The Irish parliament was both the scene of frequent political battles and an important administrative and legal element of the state machinery of early modern Ireland. This institutional study looks at how parliament dispatched its business on a day-to-day basis. It takes in major areas of responsibility such as creating law, delivering justice, conversing with the executive and administering parliamentary privilege. Its ultimate aim is to present the Irish parliament as one of many such representative assemblies emerging from the feudal state and into the modern world, with a changing set of responsibilities that would inevitably transform the institution and how it saw both itself and the other political assemblies of the day.
Presents the records of proceedings in the House of Commons (5 volumes) and the House of Lords (3 volumes) beginning in November 1640. This volume contains the debates that lead to the beginning of the impeachment trial of the Earl of Strafford for High Treason.
The volumes of Proceedings in the Opening Session of the Long Parliament present the records of proceedings in the House of Commons [5 volumes] and the House of Lords [3 volumes] beginning in November 1640. Volume 1 of theproceedings in the House of Commons is the first of two volumes leading up to the beginning of the impeachment trial of the Earl of Strafford for High Treason. For those interested in the causes of the breakdown that led to civil war and revolution in mid-seventeenth-century England, the volumes of Proceedings in the Opening Session of the Long Parliament are a good place to begin. The debates in this session focus on the accumulated problems -- political, social, economic, and religious -- that were the legacy of Charles I's years of personal rule. During the almost seven months between the dissolution of the Short Parliament in April 1640 and the first session of what came to be called the Long Parliament in November 1640, the King, his advisors, and army commanders were absorbed with the financial and military problems of the Scottisharmy camped in the north of England. In the Irish parliament in Dublin, reaction against the King's close friend the Earl of Strafford, the Deputy Lieutenant of Ireland, was beginning to crystalize. Throughout the kingdom, religious unrest continued. All of these elements came to play in the Long Parliament. Volume 1 of the House of Commons debate covers the opening session from 3 November through 19 December 1640. This volume plus Volume 2 [December 21,1640 through March 20, 1641] provide the debates leading up to the beginning of the impeachment trial of the Earl of Strafford for High Treason.
This authoritative reevaluation of Charles' personal rule yields new insights into his character, reign, politics, religion, foreign policy and finance. In doing so, the book offers a vivid new perspective on the origins of the English Civil War.
Examines of the rise of constitutionalism from the "democratic strands" in the works of Aristotle and Cicero through the transitional moment between the medieval and the modern eras.
