| Abstract: | This article identifies the forms of state development in 16th- and 17th-century England, and shows that they were embraced by parliament rather than the crown, reflecting the change whereby MPs ceased to be mere local representatives and came to be seen as the central representative of the kingdom, traditionally the function of the monarch. Thus parliament assumed a defining role in the new national dimension of foreign policy, working in concert with the Elizabethan government, but generally in opposition to the early Stuarts, who perpetuated a dynastic approach. The most challenging domestic manifestation of parliament as central representative was the long-term campaign for freedom of trade, pursued by a broad coalition of the merchant community and the gentry in parliament, asserting a principled right of English subjects to be free of arbitrary exactions and restraints, such as the royal prerogative of impositions. The emergent state was structured by a distinctive internal dynamic, based on the sole sovereignty of representative law, established by the expulsion of the universal church. Omni-competent statute had a unique dual force, responding directly to constituency requirements, and meeting them with definitive national provisions. This was adopted by parliament as the new instrument of good government, but distrusted and sidelined by the Stuart crown. Consequently, in 1641, John Pym bemoaned the absence of parliaments as bereaving the country of the legislative function, which he now saw as ‘that which makes and constitutes a kingdom’. The appropriation of state perspectives reinforced parliamentarian strength and ambitions. |
