Sir Thomas Felton and the first petition addressed to the Commons

The English Parliament first began handling petitions in large numbers in the early 1270s, at the start of the reign of Edward I (1272-1307). For the following hundred years or so, these requests were addressed either to the king, or the king and council. This reflected the fact that Parliament was conceived primarily as a royal court, with the king – helped by his senior judges, noblemen and clergymen – passing judgement in accordance with the tenets of natural justice and the royal prerogative. In reality, the bulk of this rather humdrum petitionary business was probably discharged by the king's judges, leaving the king and his councillors to see to the more important business of the day.

Then, in the late 1370s, the regular way of writing petitions changed dramatically when one or two petitioners, instead of addressing their petitions to the king and council, directed them to the Commons. It is this important change in petitionary diplomatic, and with it a significant shift in parliamentary procedure, which I should like to focus on in this month's blog.

Identifying the very first petition to have adopted this new address clause is not straightforward, because medieval parliamentary petitions were not routinely dated and most – once they had been expedited – were dumped unceremoniously into chests or cupboards to gather dust for centuries to come. But a combination of detective work and cross referencing reveals that one of the first such cases was a petition presented in the parliament which assembled at Gloucester in October 1378. The date of the petition, the identity of the petitioner and the content of his petition, all provide important clues to explain why the petition was so innovative.

The petitioner was Sir Thomas Felton, of Litcham, Norfolk. Felton had made his career as a professional soldier. He fought in the battle of Crécy (1346) and was an important military commander in the equally stunning English victory at Poitiers in 1356. For much of the 1360s and 1370s, he served in the Black Prince's household in Gascony – a territory which was then under the control of the English crown. He took part in the battle of Nájera in 1367, and from 1371 was effectively head of the administration in Gascony, at a time when French military resurgence made this an increasingly difficult and unenviable undertaking. It was while seeking to relieve the siege of Bergerac, in September 1377, that Felton was captured and put to ransom at 30,000 livres.

Felton's petition directly concerned this ransom. He addressed his petition to ‘the most honoured and wisest knights of the shires, citizens and burgesses being for the commons in this present parliament' – the knights were representatives of the counties, and the citizens and burgesses represented the towns and cities. In his petition, he asked the MPs to consider his predicament: he had now been in captivity for some time (so his petition cannot have been presented in person) and the ransom demanded for his release was far in excess of anything he could afford personally. He therefore begged the MPs to come to his aid, drawing their attention to the loyal service he had given to ‘all the realm of England' and suggesting that their assistance would act as a ‘good example [to everyone] for serving the king and all the realm.'

Almost certainly Felton addressed his petition to the Commons for two distinct reasons. First, he was relying on a favourable hearing by MPs many of whom, possessing a military background themselves, will have been sympathetic to the plight of this old, public-spirited soldier. Secondly, the king at this time was Richard II, a boy of only twelve years old. Decisions taken on petitions were therefore no longer the preserve of the royal prerogative, but dependent on the views of royal servants and ministers who wielded power on Richard II's behalf, and these men will have been susceptible to the lobbying brought to bear by members of the Lower House.

Felton's strategy of employing MPs as his advocates worked very effectively: he was released from prison and his ransom paid by the crown. In 1381, in recognition of his services to country, he was made a Knight of the Garter. His was a petitioning strategy that clearly paid off on a personal level, but it also established a new role for the Commons, as intermediaries between petitioners and the king – for the king and his councillors were now obliged to consider cases which the Commons had directly forwarded to them with their collective endorsement. By the 1420s, it was the norm for petitioners to address their requests to MPs. A new era had begun in which petitioning in parliament was no longer just a matter for petitioners of securing justice, it was also a matter of securing political support.

Gwilym Dodd is an Associate Professor in the department of History, University of Nottingham. He has published widely on late medieval politics, parliament and petitioning. He published Justice and Grace: Private Petitioning and the English Parliament in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford, 2007).

Image: The petition of Sir Thomas Felton, 1378: The National Archives, Kew, London: SC 8/111/5514. Reproduced with permission.