ABSTRACT
The office of Speaker is traceable to 1377 and the appointment of Sir Thomas Hungerford, although, from 1258, parliaments had similar officers.12 The Speaker of the House featured in the constitutional struggles between King and parliament in the seventeenth century. When Charles I arrived in the Commons to arrest the Five Knights, the Speaker declared:
May it please Your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here, and I humbly beg Your Majesty’s pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what Your Majesty is pleased to demand of me.
