To Westminster Hall, Henry II. summoned his Barons in Council, and in the reign of Henry III. parliaments were often held there. Gradually, however, the building became devoted exclusively to the judicial side of the king's Great Council, and, when Edward I. occupied the throne of England, the Courts of King's Bench and Chancery held their meetings regularly at the south end of the Hall. Peter the Great, during a brief stay in England, paid a visit to Westminster Hall, and was much struck by the presence of a number of busy people in long black gowns and bobtailed wigs. On being informed that these were lawyers, "I have but two in my dominions," he observed thoughtfully, "and I believe I shall hang one of those directly I get home!"
New buildings were erected in 1738, on the west side of the Hall, to accommodate the judges, and when, about a hundred and fifty years later, the Palace of Justice was built in the Strand, the representatives of the law emigrated thither in a body.
The general public for a long time shared with the lawyers the privilege of trading within the precincts of Westminster Hall. In Edward III.'s reign merchants' stalls abounded there, being temporarily boarded over on the occasion of State pageants, and, at a much later date, Laud tells us in his diary, a conflagration in one of these shops threatened to destroy the entire building.
During the seventeenth century, book-sellers, law-stationers, and other tradesmen still plied their callings in the Hall, undisturbed by the pleadings of their legal rivals.98 On the one side, as we read in a contemporary chronicle, were to be seen "Men with Baubles and Toys, and on the other taken up with the Fear of Judgment, on which depends their inevitable Destiny. On your Left Hand you hear a nimble Tongu'd Sempstress, with her Charming Treble, Invite you to buy some of her Knick-Knacks: And on your Right, a Deep-mouth'd Cryar commanding Impossibilities, viz. Silence to be kept among Women and Lawyers."99 In the days of Pepys, the Great Hall had become a regular meeting-place for the public, and was still the most popular market for the sale of books.100
Trade has long been banished from the portals of Westminster Hall, its stately precincts are now desecrated by no foot less worthy than that of the Member of Parliament or the Saturday sight-seer. In other respects the Hall remains unchanged. Save for the retimbering of the roof in 1820 with oak taken from old men-of-war, it stands to-day much as it has stood for centuries. Structural alterations have occasionally been suggested, but without effect. One projected by Lord Grenville, necessitating the removal and raising of the entire roof, evoked many indignant protests.101
In New Palace Yard, opposite the entrance of Westminster Hall, a huge clock-tower once stood. It had been erected in the reign of Edward I., the cost being defrayed by a fine levied on Sir Ralph de Hengham, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, as a penalty for altering a judicial record in favour of a pauper litigant. In this tower hung a bell, known as "Great Tom of Westminster," whose voice on a clear day could be beard as far away as Windsor.102 In 1707 both tower and bell were pulled down, the latter being recast and presented to St Paul's Cathedral where it still hangs.
Near the tower was a fountain from which on great occasions wine was made to flow for the delectation of the populace, while close by stood the pillory in which Titus Oates, John Williams, the publisher of John Wilkes's North Briton, and many other offenders against parliamentary privilege, suffered the penalty of their crimes.
Westminster Hall lies nearly due north and south. At its south-east angle, stretching towards the river, stands St. Stephen's Hall, on the site of that famous Chapel, founded by King Stephen and called after his sainted namesake, which was for so long the home of the Commons.
The Chapel was partly destroyed by fire in 1298, but was subsequently restored at great cost by Edward III., who also built an adjacent belfry of stone and timber containing three huge bells which were rung at "coronations, triumphs, funerals of princes, and their obits."103 After the Reformation the thirteenth century decorations which originally adorned the walls of St. Stephen's Chapel were whitewashed and covered with boards, and the building was given over to Parliament.
Though the Three Estates originally sat together, they seem to have deliberated separately. Parliament used to meet occasionally in the Priory Church of Blackfriars Monastery, but when the Houses parted company a chamber in the Palace of Westminster was reserved for the Lords, while the Commons retired to the Chapter House of the Abbey. Later on they assembled in or near Westminster Hall – Richard II. held a parliament in a building erected for the purpose outside the Great Hall – and finally, about the year 1550, St. Stephen's Chapel was fixed upon as the regular meeting-place of the Commons.
The Chapel was an oblong building, but half as long and half as broad as Westminster Hall, and most of the floor space was occupied by the Lobby. It was a gloomy and narrow chamber, and what the German traveller Moritz calls "mean-looking." At the western end was a gallery to which members ascended by means of a ladder near the southern window.104 At the eastern end stood the Speaker's chair, and opposite it the famous bar where so many persons have stood, either as prisoners, witnesses, or patriots. Here Pepys, buoyed up with brandy, appeared to answer the charges that had been brought against the Navy Office in 1667-8. Here, a century and a half later, Mrs. Clarke, the Duke of York's discarded mistress, was examined for two hours on the subject of his alleged corrupt sale of commissions – an ordeal from which she emerged triumphantly. At this bar victorious soldiers, from the days of Schomberg to those of Wellington, have received the thanks of Parliament for the services they rendered to their country. And many a trembling prisoner has stood here to receive sentence or reprimand at the mouth of the Speaker.
On either side of the old House were ranged rows of wooden benches, hard and comfortless, with neither backs nor covering. Not even were Ministers provided with padded seats.
"No satin covering decks th' unsightly boards;
No velvet cushion holds the youthful Lords;
And claim illustrious tails such small regard?
Ah! Tails too tender for a seat so hard!"105
St Stephen's Chapel was in size quite inadequate to the needs of legislators – the only point, perhaps, in which it resembled the present House of Commons. David Hume complained perpetually of the lack of room; while Cobbett cynically referred to it as "the little hole into which we are all crammed to make the laws by which this great kingdom is governed."106 Lined with dark wainscot and lit by three chandeliers, the gloomy chamber did not impress the stranger with the dignity or splendour of parliaments, and a visitor to St Stephen's might well have been excused for mistaking the House of Commons for a den of thieves or a crew of midnight conspirators.107
As was only natural, the dingy surroundings exercised a detrimental influence upon the manners of members. Moritz was surprised to see many of them lying stretched out at full length on the uncomfortable benches fast asleep, while others cracked nuts or ate oranges. "The many rude things the members said to one another," he observes sadly, "struck me much."108 Not only was the House squalid and dirty, it was also infested with rats. Speaker Manners Sutton told Thomas Moore that the only time he had ever laughed while occupying the Chair was during a debate in which members of the Opposition had been squabbling fiercely together, when he saw a large rat issue from beneath the front Opposition bench and walk deliberately across to the Treasury side of the House.109
The Lobby of St Stephen's