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Making Contact: Petitions and the English Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Derek Hirst
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 26 - 50
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2006

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References

1 William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act 3, scene 1.

2 See, e.g., John Walter and Keith Wrightson, “Dearth and the Social Order in Early Modern England,” Past and Present, no. 71 (1976): 22–42; Hindle, Steve, The State and Social Change in Early-Modern England (Basingstoke, 2000), esp. 171–75Google Scholar.

3 Russell, Conrad, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979), 377–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Foster, Elizabeth Read, “Printing the Petition of Right,” Huntington Library Quarterly 28 (1974): 81–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A Declaration of the Lord-General and his Councel of Officers (1653), 4; and Woolrych, Austin, Commonwealth to Protectorate (Oxford, 1982), 40Google Scholar. For Charles I's continuing distaste for petitioners, see Zaret, David, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England (Princeton, NJ, 2000), 85Google Scholar.

4 The petitioners had astutely observed “the joint interest your Highness hath with the Parliament (by the Instrument of Government) in the legislative power,” and that language found its echo in the Protector's tempered Christmas Day letter to parliament: “We, being interested in the government, desire to know the grounds and reasons”; Rutt, J. T., ed., The Diary of Thomas Burton, Esq., 4 vols. (London, 1828), 1:246Google Scholar; see also Journals of the House of Commons (CJ), 7:475, Public Record Office (PRO), State Papers (SP) 18/131/45. The endorsement to the petition, “left in Co.[uncil] ch.[amber] by his Highness 25 Dec. 1656,” is in the hand of the council's clerk, William Jessop; it is tempting to think that the petition itself was written by the legal reformer John Warre, who figures prominently among the signatories.

5 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic (CSPD), 1652–53, 325, 335; Tanner, J. R., ed., Constitutional Documents of the Reign of James I (Cambridge, 1930), 130Google Scholar.

6 See esp. Chris Kyle and Jason Peacey, “‘Under cover of so much coming and going’: Public Access to Parliament and the Political Process in Early Modern England,” and Dean, David, “Private Affairs: Committees, Petitions and Lobbies in the Early Modern English Parliament,” both in Parliament at Work: Parliamentary Committees, Political Power and Public Access in Early Modern England, ed. Kyle, Chris R. and Peacey, Jason (Woodbridge, 2002), 1–23, 169–78Google Scholar.

7 Fletcher, Anthony, The Outbreak of the English Civil War (London, 1981), 191–227Google Scholar; Ashton, Robert, Counter-Revolution: The Second Civil War and Its Origins, 1646–1648 (New Haven, CT, 1994), 117–58Google Scholar; McEntee, Ann Marie, “‘The [Un]Civill-Sisterhood of Oranges and Lemons’: Female Petitioners and Demonstrators, 1642–1653,” in Pamphlet Wars: Prose in the English Revolution, ed. Holstun, James (London, 1992), 112–33Google Scholar; Knights, Mark, Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678–81 (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar. The Levellers’ pressure on parliament in the 1640s has also been emphasized by Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture.

8 Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture.

9 The term “republic” is not meant to impute political homogeneity to the years 1649–60. The Commonwealth was of course displaced by the Protectorate in 1653, that process was reversed in 1659, and the forms of government changed sharply; but enough of the same individuals remained in positions of influence at the center and, above all, in the army, and there were enough ideological continuities to allow us to talk of a single period.

10 Aylmer, G. E., The State's Servants (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Woolrych, Austin, “The Cromwellian Protectorate: A Military Dictatorship?” History 75 (1990): 207–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Birch, T., ed., State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq., 7 vols. (London, 1742), 5:211Google Scholar.

12 McMichael, Jack R. and Taft, Barbara, eds., The Writings of William Walwyn (Athens, GA, 1989), 379, 390Google Scholar.

13 Thus, the London apprentices who intemperately petitioned the Barebone's Parliament for the release of John Lilburne were themselves promptly imprisoned; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 256.

14 For godly magistracy, see esp. Collinson, Patrick, “Magistracy and Ministry,” in his Godly People (London, 1983), 445–66Google Scholar; Slack, Paul, From Reformation to Improvement (Oxford, 1999), 29–52Google Scholar.

