‘But Private Notes for My Own Memory’? Parliamentary Diaries,Parliamentary History and the Politics of Information in Early Stuart England*

Early modern parliamentary diaries are a standard source for historians, and have long been used as a supplement to the official journals in reconstructions of debates and business at Westminster. This article adopts a contrasting approach and examines what diaries – viewed as sources in their own right – reveal about parliament and its members, methods of contemporary note-taking, and the circulation and readership of political information. It begins with a review of the evidence for why, how, and to what ends members kept parliamentary diaries, before exploring the extent of their dissemination in early Stuart England. While recent literature has emphasized the circulation of materials relating to Jacobean and especially Caroline parliaments during the early 17th century, the article recovers the existence of a simultaneous interest in the parliamentary proceedings of the Elizabethan era. At a time when the future of parliament seemed uncertain, it argues that the evident market for, and readership of, Elizabethan material reflects contemporaries’ increasing recognition of parliament's significance within the English state and their changing attitudes towards parliamentary history. Moreover, while Elizabethan parliamentary diaries and journals seemingly reinforced memories of a past ‘golden age’ of parliamentary rule, the article contends that contemporaries’ production, dissemination, and reading of that material was a conscious form of political action in response to the constitutional crisis of their day.     

Writing Scottish Parliamentary History,c.1500–1707

In the 19th and 20th centuries, scholarship on the Scottish parliament was heavily informed by a narrative of ‘failure’, directed at explaining why its members voted it out of existence in 1707. Part of the problem was the tendency to see any deviation from the practices of the Westminster parliament as weakness. By reappraising parliament in terms of its utility to those who comprised its membership, notably the titled peerage and the monarch, historians have revealed its adaptability and inventiveness, especially in times of crisis. This essay considers how fresh approaches both to what constituted the parliamentary record and what can – and cannot – be found within it have exerted a transformative influence on our understanding of parliament's evolving role in Scottish political life. Although the Reformation crisis of 1560 and the accession of the ruling house of Stewart to the English throne in 1603 effected profound changes on parliamentary culture, this essay emphasises how parliament sustained its legitimacy and relevance, in part, by drawing on past practices and ideas. Historians have become more attentive in recent years to the means by which social groupings ordinarily excluded from formal parliamentary activity were nonetheless able to engage with, and influence, its proceedings. Gaps remain in our knowledge, however. Some periods have been more intensively studied than others, while certain aspects of parliamentary culture are understudied. The writing of Scottish parliamentary history will continue to offer rich possibilities in future.     

Parliament and the Reformation of Edward VI

This article explores the ways in which parliament was used to shape the accelerating protestant reformation undertaken by successive governments under Edward VI. It underlines the significance for constitutional history of Thomas Cromwell's extraordinary promotion of England's parliament to enact the break with Rome and evangelical religious change, and the corresponding use of parliament after Cromwell's fall by conservatives to combat evangelical gains, which at first constituted an obstacle to Protector Somerset's plans. There was a steady deliberate erosion of conservative episcopal votes in the Lords through political man?uvres from 1547; nevertheless, up to late 1549, the weight of conservative opposition in the Lords (without much obvious corresponding traditionalist support in the Commons) dictated crabwise progress in legislation. The convocations of Canterbury and York played a more marginal role in religious change. Somerset's unsuccessful attempt at populist innovation in parliament was, arguably, an important element fuelling the coup against him in autumn 1549. Thereafter, events moved much more rapidly, aided by further compulsory retirements of bishops. Attention is drawn to the frustration felt by some enthusiastic evangelicals at the pace of change dictated by parliament, leading the prominent refugee, Jan ?aski, sarcastically to characterise the Edwardian Reformation in retrospect as ‘parliamentary theology’. From late 1552, divisions between clergy and nobility in the evangelical leadership over plundering of church wealth led to confusion, ill will and the disruption of further progress, even before it was obvious that King Edward was rapidly dying.     

