‘Rushworth Shall Not Take Any Notes Here’: Journals,Debates and the Public, 1640–60

This article focuses on, and rethinks, the issue of parliamentary ‘secrecy’ during the mid 17th century, by comparing the official journals of the house of commons with the kinds of information that emerged in the public domain in the 1640s and 1650s, not least in printed newsbooks. It suggests that scholars have too readily assumed that MPs sought rigorously to uphold the principle that parliamentary proceedings were not fit matters for public consumption, and the idea that their activities at Westminster should be protected from the public gaze. It argues that this has involved paying excessive attention to occasional comments and orders which suggest that MPs resented public scrutiny of their activity, as well as a failure to distinguish between different motives for achieving ‘secrecy’, between attitudes to the availability of different kinds of information, and between principles and political practice. The aim of the article, in short, is to offer a more nuanced appreciation of the ways in which MPs sought to professionalise and formalise public access, even to the extent of rethinking ideas about political accountability.