15 [Richard Baxter], The Humble Petition of many thousand Gentlemen, Free holders, and others, of the county of Worcester (1652), British Library (BL), E684(13), 8; To the Commons of England, Assembled in Parliament. The Humble Petition of the Well-Affected in and about the City of London, Westminster, and parts adjacent (1651), BL, E621(12). One 1654 hopeful urged that all petitions receive a written answer within forty days, since “to have gods by office that will not help” was one of the greatest evils imaginable; Thomas Philpot, To His Highnesse The Lord Protector, And to the right Honourable the Representatives of the People assembled in Parliament (1654), BL, 669.f.19(20). For slightly earlier examples of this elevated and long-standing model, see Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture, 88, 90.

16 At the close of his intended charge against the king, the Commonwealth's solicitor observed that the high court was “a Resemblance and Representation of the Great day of Judgment” and the means “to exalt Justice and Mercy in the Earth.” See John Cook, King Charls His Case (1649), 40.

17 See esp. CJ, 7:287, 300–301, 305–6, 309–10, 320–21, 328, 332, 338, 342, 350; Worden, Blair, The Rump Parliament, 1648–1653 (Cambridge, 1974), 309, 312CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The establishment of the Barebones committee is noticed by Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 159.

18 Henry Robinson, A Short Discourse between Monarchical and Aristocratical Government (1649), 15; A Letter Written to a Gentleman in the Country, Touching the Dissolution of the Late Parliament (1653), BL, E697(2), 6.

19 Henry Robinson, Certain Proposalls in order to the peoples freedome and accommodation in some particulars (1652), 5; Hamper, W., ed., Life, Diary and Correspondence of Sir William Dugdale (London, 1827), 253Google Scholar; Charles Hotham, Corporations Vindicated in their Fundamental Liberties (1651), Wing H2895, 45; Letter Written to a Gentleman in the Country, 4–5. Contrariwise, the wonderment of the London carmen, in dispute with the woodmongers, at the ability of a parliamentary committee to meet “as soon as the Petition was referred … was so much, that the Carmen, their poore Wives and Children, are ever bound to be thankfull, and to honour and serve you for ever”; Stephen Spratt, The Carmens Remonstrance (1649), Wing S5028, epistolary dedication.

20 Thus, a petition from Colchester urged, “That soe faithfull men may be appointed to take the Petitions of the people … so the sighs and groans of this languishing Commonwealth, may at last be heard.” To his Excellency the Lord General Cromwell and the Council of State: The Humble Representation of divers well-affected Inhabitants of the Town of Colchester (1653), BL, 669.f.17(11).

21 CSPD, 1652–53, 289.

22 East Suffolk Record Office, HD 36/2672/68, 69, 137; see also CSPD, 1652–53, 392, 423; Mercurius Alethes: Or, An Humble Petition of the Corrupt Party, Dissolved at Westminster, Apr. 20. 1653; To the Present Power in Being (1653), BL, E725(11). Compare the predicament of the Barbados colonists who sought in January 1660 to confirm powers they claimed to hold from “England successively as it now is or shall for the future be fixed or settled”; quoted in Bliss, Robert, Revolution and Empire (Manchester, 1990), 100Google Scholar.

23 To the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and Dominions thereunto belonging: The humble Petition of the Subscribers on the behalf of themselves, and other Reduced Officers and Souldiers therein concerned (1654), BL, 669.f.19(57); of course, they also turned to print, a step discussed below.

24 The councillor Sir Gilbert Pickering declared his priorities when he urged parliament in 1657 against restricting the business to be done, since “poor people that cry to you should be relieved”; Rutt, ed., Burton's Diary, 2:134. For less flattering verdicts, see Gaunt, P. G. I., “The Councils of the Protectorate, from December 1653 to September 1658” (PhD thesis, University of Exeter, 1983), 78, 94Google Scholar; and Roots, I., “Cromwell's Ordinances,” in The Interregnum, ed. Aylmer, G. E. (London, 1972), 152Google Scholar. For Cromwell's own priorities, see below.

25 The Complaint of Mary Blaithwaite Widow (1654), BL, E735(15), 6–7. Fairly typical is the complaint of the wife of a poor mariner from the Isle of Wight that she had spent twenty weeks in 1654 in “continuall attendance,” seeking his arrears: PRO, SP 18/77/209.

