In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Court Patronage, County Governors and the Early Stuart Parliaments There is no lack of historical scholarship on court patronage, county power structures or the Early Stuart Parliaments. There is, however, a rather critical lack of understanding of the way these three central areas of Stuart politics impinged on each other and the way in which they interacted. The patron/client struggles at court had far-reaching ramifications for the power balances of the county hierarchies and both worked to dictate which men would sit in Parliament and w h o m and what they would represent there. The ways in which this worked and the evolutionary process of these relationships during the reign of James I, particularly, are largely misunderstood and yet it is only through an examination of the roles of allegiance and patronage in these three areas that any true understanding can be gained of the quite fundamental changes in the make-up of political relations during the early years of the Stuarts. In order to try to explain the events of the 1620s, more recent historical scholarship has placed a renewed emphasis on the roles of the patron in the House of Lords and the client in the House of Commons. Such scholarship has not gone unchallenged and it has become obvious that there wiU not be a widely acceptable thesis explaining the politics of that decade until w e have a fuller understanding of the period which preceded it. The historians of the 1620s are working with far too few reliable reference points from the earlier period and in absolutely vital matters such as patron/client relationships in the context of Parliaments, our knowledge of the early part of James I's reign is still woefully incomplete. A s a result, historians have been unable to make the sort of meaningful comparisons which need to be made before a more complete understanding of the reign can be found. N o satisfactory picture of those troublesome Parliaments of the 1620s can be gained until w e have a greater understanding of what really occurred in the preceding Parliaments, particularly that of 1604-10. O n this point, at least, there is validity in the arguments of J.H. Hexter and his fellow 'Revisers of Revisionism', as they seem to term themselves.1 Unfortunately it is in this area 'See J.H. Hexter, Power Struggle, Parliament and Liberty in Early Stuart England, Journal of Modern History 50, no. 1, 1978, 42, 47; D. Hirst, Parliament, Law and War in the 1620s, review article, Historical Journal 23, no. 2, 1980, 457; and T.K. Rabb, The Role of the Commons, in Revisionism Revised: Two Perspectives on Early Stuart Parliamentary History, Past and Present 92, August 1981, 67. Rabb gives a concise bibliography of the principal revisionist publications, the most important of which are C. Russell, Parliamentary History in Perspective 1604-1629, History 61, 1976; K. Sharpe, ed., Faction and Parliament, Essays on 122 S. Hollings of gaining a better understanding of what preceded the 1620s that both the revisionists and their revisers have failed to make headway, to the detriment of aU their arguments. The first quite central point that can be made from an examination of patronage relations in thefirsthalf of James' reign is that they were in very great contrast to those operating in the latter years of the reign.2 This was particularly so when the way patronage relations interacted with Parliament is examined and the early years of James' reign provides a rather surprising picture, but one which makes the events of the 1620s far more explicable. Obviously not all patronage relations can be uncovered, but what evidence survives is most compelling. The essential relations for government, both in Parliament and outside of it, were the relations between the leading courtiers and the county governors. This latter group sat in Parliament as a virtual right because of their position in the counties and acted as the JPs and deputy lieutenants carrying out royal policy in the counties. It was the views of these county governors which dictated whether government could be workable or well nigh impossible. Throughout James' reign the attitude these men held when...

pdf

Share