It had started so well. Francis Leak, the son of Sir Francis Leak, a prosperous landowner in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, was the first of his family to try to establish himself on the national stage. He had already taken the important first step of marrying the sister of a rising star at court, Sir Henry Carey (later Viscount Falkland in the Scottish peerage). Yet Leak’s ambitions were undermined by a fierce row with his father, who had resigned the patrimonial estate to him in return for a relatively high rent-charge. Once the documents were sealed, Leak refused point-blank to pay anything to his father, on the preposterous grounds of poverty. His true financial state was revealed in 1624, when he paid James I’s favourite, George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, £8,000 to be made Baron Deincourt. The son’s ennoblement enraged the father, who was already engaged in a lengthy legal battle with his son. Even the death of Sir Francis in 1626 did not stop the wrangling, as Deincourt’s mother and half-brother disputed the will and won a chancery order for him to pay them rent arrears; this was upheld by the Lords in 1629. Deincourt’s parliamentary service in the later 1620s had been overshadowed by this constant rowing, and the dispute continued into the early 1630s, ending only with the intervention of the privy council, which ruled against the baron. His reputation at court and among the aristocracy never recovered.

Although Deincourt was treated with distain by the royal court during the 1630s, his son, also Francis, was able to succeed where the father had failed, joining the royal family for racing at Newmarket and being given minor ceremonial roles at court. His career was, however, spoiled by his father’s parsimony. Two potential marriages were ruined by Deincourt’s refusal to make realistic financial provision for his son, and by the end of the decade, Francis was languishing in debtors’ prison. Deincourt was equally mean when it came to public affairs. Although a supporter of the king, he was reluctant to give the king money to fight the bishops’ wars against the Scots in 1639-40, and he went on to play very little part in the Short and Long Parliaments. At the outbreak of civil war in 1642, he sided with the king. Francis, who had gone to France (possibly to avoid his creditors) died at about this time, leaving the second son, Nicholas, heir to the barony. Needless to say, Deincourt and Nicholas Leak immediately fell out, with Nicholas joining the parliamentarians.

Civil war did not improve Deincourt’s miserliness. In September 1642, the prominent courtier, John Ashburnham, was sent to Deincourt to secure £5,000 for the king, while Arthur Capell (later 1st Baron Capell), went on a parallel mission to the equally parsimonious Robert Pierrepont, 1st earl of Kingston-upon-Hull. The cunning Kingston deflected the request by suggesting the wealthy Deincourt – ‘who was good for nothing and lived like a hog, not allowing himself necessaries’ – could easily supply the money instead. Deincourt, who had ‘so little correspondence with the court that he had never heard his name’, did not accept Ashburnham’s credentials until he had consulted with his wife’s nephew, Lucius Carey, 2nd Viscount Falkland, but afterwards reacted ‘with so different a respect’ that the envoy became hopeful of receiving the money after all. He was soon ‘undeceived’:

The lord, with as cheerful a countenance as his could be (for he had a very unusual and unpleasant face), told him that though he had no money himself, but was in extreme want of it, he would tell him where he might have money enough … that he had a neighbour, who lived within four or five miles, the earl of Kingston, that never did good to anybody, and loved nobody but himself, who had a world of money, and could furnish the king with as much as he had need of. (Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, ed. Macray, ii. 332-4)

Despite being something of a joke at royalist Oxford, Deincourt did serve the king faithfully, not least in the defence of Newark, and in sending two of his younger sons to serve in the king’s army – both were killed in combat. He was made earl of Scarsdale at the end of 1645, probably in a deal in which he finally agreed to give material support to the king. At the end of the war, the new earl of Scarsdale refused to do a similar deal with Parliament. Unlike almost all peers who were given the option, he declined to compound for his estates, which continued to be sequestered. His heir, Nicholas Leak, who had managed to rent the Derbyshire properties from Parliament, now made a concerted effort to secure legal title to the whole estate, not least to ensure that his mother and the younger children were provided for. He finally succeeded in 1651.

Overriding Scarsdale’s wishes was easy to justify, as his mental health appears to have deteriorated in the immediate aftermath of the first civil war, reaching a low point after the execution of Charles I in 1649, when ‘he apparelled himself in sack-cloth, and causing his grave to be digged some years before his death, laid himself down in it every Friday, exercising himself frequently in divine meditations and prayers’. (W. Dugdale, Baronage of England, ii. 450). That this was not normal behaviour is underlined by the strangeness of earl’s will, written in 1651. He gave unusually detailed instructions about his burial at Sutton Scarsdale church: he was not to be disembowelled or embalmed, and he was to be buried without a coffin, covered only by a sere-cloth or winding sheet, and ‘a little round board of an inch think laid upon my face’. (TNA, PROB11/251, f. 139v). As if this was not odd enough, in the main body of the will the earl completely ignored the fact that the estate had effectively been taken out of his hands: his younger son, Henry, was provided with lands; his four unmarried daughters were given their full marriage portions of £4,000 each; and, in a highly unusual move, these younger daughters were appointed executors. Reality reappeared only after the old man’s death. When probate was passed in 1655, it was granted to Nicholas Leak, now 2nd Baron Deincourt and 2nd earl of Scarsdale, his sisters and widowed ‘having renounced the execution of the said will’. (PROB11/251, f. 140)

PL

Further reading

The biography of Francis Leak will appear in the forthcoming House of Lords 1640-60 volumes; for his earlier career, see House of Lords 1604-29.

Biographies of Sir Henry Carey and Sir Francis Leak in House of Commons 1604-29; George Villiers in House of Lords 1604-29; John Ashburham, Arthur Capell and Lucius Carey in House of Commons 1640-60; Nicholas Leak in House of Lords 1660-1715.

When the succession of Charles III to the throne was formally proclaimed on 10 September 2022, it marked the first appearance on television of an accession council. This body dates back to 24 March 1603, when a meeting of the lord mayor of London, assorted English peers and bishops, and those commoners who had served as privy councillors to the recently deceased monarch, Elizabeth I, proclaimed the accession of James VI of Scotland as James I of England. Forty-four years earlier Elizabeth had issued the proclamation of her accession in her own name, but a new procedure was now necessary because James was still in Scotland. As it took several days for the news of his accession to reach him, and rather longer for his authorization of a new privy council to arrive in London, for several weeks the accession council effectively ran the country.

