A Summer 2003 NEH Institute.
Directed by David Cressy
and Lori Anne Ferrell.






  Parliament


Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677).
Civitatis Westmonasteriensis Pars, 1647.

The Duke of Buckingham and Parliament
• Parliament, the People and Physical Space in the 1641-1642 Petitioning Campaigns
Succession in Elizabethan Parliamentary Culture
Women and Parliament in Seventeenth-Century England: The Examples of Lady Eleanor Davies and the Leveller Petitioners
Full-text of A Bloody Masacre Plotted by the Papists, 1641.
Full-text of Lady Eleanor Davies's Samsons Fall (1624).
Full-text transcription of John Hales's A Declaratyon of the Successyon of the Crowne Imperyall of England, 1563. Includes study questions.
Full-text of An Acte whereby certayne offences be made treason, 1571. Includes study questions.
    Parliament, the People and Physical Space in the 1641 - 1642 Petitioning Campaigns

In 1641, relations between Charles I and his Parliament were deeply strained over matters of religion, royal councilors, and finance. The outbreak of the Irish Rebellion in October 1641 significantly worsened these tensions. Concerns about the intentions of Charles I and the men and women who surrounded him mixed with vivid accounts of barbarous atrocities perpetrated against English Protestants in Ireland, intensifying fear and anxiety throughout England.

In Westminster at this time, the permeable boundary between Parliament and the outside world became a political problem. Petitioning efforts from the wider populace of London and the counties mobilized large numbers of local inhabitants. Due to the accessibility and location of Parliament, the crowd could exert significant pressure on members, raising significant questions about the autonomy of the institution. At certain key moments, large crowds, numbering in the thousands, assembled at Westminster, disrupted business, and were accused by critics of physically intimidating some Members. To contemporaries as well as modern historians, one of the central questions concerning the months leading up to the outbreak of the civil war is the relationship between Parliamentary activism and this popular political activism.

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The Citizens of London's Humble Petition to the Right Honourable the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses of the Commons House in Parliament (1641) is an example of the kind of petition presented to Parliament during the anxious days of late 1641 and early 1642. The Londoners' petition was the first of many submitted to Parliament as part of a sustained campaign. This was a remarkable moment in which the English people—as petitions from all over the kingdom claimed—attempted to encourage and advise Parliament.

The Citizens of London's Petition was presented on 11 December, and claimed to speak on behalf of "twenty-thousand" high-status Londoners. The proximity of Parliament's meeting spaces to the City of London and the relative openness of the Commons' meeting chamber was an important part of the formal presentation of the petition. According to the printed version of the petition, four hundred London citizens formed a procession into Westminster and one hundred were admitted into the House of Commons to present the document, where they conducted themselves in an orderly fashion and earned the thanks of the House. The petition itself outlined a number of anxieties about the severity of the Catholic-led rebellion in Ireland, the possibility of a popish rising in England, and the influence wielded by "wicked counselors" at Charles I's court. It also explicitly requested that Parliament respond to these grievances by taking steps to put the kingdom in a defensive military posture, doing more to uncover popish plots, and abolishing the privilege of "Popish Lords and Bishops voting in the house of Peeres" (1).

December 1641 was a month of political tension, due in part to the growing power of the crowd. In previous months, massive crowds of angry Londoners had marched on Westminster to protest delays in the prosecution of the notorious "evil counselor" Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford, and had succeeded in intimidating some members of the House of Lords. The presentation of the December petition saw similar popular activism, and by the end of the month, crowds assembled almost daily outside of Parliament.