26 Which is not to suggest that those who had to deal with kings fared any differently, merely that hopes may—at least for some—have been higher under the republic.

27 Scott, David, “‘Particular Businesses’ in the Long Parliament: The Hull Letters, 1643–1648,” in Parliament, Politics and Elections, 1604–1648, ed. Kyle, Chris R. (Cambridge, 2001), 279Google Scholar.

28 The small town of Dorchester provides a fairly typical example: see Municipal Records of the Borough of Dorchester, ed. Mayo, C. H. (Exeter, 1908), 645Google Scholar.

29 Povey's papers are to be found at BL, Add. MSS. 11410–11, and Egerton 2395; the most obvious gesture toward material consideration is at BL, Add. MS 11411, fol. 84.

30 The best account of relations between a constituency and its members is David Scott, “Particular Businesses,” 273–341.

31 Norfolk and Norwich Record Office (NNRO), Great Yarmouth Assembly Book 1642–1662, fol. 218; in like vein, the corporation of Boston, Lincs., paid combative tribute to the local service formerly done by its purged member, Sir Anthony Irby, in A Letter Written to an Honorable Member of the House of Commons (1648), BL, 669.f.13(58). For Great Yarmouth's continuing stress on local service, see Gauci, Perry, “‘For Want of Smooth Language’: Parliament as a Point of Contact in the Augustan Age,” Parliamentary History 17 (1998): 12–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Politics and Society in Great Yarmouth, 1660–1720 (Oxford, 1996), 49–52Google Scholar.

32 For example, The Humble Petition of divers inhabitants of the city of London (1649), BL, E546(15), 8. Again, when in 1650 the council of state rejected a petition from a group of Yorkshire gentlemen on the grounds that the subject of the petition pertained to parliament and not to the council, it pointed out that since the petitioners included two Rumper MPs, they knew where to make immediate address. CSPD, 1650, 120. See also the close collusion between petitioners and interested northeastern MP evident in the endorsement on To the Supreme Authority the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England; The Humble Petition of severall that have adventured, and are willing to adventure to Greenland (1651), BL, 669.f.15(71): “The Originall of this Petition in Writing, remaines in the hands of the Honourable Luke Robinson, to be presented to the House.”

33 London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), X109/079, Journal 41X: Journal of the Common Council, 1649–61, fol. 3v.

34 The Humble Representation and Petition of the Justices of Peace, the Grand Juries, and other Well-affected Persons to this Commonwealth … for the County Palatine of Chester (1651), BL, E629(4), 8. The correlation of particular members with the local business done in the Rump is evident throughout its records in CJ.

35 Rutt, ed., Burton's Diary, 1:84–85.

36 CJ, 7:449.

37 Rutt, ed., Burton's Diary, 1:clxxxix, 1–2, 126–27.

38 See Hirst, Derek, England in Conflict, 1603–1660 (London, 1999), 299Google Scholar; see too the success of groups in Leeds in using the army “interest” of Adam Baynes and General Lambert as detailed in Hirst, Derek, “The Fracturing of the Cromwellian Alliance: Leeds and Adam Baynes,” English Historical Review 108 (1993): 868–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Greaves, Richard L. and Zaller, Robert, eds., Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the Seventeenth Century, 3 vols. (Brighton, 1983), 2:201Google Scholar; Mercurius Aulicus, 13–20 March 1654, BL, E732(3), 1–2. Nathaniel Bacon and Lislebone Long were both active as masters of requests to the Protector. A group of imprisoned debtors credited “Mr. Lisle [sic] Long one of the Masters of Requests” with gaining a council hearing for their petition within twenty days of its receipt; The Prisoners Remonstrance (1654), BL, E733(3); and it was Bacon who escorted his fellow East Anglian Roger Coke to the Protector as he petitioned against decimation: see below. Not only did the masters screen petitions and petitioners, they were also sometimes instructed to act on petitions; see Stevenson, W. H. et al. , eds., Records of the Borough of Nottingham, 9 vols. (London, 1882–1956), 5:283Google Scholar.

