The final year of the decade has been a busy one for the History of Parliament Trust. We’ve sent volumes to the publishers, been involved in regional and national engagement projects, started a YouTube channel and undergone many internal changes – here’s Sammy Sturgess with the highlights of 2019… During the final quarter of 2019 we’ve seen some significant changes to staffing at the History … Continue reading Review of the year 2019
In a previous blog our director, Dr Stephen Roberts, explored legislation by which parliamentarians of the 1640s tried to promote what they saw as more appropriate ways of celebrating Christmas; contrary to popular historical myth, Oliver Cromwell was not the driving force. As Dr Vivienne Larminie of our Commons 1640-1660 section explains, Parliament itself began cutting back on the Yuletide festivities some years before Cromwell … Continue reading Sitting at Christmas: getting business done, 1643
In our latest blog Dr Simon Payling, Senior Research Fellow in our 1461-1504 project, discusses the short Lancastrian parliament of 1459 and an Act that would have a lasting impact in the Wars of the Roses… The brief Parliament, which met at Coventry between 20 November and 20 December, 1459, marked a determining moment in the Wars of the Roses. The Lancastrian regime, in the … Continue reading A turning-point in the Wars of the Roses: the attainders of the Coventry Parliament
Dr Emma Peplow is the new lead coordinator for our Oral History Project. Today she is announcing a new round of training for oral history volunteers. For more information about the project, click here. As many of you know, our oral history project interviews former MPs about their lives and experiences both inside and outside of the House of Commons. Since 2011 we have interviewed … Continue reading Oral History at the History of Parliament Trust: new volunteers needed!
The final piece in our Named Parliaments series represents the earliest Parliament we’ve discussed, the ‘Model’ Parliament of 1295. Dr Simon Payling of our House of Commons 1461-1504 project explores the significance of this early Parliament and the Victorian historian who named it… It is impossible to discern and date accurately the birth of any institution that goes on to last centuries and, in its … Continue reading A new beginning? Stubbs’s ‘Model’ Parliament of 1295
In the spring of 1719 the government introduced a measure for reforming the House of Lords. By its provisions the size of the peerage of Great Britain was to be frozen, while the Scots were to be allotted 25 hereditary peerages in place of the 16 elected ones they currently held. It failed but in the following session the same measure was brought back again. … Continue reading “Windy music & heat in the House” The failure to reform the House of Lords in 1719
This evening Dr Henry Miller of Durham University will give this term’s final paper to the IHR seminar Parliaments, Politics and People. Ahead of the session Paul Seaward, British Academy/Wolfson Foundation Research Professor at the History of Parliament Trust, revisits his paper on writing the history of parliament… Parliament has been in the middle of narratives of the institutional development of the British state since … Continue reading Parliaments, Politics and People seminar: On Writing the History of Parliament
The History of Parliament 