Dr Stephen Roberts

Emeritus Director and Editor, House of Commons 1640-1660

sroberts@histparl.ac.uk

Current Research/Role

I was between 2018 and the end of 2020 Director of the History, and edited the House of Commons 1640-1660 project for 25 years. Previously I worked as a teacher and a manager in continuing education. I have published a range of volumes, essays and articles on the history of England and Wales in the seventeenth century, focusing mainly on the civil wars and interregnum.  My current interests include the private diaries of the Long Parliament, particularly the diaries of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, and the sales of confiscated properties during the English republic. 

Research Interests

My wider historical interests include the history of Wales, particularly in its regional aspects; the history of the English midlands and the south-west. I am currently president of the Devon and Cornwall Record Society, a vice-president of the Cromwell Association, and am active in the governance of the Dugdale Society, the Worcestershire Historical Society and the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion. I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Learned Society of Wales.

Publications

Books

The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1640-1660 (9 vols. Woodbridge:, Boydell & Brewer, 2023) [edited]

The Diary and Papers of Henry Townshend, 1640-1663 (Worcester: Worcestershire Historical Soceity, 2015) [co-edited with S. Porter and I. Roy] 

Docquets of Letters Patent of Lord Keeper Coventry, 1625-1640 (4 vols., List and Index Society, Special Series, 2004) [Co-edited with J. Broadway and R.P Cust]

Politics and People in Revolutionary England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986) [co-edited with C. Jones, M. Newitt]

Recovery and Restoration in an English County: Devon Local Administration 1646-1670 (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1985)

Chapters in Books

‘”One of the Least Things in Religion”: The Welsh Experience of Church Polity, 1640-1660’, in H. Powell and E. Vernon (eds.), Church Polity in the British Atlantic World, c. 1636-1689 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp.60-79  

‘Cardiganshire and the State, 1540-1689’, in G. H. Jenkins, R. Suggett and E. M. White (eds.), Cardiganshire County History, Vol. II (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019), pp. 429-51

‘State and Society in the English Revolution’, in M. Braddick (ed.), The Oxford Handbook to the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp.294-311.

‘The Sermon in Early Modern Wales: Context and Content’, in H. Adlington, P. McCullogh and E. Rhatigan (eds.),  The Oxford Handbook to the Early Modern Sermon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp.303-25

‘The Reputation and Authority of the Speaker and the Speakership of the House of Commons, 1640-60’, in P. Seaward (ed.), Speakers and the Speakership (Wiley-Blackwell, Parliamentary History Series, 2010), pp. 75-89

‘”Ordering and Methodizing”: William Dugdale in Restoration England’ in C. Dyer, C. Richardson (eds.), William Dugdale, Historian, 1605-86: his Life, his Writings and his County (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2009), pp.66-88

‘Monmouthshire Politics, 1558-1642′ in M. Gray and P. Morgan (eds.), Gwent County History Vol. III: Gwent c. 1530-1780 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009), pp.35-61

‘One that would sit well at the mark’: the early parliamentary career of Oliver Cromwell, 1640-42’, in P. Little (ed.), Oliver Cromwell: New Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008), pp.38-63

‘Cromwellian towns in the Severn basin: a contribution to cis-Atlantic history?’ in P. Little (ed.), The Cromwellian Protectorate (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007), pp.165-87

Journal Articles

‘The Uses of Scribal Publication in the Making of a Royalist: Henry Townshend of Worcestershire, his “diary” and Parliament’, Midland History lxi (2016), pp.152-67

 ‘Patronage, Office and Family in Early Modern Wales: the Carnes of Nash Manor and Ewenni in the Seventeenth Century’, Welsh History Review 23:2 (2006), pp.25-49

‘Propagating the Gospel in Wales: the making of the 1650 Act’, Transitions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion ix (2004), pp.53-71

‘The 1656 Election, Polling and Public Opinion: A Warwickshire Case Study’, Parliamentary History 23:3 (2004), pp.57-74‘How the West Was Won: Religion, Politics and the Military in South Wales, 1642-9’, Welsh History Review 21:4 (2003), pp.646-74

Online Publications

The Cromwell Association Online Directory of Parliamentarian Army Officers (2017), born-digital resource listing over 4,000 parliamentarian army officers of the first English civil war (1642-6), online at British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/cromwell-army-officers [editor]

Specialisms:  Parliamentary History; Early Modern History; Local and Regional History; Welsh History; British Civil Wars 1642-51; the English Commonwealth and Protectorate 1649-1660