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III.

CHAP. number: but in Ireland there were at first only representatives of hires; for the 1634. burghs did not arise from burgage tenures as in England, but from conceffions of the king to fend members, which were erected in later times, when, by fecuring an intereft in fuch towns, proper reprefentatives to ferve the turn of the court were sent to parliament: but the ancient members being only for the fhires, the proctors were chosen from the county to answer them in numbers.

"By the 28th of Henry VIII. c. 12. the proctors of the clergy were excluded from any feat in the lower house of parliament but as the proctors came from all parts of the kingdom, fo they affembled in convocation in one fynod, where the parliament was held, and did not form four diftinct fynodical meetings in the four distinct provinces, as they did in the two diftinct provinces in England, but made one national fynod under the Primate."

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Treatife on the Court of Exchequer by the
Lord Chief Baron GILBERT, page 58.

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On the 2d of Auguft, it was ordered that CHAP, fir Barnaby Bryan fhould have leave of the house to go to England; but that if he did 1634. not return within one week after the next feffion of parliament, then, by his own confent, a writ should iffue for a new election ; which was afterwards accordingly done

This was the first precedent of issuing a writ by a member's own defire, of which fo many inftances occur in the early journals; and it was a conftant practice till one thousand feven hundred and four, when, upon Mr. Caulfield, an ancestor of lord Charlemont's, defiring to vacate his feat to travel for his pleasure, a standing order was made, that writs fhould not iffue any more at the defire of members to choose others in their own places. This has been fince the constant regulation; and in one thousand feven hundred and feventynine this principle was adopted in the contest between Mr. Fitzgibbon (the pre

* Commons Journals, p. 119. 121,

B 4

fent

III.

1634.

CHAP. fent chancellor) and Mr. Hutchinson for the university of Dublin, after the election was voided the latter having defired to vacate his feat for Sligo, for which two places he had been returned, the house in a reference to them from the select committee, under the adoption of Mr. Grenville's bill, and upon a question particularly and fully debated, gave it against Mr. Hutchinson, and would not allow him to vacate his feat for Sligo, that he might be again a candidate for the university of Dublin; and pronounced at the fame time an obiter opinion, grounded upon a decifion in one thousand feven hundred and forty-three, as was then faid, that seats were only to be vacated by death, by being made a peer, or a judge, or taking holy orders *, in the Irish parliament.

* A doctrine grounded not only upon the ancient law of parliament, but alfo upon the Irish ftatute of the 28th of Henry VIII. c. 12. by which the clergy are inadmiffible. In the cafe of Alexander Newell, who was a prebendary of Westminster in the reign of Philip and Mary, and had been returned for that city, the decifion was fimilar. This is the first election cafe in the journals.-English Commons Journals, vol. ią P. 27.

III.

This feffion fat only for a part of two CHAP. fummer months; the fitting days in the commons were only eighteen. On the laft 1634 day it was ordered that the members should have the fame wages they had in the last parliament, viz. thirteen fhillings and four pence for counties, ten fhillings for cities, and fix fhillings and eight pence for boroughs; and also that five members then named fhould confider fuch orders as were extant, and report them to the houfe next feffion, that they might be regularly entered and published by the clerk of the house; and on this day the parliament was prorogued to the 4th of November, one thousand fix hundred and thirty-four. The inftrument of prorogation is not entered in the journals.

In the fecond feffion of one thousand fix hundred and thirty-four, the commons fat thirty-one days, from the 4th of November, to the 24th of December, when parliament was prorogued. On the first day a

writ

CHAP. writ was iffued in the room of fir Barnaby III. Bryan, (in confequence of his abfence in 1634. England, agreeable to his licence of the last

feffion,) at his own defire: the writ was to iffue, provided he did not return before the meeting of parliament: and on the fame day the lord deputy Wentworth communicated an act of council for confining and imprisoning fir John Dungan and captain Charles Price for words fpoken in parliament; and alfo the obligation of the former to make an apology to the latter at the council board; and informed them, that he was to be conveyed as a prisoner, by the conftable of Dublin Castle, to the house, and there at the bar to repeat his submission. This act of council, figned by lord Wentworth and fix counfellors, was fatis pro imperio; and it was entered in the journals without any comment.

On the 11th of November it was ordered, that a committee of fixteen persons, then named, should repair to the judges any morning

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