25-797: List of parliaments of England List of acts of the Parliament of England The Habeas Corpus Parliament , also known as the First Exclusion Parliament , was a short-lived English Parliament which assembled on 6 March 1679 (or 1678, Old Style ) during the reign of Charles II of England , the third parliament of the King's reign. It is named after the Habeas Corpus Act , which it enacted in May 1679. The Habeas Corpus Parliament sat for two sessions. The first session sat from 6 March 1679 to 13 March 1679,
50-517: A note. These parliaments included representatives of Scotland and Ireland. On 29 April 1707, the Parliament of Great Britain was constituted. The members of the 2nd Parliament of Queen Anne became part of the 1st Parliament of Great Britain . Habeas Corpus Act 1679 The Habeas Corpus Act 1679 is an Act of Parliament in England ( 31 Cha. 2 . c. 2) during the reign of King Charles II . It
75-522: Is thought to have originated in the Assize of Clarendon of 1166. It was guaranteed, but not created, by Magna Carta in 1215 , whose article 39 reads (translated from Latin): "No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor will we send upon him except upon the lawful judgement of his peers or the law of the land." The Act of 1679 followed an earlier Habeas Corpus Act 1640 , which established that
100-521: The Kingdom of Ireland under James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde . He also denounced anew the Earl of Danby . Parliament resumed the pursuit of Danby's impeachment , showing even more anger against him than its Cavalier Parliament predecessor had. As the parliament's name implies, its most notable achievement was the passage of the Habeas Corpus Act 1679 . This was part of the struggle led by Shaftesbury to exclude
125-699: The Protestant Religion , and the Laws of this Kingdom , and I do expect from you to be defended from the Calumny, as well as the Danger of those worst of Men, who endeavour to render me, and my Government, odious to my People. The rest I leave to the Lord Chancellor . Lord Chancellor Finch replied. After several days of debate and correspondence with the King, William Gregory , who had served only one year in Parliament,
150-530: The Act enacted, even with limitations. A popular but likely untrue anecdote holds claims that the Act only passed because the votes in favour were miscounted as a joke. When a parliamentary house votes on legislation, each side—those voting for and against—appoints a teller who stands on each side of a door through which those Lords who vote "aye" re-enter the House (the "nays" remain seated). One teller counts aloud whilst
175-604: The King's Roman Catholic brother James, Duke of York , from the succession to the throne , as Shaftesbury and his allies believed James would rule England arbitrarily. On 15 May 1679, Shaftesbury's supporters in the Commons introduced the Exclusion Bill , which had the specific aim of disbarring the Duke of York from the throne. When it appeared that the bill was likely to pass, Charles used his prerogative to dissolve Parliament, which
200-730: The Murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey ... I have disbanded as much of the Army as I could get Money to do; and I am ready to disband the rest so soon as you shall reimburse me the Money they have cost me, and will enable me to pay off the Remainder: And above all, I have commanded my Brother to absent himself from me, because I would not leave malicious Men room to say, I had not removed all Causes which could be pretended to influence me towards Popish Counsels... I have not been wanting in giving Orders for putting all
225-568: The act gave prisoners or third parties acting on their behalf the right to challenge their detention by demanding from the Lord Chancellor , Justices of the King's Bench , and the Barons of the Exchequer of the jurisdiction a judicial review of their imprisonment. The act laid out certain temporal and geographical conditions under which prisoners had to be brought before the courts. Jailors were forbidden to move prisoners from one prison to another or out of
250-550: The battle, Lauderdale was replaced in Scotland by the Duke of York. List of parliaments of England This is a list of parliaments of England from the reign of King Henry III , when the Curia Regis developed into a body known as Parliament, until the creation of the Parliament of Great Britain in 1707. For later parliaments, see the List of parliaments of Great Britain . For
275-632: The command of the King or the Privy Council was no answer to a petition of habeas corpus . Further Habeas Corpus Acts were passed by the British Parliament in 1803, 1804, 1816 , and 1862, but it is the Act of 1679 which is remembered as one of the most important statutes in English constitutional history. Though amended, it remains on the statute book to this day. In criminal matters other than treason and felonies (a distinction which no longer exists),
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#1732848623590300-576: The country to evade the writ. In case of disobedience jailers would be punished with severe fines which had to be paid to the prisoner. The Act came about because the Earl of Shaftesbury encouraged his friends in the Commons to introduce the Bill where it passed and was then sent up to the House of Lords. Shaftesbury was the leading Exclusionist —those who wanted to exclude Charles II's brother James, Duke of York from
325-662: The court , three-fifths favouring the Opposition , and the rest capable of going either way. On Thursday, 6 March, the Parliament first met, and the King opened the session with a speech to both houses, in which he said: I have done many great Things already... as the Exclusion of the Popish Lords from their Seats in Parliament; the Execution of several Men, both upon the score of the Plot , and
