Today Parliament returns, and the new assembly’s first job is to elect a new Speaker. Dr Simon Payling, Senior Fellow of the Commons 1422-1504 section, explores how medieval parliaments ‘chose’ their Speakers…
The practice of electing the Speaker can be traced back almost to the origins of the office in the 1370s, but there is almost nothing to show the form taken by these elections or even if it was common for the speakership to be contested. The official record, the rolls of parliament, simply record that the Commons were, at the outset of each Parliament, charged to elect a Speaker and that their nominee was then formally presented to the King.
There are only two breaks in the silence of the sources. The record of a report made by a Bishop’s Lynn MP to his constituency on his return from the brief Parliament of December 1420 notes…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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