Placemen in Parliament
In 1694 a bill passed both Houses “touching free and impartial proceedings in Parliament,” against the eligibility of Placemen. On its discussion Mr. Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, remarked, that “in the 1st of James I., the Chancellor, studious of the good of the kingdom, sent down to the House of Commons a list of the members in office, and they were turned out of the House, and new members chosen.” King William, however, refused his sanction to this Act. “A Dutchman (says Mr. Burgh) comes over to Britain on pretence of delivering us from slavery, and makes it one of his first works to plunge us into the very vice which has enslaved all the nations of the world that have ever lost their liberties. When the Parliament passed a bill for incapacitating certain persons who might be supposed obvious to Court influence, our glorious Deliverer refused the royal assent.”