Bishops and the English Parliament 1558-1642

The presence and activities of bishops in the English Parliament was the subject of major controversy in the century following the Elizabethan settlement, culminating in the removal of bishops from the House of Lords by statute in 1642. While early modern bishops' pastoral roles and ecclesiastical jurisdiction has received more recent attention from historians, the nature of (and disputes over) their political and parliamentary role remains relatively neglected (outside studies of individual parliaments). This PhD project is intended to redress this balance by providing the first sustained study of bishops' presence and activities in Parliament, and the disputes over them, between the Elizabethan settlement and their ejection in 1642. The project will study a range of bishops' parliamentary activities - in committees, debates, and the formulation of legislation - analysing how they blocked, revised and initiated bills on religious and other matters, and how in some cases they acted through surrogates in the Commons to use Parliament as a political forum to lobby for their preferred policies. The student will also be encouraged to look to develop the project in ways that build upon their own specific interests. One possibility might be to engage with contemporary theoretical disputes regarding bishops' secular powers which had major constitutional implications, and to analyse how far these related to the precise activities that bishops pursued in Parliament, and how far these phenomena changed over time.
It is expected that the student will analyse a wide range of surviving materials when working on this project. Guidance in locating and analysing this material will be provided by the supervisory team, but also by the History of Parliament (HoP), whose collaboration is an indispensable feature of this project. The student will have a unique opportunity to develop their research knowledge and skills while working and consulting with the foremost experts on Elizabethan and early Stuart parliaments. They will have access not just to this unrivalled expertise, but will also be able to make use of the finding aids, papers, xeroxes and diary transcripts accumulated by HoP during their work on this period, and the shelf collection available at the HoP's offices. The student will work closely with the new HoP project covering The Lords, 1558-1603, providing direct input by covering the parliamentary activities of bishops as well as assisting in the creation of biographies of episcopal members and also ecclesiastical material for the introductory survey and online database of legislation. They will also assist in ongoing work on the creation of a database of parliamentary bills 1558-1662, and may assist with the set-up of potential projects to succeed another HoP project, The Commons 1640-1660, which will be completed shortly.

About the History of Parliament
The History of Parliament Trust is one of the best known and most respected projects in British and Irish history, with a national and international reputation for the value and quality of its research. Its biographical studies of members and peers of the Westminster Parliament, and its accounts of politics and elections in each constituency now amount to an extraordinary resource for historians, along with the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Victoria History of the Counties of England a crucial part of the infrastructure for British and Irish history. There are now 53 published volumes of the History, totalling over 30 million words. All but the most recently published volumes are now available through the History's website, at www.historyofparliamentonline.org. The project is funded by both Houses of Parliament. It was formally founded in 1940 as a Trust. Most of the Trustees are members or officers of one or other House of Parliament. There is also an academic advisory board which consists of major historians of British politics and society.