PARLIAMENT | King James I's Speech and the Apology of the Commons of 1604, scribal manuscript

PARLIAMENT

The Speech of King James the 1st To both Houses of Parliament On Thursday the 22th of March 1603. Together with the Commons Protestation thereupon

scribal manuscript in a single seventeenth-century hand, divisional title for the "Commons Protestacion" (usually called the Apology of the Commons), with some portions of text underlined in red and a few pencil marginal markings, contemporary pagination, red ruled margins, 109 pages, folio, seventeenth century, blue Middle Hill boards lettered on spine ("Speech of K. Jas. 1" and with the Phillipps MS number 6216)

This manuscript contains two key Parliamentary texts from the beginning of the Jacobean period. The first is the King's speech from the opening of his first Parliament, an occasion delayed by an outbreak of plague and which took place in March 1604 (new style). James took the opportunity to expound his vision of kingship: "What God hath Enjoyned [sic] then lett noe Man separate; I am the Husband and all the whole Island is My Lawfull Wife, I am the Head, and it is My Body, I am the Shepheard, and it is my Flock".

The second text dates from 1 June 1604 and envisions a very different relation between King and Parliament. It was not - as suggested in the title page of the current manuscript - a direct response to the King's speech, but was triggered by a disputed electoral return for Buckinghamshire. the Protestation, usually known as the Apology of the Commons, was an assertion of Parliamentary rights and insisted that its privileges were of right, not of grace from the monarch, warned of the dangers of ever-enlarging royal prerogative, and for good measure included long-standing complaints about abuses of power within church and state. The text was disputed within Parliament and Francis Bacon was among the MPs who spoke against the Apology. It was never transcribed in full into the Commons Journal and was not presented to the King, but later came to be seen as a sign of the fissure between King and Parliament that was to dominate the coming decades.

PROVENANCE:

Sir Thomas Phillipps (Phillipps MS 6216), acquired from the dealer John Cochran, c.1829; sold in these rooms, 19-22 June 1893, lot 364