HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT (CRYPT). (Hansard, 10 March 1924)

§ Mr. MACPHERSON

I make no apology for asking the House to listen to me for a moment or two. Members of the House in all quarters received this morning a notice of four Lenten services to be given in the Crypt of this ancient and Royal Palace in the near future. These services are to be conducted by distinguished clergymen of the Church of England, and I am sure that, whatever our political views may be, whatever our religious views may be, all of us in all quarters of the House will give these distinguished gentlemen a welcome to this House. Indeed, I might almost quote the solemn words which are addressed to us every day in this House as we listen to Prayers. We, I feel sure, will receive them with that true Christian love and charity one from another, setting aside prejudices and partial affection. The time has come, I think, to put those solemn words to the test; not only that, but to make claim and demand a privilege, a right. In the past the claim which I ventured a day or two ago to put forward was put forward by colleagues of mine from many parts of the House, and that claim was refused. But on this occasion I venture to make a stand, particularly as there is throughout the country and throughout the world a brighter and sweeter atmosphere in the interests of religious tolerance and reunion.

I make that claim here in the recognised home of liberty, of generosity, of right and of fair play. I am now one of the oldest Members of this House. I am 2093 proud to belong to it. With that pride in my heart—I feel sure there is no Member in any part of the House who would deny me that pride—I desire that my son should enter within these walls the Church of his fathers, the national and State Church of my native country, a Church recognised in 1707, within a few yards of the Crypt which we are discussing to be a fundamental and essential condition of the Treaty of Union—one Crown, one Parliament, one Protestant form of government for all time to come. Your Chaplain, Mr. Speaker, acting in his capacity as Vicar or Rector of St. Margaret's, refused me that right, on the ground that my minister was not a minister of the Church of England and could not therefore perform that ceremony. I say it with hesitation, but I resented that refusal. Not on account of my minister, however. The greatest names in the history of this country have been proud to acknowledge him as pastor, and he need yield to nobody in any church in this country, either in spiritual grace or in scholarship, but I resented it on other grounds. When a Chapel is maintained by public funds, annually voted by representatives of the entire people of this country assembled in this ancient Palace of Westminster, it should not, in my judgment, be for the exclusive use of one sect, one party, one creed or one person. In that direction lies disaster in these days of broadminded enlightenment.

I challenge the contention of your Chaplain, Mr. Speaker, that in his capacity as Vicar of a Church near this ancient House, he asserts a pretended jurisdiction over any part of this Royal Palace, and over the rights and privileges of Members of this House who are assembled here from a United Kingdom under the ægis of the Royal Prerogative. I am fortified in this view, not only by the humble researches I have been able to make myself during the last few days, but by the answer to a question which I took the liberty of addressing to my right hon. Friend the First Commissioner of Works. His answer to me to day was that the Crypt is under the general jurisdiction of the Lord Great Chamberlain. There can be no other meaning in that sentence than that this is a Royal Peculiar exempted from the jurisdiction of the Ordinary, and upon that I base 2094 one of my claims. Its antiquity dates long back into the history of our great country in pre-Reformation days, and is a source of pride to us all. That it should, during its long history, have fallen on evil days and have been devoted to mundane material and secular pleasures is a source of infinite regret. It stands to-day as an ancient and honoured monument in our midst, and it will be no less honoured in the future as a shrine devoted to His Majesty's faithful Commons, a shrine hallowed by that great and generous charity not unknown in the history of these historic crypts of Protestant England.

Since Queen Elizabeth's time, not long after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the persecuted Huguenots from France held, as their successors now hold, free and unmolested, their services in their chapel in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, which stands in its majestic grandeur as if to welcome them from their native shores. If that great and generous charity be not now needed, may I plead that it may not be forgotten when I venture now, as I do in the twentieth century to claim a similar right in this ancient assembly for my own countrymen.