428 The Period of Constitution Making
make formal replies to questions addressed to them.
These things must be done through some one of their
number appointed for the purpose. Their discussions
were carried on, not in the Parliament house, but in West-
minster Abbey, and when a decision was reached they
returned across the street, and one chosen to speak for
them made the formal reply in their hearing in Parliament.
Such was the origin of the Speaker, of whose existence we
get but a scanty trace in Edward III. 's reign, but whom we
must suppose regularly functioning in that reign, or per-
haps earlier. Whether the Commons chose him or had
any voice in his choice we do not know. In the reign of
Richard II. the Speaker appears as a well recognised
official, but did not in any true sense represent the body
for which he spoke, being usually controlled by one or
other of the factions in the nobility. Under the Lancas-
trians he more distinctly belonged to the Commons.
They named him, but the nomination was subject to the
Crown's assent. There was little esprit de corps among
the Commons and so little mutual acquaintance in the
case of a newly elected House that a sovereign who so de-
sired could practically name the Speaker. This was
regularly the case during most of the Tudor period. The
political importance of the Speaker might be great, for he
was the official medium of communication between the
Commons and the king; a servile Speaker could render
the work of the House abortive in many ways. Of the
procedure of the Commons in the middle ages, of their
sessions and debates when they sat by themselves across
the street and wrought out the answers or requests which
the Speaker delivered at their head in Parliament, or how
or when he became their presiding officer, there is nothing
known. The earliest surviving records of the proceedings
of the House of Commons are for 1547. In the fifteenth
century the Speaker was almost always one of the shire
representatives, but with the rise in importance of the
borough members at the end of the century this ceased to
be the rule.