350-537: The history of the English Parliament, see Parliament of England . The parliaments of England were traditionally referred to by the number counting forward from the start of the reign of a particular monarch, unless the parliament was notable enough to come to be known by a particular title, such as the Good Parliament or the Parliament of Merton . The Long Parliament , which commenced in this reign, had
375-449: The longest term and the most complex history of any English Parliament. The entry in the first table below relates to the whole Parliament. Although it rebelled against King Charles I and continued to exist long after the King's death, it was a Parliament he originally summoned. An attempt has been made to set out the different phases of the Parliament in the second table in this section and in subsequent sections. The phases are explained in
400-451: The minutes of the Lords that the "ayes" had fifty-seven and the "nays" had fifty-five, a total of 112, but the same minutes also state that only 107 Lords had attended that sitting. However, the attendance counts in the minute book were frequently inaccurate, and the attendance count is off by five rather than nine, undermining rather than supporting Burnet's reminiscence. According to Nutting, had
425-508: The other teller listens and keeps watch to verify the count. Of the Habeas Corpus Act count, Gilbert Burnet wrote, Lord Grey and Lord Norris were named to be the tellers: Lord Norris, being a man subject to vapours , was not at all times attentive to what he was doing: so, a very fat lord coming in, Lord Grey counted him as ten, as a jest at first: but seeing Lord Norris had not observed it, he went on with this misreckoning of ten: so it
450-531: The present Laws in Execution against Papists ; and I am ready to join in the making such farther Laws, as may be necessary for securing the Kingdom against Popery ... I must needs put you in mind how necessary it will be to have a good Strength at Sea , next Summer, since our Neighbours are making naval Preparations... I will conclude as I begun, with my earnest Desires to have this a Healing Parliament; and I do give you this Assurance that I will with my Life defend both
475-463: The second session from 15 March 1679 to 26 May 1679. It was dissolved while in recess on 12 July 1679. The parliament succeeded the long Cavalier Parliament of 1661–1678/79, which the King had dissolved. Elections were held for a new parliament on various dates in February 1678/79, after which the Earl of Shaftesbury estimated that of the members of the new House of Commons one third were friends of
500-445: The succession—and the Bill was a part of that struggle as they believed James would rule arbitrarily. The Lords decided to add many amendments to the Bill in an attempt to limit it, designed to protect the Lords from arrest by members of the Commons. However, the Commons had no choice but to pass the Bill with the Lords' amendments because they learned that the King would soon end the current parliamentary session and they desired to see
525-612: The vote been miscounted, King James II would almost certainly have "taken advantage of a real miscount to overturn the act", since he opposed it. King Charles II assented to the Act in 1679 since, Nutting explains, "it was no longer controversial". The Act is now stored in the Parliamentary Archives . The Habeas Corpus Act 1679 and the later acts of 1803, 1804, 1816 and 1862 were reprinted in New Zealand as Imperial Acts in force in New Zealand in 1881. The 1679 act, along with
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#1732848623590550-481: Was prorogued on 27 May 1679 and did not meet again before it came to an end on 12 July 1679. On 22 June, in the dying days of the parliament, although some weeks after its final meeting, came the Battle of Bothwell Bridge , at which troops commanded by the King's illegitimate son James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth defeated a rebellion in Scotland by militant Presbyterian Covenanters against Lauderdale's rule. Following
575-500: Was elected to serve as Speaker of the House of Commons , this being agreed as a compromise between the Commons, who had wished to re-elect Edward Seymour , and the King, who objected to Seymour. On 25 March, Shaftesbury made a strong speech in the House of Lords warning of the threat of Popery and arbitrary government, and denouncing the royal administrations in the Kingdom of Scotland under John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale , and in
600-532: Was passed by what became known as the Habeas Corpus Parliament to define and strengthen the ancient prerogative writ of habeas corpus , which required a court to examine the lawfulness of a prisoner's detention and thus prevent unlawful or arbitrary imprisonment. The Act is often wrongly described as the origin of the writ of habeas corpus . But the writ of habeas corpus had existed in various forms in England for at least five centuries before and
625-400: Was reported that they that were for the Bill were in the majority, though indeed it went for the other side: and by this means the Bill passed. In the words of historian Helen Nutting, this miscount story is "highly improbable". Proponents of the story cite as supporting evidence a discrepancy between the vote total and the attendance count in the parliamentary minutes: the clerk recorded in
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