Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley, D. W. Hayton, eds. The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1690-1715. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 5,144 pp. $400.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-77221-1.
Reviewed by Bill Speck (History Department, University of Northumbria)
Published on H-Albion (February, 2003)
As Ted Rowlands MP observes in his foreword, "the completion of these volumes has been a thirty-year odyssey during which a large number of people have contributed" (I, p. xi). The three editors spanned the decades, Eveline Cruickshanks directing the project from 1971 to 1990, David Hayton from 1990 to 1994, and Stuart Handley from 1994 to 1999.[1] Hayton wrote the introductory survey which takes up the first volume, and the editors were assisted by twelve contributors to the other volumes. The acknowledgments thank some fifty scholars who provided them with material from their own research, including the present reviewer who hereby declares an interest. He, along with the rest, has waited longer than the period reviewed by this contribution to The History of Parliament for it to appear.
The wait was worthwhile, for not only does it magnificently fill the gap between the volumes for 1660-89 published in 1983, and those for 1715-54, which appeared as long ago as 1970; it also updates their historiographical context. This is particularly the case with the magisterial introductory survey written by David Hayton. Hayton's previous publications have established him as the leading political historian of the period since the death of Geoffrey Holmes, whose unchallenged authority on the politics of the reign of Queen Anne he duly acknowledges. Holmes demonstrated definitively that the principal division was that which polarized the Tory and Whig parties. This fundamental polarity now provides the conceptual framework for the whole period from the Revolution of 1688 to the accession of the house of Hanover, a conclusion which emerges from Hayton's review of secondary works and informs his analysis of the politics of the House of Commons.[2] The latter incidentally contains a narrative of political history from 1690 to 1715 which, in a work which might give the appearance of prolixity, is a model of succinctness. Hayton's investigation of the nature of political parties casts light backwards into the late Stuart period and forward into the early Hanoverian.
The "Introductory Survey" covers far more than parliamentary and electoral politics. There are sections on constituencies and elections, the members, the organization and business of the House, as well as appendices with a wealth of information on the activities of MPs both in and outside the Commons, from their membership of committees to their criminal and immoral predilections. The section on constituencies and elections is indeed the most substantial in the volume, occupying 224 pages. Most of the discussion deals with the electorate and election campaigns. Where some historians, myself included, have tried to calculate the size of the electorate, Hayton rightly points out that not only is this virtually impossible, but it can only be a hypothetical exercise anyway, since what mattered were those electors who actually cast their votes and whom Stephen Baskerville has dubbed the "voterate" (I, p. 40 n. 25). This can be calculated for most constituencies which experienced contests from the numbers of votes cast. Historians have also tried to summarize the results of general elections in terms of party gains and losses. Again those earlier calculations, including my own, are here corrected with as definitive an analysis as could be realized. The section ends with a summary of the measures advocated with varying degrees of success to preserve the pristine purity of the electoral system from the perceived threat to it from corruption. It demonstrates that the period was by no means devoid of efforts at "parliamentary reform," albeit from a conservative rather than a radical viewpoint.
Where the survey of electoral politics draws mainly on the second volume, dealing with the constituencies, the analysis of the members condenses information from the remaining three volumes containing the biographies of all those returned to the Commons between 1690 and 1715. There are few surprises here for those familiar with the social composition of the House from the late Stuart and early Hanoverian volumes of The History of Parliament. MPs came largely from the landed elite, with a significant minority from the professional and business classes. They were also overwhelmingly members of the established church, the percentage of dissenters declining to under five in the last parliament of Anne's reign, compared with over eleven in 1690, which was itself the lowest since 1660 with the remarkable exception of James II's parliament, when it had plunged to four. Almost half had been educated at the two English Universities, approximately two-thirds of these at Oxford compared with one-third at Cambridge. Hayton demonstrates considerable skill in drawing this material together and in presenting it attractively. He even speculates intriguingly on why men entered, and left, parliament.
