The first Speaker?
The remarkable account in the Anonimalle Chronicle of the so-called ‘Good Parliament’ of 1376 provides what is generally taken to be the first reference to a ‘Speaker’ of the Commons, Sir Peter de la Mare. The account is extraordinarily detailed and circumstantial – so unusual for an account of any event in the fourteenth century, let alone a Parliament, that many have been tempted to call it an eyewitness account, though it’s impossible to tell. (The Chronicle is available in digitised form from the University of Leeds website here: the account of the Good Parliament starts about f. 313; you can get at an edited version of some of the original Norman French text here, from p. 83; and there is a translation of the bit relating to the Good Parliament available on the California State University website .) The Chronicle describes how once the…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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