The secretary of state, Sir Robert Cecil, had established contact with James before Elizabeth’s death, and they had agreed the wording of the accession proclamation, but Cecil was obliged to act in secret because Elizabeth refused to allow any discussion of the succession. Cecil therefore could do nothing formally until after the queen had died, nor could James issue a proclamation as king of England until he had been informed of the queen’s death, leaving a potentially dangerous hiatus in which England had no legitimate authority. Accordingly, on 20 March 1603 the privy council convened a meeting of the peers and bishops who were then in and around London. They informed this assembly that, on the death of the queen, the powers of the councillors and other royal officers would cease. Only those such as the lord mayor of London who held offices in urban corporations would retain their places. However, those present were reminded that the peers and bishops constituted the great council (whose membership was the same as the upper house of Parliament) and were told that it would fall to them to preserve the peace of the realm.

The queen died at Richmond in the early hours of 24 March, whereupon those members of the council who had attended her deathbed returned to Whitehall, where another meeting of the peers and bishops was convened. According to one widely circulated account of these events, the lord admiral, Charles Howard, 1st earl of Nottingham announced that the queen had finally been induced to name James as her successor. The accession council then agreed to proclaim James as the new king of England, which they promptly did outside the palace. The proclamation was signed by 21 peers and four bishops, together with the lord mayor of London, seven of the former commoner privy councillors and one Irish peer. However, the names of three further peers were added to later printed editions of the document.

The accession council then went to the city of London, where they were admitted after promising to proclaim James, the lord mayor taking as security the Garter insignia of the lord treasurer, Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, before allowing them to enter. They again proclaimed the new king at Cheapside and then dined at the house of one of the sheriffs of London, from where they sent three heralds and a trumpeter to proclaim James on Tower Hill. At 10 at night they wrote to James to notify him of the death of the queen, although they acknowledged that he might have already heard the news from Sir Robert Carey, who had departed for Scotland without their authorization as soon as the queen died.

Cecil probably intended that the accession council would confine itself to proclaiming the new monarch, after which it should be brought to an end as soon as possible and the normal processes of government by the privy council be resumed. In the short term this would require the former members of the Elizabethan privy council to continue meeting as though the queen was still alive, but this met with objections from the nobles. According to one report, Henry Percy, 3rd earl of Northumberland asserted that nothing should be done without the participation of the nobility, who were councillors by birth but had been neglected for too long, and that their exclusion would set a bad example to the king.

James was probably also keen to quickly dissolve the accession council, as its members did not owe their place to royal appointment, implying that there existed in England an alternative source of authority to the crown. On 27 March he authorized the former members of Elizabeth’s privy council to act in his name, which would have rendered the accession council redundant. However, the following day he felt obliged to order the nobility to continue to meet together, and consequently the accession council continued until the middle of April. In addition to those whose names appear on the accession proclamation, at least four further peers, three bishops and another Irish lord also took part in the council’s proceedings. Cecil complained to his brother, Thomas Cecil, 2nd Lord Burghley, about having to deal with what he called ‘our Parliament council’, stating that he dared not act without its consent and that business which had previously been done in a day now took a week.

On 25 March the accession council wrote to the magistrates of the various counties of England ordering them to proclaim James in their localities. The accession of the new king passed off peacefully, which in practice left the council with little more to do. Aside from facilitating communications with James, they issued warrants to the lord treasurer for the payment of money, and sent advice to English commissioners negotiating a commercial treaty in Bremen. They also authorized local magistrates to continue impressing men for service in the Netherlands in the war against Spain. On 10 Apr. James wrote to the council from Newcastle ordering the privy council (to whom he had added Northumberland and three other noblemen), to resume normal meeting. The other peers were instructed to remain in the vicinity of London to assist the privy council if needed, but implicitly were no longer to meet together. By 17 April James’s new privy council was operational, and the accession council had been dissolved.

BC

Further reading:

Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata ed. W.P. Baildon (1894)

E. Howes, Annales … Begun by John Stow (1631)

M. Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot (c.1991)

A. Nelson, Monstrous Adversary (2003)

Biographies of Robert Cecil (as 1st earl of Salisbury), the 1st earl of Nottingham, Lord Buckhurst, Robert Carey (as 1st earl of Monmouth), the 3rd earl of Northumberland and the 2nd Lord Burghley may also be found in The House of Lords 1604-29 ed. Andrew Thrush (2021).

In March 1603, following the death of Elizabeth I, her cousin James VI of Scotland became James I England as well. Just two weeks later the king crossed the Anglo-Scottish border into his new realm, vowing to come back every three years. In fact it would be another 14 years before he returned to Scotland, and the timing of this visit was dictated not by some political emergency, but by much more personal considerations. James had become king of Scotland in July 1567, shortly after his first birthday, and so the year 1617 was the 50th anniversary of his accession. Moreover, he had recently become Scotland’s longest-reigning monarch (the previous record-holder, William the Lion, had ruled for just under 49 years), and he meant to celebrate these landmark events in style.

It would be fair to say that James’s enthusiasm for this great northern ‘progress’ was not widely shared. One basic problem was his very status as a 17th-century king. A 21st-century British monarch serves as a largely symbolic head of state, and can travel about relatively freely with no impact whatever on the workings of government. However, James was in a very real sense the ruler of Great Britain, whose approval was required for all matters of policy and patronage. While his ministers were accustomed to him disappearing off on brief hunting trips, a more elaborate expedition such as a summer progress entailed a substantial number of courtiers, advisers and even bishops trailing around the country in the king’s wake, with all the logistical complications that this entailed. For his visit to Scotland, James envisaged being away from London for around six months, and for much of that time he would be difficult to contact quickly, should some emergency develop.

And then there was the prospective cost of this trip. In a context where the English exchequer and Scottish treasury were already struggling – and mostly failing – to balance the books, James’s travel plans imposed an entirely unwelcome additional financial burden on both governments. The Scottish privy council, which received roughly a year’s advance notice, was instructed to repair the principal royal residences, none of which had been properly maintained for decades, and prepare accommodation at Edinburgh for up to 5,000 visitors.  The desperate councillors were obliged to introduce an emergency levy of £200,000 Scots (more than £2 million in today’s money), so the first intimation that many of James’s Scottish subjects had of his imminent arrival was an unexpected tax demand.

Nevertheless, the king intended his much wealthier kingdom of England to cover the bulk of the costs. There, supplementary taxation was out of the question, following the failed Parliament of 1614, and instead the city of London and the farmers of the customs were approached for a loan of £200,000 sterling (more than £26 million today). Raising such a massive sum at short notice proved so difficult that, in early March 1617 the English privy council literally begged James on their knees to postpone the progress for twelve months, all to no avail. The king was by now denouncing opponents of the trip as traitors, and was determined to press on.