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As the tract entitled A Bloody Masacre [sic] Plotted by the Papists illustrates, this kind of popular participation could turn violent. The tract describes the confrontations of 24 December 1641, when blood was shed in Westminster Hall. In many respects, the crowd expressed the same concerns as the 11 December petitioners, albeit in a dramatically different manner. According to the tract, the crowd gathered out of anxieties derived from vague rumors of a plot that "there would be bloody designes wrought in this kingdome of England by the Papists" (2-3). Like the 11 December petitioners, the ringleader pledged to "spend my dearest and best blood in defense of the House of Commons," (5) and the apprentices in the crowd physically intimidated the Archbishop of York in order to prevent him from taking his seat in the House of Lords. Eventually the apprentices came to blows with soldiers under command of Colonel Thomas Lunsford, the recently appointed and roundly-despised lieutenant of the Tower of London. Inside Westminster Hall, only a few yards from the assembled members of the Houses of Parliament, chaos and violence erupted.

A Bloody Masacre Plotted by the Papists casts the inhabitants of London and Westminster as heroes for their vigilance against popish plots and their successful attack on Colonel Lunsford. Other responses to the events of 24 December, however, demonstrate that some members of Parliament were anxious about the impact that protesters outside of the House would have on Parliamentary autonomy. The Commons Journal for 27 December 1641 reported on a communication from the House of Lords, which asked the Commons "to join with them in a Declaration to be printed and published, of their Dislike of the Assembling of the People in such Companies and Disorders about the Houses of Parliament; and to join with them in a Petition to his Majesty, that the Houses of Parliament may have a Guard" (358-9). Likewise, a Member of Parliament, Philip Smith, complained on 29 December of "the riotous, and tumultuous Assembly of vaine and idle persons, who presume to begirt our House, not only in an irregular manner to preferre their Petitions, but with open clamour would prescribe us what lawes to inact, and what not; and what persons to prosecute, and who not." Smith's proposals to prevent future disorders were published. Smith hoped that the House would warn the people of London and Westminster to desist from assembling outside the Commons, and failing that, post a guard with instructions: "to shoot at them if they obstinately refuse to bee perswaded; it will bee the best and speediest means to repell them."

These responses to the petitions and assemblies raise important questions about who exactly wielded political power on the eve of the English Civil War. On the one hand, some Parliamentary initiatives from late 1641 and 1642—for example the Protestation Oath and appeals for relief collections on behalf of Irish Protestants—encouraged the English people to involve themselves in national politics and to assist in protecting the nation from popish plotting. On the other hand, the riots of late December were clearly disruptive, suggesting that the proximity of Parliament's meeting rooms to London and Westminster were increasingly problematic, and revealing that some members felt intimidated and endangered by the tumults. Charles I, for his part, was more decisive in his views of these developments, citing the dangerous crowds of London protesters as one of his main justifications for retiring from the metropolis in January 1642.

Joseph Cope
State University of New York, Geneseo College


Full-text of The Citizens of London's Humble Petition to the Right Honourable the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses of the Commons House in Parliament, 1641.

Full-text of A Bloody Masacre Plotted by the Papists, 1641.


Suggestions for further reading:

Clifton, Robin. "The Popular Fear of Catholics during the English Revolution." Past and Present 52 (1971): 23-55.

Cust, Richard. "News and Politics in Early Seventeenth Century England." Past and Present 112 (1986): 60-90.

Fletcher, Anthony. The Outbreak of the English Civil War. London: E. Arnold, 1981.

Freist, Dagmar. Governed by Opinion: Politics, Religion and the Dynamics of Communication in Stuart London, 1637-1645. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.

Kyle, Chris R., and Jason Peacey. "'Under cover of so much coming and going': Public Access to Parliament and the Political Process in Early Modern England." In Parliament at Work, eds. Chris Kyle and Jason Peacey, pp.1-23. Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2002.

Kyle, Chris R. "Parliament and the Palace of Westminster: An Exploration of Public Space in the Early Seventeenth Century." In Parliamentary History 21 (2002): 85-98.

Lindley, Keith. "The Impact of the 1641 Rebellion upon England and Wales, 1641-5." Irish Historical Studies 18 (1972-3): 143-76.

Manning, Brian. The English People and the English Revolution, 1640-1649. London: Heinemann, 1976.

Pearl, Valerie. London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution: City Government and National Politics, 1625-43. [London]: Oxford University Press 1961.

Walter, John. Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

© 2004 Folger Institute