40 Thus, in early 1653, Sir Gilbert Pickering from Northamptonshire was detailed to report from the council of state to parliament on his county's outlays during the 1651 campaigns; and three years later a Dorset widow petitioned Colonel Sydenham, a councillor from Dorset, to further her petition to the council for relief. CSPD, 1652–53, 207, and 1656–57, 12–13, 176–77.

41 CSPD, 1656–57, 176–77. The case of Mary Blaithwaite suggests that Lambert's interest and duties were understood to include the northwest as well.

42 Birch, ed., State Papers of John Thurloe, 6:390.

43 The evidence for this conclusion lies scattered throughout the council records in PRO, SP 18. For an example of a clerical line of communication to the Protector, see the petition of the minister of Wratting, Suff.; PRO, SP 18/76/7. For a very personal clerically driven intervention, see the Protector's holograph endorsement of the petition for arrears submitted by his chaplain Peter Sterry at PRO, SP 18/153/116, with the remarkable evidence of outcome.

44 York City Archives, House Book 37, fol. 57v; for the clergy as testimonial writers, see Capp, B. S., Cromwell's Navy (Oxford, 1989), 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Worcester College, Oxford, Clarke MSS, vol. 1/6, fols. 7, 13.

46 Quoted in Bliss, Revolution and Empire, 71; Povey's papers abound in self-serving protestations—with some evidence in their support—of the importance of a well-placed and resourceful solicitor; BL, Add. MSS 11410-11, and Egerton MS 2395.

47 Ward, Ian, “The English Peerage, 1649–1660” (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1989), 181Google Scholar. See also Aylmer, State's Servants, 235, 260, for Jessop and Rushworth as solicitors for noblemen.

48 Verney, M. M. and Verney, F. P., Memoirs of the Verney Family, 4 vols. (London, 1892), 3:269–70Google Scholar.

49 Samuel Chidley, A Remonstrance to the Valiant and Well Deserving Souldier (1653), 13: “When I was your solicitor at the Parliament-door I learned experience” (16). Povey drew on similar career patterns when he referred to himself as a “Journey Man” solicitor; Bliss, Revolution and Empire, 261 n. 59.

50 See, e.g., the tribute to Capt. Roger Pritchard as petitioners’ “agent” in The Prisoners Remonstrance (1654), and to Samuel Chidley and—less warmly—to “Captain Howard” in The Complaint of Mary Blaithwaite Widow (1654), 6–7; for another glimpse of Captain Howard as petitioners’ agent, see The Humble Petition of the Subscribers on the behalf of themselves, and other Reduced Officers and Souldiers therein concerned (1654), BL, 669.f.19(57).

51 The Just Defence of John Lilburn (1653), 9; CSPD, 1658–59, 202; Worden, Rump Parliament, 90; and BL, Egerton MS 2395, fol. 176. Lilburne's self-satisfaction—if warranted—says something of the political openness of the Rump as an administrative body, or of the adeptness of someone who was scarcely dear to senior Rumpers, or both.

52 BL, Add. MS 11411, fol. 87v.

53 Dyfed County Record Office (Dyfed RO), Haverfordwest Borough Records (HBR) 289, 293a; CSPD, 1650, 454. There were other complaints about the intimidatory nature of Powell's peripatetic ministry: The Petition of the Six Counties of South-Wales, and the County of Monmouth (1652), Wing P1836, 24–30. For the changes in the 1649 assessments, see Firth, C. H. and Rait, R. S., eds., Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, 3 vols. (London, 1911), 2:29–30, 289–90, 292Google Scholar.

54 Dyfed RO, HBR 294, 295, 298, 318.

55 Dyfed RO, HBR 296.

56 See, e.g., the affecting call for charitable donations to offset the damage done by plague and war to parts of Lancashire forwarded in the summer of 1649 to London clergy by various notables “together with four godly and faithfull Ministers of Lanchashire [sic], by providence in this city at this present.” A True Representation of the present sad and lamentable condition of the County of Lancaster (1649), BL, 669.f.14(34).

57 Dyfed RO, HBR 296, 299.

58 Scott, “Particular Businesses,” 278–87; Firth and Rait, eds., Acts and Ordinances, 2:460, 656, 1032, 1237, 1359. Assessment patterns nationally indicate that Haverfordwest's mobilization of its friends was unusually effective.