Accordingly, on 15 March the expedition set off, with James accompanied by favoured English and Scottish courtiers, all the principal officers of the royal household, one secretary of state, three bishops, eight chaplains, the king’s bodyguards, and over 70 other court servants, including pages, ushers, cupbearers, trumpeters and physicians. Naturally all the more senior figures in the party took their own personal servants, and the numbers were further swelled by other Scots resident in England who seized the opportunity to visit their homeland in style. More than 60 wagons were used to transport the royal luggage, while larger items were sent north by sea, since James was determined to create the most magnificent impression, and took with him not just his clothes but also furniture, wall-hangings and plate to decorate the Scottish palaces during his brief stay.

Unsurprisingly, this massive train moved slowly. Travelling north via Lincoln, York, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Berwick-upon-Tweed, James spent two whole months on the road before reaching Edinburgh. On his birthday, 19 June, he spent the night at his birthplace, Edinburgh castle, though he normally resided at the more comfortable Holyrood palace while in the Scottish capital. He also found time to visit Dunfermline, Falkland, St Andrews, Dundee, Perth, Stirling, Glasgow and Dumfries, and of course to go hunting at regular intervals. James took a smaller group of attendants with him for these subsidiary trips, leaving the bulk of the English courtiers to feast and revel in Edinburgh. If the king’s instructions were carried out, there were also displays of traditional Scottish sports such as football and bowls.

However, there was also business to attend to. Despite all of James’s assurances to the contrary, he hadn’t returned north simply for reasons of nostalgia. As the Scottish government suspected all along, he had a political agenda as well as a social one, which soon became clear. The king’s attempt to achieve a formal union of his two principal kingdoms had failed a decade earlier, but he still hankered after greater uniformity of government between England and Scotland. After 14 years down south, he also firmly believed that the English system was superior, and didn’t hesitate to say so. Opening a session of the Scots Parliament in June, he tactlessly informed the assembled members that he aimed to reduce the ‘barbarity’ of Scotland to the ‘sweet civility’ of England. He then proceeded to push through changes to local administration and the Scottish kirk, all designed to promote English practices. In another unprecedented move, five of his English courtiers were admitted to the Scottish privy council, including his controversial male favourite George Villiers, earl (later duke) of Buckingham. At Holyrood palace the church services were conducted along English lines, the Anglican ceremonial scandalizing the Presbyterian Scots.

By the latter stages of the tour, these tensions were spilling over into quarrels between English and Scottish courtiers. James spent the actual 50th anniversary of his accession, 24 July, in Glasgow, and then headed south again. As he passed through the Borders, there were reports of an assassination attempt on Buckingham, who had replaced an earlier Scottish favourite, Robert Carr, earl of Somerset. The return journey, via Carlisle, Chester, Coventry and Windsor, proved a little quicker, as many of the English courtiers peeled off to make their own way home. However, it was still mid-September by the time the king reached London. The final bill for the Scottish government was nearly £230,000 Scots. The English financial tally is not known, but was undoubtedly much higher. Unsurprisingly, James never attempted to repeat this trip, and the lasting legacy of his jubilee tour was mounting suspicion in Scotland of Stuart royal policy, which would come to an explosive climax under his successor, Charles I.

PMH

Further reading:

W.A. McNeill and P.G.B. McNeill, ‘The Scottish Progress of James VI, 1617’, Scottish Historical Review, lxxv. 38-51

Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1611-18 [online resource: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/domestic/jas1/1611-18 ]

Biographies of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, and Charles I (as prince of Wales) feature in our recently published volumes on The House of Lords 1604-29 ed. Andrew Thrush (2021).

If the Committee on Standards in Public Life had existed 400 years ago, it would have needed a rather different remit. While Jacobean politicians periodically attacked corruption and venality in government, it was taken for granted that money was an essential lubricant of the system, and that the highest offices in the land frequently went to the highest bidders. Key components of the civil administration were run as personal fiefdoms and traded as though they were private property. A prime example was the prothonotaryship, or chief clerkship, of the court of King’s Bench, which in 1603 was occupied by John Roper. This office was reckoned to generate a net annual profit of around £4,000 (roughly £1.4 million today), equivalent to the income of a reasonably affluent peer. By dint of purchasing reversionary grants of the prothonotaryship, the Ropers had monopolised this role for more than a century, growing very rich in the process. John, the fourth member of his family to hold the post, had been in office since 1573, and was now aged about 69. For some reason he had not obtained a further reversion for any of his relatives, so although his own tenure was secure until he either died or resigned, thereafter the clerkship was up for grabs.

Unsurprisingly, the prospect of an imminent vacancy – Roper was already quite old by the standards of the time – aroused considerable interest within government and legal circles, and also at court. In July 1603, less than four months after James I’s accession, a reversion to the prothonotaryship was procured by one of the king’s Scottish favourites, James Elphinstone (later 1st Lord Balmerino). Unlike Roper, Elphinstone wasn’t a lawyer, and had no intention of running the office in person – not least because he spent much of his time in Scotland, where he was James’s secretary of state. Accordingly, he struck a deal with an up-and-coming English lawyer, Robert Heath, whereby the latter would do the actual work, and the two of them would split the profits. In the event, Roper was still going strong when, in 1609, Balmerino was disgraced and convicted of treason, as a result of which his reversion was deemed to be void.

At this juncture the king decided to grant a fresh reversion to his current favourite, Robert Carr, another Scot. Roper and Heath both made difficulties over this, but after three years of wrangling the grant was confirmed. However, in the interim Carr (now Viscount Rochester) had struck a deal with a rival for the post, John Harington (later 2nd Lord Harington), whereby they became joint reversioners. As before, surrogates were selected to run the office, the choice falling this time on Heath and another promising young lawyer, James Whitelocke. And once again these arrangements failed to come to fruition. Harington died in 1614, while two years later Carr (by now earl of Somerset) was convicted of the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury and disgraced.

The circus duly resumed. King James indicated his intention to settle a new reversion on his latest favourite, George Villiers. Roper was by now was aged around 82, and more than ready to retire. He duly offered to simplify matters by surrendering the prothonotaryship – but in return he demanded a peerage. He had in fact been angling for a title since at least 1606, when he offered to purchase a barony. However, he lacked the family background normally considered a prerequisite for such an honour, and he was also a covert Catholic. Moreover, while the sale of peerages would become relatively commonplace by the end of James’s reign, the issue was still considered highly sensitive at this juncture. His offer was rejected, and although he again broached the subject while negotiating with Robert Carr in 1612, he was once more turned down.

