The Management of the Elizabethan House of Commons: The Council's ‘Men‐of‐business’

Graves, Michael

doi:10.1111/j.1750-0206.1983.tb00512.x

Cited by 28 publications

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“…This change of perspective locates the likes of William Cecil as well as the erstwhile Puritan Thomas Norton at the center of the development of novel techniques of political maneuver and communication that we argue helped to frame the post-Reformation public sphere. 16 The repeated willingness of members of the establishment to resort to these novel and potentially destabilizing techniques is explained by the hothouse atmosphere attendant upon Collinson's Elizabethan exclusion crisis (and arguably the succession crisis that followed it). 17 These appeals by elements of the regime to the people or to the Protestant Nation were prompted in large part to meet the threat posed to the state by Catholicism.…”

Section: Lake and Pincusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England

Lake¹,

Pincus²

2006

J. Br. Stud.

133

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Section: Lake and Pincusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England

Lake¹,

Pincus²

2006

J. Br. Stud.

133

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“…122 It could be argued, therefore, that Scott and Norton acted to seize the moment, against Elizabeth's wishes, where councillors could not, and that the clash with Croft reflected divisions within the council rather than between it and its parliamentary collaborators. 123 However, although definite news of Requesens's death and predictions of 'great mutations' in the Netherlands reached Walsingham by 9 March, the ardent protestants had missed the parliamentary tide. 124 For the next few days, groups of courtiers besieged Elizabeth, urging her not merely to protect the Dutch, but, now that effective Spanish government had collapsed, to occupy the strategic towns already offered in Holland and Zealand.…”

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confidence: 99%

Foreign Policy and the Parliament of 1576

Parry¹

2015

Parliamentary History

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This article brings together scattered, but important, new evidence about foreign policy debates in and around the reconvened parliament of early 1576. It demonstrates that co‐operative parliamentary management did not exclude principled political differences from the Commons, but nor were members of the Commons trying to ‘seize the initiative’ when they initiated foreign policy discussion. The queen and her privy council, for a variety of reasons, had initially sought parliamentary support for a foreign policy guided by religious solidarity rather than dynastic legitimacy, but when they belatedly abandoned this plan they underestimated the strength of the expectations they had raised. Some zealous protestant members of the Commons felt encouraged to believe that parliament would act as the great council of the realm, to be consulted over important matters of state, and especially whether Elizabeth should accept the recently‐offered sovereignty of Holland and Zealand. The retreat from this position began with the arrival of Champagney, envoy of the Spanish viceroy in the Netherlands, Requesens. Champagney exploited the gap between Elizabeth's position and the committed protestants on her council, and especially Burghley's internal debate between his protestant idealism and his economic and strategic realism. Burghley's eventual withdrawal from the proposed arrangement to enlist virulently anti‐catholic Commons' members in support of the ambitious foreign policy bitterly disappointed large sections of popular protestant opinion in the ‘public sphere’, who virulently attacked both Burghley and Elizabeth. This enabled conservatives to mount increasingly effective responses against both radical protestantism and its dangerous propensity for foreign entanglements.

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“…men-of-business were crucial to its success'. 10 Work on men-of-business also led to another monograph, this time a biography of Thomas Norton, which looked well beyond his parliamentary career to his service for the privy council, as well as to his role as co-author of the first blank verse drama in English, Gorboduc, numerous pamphlets that he authored against catholicism, and his use by the government as an 'examiner' of jesuit priests and those who surreptitiously printed catholic works in England. 11 This led to the epithet applied to him by Robert Parsons of 'Rackemaister'.…”

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Foreword

Kyle¹

2015

Parliamentary History

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stretched already with a family of four children, he asked Bindoff about the possibility of a university tutorship to which came the immortal reply: 'Graves, Graves why don't you try the colonies?' That, indeed, is what Michael did and, after obtaining a lectureship at the University of Otago, New Zealand, he and his family embarked on the ship Ruahine for the six-week voyage to New Zealand and a strange new world far away from his beloved childhood and memories of Balham High Street -always pronounced Blahm by Michael in jocular fashion.Michael was born in Balham in 1933, but evacuated to Devon during the war. Before his education at Cambridge he completed his national service working on codes and ciphers, punching endless marks into cards for the air force. His aptitude test had singled him out for pilot training but, as quickly became apparent, Michael and technology of any kind were distant bedfellows -a situation that continued throughout his life as anyone who knew him could attest. He never learned to drive and the few half-hearted attempts he made at it invariably resulted in damage to property and psychological damage to anyone in the vicinity, although fortunately no physical harm! Until the very end of his life, computers, and even typewriters, were anathema to him, and all his books and articles were handwritten, annotated heavily in his distinctive hand, and no doubt a puzzle for even the most skilled typist or copy-editor.Michael quickly settled into life in Dunedin and loved the quiet of the city and the beauty of the surrounding countryside, far away from what he had left behind in war-torn London. While he worked weekdays on his PhD at Otago on the house of lords in the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, weekends were often spent on archaeological digs with his great friend, the acclaimed New Zealand author, Maurice Shadbolt.Michael had also became firm friends with the chair of the history department, a much-decorated New Zealand war hero and ex-special forces operative, Angus Ross. Daring in a department meeting to contradict Ross one day he was met with a glare and a comment: 'Graves, I've killed men for less than that.' This helps to explain the secrecy surrounding his move to Auckland University in 1966. Having given a lecture at Auckland the previous year and impressed the department, the chair at Auckland, (Sir) Keith Sinclair, travelled to Otago ostensibly to give a paper, but in reality to offer Michael a position. Fearful of Ross's anger should Keith and Michael be seen together, Keith snuck through the bushes beside the department, tapped on Michael's window bs_bs_banner

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The Management of the Elizabethan House of Commons: The Council's ‘Men‐of‐business’

Cited by 28 publications

References 0 publications

Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England

Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England

Foreign Policy and the Parliament of 1576

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