Convention Parliament of 1399
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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Famous quotes containing the words convention and/or parliament:
“No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius—a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“At the ramparts on the cliff near the old Parliament House I counted twenty-four thirty-two-pounders in a row, pointed over the harbor, with their balls piled pyramid-wise between them,—there are said to be in all about one hundred and eighty guns mounted at Quebec,—all which were faithfully kept dusted by officials, in accordance with the motto, “In time of peace prepare for war”; but I saw no preparations for peace: she was plainly an uninvited guest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)