By 1616, however, the climate had changed. The king had failed to secure a grant of taxes from the Addled Parliament two years earlier and was now short of funds. In 1615 the first explicit sale of a peerage occurred, breaking that taboo. And so Roper’s request was this time taken seriously, even though his proposal to trade in his office for a title would benefit Villiers rather than the crown. Word soon spread that the prothonotary would indeed get a peerage, but before the details had been settled James suffered a cash crisis and decided that he needed the money after all. Roper, sensing his opportunity, drove a hard bargain. He agreed to pay the king £10,000 for a barony, but in return he insisted on retaining a life interest in the clerkship, with trustees managing the office on his behalf and handing him the profits. A desperate James approved this deal, and in July 1616 Roper became Lord Teynham – or ‘Ten Ms’, as one contemporary wit suggested (the letter M signifying 1,000 in Roman numerals). Four months later the somewhat irregular new arrangements for the prothonotaryship were signed off by the lord chief justice of King’s Bench, Sir Henry Montagu (later 1st earl of Manchester), in return for a £500 pension out of the profits of the clerkship. Teynham finally died in August 1618, at the grand old age of 84, by which time the continuing flow of profits from the prothonotaryship must have cancelled out at least half of the cost of his peerage.

PMH

Further reading:

G.E. Aylmer, The King’s Servants (1961)

C.R. Mayes, ‘The Sale of Peerages in Early Stuart England’, Journal of Modern History, vol. 29 (1957)

L.L. Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (1990)

Biographies of John Roper, 1st Lord Teynham, Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, John Harington, 2nd Lord Harington, George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, and Henry Montagu, 1st earl of Manchester appear in the History of Parliament’s new volumes on The House of Lords 1604-29 ed. Andrew Thrush (2021).

Before the seventeenth century, English kings were generally content to share the fishing grounds around their coasts with their neighbours. Elizabeth I, for instance, opposed the idea of restricted waters, refusing to recognize Spanish claims to sovereignty over the western Atlantic and the Pacific. English claims to sovereignty were limited to a patch of sea off the Sussex coastal town of Rye known as the Sowe (or Zowe). Frenchmen fishing in these waters were expected to buy licences from the lord warden of the Cinque Ports, and their numbers were strictly limited.

English thinking was altered following the emergence of the Dutch Republic. Following their declaration of independence from Spain (1581), the Dutch enlarged their already substantial North Sea fishing industry. Worth £1 million a year, it provided cured herrings to most of Europe, employed a fifth of the population of the Netherlands and was the envy of Europe. Described by one observer as their ‘chief goldmine’, the ‘great fishery’ enabled the Dutch to become a major naval power and also to defeat Spain. By comparison, as early as the 1540s the English fishing industry was in decay. An Act of 1563 tried to prop up the native industry by increasing the number of weekly fish days from two to three, but it failed to arrest the decline because the English continued to buy their fish from the Dutch.

The rise of the Dutch fishing industry was not the only factor which helped to change English thinking. Another was the emergence of a legal concept of territorial waters, which was first articulated by the lawyer Sir Edmund Plowden. In Sir John Constable’s Case, Plowden argued that the ‘bounds of England’ extended to the middle of the adjoining sea, and that the crown had exclusive jurisdiction over the entire English Channel because of the monarch’s historic claim to the crown of France. While Elizabeth remained alive, Plowden’s ideas remained largely theoretical. However, the accession of the Scottish king James VI to the throne of England in 1603 changed all that. Scottish law, unlike English, had long acknowledged the concept of territorial waters. From the twelfth century, kings of Scotland had authorized coastal monasteries to issue fishing licences to foreign fishermen. James was therefore disposed to think that foreign fishermen ought to pay for the privilege of fishing in English and Scottish waters. This view was sharpened both by his distaste for the Dutch, whom he regarded as rebels, and by his growing financial difficulties, which forced him to look for new sources of revenue. In 1609, as his finances spiralled out of control, he issued a proclamation requiring all foreign fishermen to take fishing licences, either at London or at Edinburgh. At around the same time a consortium of London merchants proposed to form a fishing company and levy a tax of 10% on foreigners who fished in British waters.

In the event, the proposed fishing company failed to materialize, while the Dutch disregarded James’s proclamation. Matters might have rested there were it not for the fact that in 1616 the Dutch struck a serious blow at the English economy by forbidding the import of English dyed cloth. James immediately retaliated by dispatching a small royal warship to the North Sea with orders to compel the Dutch to buy fishing licences. This mission proved highly successful, as the tax demanded was peaceably paid by the Dutch busses. However, when an attempt was made to repeat the exercise the following year, James’s representative was arrested on the orders of the States-General. In the ensuing diplomatic row the Dutch backed down, and in 1618 and 1619 James demanded the duty again. However, by now he was nervous of pressing his claims of sovereignty too far. When, in 1618, the lawyer John Selden presented him with a treatise entitled Mare Clausum, which argued that the seas around Britain were British, James declined to publish it for fear of offending the Danes.

James’s son and heir, Charles I, was less concerned than his father at causing offence. The publication in 1626 by the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius of Mare Liberum, a treatise aimed at refuting Spanish claims to dominion in the East Indies, was widely perceived as an attack on English pretensions. In 1632 Charles responded by authorizing the creation of a joint stock company to rival the Dutch. He also launched a propaganda campaign, which included publication of Selden’s Mare Clausum, copies of which were deposited in the Council chamber, the Exchequer and the court of admiralty. Moreover, unlike his father, he demonstrated a willingness to enforce his claims with overwhelming force. Between 1635 and 1640 Charles put to sea large annual fleets paid for by Ship Money (an annual levy demanded without parliamentary approval to pay for the Navy), whose purpose was to uphold England’s claim to sovereignty of the seas around her coasts. In 1636 the fleet was ordered to sell licences to the Dutch. As the latter were still at war with Spain and their Flemish allies, purchasers were promised protection from the Dunkirkers who, the previous summer, had sunk or captured more than 70 Dutch fishing busses. As in 1616, many Dutch fishermen willingly paid the new duty in return for English defence, to the dismay of the States-General.

Although the sale of licences yielded only a modest financial return, Charles had succeeded in enforcing his claims. In 1637, after a brief suspension occasioned by the prospect of war with Spain (in which England would need the support of the Dutch), he revived the scheme. Unfortunately for him, the successes of 1636 were not repeated, for in July Dutch warships prevented an English captain from distributing licences. Furthermore, Charles’s new fishing company was so under-capitalized that it quickly foundered. By 1638, with war with the Scottish Covenanters on the horizon, the campaign to enforce Dutch acknowledgement of English sovereignty over the North Seas fisheries largely ceased. However, this was far from being the end of the matter. During the 1650s the Cromwellian regime revived Charles’s policy, and thereby helped precipitate war between England and the Dutch.

