Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government

Abstract

This volume continues the publication of Professor Elton's collected papers on topics in the history of Tudor and Stuart England. All appeared between 1973 and 1981. As before, they are reprinted exactly as originally published, with corrections and additions in footnotes. They include the author's four presidential addresses to the Royal Historical Society and bring together his preliminary findings in the history of Parliament and its records. Several of them, which appeared in various collections and Festschriften, have been difficult to find, and some are taken from locations in Germany and the United States unfamiliar to English readers. The eight lengthy reviews here republished examine some of the major questions in the history of the age and throw light on the principles of investigation which underlie the author's own research.

From ‘The Body Politic’ to ‘The National Interest’: English State Formation in Comparative and Historical Perspective (An Argument Concerning ‘Politically Organized Subjection’)

“…The central courts of justice operate from the twelfth century to 1875; circuits of assize from 1328 to 1971; Justices of the Peace, with us still, originate in the thirteenth century, their Quarter Sessions were regularised in 1388 and existed until 1971, when they were translated into 'Crown Courts'! Parliament achieves its 'characteristic bases of power’ by 1340 (Elton, 1974b: 24), with specific wording in the writs calling parliamentary elections denying that members could be 'delegates' from 1294 to 1872 (Edwards, 1934). The Privy Council—with enormous 'residual’ powers and a totally unreformed, unrepresentative 'body'—developed from the medieval Curia Regis, while the Exchequer (whose Chancellor still presents a Budget) was the earliest office of state to go 'out of court’ (in Tout's phrase, cf.…”

“…Laski, 1928; Arnstein, 1972). For the history of Parliament we are well served by general accounts (Elton, 1974b; Fryde & Miller, 1970) and excellent studies of the crucial period of Tudor Erastianization (Elton, 1972, 1973, 1974a, b) and the more general context (Loades, 1977; Stone, 1965b; Zagorin, 1982) plus, of course, Christopher Hill's work on the seventeenth century (placed in context by his admirable summary Reformation to Industrial Revolution , 1969); while there is a useful study that places parliamentary representation in the context of governance for the 1780–1870 period (Chester, 1981). We wish to stress—as another linkage between this section and our pervasive emphasis on rituals of rule—the continuing power of the aristocracy throughout the whole period from before the twelfth century until the 1980s (Arnstein, 1972; D. C.; Moore, 1976; Porter, 1982; Powis, 1984; Bush, 1984; Stone L. and J.C. Stone, 1984).…”

“…In Perry Anderson's formulation, it was ‘singleton and conglomerate’ (Anderson, 1974b: 114–5; cf. Elton, 1974b: 37ff), in other words (a) a national assembly with no regional or other national competitors, and (b) a representative assembly neither of the three conventional ‘estates’ nor—at least formally and ‘in theory’—of specific kinds of individuals. Immediately, we must qualify—or better, deny —this 'formal’ claim.…”

“…England was remarkably 'representative’ from the twelfth century onwards. As to the conventional medieval 'estates,’ the clergy were not as clergy represented in Parliament after 1340, bishops and other prelates were there as tenants‐in‐chief of the monarch or royal officials; the peerage were not elected by their own kind and did not represent the nobility as an estate, they were King's or Queen's councillors, 'the enlarged General Council of the realm’ (Elton, 1974b: 36). But it is 'the’ Commons that is most distinctive.…”

“…It was, strictly, a relay system or transmission belt between the governing and the governed and so it remains to this day: about governance and not about representation, except that in posing as the latter symbolic power it effectively misrepresents—in exactly the way that Thomas More described for the early sixteenth century—what other forms of power are at work in governing. As early as 1301 we find Parliament speaking of the 'community of the realm’ (Cam, 1945:181,193), a term that can be translated—in that special sense we shall clarify below—as 'public opinion.’ By 1366 Chief Justice Thorpe wrote that Parliament represents 'the body of the realm’ and by 1480 it was argued that Acts of Parliament must be binding upon all 'forasmuch as every man is party and privy to the Parliament,’ that is, represented there (Elton, 1974b: 36, 37); 'a man there was "a publick, a councillor, to the whole State" (Cam, 1962: 278). The masculinist exclusionary language alongside the claim to be binding upon all should not go unremarked.…”