530 



Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



enjoined to stand and remayne uncovered. The Orders conclude with 

 a regulation touching the arrest of members during the continuance 

 of Parliament, which provided that the Speaker should assert the 

 immunity of members from arrest by sending his serjeant-at-arms to 

 require the officers of the Court to stay their proceedings. 



In addition to these Orders, there is also extant among the Carte 

 Papers at the Bodleian Library a portion of the journals of the Parlia- 

 ment, which, though meagre, forms the first record of the kind which 

 has come down to us. The preservation of the journal is due to its 

 having been lent to Sir John Davies, who had procured it in connexion 

 with his inquiry into the procedure of Parliament, on his nomination 

 as Speaker in the celebrated Parliament of James I., nearly a genera- 

 tion later. Davies had, perhaps, obtained it from Sir i^icholas Walsh, 

 the Speaker of Perrott's House of Commons, who, in 1613, still sur- 

 vived, and held the office of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. At 

 any rate it remained among the papers of the great Attorney- General, 

 and passed with them to Oxford.^ 



To Perrott's Parliament twenty-two spiritual and twenty- six 

 temporal peers were summoned ; but it is remarkable that the roll 

 does not include the Irish chiefs, whose attendance was invited by 

 Perrott, and for whose behoof, since " there were none of any degree 

 or calling suffered to come in any cloths but only in English attire," 

 the Deputy supplied "both gouns and cloakes of velvet and satten." 

 Put the chiefs, though they were content to wear these garments, 

 " thought themselves not so richly, or at the least so contentedly, 

 attired as in their mantells and other theyr contry habits."^ 



To the House of Commons twenty-sevan counties, four cities, and 

 thirty-two boroughs, writs of summons to return two members each 

 were issued. Downpatrick and Carrickf ergus made no returns ; but 

 as the counties Cork and Sligo, for some unknown reason, each returned 

 three, the actual number of members was 124. The peculiarity of 

 this Parliament, as a representation of Ireland, is that, owing to the 

 unsettled state of Ulster, the northern province was almost entirely 

 unrepresented. Only two counties — Antrim and Down — returned 

 knights of the shire, while not a single member was present from any 

 Ulster borough. It is this fact that justifies the claim advanced by 



^ A specimen of the Journal of the House of Lords for 1586 has been reproduced 

 in Facsimiles of National Manuscripts of Ireland, V art iv., App. xxi. But the 

 portion printed does not now form part of the manuscript referred to above. 



- Life of Sir John Ferrott, Knt., p. 200. 



