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The English Parliaments of Henry VII,1485–1504Sean Cunningham aa UK National Archives , KewPublished online: 16 Dec 2011.

To cite this article: Sean Cunningham (2011) The English Parliaments of Henry VII, 1485–1504,Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 31:2, 199-200, DOI: 10.1080/02606755.2011.617977

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REVIEWS

P.R. Cavill, The English Parliaments of Henry VII, 1485–1504 (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2009), Hardback £61, 312 pp., ISBN 978-0-1995-7383-7

Paul Cavill is at the forefront of scholars engaged in reappraising Henry VII’s

luminal position between the historiographical traditions that still dominate the

intellectual landscape of scholars of medieval and of early modern England. His

book explores a dazzling array of unstudied manuscript and primary sources to

create an authoritative study of the constitutional role and practical function of

parliament at the end of the fifteenth century. Additionally, the book offers

well-considered insight into the character of the king and the nature of the

country he ruled.

This complex analysis requires concentration and effort from the reader, but

few more comprehensive and rewarding modern studies of the impact of the first

Tudor king upon the ruling institutions he inherited have yet been produced.

Dr Cavill has created as full a survey of known commentaries on Henry VII’s

parliaments as we are likely to require. He also supplies more general context for

the role of parliament in England immediately before the Reformation.

The introduction offers a satisfying summary of parliament’s part in the impor-

tant historiographical debates revolving around Henry VII’s kingship: from the

characteristics of the Yorkist and early Tudor experiments in ‘new monarchy’, to

the adversarial relationship of crown and parliament in the Whig interpretation

of England’s constitutional development. The first of three sections then discusses

how the king used parliament to communicate with the representatives of the

realm and to support his struggles to maintain the Tudor regime.

The second section tackles the practical interaction of parliament with the

normal business of the polity – how did the king’s subjects contribute to parliament

and what were their expectations of parliament’s function. Although surviving

sources are limited, Dr Cavill does an excellent job in locating evidence of the

people who were selected to represent counties and boroughs; how elections were

conducted; and the struggle for influence within early Tudor constituencies.

In the final part of the book, ‘Parliament under the “New Monarchy”’, the

achievements and activities of Henry VII’s parliaments are linked back into the

other branches of government. This section also presents a rewarding overview

Parliaments, Estates & Representation 31, November 2011. Published for the International Commission

for the History of Representative & Parliamentary Institutions by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. # 2011

International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions/Commission

Internationale pour l’Histoire des Assemblees d’ Etats. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02606755.2011.617977

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of how parliament and parliamentary commentators recorded the institution’s own

development. Here, Dr Cavill demonstrates a clear understanding of the intricacies

of parliamentary procedure and history.

The strengths of the author’s discussion stem from an analysis of parliament’s

growing role as a legislature. In the final section, this is integrated into a broader

discussion of the administrative framework inherited by Henry VII as his regime

sought stability.Dr Cavill does tackle head-on some of the myths concerning

Henry VII and parliament. There is a detailed examination of the truth behind

the king’s intention not to summon another parliament after 1504, and a rejection

of the Eltonian view that Henry perhaps abandoned parliament to focus on less

consensual means of government through the activities of small groups of directly

appointed councillors, that were closely aligned to the king’s private wishes.

Although their influence undoubtedly grew, Henry VII recognized the authority

invested in parliament and ‘turned naturally to parliament to amplify and relay

royal authority’ (p. 245).

Dr Cavill’s book stands out as one of the very few modern studies to venture

successfully beneath the surface of the narratives of Henry VII’s reign. He provides

a meticulous analysis of the intersection of late medieval institutional and personal

rule, and creates a thorough portrait of parliament as the realm’s most important

constitutional agency.

Inevitably in a study with such a broad sweep, some sections are disappoint-

ingly brief. For example, Chapter 6, ‘The Wider Realm’, mixes explanation of

how the decisions made at Westminster were broadcast nationally with evidence

to show the functioning of that process. An interesting discussion of the language,

form, and use of statute books is truncated, and at such points the reader must

follow the footnoted sources very carefully.

Much of the success of this study results from the author’s clear style and rig-

orous organization of structure. The employment of less skill in the presentation of

the book’s sophisticated discussion of constitutional ideas and political theory, or

the minutiae of parliamentary and electoral procedure, might have rendered this

book somewhat indigestible.

These minor points do not detract from a very fine study of parliamentary prac-

tice and parliament’s place within the early sixteenth-century polity. Henry VII’s

parliaments were the high point of discourse between the king and the nation.

On both sides of the discussion there were tensions and challenges. The author’s

evidence makes it clear that parliament was neither wholly subservient to, nor

obstructive of, the king’s wishes. Henry VII, too, learned to balance his demands

upon the nation through parliament. He emerges from Dr Cavill’s analysis as a

king very much involved in the functions of parliament, who recognized and

valued its constitutional place as the provider of a stable platform for his ruling

ambitions.

SEAN CUNNINGHAM

UK National Archives, Kew

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Keith M. Brown and Alan MacDonald (eds), The History of the Scottish Parliament,Vol. 3, Parliament in Context 1235–1707 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,

2010), Hardback £70, 304 pp., ISBN 978-0-7486-1486-8

The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland is a momentous electronic publication

which makes the proceedings of the unicameral Scottish Estates from the thir-

teenth century to 1707 available to researchers, scholars and the general public

on the Web. Tremendous credit for the organizing, implementing and final deliv-

ery of this project must go to the general editor, Professor Keith Brown. This

volume of edited essays, the last in a series of three, supplements rather than comp-

lements the electronic publication of the Records. That they can be deemed as no

more than supplementary is in part because an eclectic collection can never hope

for comprehensive coverage. However, the primary reason is the introspection and

insularity of Professor Brown’s historical perspective which, as associate editor for

all three, he has stamped over the complete set. This is an essentially static view of

history which prioritizes power plays, pragmatism and the peerage over the inter-

action of policy and process and of principles and party. History in Scotland is see-

mingly unchanging from the High Middle Ages until the dissolution of the Scottish

Estates through the Treaty of Union in 1707: all that matters are the relations of the

Crown and the nobility, not periodic changes brought about by confessionalism or

state formation and latterly by the emergence of political economy.

