366 WRITS OF ASSISTANCE, 1558-1700 July justice in their attitude. Certain members of the commons who had been sent to the lords on another matter had also Order to desire of their Lordships in the name of the said House, that Mr. Sollicitor being returned a Member thereof might be suffered to come thither and give his attendance in the same. To which desire of theirs their Lordships a little after sent down word by Mr. Serjeant Puckering and Mr. Attorney General to the said House, that the said Mr. Sollicitor was called by her Majesties Writ to serve in the Upper House long before he was chosen a Member of the said House of Commons, and therefore thought it very fitting he should still continue his attendance in the said Upper House. 1 It may be possible that the fact that the solicitor was eligible, while the attorney was not, represented a compromise by which the services of one law officer were more or less secured to each house, just as was suggested in the case of the two secretaries in 1540, 2 or it may have been the result merely of the commons' jealousy of a royal official. (d) The whole body of serjeants-at-law had never received writs of assistance, which had always been confined to the small inner group of king's Serjeants ; 3 this was only to be expected,' for it was the king's Serjeants alone, and not the whole body, that had any special obligation to serve the Crown in legal matters. They were summoned quite regularly down to 1685, but, if the Parliament Pawns are to be relied upon, no writs of assistance were issued to Serjeants from 1685 to 1710 inclusive. 4 There is no such gap as this anywhere else, and there seems to 1 D'Ewes, p. 424, 3 March 1589 ; cf. also p. 441. In 1566 the commons had asked that ' Mr. Jtic. Onselowe Esquire, Solicitor General to the Queen's Majesty . . . might be restored to join in their Election [of a Speaker] as Burgess for the Borough of Stening in Sussex '. The lords sent him down to the commons to explain for him, self why he ought not to be regarded as a member, but he failed to convince them and was at once elected as the new Speaker. Here the disinclination seems to come from the solicitor-general himself, not from the lords (Commons' Journals, i. 73, 1 October 1566). In January 1581 ' Mr. Treasurer declared unto the House before their proceeding to Election, that he and others had erst seen in the Higher House one that is a Member of this House, to wit, Mr. John Popham, her Majesty's Solicitor General, being One of the Citizens for Bristowe '. The commons considered the precedent of Mr. Onslow quoted above and decided to ask the lords to restore Popham to them ; this the lords did, on the ground ' that he was a Member of this House [i. e. the com- mons], and this House possessed of him, before he was Solicitor, or had any Place of Attendance in the Higher House '. He was then elected Speaker (Commons' 1 Journals, i. 117; D'Ewes, pp. 280-1). Sir Edward Coke, who held the office of solicitor-general from 1592 to 1595, was elected Speaker in the parliament of 1593, but D'Ewes says nothing of the attitude taken up by the lords on this occasion (D'Ewes, p. 469). 2 See below, p. 368. 3 All the king's Serjeants seem to have been summoned, but, of course, as soon as they were raised to the bench they were summoned in the higher capacity, just as was a judge who happened also to be a peer. 4 Parliament Pawns, bundle i, nos. 25-33 ; ii, nos. 1-4.
