Falkiner — Parliament of Ireland wide)' Tudor Sovereigns. 523 



is well known, the Speaker was less the officer of the Commons than 

 the nominee of the Crown. Sir Thomas Smith, one of the earliest 

 writers on the English Constitution, writing in Elizabeth's reign, 

 observes, in his Commonwealth of England, that *'the Speaker is he 

 that doth commend and prefer the Bills exhibited into the Parliament, 

 and is the mouth of the Parliament. He is commonly appointed by 

 the King or Queene, though accepted by the assent of the House. 

 The right of election in the Commons had in fact degenerated under 

 the Tudors into something little more real than the eonge d^elire to a 

 Cathedral Chapter for the election of a bishop. The royal nominee 

 was invariably selected beforehand by the Government ; his nomina- 

 tion was as invariably ratified by the Commons ; and he was almost 

 always a Crown lawyer. A similar conception of the office appears 

 to have prevailed in Ireland at this period, and indeed for long 

 afterwards. The person pitched upon by St. Leger, and the first 

 recorded Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, was Sir Thomas 

 Cusake, then at the commencement of a highly distinguished, though 

 somewhat chequered, career. Cusake had already held for a few 

 months a puisne Judgeship in the Common Pleas — a position which he 

 had perhaps resigned in view of his intended election as Speaker, 

 and he had been a diligent servant of the Crown. But, like more than 

 one of his successors in the eighteenth century, he united with the 

 Speakership the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. St. Leger, in 

 commending him to the King, described him as *'a man that right 

 paynfully hath seiTed your Majestie at all times, and as " a gentil 

 man of the best possessions of any of his degre within your Inglisshe 

 Pale."- On the Friday after the meeting of Parliament, the Commons 

 — being assembled in the place of Parliament accustomed " — 

 presented Cusake to the Deputy, who, on being accepted, made, 

 according to the custom of Speakers in England, a speech which is 

 described by the Deputy as " a right solempne preposition," but one 

 which, unlike the declarations of modern Speakers on similar 

 occasions, was much less concerned with the vindication of the 

 liberties of His Majestie's faithful Commons, than with a vigorous 

 assertion of the King's prerogatives.^ 



1 Edition of 1633, p. 77. 



- State Papers, Henry YIII., iii., iii., 304. 



^ It does not appear whether or not Cusake AA'as also Speaker of Lord Leonard 

 Grey's Parliament, though this is quite possible. St. Leger, in his letter quoted 

 above, mentions him as having "for this five or six yeres miche traveled about 



R.I. A. PKOC, VOL. XXV., SEC. c] [42] 



