Mini issue: a rare peek at centuries of parliamentary proceedings
From land tax and death warrants to fashion policing and carpet beating.
Welcome to the ‘mini issue’ of Born Free Press, a fortnightly newsletter delivering a free-range collection of (short) interesting stories for interested people. Currently focusing on quirks and curiosities from the UK’s history.
The Parliamentary Archives is in the process of moving its collection of more than three million papers, parchments, scrolls, photographs, and journals from The Palace of Westminster (aka the Houses of Parliament) to The National Archives at Kew.
I thought this was as good an excuse as any to share photos and titbits from the time I was given rare access to explore one of the most aesthetically pleasing parts of the Archives. I visited a room within Victoria Tower which contained some of the more than 60,000 goat skin scrolls (and more recently, parchment booklets) on which are written (or typed) every act that has been passed by England’s Parliament dating back to the late 15th century.
Past a fire-proof iron door, the temperature-controlled room was lined and aisled with brown steel shelving. Some scrolls were larger than a dinner plate, others as small as a toilet paper tube. Most were pleasingly round, but some misshapen and slumped under their own and others’ weight, and the weight of time. The end of each scroll featured a numbered plastic tag, alternating colours for the different monarchs who gave it assent.
The oldest act in the Parliamentary Archives’ collection was signed in the spidery scrawl of Henry VII in 1497 allowing "the taking of apprentices to make worsteds [a type of yarn] in the county of Norfolk". The largest scroll is an 1821 land tax act, which measures 350metres when unrolled. One of the most significant items is the 1649 death warrant of Charles I, the first monarch to face formal legal proceedings in a court established by Parliament. The death warrants of two of Henry VIII’s wives – Anne Boleyn (1536) and Kathryn Howard (1542) – are part of the collection, too.
As well as the historically significant, the Archives contain records that might seem strange, or even laughable, to modern eyes and ears.
For example, Henry VIII signed an act to ban anyone entering the royal court from wearing shirts with “outrageous double ruffs” or hose of “monstrous and outrageous greatness”. It was later repealed by James I. Although a 1313 act that forbid MPs from wearing armour in Parliament still stands to this day.
Perhaps one of the most bizarre laws that remains in force is an 1839 act forbidding the beating or shaking of any carpet, rug, or mat in the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police, except for a doormat, but only before 8am.
Today, when a bill has been approved by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords and becomes an act, it is printed (rather than handwritten) onto a parchment book (rather than a goat skin scroll) and bound with a red ribbon. This act is then signed and given royal assent by the reigning monarch, making it law, and the booklet is added to the Archives. Digital copies are made available, but the Archives’ copy is unique.
And among its collection is a complete set of signatures from all 23 reigns of monarchs from 1497 through to the present day (as at the time I visited, before Elizabeth II’s death – there’s probably a Charles III signature in there by now).