Erskine May
British constitutional theorist (1815–1886)
Thomas Erskine May, 1st Baron Farnborough, (8 February 1815 – 17 May 1886) was a British constitutional theorist and Clerk of the House of Commons during the Victorian era.
His seminal work, A Treatise upon the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament (first published in 1844) has become known as Erskine May: Parliamentary Practice or simply Erskine May. This parliamentary authority (book of procedural rules) is currently in its 25th revised edition (2019) and is informally considered part of the constitution of the United Kingdom.
Following his retirement as Clerk of the House of Commons in May 1886, May was created "Baron Farnborough, of Farnborough, in the county of Southampton" just a week before his death. Since he left no heirs, the barony became extinct, making it the second-shortest-lived peerage in British history.
Biography
Thomas Erskine May was born in Highgate, Middlesex, on 8 February 1815. He was christened on 21 September 1815 at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster with his parents being registered as Thomas and Sarah May. He was educated at Bedford School.
May began his parliamentary service in 1831, at the age of 16, as Assistant Librarian in the House of Commons Library. He was admitted to the Middle Temple on 20 June 1834 and called to the bar on 4 May 1838.
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This entry incorporates text from “Erskine May” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.