Archbishop Lanfranc at its head, set aside Robert of Normandy, and put William Rufus on the throne, did or did not afterwards continue to act as the legislature of the realm. Much was said about the history of writs; much about the etymology of the word Parliament. It is remarkable, that the orator who took the most statesmanlike view of the subject was old Maynard. In the civil conflicts of fifty eventful years he had learned that questions affecting the highest interests of the commonwealth were not to be decided by verbal cavils and by scraps of Law French and Law Latin; and, being by universal acknowledgment the most subtle and the most learned of English jurists, he could express what he felt without the risk of being accused of ignorance and presumption. He scornfully thrust aside as frivolous and out of place all that blackletter learning, which some men, far less versed in such matters than himself, had introduced into the discussion. "We are," he said, "at this moment out of the beaten path. If therefore we are determined to move only in that path, we cannot move at all. A man in a revolution resolving to do nothing which is not strictly according to established form resembles a man who has lost himself in the wilderness, and who stands crying 'Where is the king's highway? I will walk nowhere but on the king's highway.' In a wilderness a man should take the track which will carry him home. In a revolution we must have recourse to the highest law, the safety of the state." Another veteran Roundhead, Colonel Birch, took the same side, and argued with great force and keenness from the precedent of 1660. Seymour and his supporters were beaten in the Committee, and did not venture to divide the House on the Report. The Bill passed rapidly, and received the royal assent on the tenth day after the accession of William and Mary.[1]
The law which turned the Convention into a Parliament contained a clause providing that no person should, after the first of March, sit or vote in either House without taking the oaths
- ↑ Stat. I W. & M. sess. i. c. I. See the Journals of the two Houses, and Grey's Debates. The argument in favour of the bill is well stated in the Paris Gazettes of March 5, and 12, 1689.