A.T.

Still feeling fishy? Read about the politicisation of Cornish pilchards in the 17th century in this blog from our Civil War section.

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Historical perceptions can be deceptive. The year 1603 is now primarily remembered as the moment when James VI of Scotland peacefully succeeded Elizabeth I on the English throne, reigning south of the border as James I. This was indeed a remarkable event, given the centuries of Anglo-Scottish warfare which preceded it, but as the king himself quickly discovered, his accession didn’t instantly dispel that deeply engrained tradition of inter-racial hostility and suspicion. James was embraced as the only convincing Protestant candidate for the crown of England. However, that warm welcome most definitely did not extend to his fellow Scots, many of whom flocked south in the hope of capitalizing on the king’s good fortune. To make matters worse, it quickly became clear that James wanted to see a ‘perfect union’ of the two countries, creating a single kingdom of ‘Great Britain’. As a first step towards that objective, he largely surrounded himself with Scots at court, and even appointed some to senior positions in the English government. As the proposed national merger began to look more like a takeover, and the king’s lavish generosity towards his countrymen depleted the English treasury, tensions rose both at court and around the country. 

Latent opposition to James’s policies finally found voice in Parliament, particularly during the king’s unsuccessful bid to push through the Anglo-Scottish union in 1604-7. The mood in the House of Commons was illustrated in February 1607, when Sir Christopher Pigott, the Speaker’s brother-in-law, launched into ‘invective against the Scots and the Scottish nation, using many words of scandal and obloquy’ [Journals of the House of Commons, i. 333]. In the Lords, the peers were a great deal more diplomatic, but almost equally uncooperative. Anxious not to alienate the Upper House completely, James finally compromised. In June 1606, he took the momentous step of granting an English barony to his leading Scottish favourite, James Hay, but the patent specifically excluded him from sitting in the Lords. This conciliatory gesture no doubt mollified the peers, but it did nothing to stem the Commons’ hostility towards the union, and this ambitious project was all but abandoned in the following year.

That failure seems to have hardened James’s resolve to bring his kingdoms together by other means. In 1610 the king once again found himself in dispute with Parliament, this time over money. On 23 November the Hereford MP John Hoskins delivered a coded attack on Scots at court, whom he accused of emptying the royal purse. One of the principal targets was James’ current Scottish favourite, Robert Carr, and the king’s response made his feelings clear. In March 1611, shortly after Parliament was dissolved, Carr was created Viscount Rochester in the English peerage, this time with the customary privilege of a seat in the Lords, despite fierce opposition at court. A precedent had now been set, and although James moved cautiously, five other Scots received English peerages with full rights during the next decade, including Hay, who secured a second barony in 1615. The fact that three of these men, James Hamilton, Ludovic Stuart and the latter’s brother Esmé, were the king’s closest Scottish relatives, underlined James’s determination to entrench his dynasty within the English establishment, including Parliament.

The focus now moved to the House of Commons. No one seriously questioned the king’s right to award peerages as he saw fit. However, the Lower House was empowered to define its own rules of membership, and made full use of that privilege. For MPs, there was a very simple rationale. The laws governing England and Wales should be made by full subjects of the English crown. In other words, all candidates for the Commons must either be native Englishmen or Welshmen, or they must have been naturalized if born elsewhere. There was no room for divided allegiances, as became clear in 1621.

Shortly before the elections for the third Jacobean Parliament, Sir Henry Carey, comptroller of the king’s household, was created Viscount Falkland in the Scottish peerage. Carey had twice before served in the Commons as a Member for Hertfordshire, and was again returned for the county in December 1620, his election indenture making no reference to his peerage. However, he was too well-known for this ‘oversight’ to go unnoticed, and his case was referred to the committee for privileges, and then the full House. There was no precedent for a Scots peer sitting in the Commons, but Carey had clearly stood for election as an English commoner, so was that a valid distinction? Opinions were divided, but on 7 February Sir Edward Montagu swung the debate against Carey, arguing that upholding his return would ‘open a way to all noblemen of Scotland, naturalized [in England], to sit here and thrust us out’ [Journals of the House of Commons, i. 512-13]. Carey was not formally expelled from the Commons – a gesture liable to provoke the king – but neither was he permitted to take his seat.

The turning point came in 1624. Two decades had now passed since James’s accession and his current favourite was an Englishman, the 1st duke of Buckingham. With war looming against Catholic Spain it was increasingly difficult to maintain that Protestant Scots posed a serious threat. That year a Scottish gentleman of the king’s privy chamber, Walter Steward, was elected for Monmouth Boroughs. He was already an English denizen, but had not yet been naturalized, though there was a bill going through Parliament. There can be little doubt that James was once again testing the water. Steward’s electoral patron was almost certainly a major courtier, the 4th earl of Worcester, while Steward pointedly refrained from taking his seat pending a verdict from the Commons. Members initially prevaricated over what to do. As Steward was not naturalized at the time of his election, his return was invalid, but might he be allowed to sit once his status was settled (assuming that his bill proved successful)? Sir Edward Coke, a famous lawyer, objected that the key issue was Steward’s status when elected: ‘none can sit here but a natural liegeman’ [TNA, SP14/166, f. 63v]. This time the Commons compromised. The matter was shelved until the naturalization bill completed its passage, leaving Steward in the clear to try his luck again. A fresh election was then called at Monmouth, though in the short term nothing seems to have happened. 

In January 1625, another Scottish courtier, Sir Robert Kerr, keeper of the privy purse to Prince Charles, stood successfully in a by-election at Aylesbury. Kerr was already naturalized, and therefore qualified for the Commons under the precedent established by Steward. However, before he could take his seat the final Jacobean Parliament was cut short by the king’s death. Thus another few months passed before the Scottish question was definitively settled. In the elections for the first Caroline Parliament Kerr and Steward were again returned, along with a third prominent Scot, Sir James Fullerton, who had been naturalized back in 1610. No further objections were raised, and from that point onwards, Scots with English nationality were free to serve in the Commons. The prejudice that fuelled the earlier protests had dissipated … at least for the next few years. 