In this volume, Brown’s essay on ‘The Second Estate: Parliament and the Nobi-

lity’ encapsulates the problematic of this pervasive approach. The first problem is

that of definition. Certainly it can be convincingly claimed that Scotland had a

broad definition of nobility to include peerage and gentry which was in keeping

with European tradition. But Scotland increasingly moved in line with the

English separation of nobility and gentry from the later sixteenth century. James

VI effectively created temporal lordships from 1587 (not 1606) at the same time

as the lairds (later gentry) were being encouraged to come to parliament as commis-

sioners for the shires. Charles I markedly accelerated the process of differentiation

through his Revocation Scheme. The Lord Lyon, Sir James Balfour of Denmylne

(the adjudicator of honours) was using essentially English definitions for nobility

from 1627. At one moment (p. 68) Brown aligns the Scottish nobility with the Euro-

pean in having their world broken up by the forces unleashed by global exploration,

industrialization, urbanization and the Enlightenment. At another, he points out

more accurately (p. 94) that eighteenth-century Britain was to be dominated by

the nobility and in Scotland that dominance was more extreme than elsewhere.

In reality, the gentry operated as a distinctive estate not from its formal recognition

in 1640 but from the outset of the Covenanting Movement in 1638, which, in turn,

brings us on to further problems of interpretation.

Brown makes the summative claim (p. 93) that it was only in 1648–49 that the

peerage was in danger of being politically eclipsed through the alliance of the other

two Estates (the gentry or shire commissioners and the burgesses). However, this

danger had been evident since 1646 with the ending of civil war in Scotland and the

transfer of Charles I from the custody of the Scottish Covenanters to the English

Parliamentarians. The Engagement of conservative Covenanters with Charles I

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in 1648 was an attempt to reassert aristocratic control whose failure led to a notably

radical regime in 1649. Although neither radical nor conservative Covenanters in

alliance with Royalists could hold off the occupation of Scotland by Oliver Crom-

well, the English forces negotiated political incorporation in 1652 with the Scots as

junior partners. It was not the peers but the other two Estates who participated in

the negotiations. The Restoration of 1660 can thus be interpreted as the restoration

of peerage as well as monarchy. But again this position of apparent dominance

came under extra-parliamentary threat from the later Covenanting Movement,

which episodically mobilized forces of up to 14,000 to assert their rights of resist-

ance without any notable backing from the peerage. Alternative readings of the

Revolution and of 1688–91 and of the Treaty of Union of 1706–07 see them

less as the triumph of the nobility as the conserving of their position. Undoubtedly,

the shire commissioners were tied to the nobility through ties of kinship, local

association and clientage. But these facets are not the only determinants of political

allegiance. The gentry, more so than the nobility and no less than the burgesses,

were distinctive participants in the expansion of landownership, in the commercia-

lization of estate management, in developing manufactures and private banking, in

colonial entrepreneurship and in integrating cities and towns with their rural hin-

terlands. As well as their leadership of religious dissent, they maintained their tra-

ditional role as foremost military adventurers on the global stage. Ennoblement was

an incidental outcome, not necessarily a pre-eminent aspiration by the later seven-

teenth century.

Brown’s static views on power plays, pragmatism and the peerage are readily

endorsed in the two chapters in which Roland Tanner was joint author; the first

on ‘Balancing Acts: The Crown and Parliament’ and the second on ‘The First

Estate: Parliament and the Church’. However, in the first Gillian MacIntosh and,

to a greater extent in the second, Kirsty McAlister inject a more coherent periodic

analysis which takes account respectively of how state formation and confessional

commitment impacted on the Scottish Estates. Two minor quibbles arise respect-

ively from their analysis. The opposition in 1704 promoted the Act anent Peace

and War as well as the Act of Security to limit the powers of the Crown. The Wine

Act was promoted by the Scottish ministry to attempt to head off such limitations.

In the list of years in which the parliament passed acts confirming the denomina-

tional establishment of the Kirk of Scotland, the Treaty of Union does not immedi-

ately feature as the final confirmation of Presbyterianism. The three articles which

look beyond Scotland and engage with continental and Scandinavian comparators

are the most commendable. Although more could have been made of the commer-

cial linkages between gentry and burgesses (as outlined above), Alan MacDonald

provides an informative and engaging account of ‘The Third Estate: Parliament

and the Burghs’. In a volume which is riddled with self-supporting references, Mac-

Donald offers fresh archivally based insights which reinforce and illuminate his judi-

cious analysis on the political weighting to be attached to the burgess estate. No less

rewarding is Alastair Mann’s ‘House Rules: Parliamentary Procedure’, which is a

convincing and comparative rehabilitation of the sophisticated procedures used by

the Scottish Estates. A minor reservation to a comprehensive account is his failure

to scrutinize the role of the shire commissioners as well as the burgesses in

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presenting grievances and programmes for change, a feature that was well developed

by the mid-seventeenth century. Mann’s other essay on ‘The Law of Person: Parlia-

ment and Social Control’ reeks of him having drawn the short straw in writing about

issues such as the family, education and social welfare which were essentially the

preserve of the Kirk not the parliament, which framed but did not implement pol-

icies. At least this chapter is not encumbered by an extensive discourse on witchcraft.

The most rewarding contribution from the perspective of this reviewer was that by

the esteemed James Burns on ‘Political Ideas and Parliament’, which is a wide-

ranging and erudite if gentle rebuttal of the prevailing editorial ethos. But I

remain unconvinced that George Buchanan’s post-Reformation contention that

royal power should be subjected to the judgement of the populous should not be

taken in its radical context as the community of the realm rather than the political

elite. In like manner, organic rather than absolutist may be a more appropriate

way to view parliament as the head court of the king – a quote incidentally used

in four of the chapters.

