Imperial Houses of Parliament

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVI, Issue 86, 27 March 1926, Page 9

Imperial Houses of Parliament

iTNEIE Imperial Houses of Parliament at Westminster stand on a site which has been closely associated with many ol the greatest events in British history for more than a thousand years. Long before the Roman Conquest in 43 A.D. the Britons had constructed a rough road from the north of England to the south coast, which crossed the river Thames at a spot called Thorney Island, where it was possible twice a day at low tide for a man to wade across the stream. There was no other fording place on the river for many miles, and before the building of the first London bridge the ford was much used by The Romans, who also established a ferry service on the spot which continued in existence for nearly 1700 years. The erection of the first Westminster Abbey on Thorney Island in the early days of the seventh century led to the Saxon kings building a palace adjacent to the church, and it was in the Palace of Westminster that the British sovereigns held their courts down to the reign of Henry VIII. Very little is known of the earlier royal residences beyond the fact that one of them was extensively restored by William the Conqueror. In 1097 William Rufus built the great assembly hall of the palace, which became known as Westminster Hall and was destined to be the scene of many stirring historical events. The hall passed unscathed through three great fires which completely destroyed the whole of the surrounding buildings, and is thus the only portion of the old royal palaces still in existence. The first of the fires took place in 1299, and the new palace which arose on the site was rebuilt in 1398 by Richard 11.. who at the same time raised the walls of Westminster Hall to their present height and added the magnificent oak roof, the great beauty and marvellous construction of which has no equal in the world. In 1923 this roof was restored for the first time in its existence of over 500 years. After the second fire in 1512 Henry VIII. moved his court to Whitehall Palace, which he had stolen from Cardinal Wolsey, and the new buildings on the site became the home of the British Parliament, which for the preceding 250 years had held its meetings in the Chapter House of the Abbey. The, chamber in which the Commons met m the new building stood on the site of the old palace chapel, which had been dedicated to St. Stephen, and it is owing to this fact that the British House of Commons is frequently referred to as “St. Stephen’s”. It was this building which had such a narrow escape from destruction in 1605, when one of the most diabolical conspiracies in British history, com monlv known as “The Gunpowder Plot,” was discovered just in time to avert the annihilation of practically the whole of the three estates of the realm. A small band of fanatics, of whom Guv Fawkes was one. had made

elaborate arrangements to blow up the building on the occasion of the opening or Parliament and thus destroy the King, the Lords and the Commons at ono swift stroke. This ill-advised plot had a disastrous effect upon numerous loyal and innocent Catholic families throughout Britain, and put back for seyeral years the tendency towards religious tolerance which had been inaugurated in the latter days of the reign qf Elizabeth. The third fire, which occurred in 1834, made a clean sweep of all the buildings with the exception of the Hall, and the present mighty structure, which was commenced three years later, was not completed until 1852. It was designed by Sir Charles Barry and is one of the most beautiful modern buildings in the world. It covers an area of eight acres, contains over 1200 apartments and its cost exceeded £3,000,000. The first of the numerous outstanding events which have taken place in Westminster Hall was the abdication of Richard IT. in 1399, and the last was in 1910, when over 600,000 persons passed through the Hall to pay a silent homage to King Edward VII., whose body laid-in-state there for three days. Many of the noblest and best men in British history have been condemned to totally undeserved death in the Hall, which was the scene'of most of the great State trials for treason. The most memorable trial was that of Charles 1., and shortly after the execution of the ill-fated monarch the enthronement of Oliver Cromwell as «tx>rd Protector took place in the Hall, for which ceremony the coronation chair was used. This is the only time that the chair has been removed from the Abbey during the six hundred and fifty years since it was made and first used for the coronation of Edward 1. Soon after the restoration of the monarchy the body of Cromwell was removed from its resting-place in the Abbey and subjected to the vilest indignities, the skull being placed on a pinnacle on the roof of Westminster Hall, where it remained until it was blown down during a gale thirty years later. One of the shortest trials was that of the seven Bishops in the reign of James IL, when the Hall was surrounded by a raging mob, which would have torn the judges and jurymen limb from limb had they dared to follow the instructions of the King and I find the prelates guilty of treason, while the longest was that of Warren Hastings, which lasted for seven years. The Courts of Justice sat continuously in Westminster Hall and the adjoining buildings from 122-4 to 1882. and were only removed when the new Law Courts was opened in the Strand in the lattervear? During the Middle Ages it was the custom of the king to occasionally sit as a judge in one of the Courts for the trial of civil cases, and this is the origin of the name of the King’s Bench Court.