House of Lords, 1640-1660

The House of Lords 1640-1660 project was established in 2022 to research and write the biographies of the 250 or so lay peers and bishops eligible to sit in the Upper House in the period 1640 to 1649. This multi-authored project will build on the 9 volumes that the History of Parliament published in 2023 on the House of Commons in the 1640s and 1650s.

The Lords sat more or less continuously from 1640 until they were abolished by the Commons in 1649. During this period of civil war across the three Stuart kingdoms, the House’s business expanded considerably, becoming more politically charged and controversial as the decade progressed. There was a marked growth in the Lords’ work as a court of redress for petitioners from all sections of society, and peers featured prominently in the factions that took centre-stage at Westminster and that constituted England’s first ever national political parties. As royal counsellors and party politicians they helped master-mind policy and reform by both king and Parliament, and they were intimately involved in trying to reach a settlement within Charles I’s war-torn realm. Perhaps most striking of all was their participation in the highly authoritarian war-state that Parliament constructed to defeat the king, provoking a powerful reaction among radicals against the nobility and its constitutional role. 

Charting the shifting nature and perceptions of aristocratic power during the civil-war era is just one of the many challenges facing the project. Another key issue it will have to address is the extent to which party-political strife and new ideological commitments to king and ‘commonwealth’ overrode peers’ loyalty to the Lords and even to the nobility itself. Answering these and related questions will take the new section to the heart of popular as well as parliamentary politics in the English Revolution.