Legislation, Foreign Policy, and the “Proper Business” of the Parliament of 1624

1991 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark E. Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Parliamentary History ◽  
Proper Functions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Parliamentary Politics

A dozen years ago Conrad Russell initiated a major historiographical debate when he rejected the traditional interpretation of seventeenth-century parliamentary history expounded in the classic studies of S. R. Gardiner and Wallace Notestein, whose work on early Stuart parliaments dominated the field for three quarters of a century. According to Russell, Gardiner's and Notestein's conviction that Jacobean and Caroline parliaments were the scene of escalating constitutional conflicts between the Crown and the House of Commons was the result of the two historians' failure to understand either the nature of early Stuart politics or seventeenth-century notions of Parliament's proper functions. Politics in general and parliamentary politics in particular were devoid of ideological content, and the provincial gentry who filled the benches of the House of Commons were as certain as the rest of their countrymen that the “proper business” of Parliament was the passing of bills, not the debating of issues of national or constitutional significance. Russell, of course, did not suggest that the conflicts so crucial to the traditional interpretation were made out of whole cloth, but he did deny that disagreements between Crown and Parliament were due to the emergence of a constitutional opposition. Instead, such disagreements were the inevitable product of the pervasive tension that marked the relationship between the royal government in London and the local communities in the provinces. During the reigns of James I and Charles I, the Crown's incompetent parliamentary management made it more difficult than usual for local gentlemen to reconcile their obligations to their king with their loyalties to their communities. The result was some remarkably unhappy parliaments, but since no important issue of principle divided parliamentary leaders from privy councilors or officers of state, there could be no organized, ideologically based opposition, no constitutional crisis leading inexorably to civil war.

“The Fittest Subject for A King's Quarrel”: An Essay on the Militia Controversy 1641-1642

1971 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lois G. Schwoerer
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Fundamental Issue ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
King Charles I

The struggle between King and Parliament in 1641-42 for command of the militia was to King Charles I “the Fittest Subject for a King's Quarrel.” As the King himself and a group of pamphleteers, preachers and members of Parliament realized, the controversy was not just a contest for control of military power. The fundamental issue was a change in England's government, a shift in sovereignty from King or King-in-Parliament to Parliament alone. As Charles explained, “Kingly Power is but a shadow” without command of the militia. His contemporaries, representing various political allegiances, also testified to the significance of the contest over the militia. They described it as the “avowed foundation” of the Civil War, “the greatest concernment” ever faced by the House of Commons, and the “great quarrel” between the King and his critics. To some men it was this dispute over military authority and the implications for government which were inherent in it, rather than disagreements about religion, taxes or foreign policy, that made civil war unavoidable.Concern about military authority first erupted in the fall of 1641 in response to a series of events – rumors of plots involving the King, the presence in London of disbanded soldiers who had returned from the war with Scotland, the “Incident” in Scotland, and above all the rebellion in Ireland which required the levying of an army to subdue those rebels.

Institutional memory and contemporary history in the House of Commons, 1547–1640

2018 ◽  
pp. 211-228
Author(s):  
Paul Seaward
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Institutional Memory ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

Parliament in the course of a century after 1547 became almost certainly the best-recorded institution in Britain. This essay considers the nature of institutional memory in the late sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century House of Commons. It concerns firstly the nature and quality of institutional memory, and how, while it relied considerably on non-inscribed memory, it changed with the growth of the written record. It discusses the importance of precedent to parliamentarians, and how precedents were identified and selectively used. But more broadly it considers how written records, both of a formal and official nature and a private and unofficial kind, were developed over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in order to generate a narrative about parliament that helps to consolidate its landmark status. As a result, parliament came to be recognised and revered as the key institution in the relationship between the state and the individual.

