Essays on the History of Parliamentary Procedure: In Honour of Thomas Erskine May

The 8th of February 2015 marked the 200th anniversary of Thomas Erskine May's birth, the most famous holder of the office of the Clerk of the House of Commons.

This volume celebrates that event. Bringing together current Clerks in the House of Commons and outside experts, the authors analyse May's profound contribution to the shaping of the modern House of Commons as it made the transition in his lifetime from the pre-Reform Act House to the modern core of the UK's constitutional democracy, symbolised perhaps from its enforced transition between 1834 and 1851 from a mediaeval slum to the World Heritage Palace of Westminster which is the most iconic building in the UK.

It constitutes the first sustained analysis of the development of parliamentary procedure in over half a century, attempting to situate the reforms in the way the central institution of our democracy conducts itself in the political contexts which drove those changes.

Introduction: The Growth of Many Centuries
Paul Evans

Part I: The Man and his Milieu

1. A Sycophant of Real Ability: The Career of Thomas Erskine May
William McKay
2. Slumber and Success: The House of Commons Library after May
Oonagh Gay
3. Magi or Mandarins?: Contemporary Clerkly Culture
Emma Crewe

Part II: The Book

4. Persuading the House: The Use of the Commons Journals as a Source of Precedent
Martyn Atkins
5. Manuals before May: From the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century
David Natzler
6. Parliamentary Law in the Eighteenth Century: From Commonplace to Treatise
Paul Seaward
7. From Manual to Authority: The Life and Times of the Treatise
Paul Evans and Andrej Ninkovic
8. Controversy at the Antipodes (and Elsewhere): The International Cousins of the Treatise
David Natzler, David Bagnall, Jean-Phillipe Brochu and Peter Fowler

Part III: Procedural Development

9. The Principle of Progress: May and Procedural Reform
William McKay
10. May on Money: Supply Proceedings and the Functions of a Legislature
Colin Lee
11. A History of the Standing Orders
Simon Patrick
12. Pursuing the Efficient Despatch of Business: The Role of Committees in Procedural Reform since 1900
Mark Egan
13. Finding Time: Legislative Procedure since May
Jacqy Sharpe and Paul Evans

Part IV: Select Committees

14. Where Did It All Go Right: Developments in Select Committees, 1913–1960
Mark Hutton
15. A Road not Taken: Select Committees and the Estimates, 1880–1904
Colin Lee

Part V: The Lex Parliamentaria Revisited

16. Privilege: The Unfolding Debate with the Courts
Eve Samson
17. Is the Lex Parliamentaria Really Law?: The House of Commons as a Legal System
David Howarth