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Observations on Early Stuart Parliamentary History*

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Commons Debates 1628. Edited by JohnsonRobert C., KeelerMary Frear, ColeMaija Jansson, and BidwellWilliam B.: The Yale Center for Parliamentary History. Volume I, Introduction and Reference Materials. Volume II, 17 March - 19 April, 1628. Volume III, 21 April-27 May, 1628. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977).

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2014

Stephen D. White
Stephen D. White*
Affiliation:
Wesleyan University
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Type
Review Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , Spring 1979 , pp. 160 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1979

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to thank Professor Theodore K. Rabb for commenting on a draft of this review article.

References

1. This literature is too extensive to be listed here. Much of it is referred to in the works cited below.

2. Elton, G. R., “A High Road to Civil War?” in Carter, Charles H. (ed.), From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation. Essays in Honor of Garrett Mattingly (New York, 1965), pp. 325–44Google Scholar, esp. pp. 325-29.

3. Elton, G. R., “Studying the History of Parliament,” British Studies Monitor (hereafter, B.S.M.), II (1971), 4–14Google Scholar.

4. J. H. Hexter, “Parliament under the Lens,” ibid., III (1972), 4-15.

5. Ibid., 12. For a response to Hexter's article, see G. R. Elton, “A Reply,” ibid., III (1972), 16-22.

6. Berkowitz, David S., “Parliamentary History, American Style,” American Journal of Legal History, XVI (1972), 260–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rabb, Theodore K., “Parliament and Society in Early Stuart England: The Legacy of Wallace Notestein,” American Historical Review, (hereafter, A.H.R.), LXXVII (1972), 705–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Ibid., 709; see also 710.

8. Russell, Conrad, “Parliamentary History in Perspective, 1604-1629,” History, LXI (1976), 1–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 3.

9. Ibid., 3.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., 9-11.

12. Ibid., 24; see also 18 and 20.

13. Ibid., 2.

14. Ibid., 26. The phrase “political schizophrenia” is my own and not Russell's.

15. Ibid., 27.

16. Christianson, Paul, “The Peers, The People, and Parliamentary Management in the First Six Months of the Long Parliament,” Journal of Modern History (hereafter, J.M.H.), XLIX (1977), 575–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 575-76; and James E. Farnell, “The Social and Intellectual Basis of London's Role in the English Civil Wars,” ibid., 641-60, esp. 643-45.

17. Mark Kishlansky, “The Emergence of Adversary Politics in the Long Parliament,” ibid., 617-40. Kishlansky conceded that beginning in 1626, “parliament could not always act according to the ideals of consensus politics,” and that it engaged in sometimes divisive debates on topics like the Petition of Right (623-24). Nevertheless, he insisted that “the opposition which appeared in Charles's Parliaments … was neither the precursor nor the equivalent of the Parliamentarian Cause,” and that in the later 1620s, “neither parliamentary procedure nor political practice was adopted to reflect a new relationship between king and parliament.” He also claimed that the Petition of Right was generally acceptable even to “the staunchest defenders of the king's prerogatives.” Ibid., 623-24.

18. Hirst, Derek, “Unanimity in the Commons, Aristocratic Intrigues, and the Origins of the English Civil War,” J.M.H., L (1978), 51–71Google Scholar, esp. 52-56.

19. Ibid., 51.

20. Ibid., 53, 56, 59-60, 70.

21. Hexter, J. H., “Power Struggle, Parliament and Liberty in Early Stuart England,” J.M.H., L (1978), 1–50Google Scholar; see esp. 12-15.

22. Ibid., 15-30.

23. Ibid., 25-30, 32-46.

24. Ibid., 27, 38-39.

25. Ibid., 47.

26. Ibid., 47-50.

27. On the tendency of social historians to ignore early Stuart parliamentary history, see Rabb, , “Parliament and Society,” A.H.R., LXXVII (1972), 709–10Google Scholar.

28. Johnson, Robert C.et al (eds.), Commons Debates 1628, 3 vols. (New Haven and London, 1977)Google Scholar.

29. For some interesting comments on the tendency of some recent historians to “bypass” political history, see Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, , “The Political Crisis of Social History: A Marxian Perspective,” Journal of Social History, X (1976), 206–20Google Scholar, esp. 215-19. For another lament, in a different key, on the decline of political history, see Elton, G. R., Political History, Principles and Practice (New York, 1971), esp. pp. 57–72Google Scholar.