The Culture of Fasting in Early Stuart Parliaments*

The fasts, proposed and observed by parliament in the first half of the 17th century, have always been defined as opportunities for propaganda. This article focuses, instead, on their cultural and religious meanings: why MPs believed that the act of fasting itself was important and what they hoped it would achieve. It argues that fasts were proposed for two reasons: to forge unity between parliament and the king at a time of growing division, with the aim of making parliamentary sessions more productive and successful, and to provide more direct resolution to the nation's problems by invoking divine intervention. Fast motions commanded widespread support across parliament because they were rooted in the dominant theory of causation – divine providence – and reflected the gradual conventionalisation of fasting in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. However, this consensus seemed to wane in the early 1640s as divisions between Charles I and some of his most vocal MPs widened, while the fast day observed on 17 November 1640 was used by some MPs to express their opposition to Charles's religious policy, especially regarding the siting of the communion table/altar and the position from where the service was to be read. The article concludes by reflecting on how a study of parliamentary fasting can contribute to wider debates on commensality and abstinence.     

The Irish Parliamentary Diary (1776–89) of Sir Henry Cavendish

This article clarifies the history of the ‘parliamentary diary’ compiled by Sir Henry Cavendish while a member of the Irish parliament between 1776 and 1789, correcting misapprehensions in previous accounts, in particular the assertion by A.P.W. Malcomson and D.J. Jackson that Cavendish paid less attention to recording debates in the 1780s.     

Parliament in print: William Caxton and the history of political government in the fifteenth century

This article explores the narrative of parliamentary history in fifteenth-century England, specifically as found in the texts William Caxton printed. It investigates Caxton's approach to history and motivation for choosing texts, his translations and vocabulary, his editorial oversight and his audience. As his confidence in his own skill grew, and as he moved from a continental to an English context, his reading of parliaments changed. Initially it corresponded to his French texts, but by the early 1480s he understood the term ‘parliament’ to mean some variation of the contemporary English Parliament. Caxton's later understanding is reflected in the histories he published. This article emphasises the importance of Caxton's historical narratives to Parliament's legitimacy and to political discourse in a time when few parliaments were held.     

Enoch Powell,Parliament and Europe

In recent years, there has been substantial academic reappraisal of Enoch Powell alongside a growing public realisation, increased by the debate over Brexit, that his interests were wider than immigration and notably included opposition to British membership of the European Community – a topic that this article probes further. It begins by examining Powell's understanding of the British nation as a unitary state, centred on parliament, that underpinned his interpretation of both Conservatism and Unionism. Then, covering the period up to the 1975 referendum, the article analyses exactly how Powell argued that membership of the European Community threatened parliamentary sovereignty. It situates Powell's thinking in the context of arguments made by others and explores the connections made by Powell between the threat from Europe and the history of parliament itself, particularly the formation of the unions with Scotland and Ireland. The article shows that while Powell's arguments were marginalised in the later 1970s and for much of the 1980s, they were revived from the early 1990s – albeit in a changed constitutional context.     

Radicals,Tories or Monomaniacs? The Birmingham Currency Reformers in the House of Commons, 1832–67*

Benjamin Disraeli described Thomas Attwood as a ‘provincial banker labouring under a financial monomania’. The leader of the Birmingham Political Union, Attwood's Warwickshire accent and support for a paper currency were widely derided at Westminster. However, the themes of Attwood's brief parliamentary career were shared by the other men who represented Birmingham in the early‐ and mid‐Victorian period. None of these MPs were good party men, and this article illuminates the nature of party labels in the period. Furthermore, it adds a new dimension to the historical understanding of debates on monetary policy and shows how local political identities and traditions interacted with broader party identities. With the exception of Richard Spooner, who was a strong tory on religious and political matters, the currency men are best described as popular radicals, who consistently championed radical political reform and were among the few parliamentary supporters of the ‘People's Charter’. They opposed the new poor law and endorsed factory regulation, a progressive income tax, and religious liberty. Although hostile to the corn laws they believed that free trade without currency reform would depress prices, wages and employment. George Frederick Muntz's death in 1857 and his replacement by John Bright marked a watershed and the end of the influence of the ‘Birmingham school’. Bright appropriated Birmingham's radical tradition as he used the town as a base for his campaign for parliamentary reform. He emphasized Birmingham's contribution to the passing of the 1832 Reform Act but ignored the currency reformers' views on other matters, which had often been at loggerheads with the ‘Manchester school’ and economic liberalism.     