59 See, above all, Raymond, Joad, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early-Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar.

60 Knights, Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 16; and see above.

61 A fine example of the peremptory tone is the opening to the April 1649 petition of Leveller women for the freedom of Lilburne and Overton: “We beseech you, that laying all self-respect, and vain affectations of wealth or greatnesse aside”; Perfect Occurrences, 20–27 April 1649, BL, E529(21), 997.

62 Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture, 221.

63 Printed petitions in petty material causes are certainly not unknown before Pride's Purge, even before the Long Parliament, as Kyle, Chris has shown in Parliament, Politics and Elections, 1604–1648, ed. Kyle, Chris R. (Cambridge, 2001), 6–7Google Scholar. It seems clear from the array of printed petitions to each House and both together in 1621 that the campaign against patentees coupled with the Lords’ revival of judicature then generated a new level of expectation and activity, particularly in the capital: see Guildhall Library, Broadsides Collection, sub 1621. But thereafter printing of such petitions largely lapsed, to revive during the later 1640s. Although Sir Roger L’Estrange in 1646 disclaimed “any thing of singularity” in his despairing decision to print his plea for release from Newgate gaol (BL, 669.f.10[66]), even the Commons had learned the value of print. After a committee heard counsel in a clothworkers’ dispute of 1647, the petitioners were given leave to go into print, “that notice might be taken thereof” before the next scheduled committee meeting, “in regard the business was of a generall concernment”; To the Honourable House of now Commons assembled in Parliament. The humble Petition of many Thousands of Clothiers … (1647), BL, 669.f.11(2).

64 See, e.g., Henry Robinson's jaundiced account of petitioners’ behavior and the perfunctory responses of parliamentmen in Certain Proposalls in order to the peoples freedome, 1.

65 CSPD, 1652–53, 305.

66 A Reply to a Printed Paper Intituled the state of the Adventurers Case (1650), Wing R1054, 1; Thomas Philpot, To His Highnesse The Lord Protector, endorsed by Thomason, “Presented at the Parlament-door, Octob.9.1654.” See also the scandalized broadside complaint of Sir William Killigrew at the fenmen's “libels … delivered at the Parliament Door against the Drayners,” BL, 669.f.19(64).

67 Some northern petitioners to the Rump apologized to the president of the council of state for going into print but claimed they could gain no access to parliament because of the influence of Sir Arthur Haselrig, the target of their petition; see John Musgrave, A True and Exact Relation of the Great and Heavy Pressures and Grievances the well-affected of the Northern Bordering Counties lye under (1650), BL, E619(10), 3. See also To all the People of England, Souldiers, and others, more especially in and about the City of London; The humble Remonstrance of Edward Jenkes, Gent. (1649), BL, 669.f.14(62), against Speaker Lenthall; and The Case of Anne Smyth, the wife of Daniell Smyth, one of the daughters of Sir John Danvers of Culworth (1650), BL, 669.f.15(61), against Sir John Danvers.

68 For example: To Every Individuall Member of the Parliament of the Supreme Authority of the Commonwealth of England … The Humble Address of Lieut. Coll. John Lilburne (1650), BL, 669.f.15(64); The Case of Mrs Mary Walker, the wife of Clement Walker, Esq. Truly Stated. Humbly tendered to every individual Member of the Supream Authority of the Nation, the Commons assembled in Parliament (1650), BL, 669.f.15(39); A Brief Remembrance When the Report concerning the pretended Ryot in the Isle of Axholm shall be read. Humbly tendered to every individual Member of Parliament (1653), BL, 669.f.17(31); To every Member of Parliament Charles Hotham of Peter-house in Cambridge presents this following brief Account (1653), BL, 669.f.17(32); Unto Every Individual Member of Parliament, The Humble Representation of divers afflicted Women-Petitioners to the Parliament (1653), BL, 669.f.17(36); A Voyce from the Heavenly Word of God; A Representation to every Member of Parliament of the Commonwealth of England (1653), Wing W2814. See also the inflammatory 1649 petition of Capt. William Bray against Lord Fairfax, “printed by the Authority of Reason and Justice,” and “delivered to divers Members”; CJ, 6:167–68. Parliament men were not the only ones to be browbeaten, for the day after the dissolution of the Protector's first parliament, the eccentric prophet Walter Gostelo thrust his defense of Charles Stuart “into your own hand,” he reminded Cromwell, “as you came from your Council [and] since … to every of your Council one of the same.” See Walter Gostelo, For the Lord Protector (1655), BL, 669.f.19(69).