Mark Godfrey’s chapter on ‘Parliament and the Law’ is written very much from

a medievalist perspective which is both understandable and constructive given the

judicial origins of the Scottish Estates. His analysis is technically accomplished and

informative. International as well as English precedents are productively devel-

oped. However, questions arise over the role of the Scottish Estates in promoting

mediation through arbitration as well as enforcement and punishment by due

process in the Middle Ages. Parliament also remained the platform for show

trials for treason and the pronouncement of forfeitures for Covenanters and Jaco-

bites in the later seventeenth century. By the editors’ own admission the raising

of taxation is a major gap in this volume and indeed in the series. Why then

were we treated to the ramblings and discursive pronouncements of Julian

Goodare on ‘Parliament and Politics’ when he could have played to his undoubted

strengths of forensic and detailed analysis in relation to fiscal developments, par-

ticularly as the emergence of the fiscal-military state in later seventeenth-

century Scotland redefined the leading role of the nobility?

ALLAN I. MACINNES

University of Strathclyde

Voltaire, Histoire du parlement de Paris, critical edition by John Renwick, Les Oeuvrescompletes de Voltaire, vol. 68 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2005), Hardback £110,

xxiv + 650 pp., ISBN 978-0-7294-0823-X

James Hanrahan, Voltaire and the parlements of France, SVEC, vol. 6 (Oxford:

Voltaire Foundation, 2009), Paperback £55, xi + 265 pp., ISBN 978-0-7294-0970-4

The Histoire du parlement de Paris was probably the most important political work

that Voltaire wrote. Despite the fact that it was written in 1768 and published in

1769, a full year before the unpremeditated coup d’etat by which Louis XV

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abolished the parlement of Paris and several others, the work came to be seen as a

clear justification of that move. Justice was henceforth to be free and fair, the

system of venal office-holding in the magistracy was to be abolished, and the pol-

itical opposition to the Crown of supposedly privileged magistrates brought to an

end. Louis XV and his chancellor, Maupeou, had the support of the foremost

French thinker of the age. Although the Maupeou revolution came to an end

with Louis XV’s death in 1774 and the old parlements were recalled, yet Voltaire’s

thesis remained and indeed reappeared regularly over the next two centuries until

it acquired the force of historical orthodoxy, which it still enjoys to this day in some

academic quarters.

John Renwick, a distinguished scholar of eighteenth-century France, has

produced the first critical edition of Voltaire’s text. His task was a daunting

one. Voltaire denied authorship of the work and few original manuscript

fragments survive, just a short preparatory passage and a copy of Chapter 68.

The establishment of a definitive text was thus mainly a question of carefully

collating the various early editions of the work. There were also unresolved

problems concerning the identity and location of the publishers. Rey of

Amsterdam brought out the first edition in 1769. In a second edition of the

same year, where the place of publication is also given as Amsterdam but

which Renwick claims was printed in Lausanne, Voltaire made important

modifications, especially to the chapter dealing with Damiens’ attempt on the

life of Louis XV and which had shocked the readership. He continued to

make changes to subsequent editions. Renwick has examined pirated versions

as well as the final appearance of the work in the Kehl edition of Voltaire’s

complete works in 1785. His aim was to produce a version that embodies

Voltaire’s revisions, while at the same time providing a scholarly annotation

and commentary.

The problems of providing such a version were relatively simple in comparison

with those surrounding the genesis of the text. There were doubts, entertained by

Voltaire himself, that he was the author. If these are now sensibly discounted, why

did he write the work? As it has already been noted, the fact that it was composed in

1768 and published a year later makes it difficult to see it as an unofficial govern-

ment commission to justify the brutal suppression of the parlement of Paris in 1770–

71. Yet Renwick argues that the work was possibly the result of a letter from the

minister Choiseul of 20 September 1763 asking Voltaire to publish notes which

he had sent him (and which have now disappeared) on the subject of the parlement.‘Pareilles recherches, venant de vous’, wrote Choiseul, ‘feraient plus d’impression

dans le public que si elles etaient publiees par le Ministere’ (p. 49). It is clear from

this letter that Choiseul’s concern when he wrote it was the difficulty of getting

taxes through the parlement at the end of the Seven Years’ War. By 1768 much

water had flowed under the bridge and Choiseul had become an advocate of

close collaboration, rather than of confrontation, with the parlement. Internal rival-

ries in the king’s council, especially after Madame de Pompadour’s death in 1764,

further explain why by 1768 Choiseul would no longer be hostile to the parlement.There would, in our view, be more links between Voltaire’s work and the team of

royal administrators who drafted the king’s response to the parlement of 3 March

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1766, the ‘seance de la flagellation’, but again the evidence for such a link is

lacking.

In his extensive and closely argued introduction Renwick sees the Histoire duparlement de Paris as Voltaire’s indignant response to ‘l’insubordination de plus

en plus deletere des robins’ (p. 60). The political ‘pretensions’ of the parlementaireslay at the origins of the work and explain its ‘lignes de force’. Yet, as he admits

himself, Voltaire recognized the services which the parlement had rendered to the

monarchy against the encroachments of the Church of Rome, against despotism

and arbitrary power. Voltaire did criticize the parlement for opposing taxation and

individual parlementaires for having motivated Damiens, an allegation he later

withdrew.

