Taking their seat in the Commons can be a nervous moment for new MPs, but for the Quaker Joseph Pease in 1833, tensions were heightened because he feared that his refusal to take oaths would prevent him from sitting at Westminster. This article from Dr Kathryn Rix, assistant editor of our House of Commons, 1832-1945 project, explains how this difficulty was overcome, enabling Pease to become the first Quaker MP to take his seat.

On 8 February 1833 Joseph Pease, returned for Durham South at the 1832 general election, was one of several new MPs who appeared in the House of Commons for the first time to take their seats. While other members went up to the table to take their oaths, Pease, a Quaker, instead asked to be allowed to affirm. He had anticipated that this request might cause problems, telling his constituents that he expected to ‘go through much persecution in your cause’ and would ‘not be surprised if the Serjeant-at-Arms be ordered to take me into custody’. He declared, however, that ‘it will be a strange thing if they should resolve to turn a man out of the House of Commons who has been returned by two or three thousand of his countrymen’, asserting matter-of-factly that ‘as regards oaths, I am not prepared to take one’.

Pease’s victory at Durham South was not the first occasion on which a Quaker had been elected as an MP. That appears to have been in July 1698, when John Archdale was returned for Chipping Wycombe. Six months later, Archdale wrote to the Speaker to explain why he had not yet attended at Westminster. The key issue was that swearing an oath was against his Quaker beliefs. He therefore hoped that ‘my declarations of fidelity … might in this case, as in others where the law requires an oath, be accepted’. Archdale was ordered to appear in the Commons, where the Speaker asked him whether he had taken or would take the oaths to qualify as a member. Archdale replied that ‘in regard to a principle of his religion he had not taken the Oaths, nor could take them’, but emphasised that this ‘was not out of any disloyalty to the King or disaffection to the government’. Having consulted lawyers, he felt that ‘his affirmation would stand good instead of an oath’. The Commons disagreed, recording that Archdale ‘hath refused to qualify himself to be a Member of this House, by taking the Oaths by Law appointed for that purpose’, and ordering a new writ for a by-election at Chipping Wycombe to replace him.

By the time Pease came to take his seat in 1833, well over a century had passed since Archdale’s rejection. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 and Catholic Emancipation in 1829 had opened public office to groups previously excluded on the grounds of their religion, yet Pease was evidently not optimistic about his chances of acceptance into the Commons. It had been suggested that he should petition the Commons to be allowed to take his seat, but he rejected this strategy, since ‘I claimed it as my legal right’. Under an Act of Parliament passed in 1695 and made permanent in 1715, Quakers were allowed to affirm instead of taking an oath except in three specific circumstances: when giving evidence, serving on a jury and taking an office of profit under the crown. In 1828 the law had been changed so that Quakers could affirm when giving evidence, leaving jury service and taking office as the only two exceptions.

On that basis, when Pease attempted to take his seat on Friday 8 February 1833, he told the clerk of the House, John Henry Ley, that ‘I am a member of the Society usually called Quakers, and I claim it as my right to be affirmed in lieu of taking the Oaths’. Ley informed the Speaker, Charles Manners Sutton, that Pease refused to be sworn. The Speaker then asked him to leave the chamber while the Commons deliberated. Since this issue had been foreseen, action was swiftly taken, appointing a select committee to inquire into the law and precedents on the question. It met the following day in the Speaker’s rooms and its report was printed for distribution to members on Wednesday 13 February. The next day, the Commons resolved that Pease was entitled to affirm, a motion carried without a division ‘amidst loud cheers from all parts of the House’.

On Friday 15 February 1833, a week after his first attempt, Pease – who later admitted that ‘if the House had refused to receive my affirmation, I should have gone quietly home again’ – made his affirmation and took his seat in the Commons alongside his fellow MPs. His legal adviser, John Hodgkin, had conferred with the Speaker and the Attorney-General to draw up a suitable form of words. Unfortunately, no record of the exact wording survives, as the papers relating to it were destroyed in the fire of October 1834. This was not quite the end of the matter. In May 1833 Pease was appointed as a member of an election committee, whose members were called to the table of the Commons to be sworn on 7 May. It was quickly decided that Pease would be allowed to affirm for this purpose too. The following day Lord Morpeth, MP for the West Riding, introduced a bill to allow Quakers – and also Moravians – to affirm in all cases, including for jury service and taking office. This Act (3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 49) passed later that session.

Pease became a well-known figure in the House, not least because of his distinctive broad-brimmed Quaker hat. His headgear presented him with something of a problem, since Quakers declined to follow customs about removing their hats as a sign of deference. According to his grandson, one way he got around this was that the Commons doorkeepers would remove his hat as he passed them on his way into the chamber; later on he would leave it in the Commons library.

The parliamentary reporter James Grant described Pease as ‘one of the most useful … members in the house’, who was very attentive to business. Grant noted that ‘it is clear he acts from principle. As to a party object, he knows not what it is. A more conscientious or upright man never sat in the house’. Pease spoke fairly often in debate, with Grant recording that

he speaks with great rapidity, and is never at a loss for words or ideas. His style is correct but plain. In his manner there is no action whatever. He stands stock still. His voice is weak, which, with his great rapidity of utterance, often renders him inaudible.

Unlike other MPs, Pease did not address the speaker as Sir and he referred to his colleagues as ‘the member’ rather than ‘the honourable member’. Grant felt that Pease was distinguished by his ‘mildness and intelligence’ and his ‘common-sense view’ of questions, concluding that ‘if he is a fair specimen of the society to which he belongs, the country would have no reason for regret were the entire six hundred and fifty-eight members selected from the Society of Friends’.

However, only a small number of Quakers followed Pease into the Commons between 1832 and 1868. When the Radical John Bright was elected for Durham at a by-election in 1843, press reports stated that he was the second Quaker MP, but this was incorrect. It was in fact Pease’s cousin, William Aldam, who was the next Quaker to affirm. Unlike Pease, his affirmation, on 21 August 1841, took place without any debate. Other Quaker MPs in the period before 1868 included Charles Gilpin, the first Quaker to become a member of the government, plus two other members of the Pease family: Joseph Pease’s younger brother Henry and his son Joseph Whitwell Pease, who both followed in his footsteps as MP for Durham South, taking advantage of the precedent he had set and the change to the law which had followed.

For more information on MPs’ religious affiliation, see our research guide.

KR

This is a revised version of an article originally published in 2023 on the Victorian Commons website.