In the Commons the Speaker first takes the oath in a very similar
fashion, and writes his name in the Roll of Members. After this
ceremony is accomplished, members come up to the table in batches of
five, and are sworn simultaneously. They then shake hands with the
Speaker, and can now consider themselves full-fledged members of
Parliament.
Up to the middle of the last century three oaths had to be taken by
every member of either House: the oaths of Allegiance, of Supremacy,
and Abjuration. There was further a declaration against
transubstantiation which effectually excluded Roman Catholics. But in
1829 these last received relief, though the final words of the Oath of
Abjuration still kept out the Jews.[223] In 1849 Baron Lionel de
Rothschild was excluded from the Commons because of his failure to
swear on "the true faith of a Christian." He accepted the Chiltern
Hundreds, but was again returned to Parliament by the City of London.
And though he once more failed to obtain permission to vote in the
House, he was allowed to sit there until 1857.[224] Six years before
this latter date another Jew, Alderman Salomons, insisted upon taking
his seat and voting in a division. He was forcibly ejected by the
Sergeant-at-Arms, and subsequently fined £500 in the Exchequer Court
as a penalty for voting without having previously taken the oath. In
1858 an Act was passed substituting a single oath for the former
three, and giving both Houses power to deal with the Jewish difficulty
by resolution, but it was not until 1866 that the words referring to
Christianity were finally omitted from the oath.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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