Renwick is perhaps too ready to assimilate the pretensions of the parlement with

those claimed on its behalf by Louis Adrien Le Paige in his Lettres historiques sur lesfonctions essentielles du Parlement, etc (1753–54). This is a questionable assimilation,

and the positions adopted by the parlement in its relations with the Crown were

more nuanced than Le Paige’s theories might suggest. Renwick echoes Diego Ven-

turino’s argument that Voltaire also adopted the methodology of his opponents,

namely the abuse of ‘la legitimation politique par l’histoire et par la tradition’

(p. 65). Yet, despite this sterile approach to the debate about the nature of the

relationship between the king and his parlement it was an approach that led moder-

ates on all sides to strive for the compromise solutions of practical politics (as this

reviewer tried to demonstrate in 1977). As a gifted and innovatory historian, Vol-

taire missed an opportunity to step outside this rigid historical framework and

describe instead a monarchy with legal checks and balances. One reason for this

may be indicated by Renwick when he again aptly quotes Venturino, albeit in a

footnote: ‘Voltaire n’a aucunement un esprit juridique, et reste insensible a toute

fonction moderatrice des institutions historiquement deputees au controle du

pouvoir souverain’ (p. 96, note 133).

Voltaire’s writings on all the parlements form the basis of the study by James

Hanrahan, a lecturer at the National University of Ireland (Maynooth). He shows

that Voltaire was selective in his citations from historical authorities like Pasquier’s

Les Recherches de la France. Although the Olim records of the thirteenth century

showed that the parlement of Paris tried criminal cases, Voltaire strove to prove

the contrary. There were other uses and abuses of facts committed by him in an

anti-parlementaire way. He was not alone in misreading texts (to be charitable), as

scholarship was in its infancy. The same charge was levelled at Le Paige. Hanrahan

concludes that Voltaire’s approach was on the whole determined by the ‘politics of

action’, a desire for practical change, for instance, in criminal jurisprudence. The

author of the Histoire du parlement de Paris believed that the king should come to

rely on philosophers whose language was incapable of rousing a Damiens. This

was not a view which could be shared by those who upheld the ancien regime.Both Renwick’s introduction and Hanrahan’s study draw usefully on recent

research on the parlements and on the political conflicts of Louis XV’s reign.

Perhaps the dichotomy between the parlements and the ‘Enlightenment’ can be

over-emphasized. The parlements had a crucial role to play in upholding throne

and altar. They came late to the realization that philosophic works were a

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greater threat to the established order of society than certain religious ideas and the

activities of the Jesuits.

Recently, the history of the French parlements has received a new impetus. The

publication in 2008 of Volume 88 in the Studies presented to the International Commis-sion for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, the collective study

of Les Parlementaires, les Lettres et l’Histoire au siecle des Lumieres 1715–1789, edited

by Frederic Bidouze, has pointed the way to fruitful new areas of research, for

instance in the use of rhetoric and of history. There, and elsewhere, this reviewer

has also stressed the need to study parlementaire proceedings and procedure in

greater detail and to avoid the pitfalls of anachronism. This brings one back to

the chief weakness of Voltaire’s approach: his lack of interest in procedure. Never-

theless, he was and remains ‘un grand esprit’, as Renwick’s finely wrought edition

and Hanrahan’s subtle analysis again demonstrate.

JOHN ROGISTER

Institut de France, Paris

D.R. Fisher (ed.), The House of Commons, 1820–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2009), 7 vols, Hardback £490, ISBN 978-0-5211-9314-6

There will never be another publication quite like this one. This latest History of

Parliament set contains seven volumes which took 25 years in the preparation. It

contains 6,336 pages and nearly six million words, providing accounts of the

1,367 members of the House of Commons who sat between 1820 and 1832,

together with details of elections and by-elections in the 383 constituencies of

Great Britain and Ireland at the general elections of 1820, 1826, 1830 and 1831. Col-

lectively they weigh 14 kilograms. As the Foreword states with forgivable pride,

this amounts to ‘the most detailed picture of the politics of this period ever pro-

duced, either in this country or anywhere else (Vol. 1, p. viii). The effort expended

is simply prodigious. The general editor, David Fisher, has himself contributed

almost 500 articles, well over a quarter of the whole as well as about one half of

the invaluable Introductory Survey in Volume 1. This is an absolutely monumental

achievement. What overall picture does this give of the parliamentary and electoral

ancien regime on the eve of the 1832 Reform Act? And what is the future for magni-

ficent projects in these, more straitened, times?

The version of the ancien regime depicted in these volumes generally confirms,

and in many respects, excitingly deepens, the thrust of existing interpretations of

the early nineteenth-century British political system. The Reform Act of 1832

occurred at a time when the electorate was already undergoing rapid expansion.

In the 12 years covered by this volume the size of the electorate grew from

314,970 in 1820 to 434,530 in 1831, a massive rise of 38%. The 1832 Reform Act

increased the electorate by only 3% more, an increase of 41% to 614,654 (Vol. 1,

pp. 410–411). Indeed, in some respects the Act of 1832 acted as a brake upon

the expansion of the electorate. In no fewer than one third of the boroughs that

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survived the Reform Act the electorates actually declined (Vol. I, p. 389). No less

than 76% of the increase in the size of the borough electorate occurred in those

newly enfranchised (Vol. 1, pp. 394–5). Indeed, in the English counties the 1832

Act actually represents a decline in the rate of the growth in the size of the electorate

from 39% between 1820 and 1831 to only 29% in 1832 (Vol. 1, p. 404). The con-

clusion is inescapable. Had there been no 1832 Reform Act the electorate would

still have grown, and probably at about the same rate that it had been doing in pre-

vious decades. And one of the contributory motivations of the Reform Act may well

have been the need to maintain control of an electorate which was becoming

increasingly difficult to manage. Consequently, the present reviewer would have

welcomed some estimate of the extent to which the old electoral system was

becoming uncontrollable. For example, at Northampton we are told that: ‘Elec-

tions were increasingly costly, disorderly and difficult to manage’ (Vol. I, p. 51).

Even where there were very few contests, there were signs that the electorate

was becoming even more difficult to control than in previous years (see Vol. 1,

pp. 32–60).

