Speaker of the House of Commons (United Kingdom) Commons. Their names are inscribed in gold leaf around the upper walls of Room C of the House of Commons Library. The three most recent Speakers have been notable for a series of firsts. Betty Boothroyd, elected in 1992, was the first woman Speaker. Michael Martin, elected in 2000, was the first Roman Catholic Speaker since the Reformation. John Bercow, elected in 2009, is the first Jewish Speaker. By convention, Speakers have traditionally been addressed in Parliament as "Mr Speaker", and their deputies as "Mr Deputy Speaker", regardless of their gender or their usual title. Betty Boothroyd was, at her
Speaker of the House of Commons (United Kingdom) critics. In the next, "Bad Parliament", in 1377, a cowed Commons put forward Gaunt's steward, Thomas Hungerford, as their spokesman in retracting their predecessors' misdoings of the previous year. Gaunt evidently wanted a 'mirror-image' as his form of counter-coup and this notion, born in crisis, of one 'speaker', who quickly also became 'chairman' and organiser of the Commons' business, was recognised as valuable and took immediate root after 1376-7. On 6 October 1399, Sir John Cheyne of Beckford (Gloucester) was elected speaker. The powerful Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, is said to have voiced his fears of Cheyne's reputation as