Parliamentarians at Law: Select Legal Proceedings of the Long Fifteenth Century Relating to Parliament

This book brings together a selection of law suits brought by peers and members of the house of commons in the royal common law and equity courts at Westminster between 1377 and 1512. Many of the documents edited relate to aspects of constitutional history, such as disputes over parliamentary elections, the payment of the wages of members of the commons, and the evolution of the parliamentary privilege of freedom from arrest, while others illustrate a variety of aspects of the life of the medieval parliament and the members of both houses. The texts gathered within have not hitherto been published, and have been collected from unwieldy and often poorly accessible sources among the English public records. Full modern English translations of Latin, French and Middle English texts have been printed as parallel texts alongside transcripts of the originals, thus making the material accessible to a readership beyond the specialist in medieval legal history.

Part I: Introduction:
Covering subjects including the parliamentary privilege of freedom from arrest; parliamentary elections; payments of MPs’ wages; the process of statutory regulation of parliamentary affairs; the royal law courts and their procedures

Part II: The Texts:
Parallel Latin/Middle English/French – Modern English edition of
a) Suits relating to parliamentary privilege
b) Suits relating to parliamentary elections
c) Select suits relating to the payment of Members of Parliament
d) Miscellaneous suits

Part III: Appendices:
Calendar of suits relating to the payment of Members of Parliament
a) List of Peers and Members of the House of Commons mentioned in the texts
b) List of Parliaments 1376–151

Hannes Kleineke is a Senior Research Fellow at the History of Parliament, with a particular interest in the late medieval south–west of England. He has published a number of articles on the history of the medieval English Parliament, as well as on fifteenth–century England more generally, and was the joint winner of the 2006 Parliamentary History Prize.

"This is a valuable collection of documents, the standard of editing remorselessly high, and the editor, particularly in respect of wages cases, has left little for others to find." ( The Ricardian XX, 2010)