Against this background of a rapidly increasing electorate there are many indi-

cations of vibrant activity and popular participation. Even in the counties, usually

taken to be the least assertive parts of the electoral system, there are many other

signs of political life, not least in the 141 county meetings held in these 12 years

(Vol. 1, p. 19). Although structures of influence and deference remained largely

intact in the counties, there are signs that they were becoming more flexible in

their operation. Significantly, only a handful of examples of landlord intimidation

or reprisal have been discovered (Vol. 1, pp. 2, 5). Even the traditionally low

number of contested county elections was increasing, up to 26% between 1820–

31 from 16% in the earlier period (Vol. 1, p. 5). When contested, both county

and borough elections were occasions for a veritable explosion of festive ritual in

which voters and non-voters alike were involved and which helps us to explain

how the operation of patronage so regularly delivered the outcomes which

patrons and, to a point, the voters, wanted. Wisely, in view of the enormous

length of the present volumes, the editors decided to do little more than provide

occasional anecdotal descriptions of significant ritual occasions to lighten the

fairly dense constituency accounts. Perhaps in future volumes some overall

model or paradigm of election ritual might be provided in the Introductory

volume to deepen the narrative and to highlight the involvement of popular

elements in the electoral process.

Consequently, the accounts of the general elections in this period (Vol. 1,

pp. 217–39) consist largely of top-down narratives of ministerial and opposition

expectations, gains and losses and election petitions. Surprisingly little attempt

is made to estimate the distribution, extent and significance of the opinion of

voters, still less of non-voters, except to a limited extent in the case of Catholic

Emancipation and to a lesser extent on parliamentary reform. In view of the

massive researches and the availability of unprecedented amounts of material,

this may be a matter for regret and perhaps could be attempted in future

volumes. However, the accounts of general elections bear out the present

reviewer’s contention that, at least as far as England was concerned, serious

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election violence was infrequent, although it appears that this was not the case in

some of the Irish counties in 1826 and 1830 and in some of the Scottish constitu-

encies in 1831 (Vol. 1, p. 210 and n.). But see the comment that violence was ‘a

common occurrence at borough elections’, although only a dozen or so incidents

called in the police (Vol. 1, p. 59).

Not the least interesting, and innovative, section of these volumes is the discus-

sion of the passage of the 1832 Reform Act. It is detailed, scholarly and not without

some surprises. The willingness of ministers to be adaptable and make alterations

at Committee stage in the House of Commons did much to ensure the Bill’s

passage but in so doing they substantially changed the original Bill. For

example, the decision to enfranchise further generations of resident freemen,

and their descendants, helped to sustain pre-1832 cultures of electioneering,

which certainly acted as ‘a brake on electoral modernization’ (Vol. 1, p. 380). Simi-

larly, the rate-paying requirements appended to the household franchise did much

to politicize existing local institutions along party lines rather than to create new

ones. In most respects, therefore, the 1832 Reform Act continues to look unspec-

tacular, unambitious and, perhaps necessarily, pragmatic. Similarly, the analysis

of the process of seat redistribution underlines the very modest expansion in the

number of single-member constituencies. After 1832 there were only 53 single-

member boroughs out of a total of 187 (28%) (Vol. 1, p. 388). In the long march

to single-member constituencies and the enfranchisement of one man one vote,

there was still a considerable distance to travel.

The political and electoral regime that is described so carefully in these

volumes was, of course, to a considerable extent dominated by the competition

of political parties. Furthermore, the interpretation of party given in the Introduc-

tory volume is comfortingly familiar. ‘It is clear that the basic two-party polarity in

the Commons which had developed from about 1807 and had become more

marked after 1815 continued into the 1820s’ (Vol. 1, p. 372). However, as every

student knows, Government and Opposition were not supported by monolithic

blocs of members. Indeed, traditions of Independence in both Houses, albeit in

decline, were still current and whipping arrangements remained primitive. Inter-

estingly, there is no evidence in the length and breadth of these volumes that

parties were improving their centralized organizations. But overwhelmingly this

is a political society dominated by Whigs and Tories with others – Irish, Radicals,

Ultras, Independents and others – in a supporting capacity. To this reviewer, at

least, it is slightly unfortunate that the important section on party in the Introduc-

tory volume is dominated by a detailed discussion of Austin Mitchell’s attempt at

division list analysis – now more than 40 years old – to impose a party dimension

upon the House of Commons. As might have been expected, division list analysis

in this volume is far more complex and detailed than Mitchell could in his day

attempt and the quality of the work is highly professional, and scholarly, reminis-

cent perhaps of a PhD dissertation. Might it not have been preferable to have pro-

vided a broader and more nuanced discussion which would have taken into account

the varied local constituency aspects of party? In any case, the minute tracing of

division list analysis through the parliaments of 1820, 1826 and 1830 yields

nothing more surprising than the conclusion that 56% of members were ‘firm’

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supporters of their parties and a further 37% ‘tenuously attached’. And was it

necessary in a project such as this to include such minute analysis over more

than 50 pages? Precious space could have been spared – and some head scratching

saved –with an informative series of tables together with sparing explanatory

detail.

Because in the constituency section, a varied, even confusing, mixture of party

structures obtained. In those counties where ‘a strong party dimension was evident’

(Vol. I, pp. 23–4), party distinctions were sophisticated and acted as a dominant

structural determinant in local politics and, to some extent, social and cultural

life (see, e.g., Bedfordshire, Vol. II, pp. 5, 10). In such counties, the parties

rested upon the competition and confrontation of local Whig and Tory Clubs

(see the accounts of Cheshire, Cumberland, Devon, Essex, Gloucestershire,

Hampshire, Herefordshire, Kent, Norfolk and Sussex). Even in such counties,

however, the hereditary loyalties of particular dynasties underscored such distinc-

tions and their liveries underpinned the traditional vendettas between local blues

and yellows, purples and oranges or other such combinations of ancient colours (for