Herzl and the Palestinian Arabs: Myth and Counter-Myth

According to conventional Zionist historiography, Herzl thought little about Arabs, and what he did have to say about them reflected benign and progressive, albeit paternalistic, sentiment. Critics of Zionism, on the other hand, claim that underlying the paucity of Herzl's comments on Arabs was a conspiracy of silence, for already in 1895 he was allegedly planning the expulsion of the Palestinians, although he only confided this dark scheme to his diary. This essay throws new light upon Herzl's attitudes towards Palestine's Arabs. It explores a variety of historiographical questions raised by the gulf that separates the camps of scholars who have written on this subject, and it critiques the way that historians have read Herzl's diary and privileged it over his other writings.     

MPs on the Subject of STEMM: What Can Oral History Tell Us?*

A growing collection of archived oral history interviews with former MPs offers historians new opportunities to study the influences that have directed MPs’ routes into elected office and their behaviour in the house of commons. This article draws on evidence in the interviews to consider the extent to which an MP's background in science, technology, engineering, maths, and medicine (so-called STEMM subjects) has contributed to his or her activity as a parliamentarian. When concerns are raised about the House's capacity to effectively debate and scrutinise legislation concerning STEMM matters, those concerns are often accompanied by calls for more MPs with a STEMM background. Listening to these oral history interviews to hear what individual MPs say about their connections with STEMM – whether before, during, or after their time in the Commons – provides an insight into the relevance of having a STEMM background as an MP and offers explanations as to why MPs with a STEMM background are in a minority in the House. As such, this examination of historical material contributes to the ongoing debate about the role of STEMM experts in parliament while demonstrating the value of consulting archived oral history interviews when researching 20th-century parliamentary history.     

1. INDIA IN A WORLD: DILEMMAS OF SOVEREIGNTY

Azfar Moin's The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam prompts a consideration not only of the histories of Islam and early modern connected histories of Central and South Asia, but also of current debates about local and global history‐writing. Moin's work intersects with a strand of comparative world history—following Victor Lieberman's Strange Parallels—but also engages strands of historical anthropology, bringing to light a range of compelling stakes for global historians, historians of South Asia, and scholars of nationalism alike. Though Moin's work pushes the boundaries of connected histories centered on South Asia, his focus on a trans‐regional millennial science avoids questions of the local within new global histories.     

John Burton versus international relations: the costs of criticism

This article explores the intellectual legacy of John Wear Burton, who died in June 2010. Widely lauded as a pioneer in the fields of conflict resolution and peace studies, Burton's legacy in the broader study of international relations (IR) is more ambiguous. The author argues that Burton is best remembered as a critic of IR rather than as a contributor to the discipline, particularly as it evolved from the mid 1980s to the present. Burton's most trenchant criticisms of IR in the 1960s and 1970s were really directed against a superficial version of realism. Burton's work on human needs and conflict resolution, in contrast, has had a more enduring legacy.     

‘Slightly Constitutional’ Politics: Fianna Fáil's Tortuous Entry to the Irish Parliament, 1926–7

Fianna Fáil is Ireland's largest political party since 1932, and has been in office for almost 60 years, mostly as a single-party government. Despite this impressive electoral and parliamentary history, the party's constitutional origins are fraught with ambivalence towards Irish state institutions. Fianna Fáil's early years, perhaps eclipsed by subsequent electoral successes, have received relatively little attention from historians and most general works content themselves with a couple of lines about the oath of allegiance with an underlying assumption that entry to the Irish parliament was inevitable. The aim of this article is to show how the process that brought Fianna Fáil into parliamentary politics was haphazard and unpredictable. Through extensive use of party literature and parliamentary party minutes from the 1920s, this article presents a detailed account of Fianna Fáil's evolving attitude towards the oath of allegiance and how it succeeded in overcoming ideological reservations to take its seats in the Irish Free State legislature.     

