THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN 1629.*
WE think of Minneapolis as a centre of the wheat trade, but historians are coming to regard it as the centre of historical studies of the Stuart period. Professor Notestein and Professor Frances Reif have just produced a solid and valuable edition • Commons Debates for 1629: Critically Edited, and An Introduction dealing with Parliamentary Sources for the Early Stuart.. Edited by Wallace Notestcin bud Frances Helen Rolf. Idluneapolls: University of Minnesota. [4 dollars.]
of the debates in the House of Commons in 1629, which con- tinues the good work done four years ago by Professor Relf in her account of the debates leading up to the Petition of Right in 1028. Further, the authors promise critical editions of the debates of the sessions of 1626 and 1628, and of the opening debates of the Long Parliament, in an annotated edition of D'Ewes's well-known diary. Nothing could be more welcome, for the defects of our early Parliamentary History and Commons Journals are painfully obvious to anyone who has looked at them. Moreover, it is good to see American historians, who are much more generously endowed by their universities than our scholars are, and who can print the results of their researches, working away at so vital a period of that long history which is the common inheritance of the English-speaking peoples. The conflicts between the Stuart Kings and Parliament are neither less nor more important to us than to the people of Minnesota, and 'deserve the most patient study there as well as here. The first requisite for that study is as full and accurate a report of the Parliamentary debates as can be put together from official and unofficial accounts, diaries and letters. Professor Relf supplied this in part for the Petition of Right controversy, and now Professor Notestein and Professor Relf, working together, have reconstructed the report for 1629 from a tangled mass of materials, printed and imprinted. It must have been a most laborious task, but it was well worth doing. The proceedings of the brief but critical session in which Charles the First lost patience with the Commons and decided to rule without Parlia- ment are now at least intelligible, though we should like to have fuller accounts of the speeches if they were extant.
The editors show that the Commons Journals for 1629 are not the finished record, which is lost, but merely the hurried and careless jottings of the Clerk. The TruiRelation, printed in 1641 to assist the leaders of the Long Parliament in their struggle with the King, is the basis of the new report of the session of 1629. It proves to be a compilation from at least two series of news- letters, into which tolerably full reports of particular speeches have been inserted. Various other compilations by different hands exist in manuscript. The editors point out that some members, anxious to gain public support, circulated their speeches, while the professional news-writers--the precursors of the modem Press Gallery—sent written accounts of the debates to their clients all over the country. The Clerk of the House was sometimes induced to supply certified copies of speeches or arguments, though, strictly speaking, the proceedings of the House were private, as they continued to be, in theory, till the reign of George the Third. After the session of 1821 the Clerk was arrested, possibly because he favoured the Opposition by divulging documents. Early in 1641 the Commons debated the question whether St. John's statement of the case against Ship Money should be published. But it may be assumed that the news-writers were the main source of the information for which the public was beginning to clamour. Written reports of separate speeches were, it seems, circulated, through the post, in considerable numbers. The editors quote a manuscript account, noted in a set of Parliamentary reports of 1628, giving the prices. paid for the reports of the separate speeches included in the collection. After the Long Parliament met, the nevi-writers took courage and printed their reports, whether accurate or not, somewhat to the annoyance of the Commons. In one case, it is recorded that 4,500 copies of a speech were sold by the London stationers. The news-letters were more carefully written and more trustworthy, though they gave but an abstract of the debates. But there is no reason to suppose, according to the editors, that the officials of the House had anything to do with these unofficial reports, which were prepared by scriveners, probably as early as the reign of Elizabeth. The news-letters were the true forerunners of the modern newspaper, and for the history of journalism this book is of great importance.
Apart from the elaborated text of the True Relation, the accepted report of the session of 1629, the editors print also the notes made by Sir Edward Nicholas, the diary kept by Sir Richard Grosvenor and several letters by Francis Nethersole. We must not discuss the Constitutional issues involved—whether, for example, the Commons were right in holding that tonnage and poundage were included in the taxes that could not, under the Petition of Right, be levied without Parliamentary sanction— but we may draw attention to the editors' significant comment :— " The many precedents of which Coke, Cotton and the Parlia- mentary lawyers and antiquaries made elaborate use must be coked up and evaluated. How far were those men right in their struggle with the King ? Were they reclaiming ground that had been lost or pushing forward to mew ground ? Was the Lancastrian period that glorious epoch of Parliamentary rule that we have supposed Had the Constitution been won by 1485 I We suspect that such a study will prove that Coke, Eliot and Digges, Pym, St. John, Whitelocke and the rest were really driving Parliament forward to new positions, that they were overvaluing much of Lancastrian precedent, honestly enough, no doubt."
Some such conclusions are forcing themselves upon the minds of English students of this fascinating period, and are strengthened, on the whole, by the fuller report of the debates of 1629, for which we have now to thank Professor Notestein and Professor Reif.
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