30. I have tried to substantiate these points in “Sir Edward Coke in the Parliaments of 1621 and 1624: Parliament, the Law, and the Economy” (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1972)Google Scholar and in Sir Edward Coke and “The Grievances of the Commonwealth,” 1621-1628 (Chapel Hill, 1979)Google Scholar. For other views on changes in parliament's proceedings between 1621 and 1629, see Hexter, , “Power Struggle,” J.M.H., L, 45Google Scholar; Hirst, “Unanimity in the Commons,” ibid., 56; Kishlanslcy, “The Emergence of Adversary Politics,” ibid., XLIX, 623-24.

31. See Hexter, , “Parliament Under the Lens,” B.S.M., IIIGoogle Scholar.

32. On the refusal of the Commons to compromise with the Lords about the substance of the Petition, see Berkowitz, David S., “Reason of State in England and the Petition of Right,” in Schnur, Roman (ed.), Staatsräson: Studien zur Geschichte eines politischen Begriffs (Berlin, 1975), 165–212Google Scholar.

33. See Berkowitz, ibid., and Elizabeth Read Foster, “Printing the Petition of Right,” Huntingdon Library Quarterly (hereinafter, H.L.Q.), XXVIII (1974), 81-84.

34. For recent discussions of the Petition, see Ball, J. N., “The Petition of Right in the English Parliament of 1628,” in Lousse, Album E. (Louvain, 1964), IV, 43–64Google Scholar; Berkowitz, , “Reason of State,” in StaatsräsonGoogle Scholar; Flemion, J.S., “The Struggle for the Petition of Right in the House of Lords: The Study of an Opposition Victory,” J.M.H., XLV (1973), 193–210Google Scholar; Foster, Elizabeth Read, “Petitions and the Petition of Right,” Journal of British Studies, XIV (1974), 21–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Foster, , “Printing the Petition of Right,” H.L.Q., XXVIIIGoogle Scholar; and Thompson, Christopher, “The Origins of the Parliamentary Middle Group, 1626-1629,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, XXII (1972), 71–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. Even the Commons' debates on parliamentary judicature, for example, have not been meticulously analyzed. See White, Stephen D., review of Tite, Colin G. C., Impeachment and Parliamentary Judicature in Early Stuart England (London, 1974)Google Scholar, in Harvard Law Review, LXXXIX (1976), 1934–45Google Scholar.

36. See Pocock, J. G. A., “The Commons Debates of 1628,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXIX (1978), 329–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37. Commons Debates 1628, I, 23Google Scholar.

38. Ibid., 4.

39. Notestein, Wallaceet al (eds.), Commons Debates 1621, 7 vols. (New Haven. 1935)Google Scholar. For references to other printed editions of early Stuart parliamentary sources, see Johnson, Robert C., “Parliamentary Diaries of the Early Stuart Period,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, IV (1971), 293–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. See Commons Debates 1628, I, 2–4Google Scholar.

41. See ibid., 4-23. For discussions of early Stuart parliamentary “narratives” that bear at least some resemblance to the “narratives” for 1628, see Commons Debates 1621, I, 5–16Google Scholar; and Notestein, Wallace and Relf, Frances Helen (eds.), Commons Debates for 1629 (Minneapolis, 1921), pp. xv–xixGoogle Scholar. Although the present editors note the similarities between the so-called “Proceedings and Debates” for 1628 and the so-called “True Relation” for 1629 (see Commons Debates 1628, I, 9–10Google Scholar), they insist that the former “narrative” differs significantly from the latter and provides a much more reliable picture of parliament's proceedings (ibid., esp. 10).

42. See ibid., 59-40.

43. See, for example, ibid., II, 2-8, 12-24, 58-60, and III, 572-80.

44. For the table of manuscripts, see ibid., I, 49-51, and for a discussion of the outlines of daily business, see ibid., 44-46. The editors have also eased the task of studying this parliament's proceedings by providing their edition with date tabs.

45. For the glossary, see ibid., I, 89-105. For some critical comments on it, see Elton's, G. R. review of these volumes in Times Literary Supplement (June 24, 1977), 763-64 at 764Google Scholar.

46. See Commons Debates 1628, I, 104–36Google Scholar.

47. See ibid., 116-19.

48. Ibid., 37 (editors' italics).