William Laud and the Parliamentary Politics of 1628–9

This article seeks to highlight the important part played by Bishop William Laud in the counsels of Charles I in the 1620s, and, in particular, his involvement in the parliamentary sessions of 1628 and 1629. Having demonstrated his usefulness as a parliamentary spokesman for the crown in the parliaments of 1625 and 1626, and having been promoted to the privy council, the parliament of 1628–9 witnessed the height of Laud's parliamentary engagement. His key role as a writer of memoranda and speeches both for the duke of Buckingham and for Charles himself demonstrate the weight accorded to his political views. These views, reflected in his writings, sermons and his contributions to parliamentary debate, embody a dislike of parliamentary bargaining, a firm commitment to uphold the royal prerogative, particularly in matters of taxation, and a determination to resist encroachments upon it by the common lawyers, whether by the confirmation of Magna Carta or in the form of the Petition of Right. The expression of these views in such an emphatic fashion would come back to bite him, in the parliamentary attacks on him in 1629, but above all at his trial in 1644. Nevertheless, his articulation of them suggests that Laud himself was a more considered political thinker, and a more active politician, than he has hitherto been given credit for, and that there were ideas around in influential conciliar circles that do not appear to reflect the ‘anti‐absolutist’ consensus that, it is widely claimed, prevailed within the early Stuart political nation.     

The Impact of Back Benchers in the Creation of Social Reform: The Indefatigable and Honourable Exertions of Mr Gilbert*

During the 18th century, back-bench members of parliament played a critical role in creating social policy. This article provides a case study of the political campaigns of the Lichfield MP, Thomas Gilbert, and his attempts at a comprehensive reform of the poor law in 1765 and 1782. These individual endeavours were energetic, sophisticated, but unallied to a particular agenda or based on Gilbert's original perspectives. Instead, he harnessed the power of local interests and extra-parliamentary forces, particularly magistrates, through the adept use of print culture in his later campaign to form social policy based on a broad political consensus. A skilled political operator, he used these same methods to help navigate his bills through parliament. To better fit the context, the campaigns were moulded around political expediency and influenced by the development of Gilbert's humanitarian reputation and the burgeoning of the press, parliamentary reporting, and political debate. The political environments of 1765 and 1782 were, therefore, different, and broader trends influenced the two campaigns. This article demonstrates the importance of the press to political campaigning and suggests that to be successful (in social policy at least) a would-be reformer was required to engage with a developing participatory political culture. However, given Gilbert's approach, the importance of ideology as a basis for social reform in an 18th-century context is questioned.     

A.F. Pollard*

A.F. Pollard is now better remembered for founding the Institute of Historical Research than he is for his scholarship. In his heyday, however, Pollard was a formidable and prolific historian, primarily of parliament and the Tudor period. Pollard has been characterised both as a modernist and as a whig historian. Rejecting romantic invocations of liberty, he extolled instead the sovereign nation state, pinpointing the 16th century as the moment when it was achieved. Pollard rejected anachronistic accounts of parliament's development: for him, the assembly had grown by accident (out of the medieval king's council), rather than by design. This adaptability had ensured parliament's longevity and would preserve it into the future. Pollard revered the English parliament all the more for its embodiment of this national good fortune. Pollard helped to professionalise the discipline of history, but his own writings could be found wanting when measured against the standards that he had advocated. Criticism of his approach and assumptions comes easily now. Yet, upon reacquaintance, historians of parliament may find enduring interest in Pollard's shrewd and extensive work.     

