I have a slight arithmetical problem in the revision of my class on
the Stuart institutions. I had started from Roger Lockyer's good synthesis,
_The Early Stuarts, a Political History of England (1603-1642)_ (Longman,
1989) to create my charts and tables of the composition of Parliament. I
had 78 knights of the shires, "representing the 39 English counties" and 12
Welsh knights of the 12 Welsh shires (Lockyer, 124), which gave me a total
of 90 knights, plus a variable, increasing number of Burgesses.
Now after perusing Saxton's atlas of Britain of 1590 (STC hesitates
on the date, the engraved maps are dated 1576), I find 40 English counties.
Now, as I had found Lockyer's figures corroborated elsewhere, I had not
gone any further. As a Frenchman I can tell the number of French
departements, as a specialist of British history, I know the names of the
English counties, but I never ever had to count them, which explains my
apparent total incompetence.
Now, there is a possible explanation: was there a county that did
not return knights?
Another slight doubt. I had always been taught, and I had read in
lots of books, that there were 26 English and Welsh bishops in the XVIIth
century (I think the number of Peers Spiritual is still the same today in
the House of Lords), but I have a total of 25 in Saxton's tables (I redid
all his additions, most of them are wrong as can be), as he gives half a
bishop to Warwickshire, and another half-bishop to Staffordshire. He gives
2 of their Graces to Kent, 1 is for sure the Primate of Canterbury, the
southern ecclesiastical province (let Northerners feel fine: he doesn't
omit his Grace of York): I'm wondering why these halves, and who's the
second bishop in Kent. I don't have the phone number of Monty Python's
Church police, so I have to e-mail H-ALBION...
Again, I can't cross-reference things easily here, as I have lots
of primary sources (all the STC reels) but I'm only progressively building
up the historical section of our Centre's library, which is dominated by
literary studies, and our UL is poor in British history. I have Kishlansky,
Kenyon, Elton, Neale, on Parliaments, perhaps I failed to find the
information in them.
When these matters are settled, I'll send the tables to the list,
with my totals alongside Saxton's, and the Latin names of the counties, to
save some of you the time I had to spend to find out which was which (that
Cantium is Kent, Devonia = Devon is OK, but Wigornia = Worcestershire is
another matter).
By the way, the full reference is Saxton, Christopher, _Atlas of
the Counties of England and Wales_, sponsored by T. Seckford, STC 21805.5
and other references around this. The maps are really beautiful. He seems
to have been better at getting good maps than at presenting good charts: he
prints a 31 for a 13 as the number of chases.
*******************************************************
Luc Borot <lb@alor.univ-montp3.fr> home 33-67 52 07 98
<lb@bred.univ-montp3.fr> fax 33-67 14 24 65
work 33-67 14 24 49/33-67 14 24 48
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise
Universite Paul Valery --- Montpellier (France)