PMH 

Further reading: 

Survey: II. Membership, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604-1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, 2010

Neil Cuddy, ‘The revival of the entourage: the Bedchamber of James I, 1603-1625’, The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War ed. David Starkey (1987) 

Our forthcoming volumes on the ‘House of Lords 1604-1629’ ed. Andrew Thrush include biographies of the following: James Hay, Lord Hay (later 1st earl of Carlisle); Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester (later earl of Somerset); James Hamilton, 1st earl of Cambridge and 2nd marquis of Hamilton; Ludovic Stuart, earl (later duke) of Richmond and 2nd duke of Lennox; Esmé Stuart, 1st earl of March and 3rd duke of Lennox; George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham; Edward Somerset, 4th earl of Worcester; and Charles Stuart, prince of Wales (later Charles I). 

The Gunpowder Plot is one of the great ‘what ifs’ of British history. For more than four centuries we’ve commemorated the scheme’s failure – but if it had succeeded, and the House of Lords had been blown up during the state opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, it would have been a devastating blow to England’s ruling elite. Potential casualties included the king, James I, his principal ministers and courtiers, almost the entire leadership of the Church of England, and many of the men who controlled local government. As the plotters calculated, political chaos would have ensued, opening the way for a possible Catholic rising and a dramatic change of regime. The Plot’s ambition and audacity was astonishing, and James and his advisors instinctively assumed that this attempted coup must be the brainchild of someone important who expected to benefit from it. After all, the most serious attempts to assassinate the king’s predecessor, Elizabeth I, had all involved major figures such as disaffected peers, or foreign powers like Spain.

And indeed, within hours of the Plot’s discovery, just such a high-profile suspect emerged. Even before Guy Fawkes was caught in the act in the cellars beneath the Lords, the government had established that he was working for Thomas Percy, soon to be identified as one of the Plot’s ringleaders. And Percy was a trusted servant and kinsman of Henry Percy, 3rd (or 9th) earl of Northumberland, one of England’s leading aristocrats, and a man whose profile marked him out as a possible traitor. One of the last remaining peers who could trace his noble lineage back to medieval times, Northumberland numbered among his ancestors numerous actual or suspected rebels, including his uncle, the 1st (or 7th) earl, executed for treason in 1572, and his father, the 2nd (or 8th) earl, who died a prisoner in the Tower of London. Both men had sided with the Catholic opposition to Elizabeth I. Northumberland himself was raised as a Protestant, but retained close links with the Catholic community. Convinced that his rank entitled him to a major role in government, the earl repeatedly turned down lesser positions which he considered beneath his dignity, thereby remaining on the sidelines of the Elizabethan regime. When James I came to the throne, Northumberland presented himself as a spokesman for English Catholics, but failed to secure any concessions. Briefly in favour with the new king, he was appointed a privy councillor in 1603 and put in charge of the royal bodyguard, but when no further significant promotions ensued, he once again became frustrated and began to openly criticise James. By the time of the Gunpowder Plot, Northumberland was increasingly avoiding the royal court, and devoting his time to scholarly pursuits, particularly science, his keen interest in this field earning him the nickname of the ‘wizard earl’.

Given this background, it was hardly surprising that, as the government investigation into the Plot got underway, Northumberland was quickly detained and questioned. His interrogators found him evasive, and the picture that gradually emerged looked highly suspicious. Thomas Percy had visited him on 4 November, and engaged in a lengthy private conversation. The earl insisted that this was about the management of his estates, but he couldn’t prove it, since Percy himself was killed before he could be arrested. Then it was discovered that Northumberland had appointed Percy one of the king’s bodyguards without administering the obligatory oath of loyalty, a highly dubious action given that Percy was a fanatical Catholic. And it got worse. Another of the earl’s servants, Dudley Carleton, had negotiated the lease of the building close to the House of Lords which the plotters used to gain access to the all-important cellars. Meanwhile, the scientist Thomas Harriot, one of Northumberland’s clients, was found to have cast the king’s horoscope, a standard method of ascertaining when he might die. Could this all possibly be coincidental, or did the earl know rather more than he was prepared to admit?

At length the government reluctantly concluded that Northumberland was innocent. The turning-point was probably the testimony of the remaining plotters that Percy had in fact kept the earl in the dark about his intentions. He’d considered warning Northumberland to avoid Parliament on 5 November, but no one knew whether he’d actually done so. On balance it seemed that he hadn’t. The main purpose of Percy’s visit was not to alert the earl, but rather to establish whether he’d picked up any rumours of the Plot at court, since the conspirators knew that word of their plans was starting to leak out.

This revelation that Percy regarded his employer as expendable may well have saved Northumberland’s life. On that basis, he could scarcely be the secret mastermind the government had imagined, and the case against him collapsed. However, James I was now in a quandary. He’d kept the earl locked up for months, and was very reluctant to admit that this treatment was unjustified. Accordingly, in June 1606 Northumberland was put on trial and convicted of contempt, the grounds being Percy’s irregular appointment as a royal bodyguard, and the earl’s half-hearted efforts to track Percy down when the plotters were on the run. Despite never being formally charged with complicity, he was fined £30,000, dismissed from all his offices, and sentenced to life imprisonment, a punishment which most contemporaries regarded as vindictive. The fine was eventually reduced to £11,000, but Northumberland remained a resident of the Tower of London until 1621, when James finally released him as part of a wider amnesty for political prisoners. The earl spent the rest of his life in largely peaceful retirement, his reputation at last repaired – not the evil genius behind the Gunpowder Plot, but rather its innocent victim.

PMH

Further reading:

Mark Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot (1991)

J. W. Shirley, Thomas Harriot (1983)

Biographies of Henry Percy, 3rd (or 9th) earl of Northumberland and Dudley Carleton, Viscount Dorchester will appear in our forthcoming volumes on The House of Lords 1604-1629 ed. Andrew Thrush.

George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, is probably best known today for his decade-long liaison with James I. However, in historical terms he is equally notable for being the principal court favourite of two successive monarchs, James and his son Charles I, an unparalleled feat in Europe during that era. When one considers the very different nature of his relationships with the two kings, Buckingham’s achievement seems all the more remarkable. He initially rose to prominence because the homosexual James found him physically and emotionally appealing, and this remained the vital consideration which sustained their affair. Charles, in marked contrast to his father, shared the conventional homophobic prejudices of his time, disapproved of James’s gay dalliances, and at first took an intense dislike to Buckingham. The role that the duke eventually assumed with him was that of confidante, indispensable adviser, and chief minister. The emotionally reserved Charles developed a deep and unshakeable affection for the duke, but their friendship was firmly platonic in character. The fact that Buckingham was able to effect this transition so successfully raises some interesting questions about the true nature of his relationship with James.