The Duke's Parrot: The Earl of Leicester,the King's Children and the English Revolution

This article examines neglected evidence regarding the ongoing captivity of the children of Charles I, at the hands of the republican regime, long after the regicide in January 1649. While it is well known that the Long Parliament was anxious to attend to the education of the royal children, and to exert authority over their upbringing, and also that there were rumours during the 1640s about plans to install the youngest prince, the duke of Gloucester, on the throne in place of a deposed king, little attention has been paid to voluminous and intriguing evidence about their fate during the interregnum. The aim of this essay is to survey such sources, and to recover evidence of a political and parliamentary debate about the children's fate, not least in a situation where it was thought possible that they might provide a rallying point for royalists, and a security threat. That debates about their fate were protracted and convoluted is used to flesh out rather sketchy evidence – much commented upon by historians, but not taken very seriously – that there was an ongoing debate over a possible monarchical settlement until 1653.     

An Anatomy of the London Agent

This article considers the London agent through the careers of Gilbert Mabbott and, to a lesser extent, William Raylton. The London agent was a commonplace in early modern political culture, but the phenomenon is rarely addressed in the historiography. I argue for the importance of the agent to early modern English history in general, but I also consider Mabbott's situation in particular. Because of the civil wars, Mabbott was able to rise beyond his social station as a scrivener and freed himself from the bonds of the patron‐client relationship. This article seeks to define some of the roles played by agents in the early modern period by looking at Mabbott's and Raylton's work for their major employers: Thomas Wentworth, Hull, royalist delinquents and their children, various parliamentary armies, and Oliver Cromwell. It ends by looking at the wealth that Mabbott acquired through his work, both before and after the Restoration, as demonstrative of how an agent's power could yield impressive rewards when freed of social constraints.     

‘A rancour and a passion would be introduced into politics’: Perceptions of the Woman MP in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Britain*

On 21 November 1918, the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act was passed, which enabled women over the age of 21 to stand for parliamentary election. Unlike women's suffrage, there was no sustained campaign to allow women to sit in parliament. However, this does not mean that the issue was ignored in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This article traces perceptions of the woman MP in the pre-1918 period and offers the first detailed exploration of the topic. It argues that although discussions on the matter were not widespread like women's suffrage, there is value in examining these lesser-known debates. This article studies the parliamentary candidacy of Helen Taylor in the 1885 General Election, in addition to how male politicians, the press, suffrage, and anti-suffrage organisations engaged with the idea of women sitting in parliament. Women's supposedly emotional nature played an integral role in how contemporaries approached the subject of women MPs. Indeed, women's emotions, and more specifically their passionate temperament, were often used to discredit their political capabilities and portray women as emotionally, intellectually and physically inferior to men.     

Constitutionalists,Despots, Whigs,and Revisionists: Tudor Parliamentary History in the 20th Century

The 20th century was the great age of Tudor parliamentary history. This essay examines the contributions and profound changes to the field made by the leading historians of the era, especially Sir John Neale and Sir Geoffrey Elton. Taking as its starting point the whiggish ideas of Stubbs's Constitutional History of England, it traces the impact of A.F. Pollard, G.M. Trevelyan, and Sir Lewis Namier on the field. At its core, though, lie the often acrimonious differences of opinion between Neale and his pupil, Elton. For Neale the Elizabethan parliaments were characterised by an increasingly puritanical Commons eager to wrest control of debates on religion and the succession away from the queen. In so doing this created a constitutional clash that would eventually lead to civil war in the mid 17th century. This ‘orthodoxy’ was savagely critiqued by a revisionist ‘school’ led by Elton that dismantled the interpretation of Neale and replaced it with an institution that was not dominated by political conflict but by largely consensual politics. It was also a position that gave equal weight to the Lords and to the importance of the business of parliament – legislation. The revisionists were masters of critique and highly effective at demolishing Neale, but did little to replace his theories or to explain religio‐political conflict – in doing so it could be argued that they killed the subject. The essay ends by suggesting some new approaches to Tudor parliaments that could help revitalise the subject.