9.45am
Registration at Rewley House Reception (for those attending in person)
10.00am
Introduction and welcome
Andrew Hopper and Paul Seaward
10.15am
Writing the History of the House of Commons 1640-60: An Overview
Stephen Roberts
The History of Parliament’s House of Commons 1640-1660 project began in a very small way in 1983. Forty years, some nine volumes and over 7 million words later, the project is complete and is the largest single publication yet of the History of Parliament series, which has so far reached a total of 65 volumes. Though the title ‘History of Parliament’ might be taken to imply a grand narrative, the heart of the project is in fact a biographical dictionary, with lives of each of the 1,803 men who sat in the Commons in the two decades. In addition, there are accounts of elections in 329 constituencies, which in the parliaments of the Cromwellian Protectorate included seats in Scotland and Ireland.
This talk will outline the parliamentary history context and methodology of the project, and indicate some of the challenges facing anyone seeking to write the parliamentary history of such a turbulent period of British history. We will also identify and discuss some of the main findings of the project, and even point the way to some further research directions.
11.30am
Tea/coffee break
12.00pm
Party Politics in 1640s Westminster
David Scott
The 1640s saw the emergence in England of party politics in something like its present-day form. Under the impact of collapsing royal government and the outbreak of civil war in 1642, the nation divided into opposing military camps and, among its more committed parliamentarians, into distinct political parties. Although these parties took shape at Westminster and comprised small groups of leading politicians, they developed rival programmes for national settlement and acquired strong popular followings in the localities. Like their modern successors, civil-war party leaders used the press and propaganda, bribery and management to secure voting majorities in the House and public support for their policies. When these methods failed, they frequently resorted to outright coercion. Political power in the 1640s, as in other revolutionary periods, proceeded ultimately from the barrel of a gun.
This talk will explore the rise of party politics in civil-war England and its transformative impact upon British political culture and government. The 1640s were a forcing house not only for the dark arts of parliamentary management but also for many of the partisan mentalities, fears and rivalries that would fuel the ‘rage of party’ in England well into the eighteenth century.
1.15pm
Lunch break
2.15pm
War at Home and Politics at Westminster: The Loyalties and Preoccupations of Oxfordshire and Thames Valley MPs
Vivienne Larminie
The upheavals of the civil wars and interregnum affected different regions of England and Wales differently. The apparently austere and uncompromising puritanism and parliamentarianism of Oliver Cromwell and his fellow East Anglian MPs have long captured the popular imagination; their perspectives have sometimes been projected onto the country more widely. The west is often known for its royalism. But those men who represented or had their estates in Oxfordshire and the Thames Valley, and who adhered to Parliament from 1642, faced particularly complicated choices.
When the king established his headquarters at Oxford, their lands and constituents were potentially under the control of royal troops. They had a vested interest in either negotiating peace or prosecuting a vigorous military campaign to win the war, leading to subterfuge or unaccustomed radicalism. Once Oxford surrendered to Parliament, there was retribution and reconstruction to be navigated. The careers of local Members like Speaker William Lenthall, scholar and jurist John Selden, memorialist Bulstrode Whitelocke and orator Nathaniel Fiennes reveal complexities far removed from those of the archetypal Roundhead.
3.30pm
Tea/coffee break
3.45pm
Charles Fleetwood, John Disbrowe and the fall of the House of Cromwell
Patrick Little
This talk tells the story of the rise and decline of the Cromwellian regime in the 1650s through the careers of two military MPs who were very close to Oliver Cromwell, showing how biographies can bring to life the alliances and tensions that brought about its collapse.
The MPs concerned are Cromwell’s son-in-law, Charles Fleetwood, who sat for Marlborough, Oxfordshire and other seats, and his brother-in-law, John Disbrowe, MP for Cambridgeshire, Somerset and elsewhere. Both men were especially close to Oliver in the early and mid-1650s, and were given important roles in the Protectorate, but came to doubt the Protector’s commitment to ‘the good old cause’, and eventually turned against his son, Richard Cromwell, becoming instrumental in his downfall in 1659.
5.00pm
Concluding remarks
Andrew Hopper
5.15pm
Course disperses
