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Historians and literary scholars explore the rise of parliament in the historical imagination of Tudor and early Stuart England. Collectively the essays demonstrate that the evolution of historical conceptions of parliament was central to the ecclesiological and political thinking and culture of the period before the English Revolution.

Introduction – Alexandra Gajda and Paul Cavill
1. Polydore Vergil and the first English parliament – Paul Cavill
2. ‘The consent of the body of the whole realme’: Edward Hall’s parliamentary history – Scott Lucas
3. The Elizabethan Church and the antiquity of parliament – Alexandra Gajda
4. Parliament and the principle of elective succession in Elizabethan England – Paulina Kewes
5. Elizabethan chroniclers and parliament – Ian W. Archer
6. The significance (and insignificance) of precedent in early Stuart parliaments – Simon Healy
7. The politic history of early Stuart parliaments – Noah Millstone
8. ‘That memorable parliament’: medieval history in parliamentarian polemic, 1641–42 – Jason Peacey
9. Institutional memory and contemporary history in the House of Commons, 1547–1640 – Paul Seaward
10. Afterword – Peter Lake
Index

Paul Cavill is a Lecturer in Early Modern British History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Pembroke College

Alexandra Gajda is Associate Professor in History at the University of Oxford and John Walsh Fellow and Tutor at Jesus College

This volume of essays explores the rise of parliament in the historical imagination of early modern England.

The enduring controversy about the nature of parliament informs nearly all debates about the momentous religious, political and governmental changes in early modern England – most significantly, the character of the Reformation and the causes of the Revolution. Meanwhile, scholars of ideas have emphasised the historicist turn that shaped the period’s political culture. Religious and intellectual imperatives from the sixteenth century onwards evoked a new interest in the evolution of parliament, shaping the ways that contemporaries interpreted, legitimised and contested Church, state and political hierarchies. Since J. G. A. Pocock’s brilliant <i>The ancient constitution and the feudal law</i> (1957), scholars have recognised that conceptions about the antiquity of England’s parliamentary constitution – particularly its basis in common law – were a defining element of early Stuart political mentalities and ideological debates.

The purpose of this volume is to explore the range of contemporary views of parliament’s history and to trace their growing definition and prominence over the Tudor and early Stuart period. Historical culture is defined widely to include chronicles, more overtly ‘literary’ texts, antiquarian scholarship, religious polemic, political pamphlets, and the intricate processes that forge memory and tradition. The volume restates the crucial role of institutions for understanding the political culture and thought of the early modern period. It will be of interest to students and scholars of the political, religious and intellectual history and literature of the early modern English-speaking world and Europe.