Convention Parliament (1660)

A Convention Parliament is a parliament in English history which, owing to an abeyance of the Crown, assembled without formal summons by the Sovereign. Sir William Blackstone applied the term to only two English Parliaments those of 1660 and 1689, but some sources have also applied the name to the parliament of 1399.

It is a branch of the royal prerogative, that no parliament shall be convened by its own authority, or by any other authority than that of the sovereign. Where the crown is in abeyance, this prerogative cannot of course be exercised, and the expedient of Convention Parliaments has been resorted to, the enactments of which shall afterwards be ratified by a parliament summoned in accordance with the provisions of the constitution. ... a Convention Parliament [is] the constitutional mode in which the general will of England expresses itself on such questions as cannot be constitutionally discussed in parliament—e.g., a change of the reigning dynasty.

Blackstone points out that the 1689 parliament had to assemble without a royal writ, because the throne was vacant, and no legally summoned parliament could ever be assembled unless a Convention Parliament met to settle the issue of government.

Between 1660 and 1689 the meaning of the word Convention underwent a revision. In 1660 the word was seen as pejorative with overtones of irregularity, but after the convening of the 1689 parliament some started to see this as a virtue, "a voice of liberty".

The Succession to the Crown Act 1707 and the Meeting of Parliament Act 1797 has made it extremely unlikely that there will be need of another Westminster Convention Parliament:

There is only one occasion on which Parliament meets without a Royal summons, and that is when the Sovereign has died. In such circumstances, the Succession to the Crown Act 1707 provides that, if Parliament is not already sitting, it must immediately meet and sit.

The Meeting of Parliament Act 1797 provides that, if the Sovereign dies after Parliament has been dissolved, the immediately preceding Parliament sits for up to six months, if not prorogued or dissolved before then.

The first example of a convention parliament is the parliament of 1399. In 1399 a convention of estates of the realm assembled to offer the throne to Henry Bolingbroke as King Henry IV of England after the deposition of King Richard II of England. The convention had been summoned as a parliament by a writ issued by Richard, but it had not been opened by his commission as he had been deposed and it was held that this had the same effect on the parliament as the death of a monarch. So once Henry was recognised as King he re-summoned the same parliament hence validating its previous recognition of him as king.

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