Palkiner — Parliament of Ireland under Tudor Sovereigns, 527 



The details furnished by Hooker are supplemented in an intercBt- 

 ing manner by another writer of note. It chanced that in this same 

 year Edmund Campion, the well-known author and Jesuit, was a 

 visitor to Dublin during the first session of Parliament. Campion 

 had come over as a tutor to young Richard Stanihurst, the Speaker's 

 son. Residing in the Speaker's house, he was, as he states in the 

 preface to his History, in " such familiar societie, and daylie table- 

 talke with the worshipfull Esquire, James Stanihurst, Recorder of 

 Dublin," that he knew everything that went on. Campion was 

 present at the prorogation of Parliament, at the close of the first 

 session. His summary of what passed on that occasion is the first 

 conscious attempt at reporting the proceedings of an Irish Parliament, 

 and Campion gives this account of his work as reporter : — " The day 

 of prorogation, when the Knights and Burgesses of the Commonalty 

 resorted to the Lordes of the Upper House, much good matter was 

 there uttered between the Deputy and the Speaker, whereof comming 

 home to my lodging I took notes, and here I will deliver them as 

 neere as I can call them to minde, in the same words and sentences 

 that I heard them."^ The principal matter of these orations related 

 to educational topics, Stanihurst felicitating his audience on the 

 passing of the Act for the erection of Eree Grammar Schools,^ while 

 regretting that * ' our hap is not to plant yet an University here at 

 home." 



It appears from Hooper's epitome of Stanihurst's speech that even 

 thus early the common form of an English Speaker's address to the 

 Crown was followed in the Irish House. The Speaker of 1568 made the 

 usual nolo episcopari declaration of his unworthiness and incapacity, 

 desiring that " some man of more gravity, and of better experience, 

 knowledge, and learning," might supply the place. He then went 

 on to claim the immemorial liberties of the Commons, freedom from 

 arrest, and freedom of speech. But instead of the petition for 

 freedom of access to the person of the sovereign, which in England 

 has been customary from the time of Henry YIII., Stanihurst 

 demanded that in the event of any member misconducting himself, the 

 punishment of the offence should be under the exclusive control of the 

 House. He does not appear, however, to have petitioned, as was then 

 usual in England, that a favourable construction might be put upon 



1 Campion's History of Ireland. 



2 Statute, 12th EUzabeth, cap. !■ 



. — An Act for the erection of free schools. 