BEYOND THE PALE: JOHN CUSACKE AND THE LANGUAGE OF ABSOLUTISM IN EARLY STUART BRITAIN

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
LINDA LEVY PECK
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
Colonial Government

John Cusacke, an Irish gentleman who was educated on the continent and worked on the fringes of the court of wards, constructed a striking re-reading of kingship, law, colonial government, and parliament in a series of tracts written between 1615 and 1647. His writings provide insight both into seventeenth-century colonial theory and early Stuart political thought. Shaped in the cauldron of Irish land struggles and continental political thought, Cusacke rejected Old English constitutionalism, arguing instead that Ireland was a colonial dependency of England. Further, to gain royal favour for various projects, Cusacke recast contemporary conceptions of parliament and common law, rejecting the centrality of custom, insisting that the king was the law maker and vigorously attacking Sir Edward Coke. Cusacke's writings reached the libraries of James I and Charles I, and their officials Sir Robert Naunton, master of the court of wards, and attorney-general Sir Robert Bankes. Cusacke's tracts graphically demonstrate the existence of an absolutist political discourse in early Stuart Britain applied not to issues of theology or of international law but to domestic politics.

THE REACTION OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER 1621 TO THE CONFINEMENT OF SIR EDWIN SANDYS

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 779-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER THOMPSON
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Lower House ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Parliamentary Politics

In the course of his challenging reassessment of the parliamentary politics of the early seventeenth century, Conrad Russell has suggested that modern students of the period have approached the subject with deep-seated preconceptions about the existence of fundamental conflicts between the crown and the house of commons. As a result, the willingness of the lower house to take up issues of parliamentary privilege has probably been over-rated. The explanation for this long-standing misapprehension lies in the fact that the views of those M.P.s who wished to pursue such issues have found their way into the record far more often than the silences of their colleagues who did not want to take them up.

Could Charles I Be Trusted? The Royalist Case, 1642-1646

1966 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Daly
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
General Public ◽  
Veto Power ◽  
English History ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
Constitutional Analysis

The followers of King Charles I in the Civil War, long among the whipping boys of English history, have been receiving better treatment since the Whig interpretation of the seventeenth century lost its pristine vigour. This is particularly true of their constitutional position as set forth in the great outpouring of manifestoes and pamphlets during the war. Edward Hyde, perhaps the key figure in this aspect of royalism, has recently profited from a capable defence of his opinions and policy. Similarly, pamphleteers such as Henry Ferne, Dudley Digges, and John Bramhall are now fairly well known, thanks largely to J. W. Allen's pioneering study of their writings. From work like this it is clear that the royalist spokesmen accepted the increased importance of Parliament, the end of prerogative courts and nonparliamentary taxation, and the supremacy of common and statute law. Like their armies in the field, they were defending the monarchy as overhauled in 1641, not as the Tudors left it, much less as James I may have conceived it. Indeed the classical doctrine of the mixed or balanced constitution, glorified by Blackstone and widely accepted until nearly 1830, is now credited, not to Philip Hunton, but to the royalists. Such rehabilitation has done much to remove the patronizing label of “wrong but romantic,” which was once the best which they could hope for from historians or the general public.Allen and those who followed him naturally concentrated on the legal and constitutional analysis of the origins of authority, the veto power, sovereignty, nonresistance, and so forth.

The Irish courts of law, 1801–1914

1957 ◽  
Vol 10 (40) ◽  
pp. 363-391
Author(s):  
R.B. McDowell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Law Courts ◽  
Court Of Chancery

At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were six superior courts in Ireland—chancery, the three common law courts (king’s bench, common pleas and exchequer), the admiralty court and the prerogative court (an ecclesiastical court with jurisdiction over testamentary matters).Four of these courts were of medieval origin. The exchequer was probably in existence before the close of the twelfth century, the Irish chancery was founded early in the thirteenth century, the first Irish chancellor being appointed in 1244, and the antecedents of the courts of king’s bench and common pleas are to be found in the thirteenth century. The other two courts were comparatively modern. The court of prerogative and faculties based its rights to exercise jurisdiction on two sixteenth century acts and two seventeenth century patents, one of James I and one of Charles I. And though admiralty jurisdiction had been exercised in Ireland from medieval times, the Irish court of admiralty had been created by statute in 1784. From the court of chancery and the three common law courts there was an appeal to the court of error (known as the court of exchequer chamber) composed of the judges of the three common law courts, and in 1857 it was enacted that the court of exchequer chamber when hearing an appeal should consist of the judges of the two courts from which the appeal did not arise. From the admiralty court and from the prerogative court there was an appeal to delegates in chancery.