69 CJ, 7:427; Rutt, ed., Burton's Diary, 1:cxxiii–cxxiv, clxxxv; Kenyon, J. P., The Stuart Constitution (Cambridge, 1966), 361Google Scholar. The Rump too had shown “great heat” with Lilburne for “giving out the petitions before they were received by them, though,” Lilburne added dismissively, “nothing was more common”; Just Defence of John Lilburn, 10. A motion to ban the presentation to members of any printed papers in the Commons lobby was narrowly defeated in December 1667, but while in 1676 Andrew Marvell noted that “nothing is more usual” than for members of the public to present printed proposals in public matters to members, he added dismissively “and sometimes Cases and Petitions”; Gauci, Perry, The Politics of Trade (Oxford, 2001), 223CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Patterson, Annabel, Dzelzainis, Martin, von Maltzahn, Nicholas, and Keeble, N. H., eds., The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell, 2 vols. (New Haven, CT, 2003), 2:50–51Google Scholar. The case for continuity is strengthened by the fact that the 1661 act's limitation of presenters of petitions to twenty recapitulated the standard and explicit practice of the corporation of London throughout all phases of the revolution; LMA, X109/079, Journal 41X: Journal of the Common Council, 1649–61, fols. 16v, 67, 110.

70 See, e.g., The Humble Petition of Divers Inhabitants of the City of London (1649), BL, E546(15); and The Humble Representation and Petition of Divers Wel-affected Gentlemen, Free Holders and others of the County of Oxon (1649), BL, H3631. For the hesitant beginnings in the Addled Parliament—which by 1621 had become “an ancient order”—see Kyle's introduction to Parliament, Politics and Elections, 6; Jansson, Maija, ed., Proceedings in Parliament, 1614 (Philadelphia, 1988), 101Google Scholar; Notestein, Wallace, Relf, Frances Helen, and Simpson, Hartley, eds., Commons Debates in 1621, 7 vols. (New Haven, CT, 1935), 2:32Google Scholar.

71 The Manner of Siting of the Parlament of the Commonwealth of England, 1653 (1653), BL, 669.f.17(37); A List of the Names of all the Members of this present Parliament, with the respective Counties and Places for which they serve. With the names of the Members of the severall Committees, and the places where they sit, for regulating the Abuses of the Commonwealth (1653), BL, 669.f.17(45); A New List of all the Members of this present Parliament; with the Respective Counties and places for which they serve. With the names of the members of the severall Committees, and places where they sit, for Regulating the Abuses of the Commonwealth (1653), BL, 669.f.17(57). Such practices were revived at the end of the decade: see, e.g., To the Right Honourable The Knights, Citizens and Burgesses Assembled in Parliament The Humble Petition of the Captains, Commanders, and Owners of English Shipping, and other Sea-faring Men of this Nation (1659), Wing T1642A.

72 For example, Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering; Raymond, Joad, ed., News, Newspapers and Society in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1999)Google Scholar; Peacey, Jason, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the Civil War and Interregnum (Aldershot, 2004)Google Scholar.

73 Charles Hotham, Corporations Vindicated in their Fundamental Liberties (1651), Wing H2895, 27, 43–44. Hotham may have come to regret his choice, since his printed appeal was deemed to contain a breach of privilege, for which he was perpetually debarred from his university fellowship; To every Member of Parliament Charles Hotham of Peter-house in Cambridge presents this following brief Account (1653), BL, 669.f.17(32).

74 The soap-makers complaint for the losse of their trade (1650), Wing W220, E615(2).

75 Hotham, Corporations Vindicated in their Fundamental Liberties, 43–44. For instances of a not dissimilar political aesthetic, see Hirst, “Fracturing of the Cromwellian Alliance,” 876; and Worcester College, Oxford, Clarke MSS XIX, fol. 65. Hotham was applying, in less theoretical terms, the logic of the Leveller claim in England's New Chains Discovered that it was “an improper, tedious, and unprofitable thing for the people to be ever running after their representative with petitions for redress of such grievances as may at once be removed by themselves” through the Agreement of the People: quoted in Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture, 265.

