The People and Parliament in Fifteenth-Century England

Summary

A fuller understanding of the participation of relatively humble people in the politics of the kingdom and the importance of the public realm in the fifteenth century has emerged in recent years. In this body of work, however, little attention has been paid to the specific question of the engagement of the people with parliament. A broad assumption remains that this was one arena from which they were excluded. After all, we seem to have no better authority for this than Bishop John Russell of Lincoln, chancellor of England in 1483. As he intended to declare to the Lords that summer, warning of the risks ahead during a minority, it was self-evident that government and good order belonged to the nobles rather than ‘the whole generality of the people’. As far as parliament went, he asserted, ‘the people, must stand afar and not pass the limits’. Yet when one considers in more detail the relationship between the people and parliament in the fifteenth century, Russell's insistence that they should stand afar was prescriptive, rather than descriptive. This paper reviews the evidence concerning popular engagement with parliament.

First, what actually did Russell have to say about the people and parliament? He took as his text Isaiah 49. 1 ‘Audite insule, Et attendite populi de longe, Dominus ab utero vocavit me’. He began by reminding his audience that all public bodies in Christendom were composed of three parts, the prince, the nobles and the people and that he had chosen his text appropriate to the particular moment and germane to an occasion when he was having to speak to all three.