Writing the King’s Death

2018 ◽  
pp. 37-59
Author(s):  
Alastair Bellany
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
James I ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Public ◽  
Charles I ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Public Sphere

The writing produced around the succession of Charles I in 1625 was dominated by discussion of the life and death of his father, James I. Focusing on a range of texts about James I’s death and funeral—James Shirley’s poem on the king’s ritualized lying-in-state, John Williams’s funeral sermon for the king in Westminster Abbey, Abraham Darcie’s engraved memorial broadside, and George Eglisham’s infamous secret history of James’s murder—this chapter explores how panegyric succession writing was shaped and undermined by significant tensions within early Stuart political culture—about religion and monarchy, kings and court favourites, domestic and foreign policy, and royal authority and the public sphere.

scholarly journals «Ultimum ratio of the Great century»: the development of the English Royal regular army in the XVII century

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-203
Author(s):  
Dmitry O. Gordienko
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Xvii Century ◽  
British Foreign Policy ◽  
Regular Army ◽  
The Relationship

The paper analyses the processes of a modern state development on the example of a regular army development as a basis of the national military system. The author considers the relationship between the development of foreign and domestic policy issues under the Late Tudors. The author analyzes the role of force-based decision-making of the most important issues in decision-making by the Crown under the First Stuarts. The author also analyzes the heavy legacy of the Protectorate regime in terms of the populations acceptance of the idea of a regular army existence. The difficulties encountered by the Stuart dynasty in solving this problem are shown. The problems of financing the Royal army were the main reasons why the active part of the population didnt support the existence of a regular army. The process of creating the Royal regular army is shown on the background of broad European practices of the Great century. The main vectors of British foreign policy development are shown from the continental confrontation with the United Provinces and France to the colonial coexistence with Spain and France. In addition, a conclusion is drawn about the continuity of military construction by the ruling regimes in England of the XVII century. Practices undertaken by the Tudors, James I, Charles I, Lord Protector Cromwell and the age of Restoration sovereigns are shown.

The Foreign Policy Debate in the House of Commons in 1621

1977 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conrad Russell
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
James I ◽  
King James I

On 3 December 1621 the House of Commons resolved to submit a petition to King James I, asking him for stricter enforcement of the laws against Catholic recusants, asking ‘that your Majesty would propose to yourself to manage this war with the best advantage, by a diversion or otherwise, as in your deep judgement shall be found fittest, and not to rest upon a war in these parts only, which will consume your treasure and discourage your people’, and that ‘our most noble prince may be timely and happily married to one of our own religion’.

Petitions and the Petition of Right

1974 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Read Foster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Normal Form ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
To Receive

Proceedings of parliament, said Sir Edward Coke in 1624, are of four sorts: by bill, judicature, petition of grace and petition of right. The purpose of this paper is to explore certain aspects of procedure by petition in the reigns of James I and Charles I and to consider the Petition of Right of 1628 in relation to other petitions which preceded it.The substance of the Petition of Right is well known. It stated that contrary to the laws of the realm, men had been required under duress to grant loans and pay other charges to the crown which had not been voted by parliament. They had been imprisoned without cause shown, tried by martial law in time of peace, and forced to receive into their homes soldiers and mariners billeted upon them. The Petition asked that these practices, which contravened the rights and liberties of the kingdom, should cease.The form of the Petition, together with its answer, is less well understood than its substance and is often considered unique. It has sometimes been regarded as a declaratory act, sometimes compared to a private bill, or to the petition, also called a petition of right, by which an individual initiated action against the crown. To discover what the Petition meant to men of the seventeenth century, it may be useful first to look at the events that surrounded Charles' several answers to it, and then to examine the petition as a normal form of procedure, of which the Petition of Right was a dramatic example.

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