List of Stewards of the Manor of Northstead

The position of Steward of the Manor of Northstead is a procedural device to allow Members of Parliament to resign from the British House of Commons. Members of the House of Commons are technically forbidden from resigning. To circumvent this prohibition, a legal fiction is used. An appointment to an "office of profit under The Crown" disqualifies an individual from sitting as a Member of Parliament (MP). As such, several such positions are maintained to allow MPs to resign. Currently, the positions of Steward of the Manor of Northstead and Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds are used; historically several other offices have also been used. The position was reworked in 1861 by William Ewart Gladstone, who was worried about the honour conferred by appointment to people such as Edwin James, who had fled to the United States over £10,000 in debt. As such, the letter was rewritten to omit any references to honour.

Most references say the position was first used in this way on 20 March 1844 to allow Sir George Henry Rose, Member for Christchurch, to resign his seat in Parliament, but the official book containing appointments to the Stewardship (lodged in The National Archives under catalogue reference E 197/1) indicates that Patrick Chalmers, Member for Montrose Burghs, was appointed to this office on 6 April 1842 so that he could resign due to ill health. The writ ordering the election of a replacement MP was changed so that it appeared Chalmers had been appointed to the Chiltern Hundreds.

Appointees to the offices of Steward of the Manor of Northstead and Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds are alternated so that two MPs can resign at once (as happened on 23 January 2017). However every new appointment to the Stewardship revokes the previous appointment so there is no difficulty in situations in which more than two resign, such as the 1985 walkout of Ulster Unionist MPs when several separate appointments were made on a single day.

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