76 Robert Wadeson, An Accusation of Dr. Arrowsmith (1649), Wing W220, sig. A3r.

77 CJ, 6:158; cf. Worden, Rump Parliament, 189.

78 For such frustrations, see Durston, Christopher, Cromwell's Major Generals (Manchester, 2001), 97–127Google Scholar. Of eighteen peers who petitioned against decimation, eleven succeeded, two failed, and the fate of the others is unknown; further, no less than fifty-four petitions from peers found their way to the councils of state between November 1652 and June 1654; Ward, “English Peerage,” 86, 114–17, 147–49, 183.

79 Hanmer, John Lord, A Memorial of the Parish and Family of Hanmer (London, 1877), 90–94Google Scholar.

80 In this it had a much more impressive record than its royal successor; indeed, it even—and remarkably—responded intermittently to the cries of its predecessor's more humble servants: the evidence for this observation is scattered through successive volumes of the CSPD.

81 PRO, SP 18/76/1; CSPD, 1654, 94.

82 Thus, the council of state in 1650 put itself out sufficiently to tell one petitioning widow that her plea was not proper for that body, but because she had lost her husband in Parliament's service she should attend Colonel Birch, governor of Liverpool, who should confer with the named interested parties and mediate a resolution; CSPD, 1650, 285.

83 A Brief of the Papers touching a Market petitioned for to be held in Clements Inne Fields (1654), BL, 669.f.19(19).

84 Journals of the House of Lords, 11:238; for access to Charles II, see Weiser, Brian, Charles II and the Politics of Access (Woodbridge, 2003)Google Scholar. Kelsey is quoted in Durston, Cromwell's Major Generals, 199.

85 Dick, O. L., ed., Aubrey's Brief Lives (Harmondsworth, 1972), 37Google Scholar.

86 For the Protector's approachability, see Hirst, Derek, “‘That Sober Liberty’: Marvell's Cromwell in 1654,” in The Golden and the Brazen World, ed. Wallace, John M. (Berkeley, 1985), 21–22Google Scholar.

87 Cromwell's deep personal commitment to petitioning had appeared even at the beginning of the Long Parliament, and it led him into sometimes disruptive interventions in the Rump; see Coates, Willson H., Young, Anne Steele, and Snow, Vernon F., eds., The Private Journals of the Long Parliament, 3 January to 5 March 1642 (New Haven, CT, 1982), 302–3Google Scholar; Worden, Rump Parliament, 90, 312. In April 1654 a London deputation reported happily on the Protector's warm reception of its petition for a reform of the laws on merchant bankruptcies: “His Highnes saying, it was reasonable and seasonable”; LMA X109/079, Journal 41X: Journal of the Common Council, 1649–61, fol. 98.

88 Button, Andrea, “Royalist Women Petitioners in South-West England, 1655–62,” Seventeenth Century 15 (2000): 60–61Google Scholar; PRO, SP 18/131/38.

89 Davis, J. C., Oliver Cromwell (London, 2001)Google Scholar; and the review by Hirst, D. in Journal of Modern History 76 (2004), 430–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roger Coke, A Detection of the Court and State of England (1696), 395–96. The Protector was not alone in responding unpredictably to a petition, for in the 1656 parliament Major General Howard offered a petition but the speaker ruled him out of order—and then “read the petition to himself” as another member was speaking; Rutt, ed., Burton's Diary, 1:82.

90 J. Crossley, ed., The Diary and Correspondence of Dr. John Worthington (1847), 115–16.

91 NNRO, Great Yarmouth Assembly Book, fols. 147v–148v, 156v, 161, 166r–166v, 245; York City Archives, House Book 37, fol. 127. For the continuing local importance of Great Yarmouth's harbor, see Gauci, Politics and Society in Great Yarmouth.

