A History of Private Bill Legislation

Frederick Clifford of the Middle Temple, Barrister at Law.

Part 1 Introduction: inclosure acts; town improvement acts; municipalities authorized to re-build; local statutes regulating industries; iron-works in Sussex; cloth manufacture in Kent; decay of southern manufactures; canals; railways; tramways; river tunnels; channel tunnel bills, 1883-4; gas lighting; electric lighting; London hydraulic power acts, 1871-84; Birmingham compressed air power company's act, 1884; improved procedure on private bills. Part 2 Private legislation - its rise and development. Part 3 Messages between the two houses: protests by peers; answers and assents by Crown to petitions or bills; royal assent by commission. Part 4 Ingrossment of private bills and acts: inrolment as statutes; drafted in statutory form by judges; protests by commons against delay in drafting; ancient records and language of statutes; first printed collection of acts; ordinances; mode of certifying private acts; promulgation. Part 5 Early precedents (personal): acts of attainder and restitution in blood; differences between houses as to right of originating such bills; act degrading from dukedom; acts not printed in statute-book; a judicial murder; estate, naturalization and divorce acts; miscellaneous. Part 6 Early precedents (personal) continued: divorce before the reformation; reformation legum ecclesiasticarum; parliamentary divorce - Marquis of Northampton, Lord Roos, James Campbell, Earl of Macclesfield, Duke of Norfolk; divorce obtained by women - divorce act, 1857; marriages annulled - cases of John Gooding and Edward Gibbon Wakefield; separation bills for cruelty of husband - Lady Anglesea and Countess Ferrers; declaration of illegitimacy bills; Townshend peerage case; diminished number of personal acts. Part 7 Early precedents (continued): the Templars; forestalling herrings at Yarmouth; salt fish at Blakeney; Mortmain; forays by dwellers in Tynedale; unruly scholars at Oxford; Berwick; exemptions from military service; fellowship of physicians; incorporation of surgeons; rivers, harbours and docks; lotteries - payment of members of parliament; appendices.