1921 WRITS OF ASSISTANCE, 1558-1700 367 be no good reason to account for it, for, when the writs of summons to Serjeants are resumed in 1713, they are issued with great regularity right down to the death of the last king's serjeant in 1866. Their duties in the house of lords were at first very similar to those of the attorney or solicitor general, 1 and like the latter they were always eligible for election to the house of commons ; 2 but towards the end of the sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth, they seem to do little more than carry bills and messages from the upper house to the lower. 3 (e) In 1539 was passed an act for the placing of the lords in their due order of precedence when they were sitting in parlia- ment, which lays it down that if the secretary and certain other officers of state shalbe under the degree of a Baron of the Parliament, by reason wherof they can have noe interest to give any assent or dissent in the saide House, that then in everie such case suche of them as shall happen to be under the saide degree of a Baron, shall sitt and be placed at the upper- most parte of the sakkes in the middes of the saide Parliament Chamber, eyther there to sytt uppon one fourme or uppon the uppermost sakk, the one of them above the other in order as is above rehersed. 4 This seems to be the first suggestion that the secretary should sit regularly in the house of lords, and in 1545 Paget and Petre received writs of assistance for the parliament of that year ; 5 and, if the Parliament Pawns are accurate, from that date till 1679 all but one of the secretaries of state who were not peers received writs of assistance. 6 There is no evidence, however, in the Pawns that these writs continued to be issued down to 1768 as Blackstone declared, and it is probable they ceased simply because, from 1679, one of the secretaries was almost always a peer and could therefore explain all that the upper house 1 They even sometimes sat on a committee to which a bill had been sent by the lords ; e. g. 3 October 1566 (D'Ewes, p. 99). 2 The serjeants-at-law played a very considerable part in the house of commons ; for example, eighteen Speakers between 1529 and 1640 inclusive were serjeants-at- law, and of these at least five were king's Serjeants. It is important to notice that the Speaker in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was almost invariably a man learned in the law, and he very frequently attained afterwards to high judicial office. 3 Lords' 1 Journals, i. 613, 5 April 1563 ; iii. 74, 27 March 1621 ; iii. 188, 10 December 1621 ; iii. 339 (mispaged 329), 4 May 1624. 4 31 Henry VIII, c. 10, sec. 8. The fact that the judges and other attendants of the lords are not mentioned in this act cannot be held to imply anything as to their position, for the act did not set out to name the attendants of the lords, but merely to settle the precedence of certain officers of state. 6 Parliament Pawns, bundle i, no. 3. There is no Pawn for the parliament of 1542, so we cannot tell if the secretaries were summoned in that year or not. 6 Of course it must be remembered that there are considerable gaps in the series of Pawns between 1545 and 1679 (see above) ; the name of Morice, the colleague of Sir Edward Nicholas, does not occur on the Pawn for 1661.