Kent’s rainbow complex of local coloured groups see Vol. II, pp. 523–4). Further-

more, and what has been rarely remarked upon, it is possible from a close reading of

the constituency sections to identify party distinctions which in some places are

almost regional in their scope. For example, the rivalry between the Durham

Whigs and Tories spilled over into the neighbouring counties of Northumberland

and Newcastle (Vol. 2, p. 354). Furthermore, in Westmorland, Cumberland and

Carlisle the Yellow Tory Lowthers confronted the Blue Whigs of Brougham

(Vol. 3, pp. 145–6) while in the North West the Cheshire Whig Club confronted

the Pitt Clubs of Bolton, Liverpool, Manchester and Preston (Vol. 2, p. 558). It

is, furthermore, possible to observe something amounting to a coherent Whig

grouping in Bristol, Gloucestershire and Monmouth (Vol. 2, p. 708). Finally, the

politics of swathes of West Wales was partly determined by the contests

between Blues (Whigs) and Reds (Tories) (Vol. 3, p. 435).

The complexity of party structures was even greater in the boroughs, where it is

possible to identity several categories of party conflict. In many boroughs party

clubs were sometimes covers for local vendettas, especially conflicts between con-

stituency patrons and independents (e.g. Carlisle, Vol. 2, p. 219, Canterbury, p. 531,

Boston, p. 630). In others, however, the rivalry between Fox or Whig Clubs and Pitt

or True Blue Clubs usually incorporated more political intent. In York, for

example, the Whig Club maintained the loyalties and traditions of Rockingham.

In Coventry, the Whiggism of the Fox Club and the Craven Arms confronted

the Toryism of the Dark Blues at the King’s Head (Vol. 3, p. 130). The Gloucester

Constitutional Whig Association confronted the True Blue Club, the latter

founded in 1789 in commemoration of John Pitt’s victory in that year (Vol. 2,

408–9 and for the complexity of colours in Gloucester see p. 409). Sometimes

the existence of one club led to the founding of its opposite number. In Northamp-

ton a Whig Club was established in 1827 to counter the increasingly active Tory

King and Constitution Club, founded four years earlier, in 1823 (Vol. 2, p. 757).

Other places where party was vital included Bristol, Canterbury and Norwich. At

others, however, party combined with money to effect contests and provoke

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local divisions and controversy. These included Ipswich, Great Yarmouth, Lincoln,

York, Berwick, Beverley, Hull and Liverpool. Variations of colour were endless and

occasionally even perverse. Party colours in Canterbury included red for Tory (and

orange for anti-Roman Catholic), blue for Whig (light blue for reforming Whigs)

and pink for those who were neutral (Vol. 2, p. 532). In some places, the power

of the press was particularly significant (see Warwick, Vol. 3, p. 141, Westmorland,

p. 146). In Kent county elections each party had its own newspaper. There was the

Kentish Gazette for Tories, the Kentish Chronicle for Whigs and the Kent Herald for

Whigs/Radicals (Vol. 2, p. 532).

There are so many different situations that one wishes for some overall model or,

at least, general interpretive ideas concerning the development of political parties in

this associational world in the early nineteenth century. To take just one example, in

what ways, if at all, was a Tory party developing in the 1820s? This reviewer would

argue that the decade of the 1820s saw a sharpening of popular and organizational

Toryism, partly because of Catholic Emancipation. Chichester and Ipswich were

not the only constituencies which saw the establishment of a Wellington Society

in the decade (Vol. 3, pp. 55, 105–8). The term ‘Conservative’ was also already

used in Hull in 1830 (Vol. 3, p. 268) and it was even current in Monmouth boroughs

in 1831 among the Beaufort Party. There is so much information buried away in the

constituency and biography sections on such topics that occasionally the reader

yearns for some distillation, and even some kind of summary guide. It is true that

Volume 1 is intended as a ‘Summary’ volume but on the topic of party, at least, it

leaves the reader wanting more.

To this the response may be that even if this complaint is even in part justified

the work is long enough already and it may be that a reviewer needs to suggest

where valuable space might have been saved. Three suggestions may be ventured.

One, the quotations in both the biographical and constituency sections are in places

surprisingly lengthy. Second, no doubt it is interesting in the constituency sections

to preview electoral and other developments after the 1832 Reform Act but these

could on occasion have been curtailed. Three, details of election campaigns give (to

this reviewer, at least) excessive attention to the manipulations of patrons and gen-

erous space to the possible emergence of candidates. Of course, such tinkering may

not achieve a significant reduction in the length of the work. However, it is per-

fectly clear that future volumes must take a longer subject period – the next

one, in fact, is to cover a period three times the length of this one, from 1832 to

1868 – and, arguably, provide the reader with concise resumes of the fruits of

material on key interpretive issues.

This reviewer, then, admires the professionalism, the dedication and the stan-

dards of scholarly research which underpin these volumes; the Introductions to

each and every constituency, in particular, are impressive and compelling models

of brevity and relevance. Yet perhaps there is some danger of their ultimate

under-utilization and under-exploitation. Indeed, it seems to me that a tension

is, and always has been, evident in the volumes of the History of Parliament,

between the ideals of academic specialization, on the one hand, and those of ency-

clopaedic availability, on the other. While it is impossible to praise too highly the

quality of academic research, usually in official archival, manuscript and newspaper

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sources, the sheer volume and variety of factual information positively demands

cogent distillation on key issues. So much wonderful material is effectively

secreted in these volumes. Was it not possible to pull the threads together not

only on party but on electoral independence, Catholic Emancipation, the reform

movement and public opinion and, arguably, on other issues? Might not the next

set of volumes, whilst yet searching for greater brevity, still strive for cogent yet

sharper thematic utilization?

Finally, this reviewer can boast of one success: a typo in Volume 2, page 684: a

missing word after ‘reform and’. . .

