Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Contents
- Editor’s Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introductory Survey
- Appendix 1 Dates of Parliaments and sessions, 1640-60
- Appendix 2 By-elections
- Appendix 3 Speakers of the House of Commons
- Appendix 4 Principal Judicial and State Officeholders
- Appendix 5 Officials of the House of Commons or of Parliament
- Appendix 6 Chairmen of Standing Committees
- Appendix 7 Failed Parliamentary Candidates
- Appendix 8 The ‘Straffordians’ of April 1641
- Appendix 9 Members who fled to the New Model army in 1647
- Appendix 10 Members excluded at Pride’s Purge, December 1648
- Appendix 11 Dissenters to the 5 December 1648 Vote to continue negotiations with the King
- Appendix 12 Members excluded in 1654 and 1656
- Appendix 13 The ‘Kinglings’ of 1657
- Appendix 14 Members of the Other House, 1658-9
- Appendix 15 Members who served City of London Apprenticeships
- Appendix 16 Members who served Apprenticeships outside London
- Appendix 17 Legal Practitioners
- Appendix 18 Members with Commercial Interests
- Appendix 19 Military and Naval Members
- Appendix 20 Officers of the Royal or Protectoral Households
- Appendix 21 Attendance at and Reporting from the Committee of Both Kingdoms
- Appendix 22 Attendance at the Derby House Committee
- Appendix 23 Recruitment and Attendance, Naval Committees
- Appendix 24 Activity at the Committee for Revenue
- List of Manuscript Sources Used
- Abbreviated Titles and Other Abbreviations used in the Footnotes
- Index to the Introductory Survey
- Committees
X - Politics and Party in the House of Commons
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 May 2023
- Frontmatter
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Contents
- Editor’s Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introductory Survey
- Appendix 1 Dates of Parliaments and sessions, 1640-60
- Appendix 2 By-elections
- Appendix 3 Speakers of the House of Commons
- Appendix 4 Principal Judicial and State Officeholders
- Appendix 5 Officials of the House of Commons or of Parliament
- Appendix 6 Chairmen of Standing Committees
- Appendix 7 Failed Parliamentary Candidates
- Appendix 8 The ‘Straffordians’ of April 1641
- Appendix 9 Members who fled to the New Model army in 1647
- Appendix 10 Members excluded at Pride’s Purge, December 1648
- Appendix 11 Dissenters to the 5 December 1648 Vote to continue negotiations with the King
- Appendix 12 Members excluded in 1654 and 1656
- Appendix 13 The ‘Kinglings’ of 1657
- Appendix 14 Members of the Other House, 1658-9
- Appendix 15 Members who served City of London Apprenticeships
- Appendix 16 Members who served Apprenticeships outside London
- Appendix 17 Legal Practitioners
- Appendix 18 Members with Commercial Interests
- Appendix 19 Military and Naval Members
- Appendix 20 Officers of the Royal or Protectoral Households
- Appendix 21 Attendance at and Reporting from the Committee of Both Kingdoms
- Appendix 22 Attendance at the Derby House Committee
- Appendix 23 Recruitment and Attendance, Naval Committees
- Appendix 24 Activity at the Committee for Revenue
- List of Manuscript Sources Used
- Abbreviated Titles and Other Abbreviations used in the Footnotes
- Index to the Introductory Survey
- Committees
Summary
‘Formed divisions’: politics and party, 1640-8
The clash of parties was a prominent theme in contemporary accounts of parliamentary proceedings in the mid-seventeenth century. Sir Simonds D’Ewes* felt compelled to persist with his parliamentary diary – as he confided to it in mid-1643 – ‘to transmit not only the story but the very secret workings and machinations of each party as well of the two Houses of Parliament, chiefly led and guided by some few Members of either House’. This factional interpretation took hold in the early 1640s: by 1647 and the publication of Clement Walker’s* The Mysterie of the Two Juntos, Presbyterian and Independent, the importance of party as a determinant of parliamentary behaviour had gained wide acceptance. Writing in response to Walker, the civil war poetaster George Wither was ‘certain that there was not one of them [MPs] in the House but professed himself either a Presbyterian or Independent, though some in a more rigid, others in a more moderate, way’.
Historians of Parliament in the 1640s and 1650s have generally followed Walker’s lead, often focusing on the rivalry between parties as a key to unlocking the ‘secret workings’ of the Houses. Recent work on the establishment of the Committee of Both Kingdoms in 1644 and the new-modelling of Parliament’s armies in 1644-5 has employed this approach to particularly profitable effect. Although the two-party structure that Walker anatomized did not survive the revolutionary events at Westminster of 1648-9, it is clear that distinct and organized parliamentary groupings played a major role in shaping politics and government policy during the interregnum.
The Parliaments of the 1640s and 1650s have long been recognized as forcing-houses in the develop-ment of political parties both at Westminster itself and in the country generally. Looking back on the ‘most great and unusual changes and revolutions’ of the 1640s and 1650s, Sir Henry Vane II* foregrounded ‘the disjointing [of] that parliamentary assembly among themselves’ and the subsequent emergence of ‘formed divisions among the people’. Of course, Parliaments before the 1640s had not been immune to partisan politics and factional ‘disjointing’.
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- Information
- The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1640-1660 [Volume I]Introductory Survey and Committees, pp. 259 - 305Publisher: Boydell & BrewerFirst published in: 2023