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The Parliament of England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Pauline Croft
Pauline Croft
Affiliation:
The Institute of Historical Research London
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Extract

REREADING the thousands of words that Geoffrey Elton penned on English parliamentary history has been a fascinating and a humbling experience. The analytical power, the mastery of sources, the clarity of argument compel unstinting admiration. Although he generously acknowledged the contributions made by friends and students, he was the paramount revisionist of early modern parliamentary history.

Type
The Eltonian Legacy
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 7 , December 1997 , pp. 217 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1997

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References

1 Studies 3 (33:1) and (35).

2 ‘Studying the History of Parliament’, Studies 2, 3–4, 7, 8–9.

3 Ibid., 9. ‘Functions’, Studies 3 (35), 159.

4 ‘Studying’, II.

5 ‘Functions’, Studies 3 (35), 157, 162, 170.

6 ‘Studying: B, A Reply’, 15.

7 At last the work is being done. The pioneering thesis by DrKyle, Christopher, supervised by Professor Graves, Michael, ‘Lex Loquens: Legislation in the Parliament of 1624’ (PhD thesis, University of Auckland, 1994)Google Scholar, shows exactly what is needed for each parliament.

8 Only seven were printed, a very different matter. ‘Studying’, Studies 2, 17.

9 Ibid., 14, 16.

10 ‘High Road’, Studies 2 (28), 166, 170, 181–2.

11 ‘Stuart Century’, Studies 2, 155–63.

12 ‘Representation’, Studies 2 (22), 38–9.

13 Ibid., 47–8. ‘Parliament’, Studies 3 (33:1), 6.

14 ‘Representation’, Studies 2 (22), 48.

15 Ibid., 52.

16 Ibid., 23, 35, 38. For a further discussion of estates theory, Parliament, 17–22.

17 Parliament, 228. Proceedings in the Parliament of Elizabeth I, ed. Hartley, T.E., vol. I, 1558–81 (Leicester, 1981), 224–5, 228Google Scholar.

18 ‘Representation’, Studies 2 (22), 19.

19 Griffiths, G., Representative Government in Western Europe in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar, and Myers, A.R., Parliaments and Estates in Europe to 1789 (1975)Google Scholar. Russell, Conrad has made two brief but sparkling contributions: ‘Wars and Estates in England, France and Spain, c.1580–c.1640’, and ‘The Catholic Wind’, in Unrevolutionary England 1603–1642 (1990)Google Scholar.

20 Elton confined himself to the first part of the region leaving the later sessions to his research student David Dean. DrDean's, book Law Making and Society in Late Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar was published just as this article was going to press. I am greatly indebted to him for letting me see an earlier typescript and for many illuminating discussions of his findings.

21 Palliser, D.M., The Age of Elizabeth: A Social and Economic History of England (2nd edn., 1993), 145Google Scholar.

22 Parliament, 273–4.

23 Ibid., 267.

24 ‘Functions’, Studies 3 (35), 63, 179.

25 Parliament, 106.

26 For a general survey, Croft, P., ‘Libels, Popular Literacy and Public Opinion in Early Modern England’, Historical Research, 68 (1995), 266–85Google Scholar, and for tne wider context, David, Underdown, A Freebom People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar.

27 Parliament, 106.

28 Ibid., 25.

29 ‘Studying’, Studies 2, 9.

30 Parliament, 6, 9.

31 Bond, Maurice F., Guide to the Records of Parliament (1971), 3Google Scholar. Parliament, 9–10.

32 Bond, , Guide, 28, 207Google Scholar.

33 For example, he doubted that the very few paper bills remaining could represent the fragments of a far greater archive, on the grounds that ‘more survive after 1584, which suggests a similar disproportion before the fire’. Parliament, 9. Can this really mean that he assumed that the fire carefully burned only a percentage of each missing class of record?

34 ‘The Early Journals of the House of Lords’, English Historical Review, 352 (1974), 481–512Google Scholar. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, I: The House of Lords, ed. Foster, Elizabeth Read (New Haven and London, 1966), xxv–xxviGoogle Scholar.

35 ‘Evolution’, Studies 2 (24), 86–8, 90–1.

36 ‘Functions’, Studies 3 (35), 159.

37 Hartley, , Proceedings, I, 59Google Scholar.

38 Parliament, ix, 376–7.

39 Bowler, Gerald, ‘“An Axe or An Acte”: The Parliament of 1572 and Resistance Theory in Early Elizabethan England‘, Canadian Journal of History, 19 (1984), 349–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Parliament, 198.

41 Hence the refusal to accept the key distinction between doctrine and discipline which lies at the heart of the debate on the bill to confirm the Thirty-Nine Articles. Parliament, 210–14. I owe this point to Russell, Conrad in Times Higher Educational Supplement, 9 12 1987, 16Google Scholar.

42 Parliament, ix.

43 Hartley, , Proceedings, I, 78–9Google Scholar.

44 Ibid., 183.

45 Hartley, , Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, vol. II, 1584–9 (Leicester, 1995), 106Google Scholar.

46 Hartley, , Proceedings, II, 62Google Scholar.

47 Parliament, 235. Hartley, , Proceedings, II, 106Google Scholar.

48 Hartley, , Proceedings, I, 47Google Scholar.

49 The History of Parliament The House of Commons 1558–1603, Hasler, P.W. (3 vols., 1981), III, 658–63Google Scholar. Additional information from The History of Parliament Trust.

50 As pointed out by the late DrLoach, Jennifer, Times Literary Supplement, 5 06 1987, 602Google Scholar. I wish to acknowledge the many enjoyable discussions on the issues addressed in this paper which I shared with Dr Loach.

51 For example, ‘Stuart Century’, Studies 2, 159. ‘Parliament was part of the king's government, called to assist him by making grants and laws, but also designed to keep die crown in touch with opinion and an accepted occasion for complaint and protest.’

52 Parliament, 168. For the most recent contribution to the discussion, Hoyle, R.W., ‘Crown, Parliament and Taxation in Sixteenth Century England’, English Historical Review, 19 (1994), 1174–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Dr Hoyle persuasively reaffirms the intimate relationship of parliamentary taxation and the needs of war in the government's requests for supply throughout the century. He notes however that Elizabethan preambles tended to lose their educative function compared to those of Henry VIII, although the full case continued to be made in the Commons.

53 Hartley, , Proceedings, I, 84–5Google Scholar.

54 Ibid., 185–7.

55 Ibid., 441–2, 504.

56 Parliament, ix.