FRANK O’GORMAN

University of Manchester

Marie-Laure Legay and Roger Baury (eds), L’invention de la decentralisation.Noblesse et pouvoirs intermediaires en France et en Europe XVIIe–XIXe siecles(Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2009), Paperback

26E, 388 pp., ISBN 978-2-7574-0104-0

This volume publishes the papers of a conference held under the auspices of the

International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary

Institutions. It comprises 21 papers from well-known international scholars, with

an introduction by Legay and Baury, and a conclusion by Legay. Its aims are

impressive, since the editors not only intend to approach the problem of decentra-

lization, but also the functions fulfilled by the nobility. As the title suggests, these

aims are still more ambitious and, like many other publications of conference

papers, it is quite misleading because of this ambition. Indeed, the collection

does not focus on Europe’s representative bodies and nobility as such, but only

on certain countries – such as Hungary, Poland, or Scotland. The breadth of

approaches is obvious. On the Austrian Netherlands, for instance, the author high-

lights the career of one family, while the paper on England is limited to the Jacobite

nobility. Both do not actually discuss the central topic, but are rather snapshots of

family life or of a political faction. The time span is also very broad. In a remarkable

paper, but strangely situated in the collection, Maria Sofia Corciulo attempts to

revive the Kingdom of Naples under the Napoleonic regime and to show its com-

plexity, while the last section considers the French nobility after the Revolution –

until the very end of the nineteenth century. There is nothing on the nobility’s par-

ticipation during the Revolution, and only one paper on the emigres between 1789

and 1815. As each author has his/her own approach this does not contribute to the

overall coherence of the book either.

The fact is that most of the authors concentrate on France. Julian Swann, for

instance, investigates the Estates of Burgundy and Arlette Jouana the Estates of

Languedoc, two interesting approaches to a similar topic, that is, the role played

by provincial estates in Bourbon France. Their conclusions are not very surprising

when one knows each author’s earlier publications: the centralizing forces of the

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state were unable to destroy the powerful provincial estates which retained a kind

of self-government, even during the reign of Louis XVI. At some point, however,

the reader gets confused. Is this a book on intermediary powers or a book on the

nobility? On the other hand, did not the intermediary powers in ancien regimeEurope almost always consist of members of the nobility?

This is not to say that this collection has nothing new to tell. As mentioned

above, the contributors are all well-known scholars who have been investigating

the central topic for years and who have already published path-breaking studies.

They succeed very well in their attempt to show the various paths taken by the

nobility to participate in high politics via provincial and representative bodies.

Most of them also remark on the nobility’s talent for adapting to modern conditions.

So, it becomes clear that not every noble was against centralization, while ancienregime centralization was not as strict as it was to become after the French Revolu-

tion. And here precisely lies an omission that may be considered to be serious.

There is no article on the Constituante and on its abortive attempts to decentralize

ancien regime France. There are no comparative papers either that could highlight

the different paths taken by the European monarchies. The conclusion certainly

tries to bundle the various papers into a coherent whole, but also admits that the

editors’ aims were not achieved. Nevertheless, Legay concludes that, over a span

of three centuries, European nobilities had to re-create themselves, before seizing

power anew during the nineteenth century.

The question arises as to whether this development was true for all Europe or

whether there were differences. Furthermore, if one looks at Polish or Hungarian

magnates and at Belgian, English or Dutch nobilities, there are huge contrasts

between them, and their ultimate functions. Finally, while describing the estates’

public activities and emphasizing the very fact that they were the guardians of pro-

vincial interests, no paper helps us understand why there was such a violent hatred of

the French nobility from the outset of the Revolution. This collection raises more

questions than it resolves, all the more so as the editors contend that there was

already a bureaucratization in ancien regime Europe and that decentralization was

not incompatible with democracy – a well-known fact confirmed by Switzerland

– should this be discussed in an introduction about a ‘Baroque’ Europe?

ANNIE JOURDAN

University of Amsterdam

Joseba Agirreazkuenaga (ed.), The Making of Parliaments: 19th and 20th Century, Europeand America (Riev Cuadernos: Revista Internacional de los Estudios Vascos, 6) (Euskko

Ikastuntza Basque Studies Society, 2010), Paperback Studies Presented to the

International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary

Institutions, vol. lxxxx, 134pp., ISBN 978-84-8419-207-7

The Making of Parliaments is a collection of papers delivered in 2007 at a workshop

on parliamentary history at St Antony’s College, Oxford, as part of the Basque

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Visiting Fellow Programme in the college. There were two themes to the

workshop. The first was to explore the way in which complex states had accommo-

dated regional claims to autonomy through the creation of substate parliaments,

and the way in which supranational parliamentary institutions have been created

to provide a democratic and representative structure for multi-state unions. The

other was to discuss approaches to parliamentary history adopted in a number of

current European projects.

The published papers form a diverse collection. Maria Sofia Corciulo

describes the early debates within the International Commission for the

History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions (ICHRPI) from its

beginnings in 1936 (when it was called the Commission pour l’etude des origines

des Assemblees d’Etats), concerning the early origin and significance of assem-

blies, focussing in particular on the role of Emile Lousse and Antonio Marongiu.

Estevao de Rezende Martins examines the parliamentary idea in Latin America,

and its development from the European and American traditions on which it is

based. Sandro Guerrieri outlines the onward procedural and political march of

the European Parliament, noting that in only a few decades it has obtained pre-

rogatives that it has taken national parliaments centuries to acquire. Peter

McGrath, an official from the Scottish Parliament, scrutinizes the record of his

institution in finding a distinctive way of doing politics to its Westminster

parent, its avowed aim when it was set up in 1999. Joseba Agirreazkuenaga out-

lines the relationship between the Spanish national Parliament and the Basque

lands and their own representative assemblies since 1812. Jean Garrigues sum-

marizes a new project to create a new and comprehensive history of the French

Parliament and the French tradition of parliamentarism. Maria Sierra provides

an introduction to the history of parliamentarism and representation in Spain.

