Although the basic distinction has existed since the origin of the House, the composition of both groups has changed over the centuries.
Six of the abbeys whose heads were on the standard list of summonses to parliament – Abingdon, Battle, Hyde, St Augustine's Canterbury, Shrewsbury and Bardney – had voluntarily surrendered to the vicar-general, Cromwell, in the course of 1538, Coventry had followed in January 1539, and Tavistock on 3 March, two days after the issue of the parliamentary writs.
The abbot of Burton, whose house was not surrendered until November, does not appear on the journal lists; but he had also been omitted from all but the first six days of the preceding parliament.
The prior of the Hospital is also omitted from the journal lists of attendances for this parliament though his house and order were not dissolved until May 1540.
... Parliament proceeded to confirm the title of the king and his heirs to the possession of recently dissolved monastic houses, by an act stating that "divers and sundry abbots, priors, abbesses, prioresses ... of their own free and voluntary minds, good wills and assents" have surrendered their foundations.
When the parliament resumed after prorogation in April 1540, the abbots were all gone, the last, Robert Fuller of Waltham, having surrendered the previous month and retired on a pension of £200 a year.The right of the Lords Spiritual to sit in the House of Lords was removed during the Long Parliament under the Clergy Act 1640 (passed in 1642).
[1] As this legislation had passed both Houses and received royal assent, the Royalists accepted it was a valid law.
[4] The Clergy Act 1661 permitted the prelates of the Church of England to resume sitting as members of the House of Lords.
Article XXII of the Treaty of Union provides: Of the Peers of Scotland at the time of the Union Sixteen shall be the number to Sit and Vote in the House of Lords ... And when Her Majesty Her Heirs or Successors, shall Declare Her or their pleasure for holding the first or any subsequent Parliament of Great Britain until the Parliament of Great Britain shall make further provision therein, A Writ do issue under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom, Directed to the Privy Council of Scotland, Commanding them to Cause Sixteen Peers, who are to sit in the House of Lords to be Summoned to Parliament ... in such manner as by a subsequent Act of this present session of the Parliament of Scotland shall be settled ...The Church of Scotland was not given any representation in the House of Lords, so the existing Lords Spiritual were unaffected by the Union.
New titles created in the Peerage of the United Kingdom conferred a seat in the House of Lords.
Under the provisions of the Act of Union 1800, one archbishop and the three bishops chosen by rotation (changing for each session of Parliament) would be Lords Spiritual in the newly united United Kingdom House of Lords in Westminster, joining the two archbishops (Canterbury and York) and the twenty-four bishops from the Church of England.
This was a revival of a royal power unused (for male recipients) since the reign of King Richard II of England.
Liberal governments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had difficulty in getting major legislation through the upper house.
On issues as central to the politics of the day as Home Rule and as dear to the hearts of radicals as the end of plural voting, the Lords were implacably opposed.
A compromise was not found until after the December election of 1910 when a bill was produced dealing only with the powers, but promising in the preamble to reform the house on a popular basis.
Since 1911 there have been various attempts to reform the Lords, but none tackled the powers of the House except the Parliament Act 1949 which reduced the suspensory veto to two sessions and one year.