Hayton's skills are also displayed in many of the constituency surveys in the second volume, including all of those for Wales. His survey of Cambridge University is worth singling out as being quite outstanding, providing a polished and scholarly overview based on a wealth of local, national, and foreign sources. It provides a benchmark by which to assess how far others rise to the difficult challenge of presenting such surveys. For in this volume Hayton is joined by his colleagues on the editorial team. These were clearly assigned to write up the surveys of particular counties and their boroughs. Thus Stuart Handley is responsible for the entries on Berkshire, Derbyshire, Kent, Nottinghamshire, and Staffordshire; Andrew Hanham for Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire; and Mark Knights for those on Essex and Hertfordshire. Perry Gauci's initials appear at the end of the surveys of Middlesex, London, and Westminster. His work on the merchant community of the capital made him just the right authority to address these crucial constituencies. He also surveyed Surrey, which of course included the metropolitan borough of Southwark. Some surveys are the joint work of two editors. For example, Eveline Cruickshanks and Richard Harrison signed those for Cumberland and Westmorland. It was gratifying to see that they drew on the Ph.D. thesis of a former graduate student of mine at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Robert Hopkinson, and even on an undergraduate dissertation on Cockermouth. Pat Murrell, who also obtained her doctorate at Newcastle for her thesis on Suffolk and its constituencies, is likewise acknowledged in the surveys of that county. The use of doctoral and other dissertations is another indication of how far this contribution to the History of Parliament was a collective effort. Scottish constituencies are surveyed separately, some by David Hayton, the rest by David Wilkinson. Their surveys provide vital details on the workings of the electoral system in Scotland in the years immediately following the Union of 1707. The whole volume is a mine of information on constituency politics in the period, and even for those immediately before and after. There are useful maps of the English, Scottish, and Welsh constituencies; however Newark has somehow been omitted from the first, although it is mentioned in the introductory survey as well as the descriptions of the constituencies.
The remaining three volumes contain the biographies of the 1,982 members who were returned to parliament between 1690 and 1715. These vary considerably in length from brief entries for obscure backbenchers to the substantial lives of prominent politicians. Hayton again supplies a model entry with a thirty-six page essay on Robert Harley. Harley was in many ways the key player in the post-Revolution political world, and it is crucial to an appreciation of the period to get the measure of the man. Hayton does this superbly, showing what made Harley tick. There are other blockbuster biographies, which help to swell this addition to The History of Parliament to an unprecedented length. Thirty-three pages are devoted to the career of Sir Edward Seymour, thirty to Charles Montagu's, and twenty-eight to Sir Christopher Musgrave's. By contrast little is known of John Acland beyond the fact that "he was returned unopposed for Callington in 1702..., but made no significant contribution to the 1702-3 session," at the end of which he died (III, p. 8)! Many of those with longer careers entered parliament before 1690 or left after 1715. Hayton makes it clear in the introductory survey that, where the biographies differ from those in previous contributions to the History of Parliament, those published in these volumes are to be preferred. This is particularly apposite for the entries on Tory members, many of whom are described as Jacobites in The History of Parliament's survey of The Commons 1715 to 1754 on very suspect evidence, descriptions which are here silently omitted.
A novel feature of this contribution to the History is the addition of a CD-ROM at the end of the first volume, with instructions on its use appended after the index. What this in fact amounts to is a very impressive search tool for exploring the Journals of the House of Commons for the years 1690 to 1714. The software for this purpose is Idealist for Windows, a read-only version of which is available on the CD-ROM with clear instructions how to install it spelled out in the appendix. Once installed on a computer the database on the CD-ROM can be searched in a variety of ways, examples of which are also given in the printed text. Thus all entries of names or bills can be collated and analyzed. A search for the term "speaker" generated 155 hits, while "elections" produced 628. The software can be a bit "clunky," for example if you wish to narrow a search down by date. But the availability of this electronic edition of the Journals considerably enhances the value of these volumes.
Notes
[1]. This is the first of two reviews of this mammoth undertaking commissioned by H-Albion. [ed. note]
[2]. The principal works on the parliamentary history of this period heretofore are: H. Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics in the Reign of William III (Manchester, 1977); G. S. Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne (London: Macmillan, 1967; rev. ed., Hambledon, 1987); idem, The Electorate and the National Will in the First Age of Party (Lancaster, 1976); W. A. Speck, Tory and Whig: The Struggle in the Constituencies, 1701-15 (London, 1970); C. Jones, ed., Britain in the First Age of Party, 1680-1750: Essays Presented to Geoffrey Holmes (London, 1987), esp. Speck, "The Electorate in the First Age of Party"; J. Cannon, ed., The Whig Ascendancy: Colloquies on Hanoverian England (1981), esp. Holmes, "The Achievement of Stability: The Social Context of Politics from the 1680s to the Age of Walpole," and Speck, "Whigs and Tories Dim Their Glories: English Political Parties under the First Two Georges." [ed. note]
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Citation:
Bill Speck. Review of Cruickshanks, Eveline; Handley, Stuart; Hayton, D. W., eds., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1690-1715.
H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
February, 2003.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=7186
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