Mikel Urquijo helpfully sketches the development of biographical dictionaries

of parliamentarians in Europe and gives a description of the new project to

create a collective biography of Spanish parliamentarians. The last paper, by

Mario di Napoli, reflects on the reputation of parliament within Italian politics

over the history of the country.

In such a varied set of contributions, two themes – apart from the explicitly

stated ones of the collection – stand out. The first is the relationship between tra-

dition and innovation in parliamentary development. Peter McGrath shows the dif-

ficulty that the Scottish Parliament has had in escaping the shadow of the

Westminster model, despite its keenness to find new, less confrontational and

less executive-dominated ways of operating. Even so, the Scottish Parliament

has managed to evolve away from Westminster in some ways, with its Members

becoming adept at finding ways of using its procedures to push their own concerns

and agendas. Sandro Guerrieri indicates the way that the development of the Euro-

pean Parliament deliberately followed that of the national parliaments in the

Union, and quotes the German Hans Furler, emphasizing that: ‘La conception

theorique d’un parlementarisme parfait ne suffit pas ici. L’exemple et l’activite

des parlements sont essentiels. L’histoire et la vie des parlements ainsi que la tra-

dition parlementaire europeenne constituent une grande force constructive pour le

Parlement europeen’ (p. 43).

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Another theme which runs through some of the articles in the collection is the

perception of parliaments. Maria Sierra refers to the contempt in which parliament

and politics were held in Spain in the nineteenth century, associated with the

attempts of a ruling class to neutralize parliamentary powers. Mario di Napoli

suggests that a negative view of parliament and politicians has been a recurring

phenomenon in Italian society, and that this anti-parliamentary polemic was nour-

ished by intellectuals and ideologists. It was the practical politicians, he argues,

whose voices have been insufficiently heard in Italian politics. Jean Garrigues,

too, writes of the poor reputation of parliament and parliamentary life from the

end of the nineteenth century in France, when anti-parliamentarism corrupted

French political debate.

Sandro Guerrieri mentions the paradox of the European Parliament – that the

increase in its powers seems inversely proportional to the interest shown in it by

European citizens, and the point reminds us that the standing of a parliament

and its politicians has complex causes, while di Napoli’s article underlines the

fact that it can have serious consequences. It is an important case for rich and

detailed research projects on parliamentary institutions such as those outlined by

Jean Garrigues and Mikel Urquijo, and also for the research programme which

defined the origins of the ICHRPI as outlined by Maria Sofia Corciulo. Potentially,

such research can help us to understand not only the construction of representative

and democratic institutions, usually by powerful elites, but also how they have,

often, failed to keep closely in touch with the people on whose approval they rely.

PAUL SEAWARD

History of Parliament Trust

Fernando Catroga and Pedro Tavares de Almeida (eds), Res Publica: Citizenshipand Political Representation in Portugal, 1820–1926 (Lisbon: Assembleia da

Republica-Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, 2011), Paperback E30, 335 pp.,

ISBN 978-9-7256-5464-4

The commemoration of the centenary of the founding of the Republic of Portugal

has led to a number of initiatives. Dozens of books have been published and the

book Res Publica: Citizenship and Political Representation in Portugal, 1820–1926,

edited by Fernando Catroga and Pedro Tavares de Almeida, may rightly be con-

sidered as amongst the best to have been published in 2010. The pretext for the

book was an exhibition which took place in two locations – the Portuguese Parlia-

ment and the National Library of Portugal – but in no way can it be considered as a

‘catalogue’, in that it does not seek to follow the itinerary of the exhibition or limit

itself to the items on display.

Of equal merit is the originality of the proposed approach. It can be seen that,

far beyond a celebration of the Republic, the editors had a larger – or at least very

distinct – purpose in mind. The guiding principle of many articles can be found as

a ‘programme’, a ‘perspective’, which is glimpsed in the two themes stated in the

subtitle: citizenship and political representation. It is around these concepts that

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the book is linked and develops, which gives it a remarkable internal consistency,

despite the diversity of the papers published in it. As such, we can find articles here

on citizenship and representation in the Empire (Cristina Nogueira da Silva),

organic representation (Antonio Manuel Hespanha), the concept of representation

in constitutional law (J.J. Gomes Canotilho), parliamentary iconography (Paulo

Jorge Fernandes), military institutions and liberal political representation (Luıs

Salgado de Matos), jurists and representation (Fatima Moura Ferreira), doctors

and public health in parliament (Rita Garnel), and parties and representation in

Portuguese (Fernando Farelo Lopes), European (Raffaele Romanelli), Spanish

(Carlos Darde Morales) and Brazilian (Keila Grinberg) liberalism.

In terms of the time frame, the diachronic scope of analysis includes, as can be

seen, an ampler period than that of the First Republic, with the various texts being

located within the space and time of Portuguese liberalism from 1820 to 1926. What

is more, they also seek to clarify similarities and differences with what occurred in

other places, in particular Brazil and Spain. The end result is a book of outstanding

academic quality that is undoubtedly a work of note and of reference and the

possessor of unquestionable durability.

The individual pieces range from a more ‘philosophical’ and reflective perspec-

tive to those with a more ‘empirical’ leaning towards political science. At the risk of

simplification, Fernando Catroga exemplifies the first approach, in the wake of pre-

vious studies devoted to republicanism, secularism and ‘civil religion’, and Pedro

Tavares de Almeida favours the second approach, which has previously character-

ized his work on political parties, elites, caciquismo, elections and representation.

Nowadays, many signs point to a need to reinvent republicanism, and perhaps

now on a scale that transcends the artificial boundaries that we have previously

erected in the nation-states. To meet this end, a Machiavellian ridurre ai principiis imperative, to figure what is essential, in a civic rediscovery of the past, as under-

taken in this book. Res Publica is a Republican book, given its origins and the

primary focus around which it develops but equally in terms of the latent civic

powers which it awakens. That is why reading it is strongly recommended.

ANTONIO ARAUJO

University of Lisbon

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