92 Gloucestershire RO, Gloucester Borough Records (GBR) B3/2, Minute Book 1632–1656, 747, 751, 755–56.

93 BL, Egerton MS 2395, f. 178; also BL, Add. MS 11411, fols. 84, 86.

94 Complaint of Mary Blaithwaite Widow, 7; it was Samuel Chidley who received the rebuff, at Lambert's hands.

95 For Cromwell on rhetoric, see Hirst, Derek, “The Lord Protector, 1653–1658,” in Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution, ed. Morrill, John (London, 1990), 132–33Google Scholar.

96 BL, Add. MS 11411, fol. 8.

97 BL, Egerton MS 2395, fol. 175.

98 The claim to entitlement can be heard in Gloucester garrison's decision to print its petition for arrears in 1645 even though Speaker Lenthall was the city's remaining MP; Wing T1645B.

99 Birch, ed., State Papers of John Thurloe, 6:683.

100 Gloucestershire RO, GBR B3/3, 88–91. In 1654 the corporation had similarly left it to “the wisedome” of Recorder Lenthall and the city's counsel whether to include the assembly's scriptural expatiations in that spring's address to the Protector; Gloucestershire RO, GBR B3/2, 756.

101 BL, Add. MS 11411, fol. 86; also BL, Egerton MS 2395, fol. 178.

102 Birch, ed., State Papers of John Thurloe, 7:344.

103 We should therefore question the claim that petitions constituted “an admission of parliamentary impotence”—the world of backroom dealing that that characterization conjures was of course not the whole world; Scott, “Particular Businesses,” 284.

104 Stocks, H. and Stevenson, W. H., eds., Records of the Borough of Leicester, 1603–1688 (Cambridge, 1923), 451–52Google Scholar.

105 Roy, Ian, “The English Republic, 1649–1660: The View from the Town Hall,” in Republiken und Republikanismus im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit: Herausgegeben von Helmut Koenigsberger, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs Kolloquien 11 (Oldenburg, 1989), 213–37Google Scholar.

106 See Matthews, Nancy L., William Sheppard, Cromwell's Law Reformer (Cambridge, 1984), 52–58, 135–42Google Scholar. The attractions of a friendly and responsive center are suggested by a 1655 Cheshire counter-petition against a local plea for the return of Duchy of Lancaster jurisdiction from Westminster to the locality: “a more remote application may free us from the oppression of neighbours of potency and interest,” quoted in Underdown, David, “Settlement in the Counties,” in The Interregnum, ed. Aylmer, G. E. (London, 1972), 174Google Scholar.

107 Hirst, “Fracturing of the Cromwellian Alliance,” 879; NNRO, Great Yarmouth Assembly Book 1642–1662, f. 166v.

108 Stocks and Stevenson, eds., Records of the Borough of Leicester, 1603–1688, 459; Henning, Basil Duke, ed., The House of Commons, 1660–1690, 3 vols. (London, 1983), 1:324Google Scholar; Hughes, Ann, “Coventry and the English Revolution,” in Town and Countryside in the English Revolution, ed. Richardson, R. C. (London, 1992), 92, 94Google Scholar: the accession of politically well-connected townsmen into local assessment committees had allegedly resulted in the halving of Coventry's burdens in county rates during the “late … distractions.” Since most local historians have observed similar changes in office holding elsewhere, we may wonder how many other townsmen gained fiscally, in relative terms, under the republic.

109 For some reflections on performance here, see Woolrych, Austin, Britain in Revolution, 1625–1660 (Oxford, 2002), 496–97, 622–23Google Scholar.

110 The killings in Savoy began in April 1655; by June the parish of St. Martin's in the Fields, London, had contributed £325 and the town of Dorchester £147, and by the following January civilians in Ireland had contributed £1,100. See CSPD, 1658–59, 171; Birch, ed., State Papers of John Thurloe, 3:591, 4:484; Mayo, ed., Municipal Records of Dorchester, 551.

111 As has been argued in Sharpe, Kevin, “‘An Image Doting Rabble’: The Failure of Republican Culture in Seventeenth Century England,” in Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution, ed. Sharpe, Kevin and Zwicker, Steven N. (Berkeley, 1998), 25–56Google Scholar; it should be pointed out that a godly culture was certainly sustained in many areas up to and even sometimes beyond the Restoration.