At the Jacobean court, rival factions openly sought influence with the king by promoting handsome young men whom they hoped would gain his favour. Buckingham himself began his court career as the client of George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury and William Herbert, 3rd earl of Pembroke, who exploited his charms to displace the previous royal favourite, Robert Carr, earl of Somerset. The young Villiers, who had reportedly come to court in search of an advantageous marriage, took to his new role with aplomb. According to Godfrey Goodman, later bishop of Gloucester, ‘he was the handsomest bodied man in England; his limbs so well compacted, and his conversation so pleasing, and of so sweet a disposition’ (G. Goodman, Court of King James the First, i. 225-6). Another observer, Sir Simonds D’Ewes, found him ‘full of delicacy and handsome features; yea, his hands and face seemed to me, especially, effeminate and curious’ (J.O. Halliwell (ed.), Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, i. 166-7).

We can get a sense of these characteristics from a portrait painted to mark his creation as a knight of the Garter in 1616, which shows Buckingham clean-shaven, and with his long, elegant legs prominently displayed. Nine years later, however, following Charles’ accession as king, the duke was keen to promote a rather different image, as seen in this equestrian portrait by Rubens. Here a bearded Buckingham consciously projects an air of machismo and strength, and this was how he chose to present himself for the rest of his career.

What might this transformation tell us about his relationship with James? For seven or eight years it suited Buckingham to cultivate a more effete persona. The king remained completely enamoured with him, and indeed became emotionally dependent on him. Judging from their surviving correspondence, Buckingham developed considerable fondness for his royal lover. But there was one fundamental problem. This was no modern-style gay partnership. James was in a sense the ultimate 17th-century sugar daddy, showering his lover with wealth, titles and influence. Buckingham, who came from minor gentry stock, rose to the summit of society, dukedoms at this time normally being reserved for members of the royal family. He achieved a degree of informal intimacy with the king that was denied to other courtiers. Nevertheless, he was never allowed to forget that James controlled their relationship. The king liked to boast of Buckingham as his finest creation, which by implication meant that he could unmake him again. The duke’s lavish thanks for all the benefits that he received reflected his awareness that he had a lot to lose if circumstances changed, and he was painfully aware that his rivals at court sought his downfall by tempting James with other pretty young men. Over time Buckingham assumed the role of a surrogate son, and James took to signing his letters as ‘thy dear dad’. But the duke knew his place, and invariably described himself in reply as ‘your Majesty’s most humble slave and dog’ (D.M. Bergeron, King James & Letters of Homoerotic Desire, 177, 182). There was surely an element of humour in that moniker, but it also reflected the fundamental imbalance in their relationship, and Buckingham’s perennial insecurity.

The duke’s success in finally winning over Charles offered him a way out of that situation. Exactly how the two men became such close friends has never been fully explained, but by 1623 Charles and James were effectively competing for Buckingham’s attention. Charles gained the upper hand that year when he travelled to Spain in a misguided bid to finalise his marriage to a Spanish princess, and the duke went with him. Once there, Buckingham adopted a flamboyantly heterosexual image, and acquired a reputation for womanizing. By the end of that trip, he and the prince were virtually inseparable, the proof coming a few months after their return to England. Charles, smarting from his treatment in Madrid, had abandoned any thought of a closer alliance with Spain, and was now intent on war. James, who had spent his entire reign promoting Anglo-Spanish peace, naturally opposed this strategy. Buckingham, while as solicitous as ever of his royal master’s wellbeing, sided with Charles. The now ailing king complained loudly about his favourite’s behaviour, but, as Buckingham had no doubt calculated, could not bring himself to dismiss him. These conflicts further enhanced the duke’s standing with Charles, and when the latter finally became king in March 1625 it was generally acknowledged that, in political and social terms, Buckingham’s position was now stronger than ever. Indeed, it was only an assassin’s knife that finally ended his dominance three years later.

Assessing same-sex love and desire in the early modern period is fraught with difficulty, and Buckingham’s case is no exception. His ability to switch between two radically contrasting modes of behaviour may seem strange to a modern eye, but such sexual fluidity was arguably less exceptional at the time. The undeniable warmth of his correspondence with James indicates a fair degree of genuine mutual affection, and indeed it’s hard to see how the duke could have sustained his role as royal favourite for so long without this. Nevertheless, when he had to choose, Buckingham valued his long-term security above loyalty to James, and this suggests that for him, ultimately, their relationship was based not on love but on the pursuit of power and wealth.

PMH

Further reading:

R. Lockyer, Buckingham (1981)

M.B. Young, King James and the History of Homosexuality (2016)

Biographies of Buckingham, Prince Charles, Archbishop Abbot, the earls of Pembroke and Somerset and Bishop Goodman will appear in the History of Parliament’s forthcoming volumes on the House of Lords 1604-29. A biography of Sir Simonds D’Ewes is being prepared for the volumes on the House of Commons 1640-60.

‘James I slobbered at the mouth and had favourites; he was thus a Bad King.’ This line from Sellar and Yeatman’s classic spoof history, 1066 And All That probably remains many people’s abiding impression of England’s first Stuart monarch. Both elements of the description are accurate, as it happens. The dribbling was a side-effect of James’s abnormally large tongue. However, the second issue requires more explanation. There was nothing particularly unusual about a 17th-century king having favourites. This was a standard mechanism by which trusted royal servants were promoted and rewarded. It allowed monarchs to look beyond the country’s traditional rulers, the hereditary nobility, and inject much-needed fresh blood into their governments. When the system worked well, it generated few complaints. James’s predecessor, Elizabeth I, had a series of favourites during her long reign, and with the exception of the 2nd earl of Essex, whose career ended messily on the scaffold, she proved adept at managing them. The queen’s favour could be withdrawn at any time if an individual offended her, and this uncertainty ensured that they never entirely forgot their dependence on her. And although Elizabeth’s principal favourites exerted considerable influence, and constructed substantial client networks, it was recognized in the country at large that the queen retained ultimate power.

Under James, this pattern changed, and the term ‘favourite’ took on new connotations. The king continued to promote particular courtiers and ministers in the usual fashion, but within this select group a few men were chosen specifically because James found them physically attractive. Notwithstanding a 30-year marriage which featured ten pregnancies, the king was homosexual. In an age when the act of sodomy was a capital offence, and people took seriously the bible’s strictures against ‘unnatural acts’ between men, this was bound to be controversial, though again context is important here. James had been king of Scotland for over three decades when he was nominated as the childless Elizabeth’s successor in 1603, and the queen’s leading ministers were almost certainly aware of his preferences, which had already caused disquiet north of the border. However, any anxieties over this issue were outweighed by the fact that he had the strongest hereditary claim to the throne, was a staunch Protestant, and had two healthy sons. In short, James was the best available guarantor of political and religious stability in England, and this trumped any other considerations.

