III - Lords and Commons

Summary

The problem of James and his Parliaments has been one of the most frequently discussed topics in the history of his reign. The initial Parliament of the first Stuart has been seen by most historians as heralding the rise of the House of Commons to political maturity, the seizing of the legislative initiative from an inept King, and the auspicious beginnings of a ‘struggle for sovereignty’ which culminated in the Long Parliament and the Civil Wars of the 1640s. This view has not always been fully subscribed to by historians of the period, and recently it has been challenged. Nonetheless, regardless of the roles which scholars have attributed to the Parliament of 1604–10, its importance in the political history of the age cannot be denied. Ellesmere's tract on this Parliament, composed shortly after its dissolution, is, when placed in the context of his other papers, an important document for the study of Crown and Parliament in the first decade of James's reign.

The first session of the Parliament of 1604 assembled in the spring. Requests by the King for a subsidy, a revision of the laws, and an Anglo-Scots union were placed aside in the House of Commons for a discussion of the grievances that had been smouldering in late Elizabethan England. These included royal interference with the privileges of members of Parliament, corruption in wardship, purveyance, and monopolies, the dispensation of penal statutes, abuses in ecclesiastical courts, and festering social and economic problems.