Similarly, if his new subjects wanted to complain about him, there was no shortage of targets. James was physically unprepossessing, cowardly, and ruinously extravagant. He neglected government business in order to go hunting, drank far too much, and (probably the worst sin from an English perspective) was unmistakeably Scottish, with a heavy accent that most of his listeners struggled to understand.  In effect, he would have been unpopular regardless of his sexual orientation, so for most people it was probably a cause for concern – but not necessarily the most important one. In any case, there was absolutely nothing they could do about it. As king, James was legally above criticism of any kind, which was classed as sedition and firmly suppressed. And in that highly privileged position, he behaved as he saw fit. The more lurid stories about his sexuality all date from long after his death, when the monarchy itself was under attack, and they should accordingly be treated with caution. Nevertheless, he seems to have been fairly uninhibited in his displays of affection towards any young man who caught his eye, and as word of this behaviour spread, so did private speculation about how far these relationships went.

Even so, it would be completely inaccurate to suggest a universal mood of moral outrage. The political system of the day dictated that the monarch was the ultimate source of all power and influence, so James could not simply be avoided by those who found him distasteful. Rather, his courtiers learnt to exploit his weaknesses for their own ends. Attractive young men thought likely to appeal to the king were recruited by senior politicians, and paraded around court, in the hope that they would become a means of manipulating James. This was how the most notorious favourite of all, George Villiers, began his career, advised and bankrolled by the 3rd earl of Pembroke and the then archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot. The earl and the prelate were aiming to bring down the king’s existing favourite, Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, who was closely allied to a rival court faction. However, such tactics could backfire. Carr was indeed superseded by Villiers, but once the latter was secure in James’s affections, he rejected the influence of his sometime mentors, and pursued his own agenda. The resultant feud between Villiers and Pembroke disrupted English politics for the next decade.

James was always exceptionally generous towards his favourites, showering them with money, lands and titles. But in the case of Villiers, with whom he became totally and permanently besotted, the king went further than ever before, eventually creating him duke of Buckingham. Dukedoms were normally reserved for members of the royal family, so the elevation of Villiers, the younger son of an obscure squire, caused particular outrage. More disturbing, however, was the emotional hold that Villiers developed over the king. By the final years of his reign, an ailing James was so desperate to retain his favourite’s affections that he became almost incapable of opposing Villiers’ wishes. The duke nominated and destroyed ministers, and endlessly interfered in politics to protect his own interests. This above all was what generated anger at court and around the country. In the early 17th century  monarchs’ sexual peccadillos were to some extent excusable, so long as they continued to provide strong leadership. But James’s passion for Villiers, heartfelt as it undoubtedly was, restricted the exercise of his royal authority, and diminished his credibility as head of state. And in the eyes of his contemporaries, that made him a Bad King.

PMH

Further reading:

• Also see the sister piece to this blog by Paul M. Hunneyball, James I and the duke of Buckingham: Love, Power and Betrayal
• Michael B. Young, King James and the History of Homosexuality (Fonthill Media, 2nd edn., 2016)
• David M. Bergeron, King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire (University of Iowa Press, 1999)

The History of Parliament’s project the House of Lords 1604-29, which sheds further light on these issues, is scheduled for publication next year.

394 years ago today, what was to be the final Parliament of King James I opened at Westminster. Unfortunately, bad weather meant that around half of the members hadn’t yet arrived and so the assembly was adjourned the same day. The 1624 Parliament eventually sat for some 80 days, however, and the History of Parliament is proud to announce today, on the anniversary of its opening, the completion of its project to provide free online access to the Commons’ debates of the entire Parliament. Hosted by British History Online, Proceedings in Parliament 1624: The House of Commons consists of around 800,000 words of political debate, religious argument, legal wrangling and legislative action from the so-called ‘Happy Parliament’.

Set against the European backdrop of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), and situated between the earlier, often rumbustious assemblies of James and the even more turbulent ones of Charles I that followed it, the Parliament is perhaps most notable for two things. The first is the unsuccessful attempt by Charles (as Prince of Wales) and the Duke of Buckingham to promote a war against Spain following Charles’ humiliation by the Spanish in his attempts to woe the Spanish Infanta. The second is that the Parliament saw an incredible seventy-three acts reach the statute book, the most in a single session since the reign of Henry VIII and almost the first notable legislation passed since 1610.

The proceedings themselves bring together for the first time some twenty manuscript sources that are scattered throughout England and America, the vast majority of which have never before been published. While some are fair hand copies of notes, others are certainly more difficult to read in their original form. Both Edward Nicholas and Sir Nathaniel Rich employed ‘speed writing’ techniques – a combination of shorthand symbols, abbreviations and longhand – the Star Chamber lawyer John Hawarde wrote in the Law French of the court system, while the appalling handwriting of John Lowther is a challenge for even experts of the period. Although the diary of the Staffordshire barrister Richard Dyott is in an extremely clear hand, large parts of it are now illegible even under UV light. It was placed in a safe in London during World War II, which did an excellent job of protecting it from the bombs of the Luftwaffe, but was rather less successful in preventing it from becoming seriously water-damaged.

Work on an edition of the proceedings of the 1624 Parliament actually began in America almost a century ago, under the guidance of the great parliamentary historian Wallace Notestein. Further research was undertaken in the US by Robert Ruigh and Mark Kennedy, and the project was subsequently taken over by the Yale Center for Parliamentary History. The 1624 materials were eventually transferred to the History of Parliament, which began working on them in 2012, generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the Friends of the Yale Center for Parliamentary History and the Mercers’ Company of the City of London. On this day in 2015, the first in a progressive release of the proceedings appeared online, which culminates today in the release of the proceedings for the final month of the Parliament.

The publication of Proceedings in Parliament 1624: The House of Commons fills a considerable hole in early modern parliamentary history, as it means that a composite edition of materials on all of the Tudor and early Stuart Parliaments is available for the first time. But used in tandem with the articles already published online from the History’s volumes on The House of Commons, 1604-29 and those forthcoming on The House of Lords, 1604-29, it also offers the prospect of a connected set of electronic resources which will enable scholars to dig more deeply and more easily than ever before into the vexed political world of the early modern Stuarts.

PRSB