Honour, Interest and Power: an Illustrated History of the House of Lords, 1660-1715 [Kõva köide]

The History of Parliament is a major academic project to create a scholarly reference work describing the Members, constituencies and activities of the British Parliament. Ten sets, forty-one volumes, have now been published, and five new sets are currently in preparation. Between them they cover the House of Commons from 1386 to 1868 and the House of Lords from 1604 to 1832. They are widely regarded as an essential source for British political, social and local history. For more information on the History of Parliament, see the History's website at www.histparl.ac.uk. All published volumes are in print and available from Boydell & Brewer or from Cambridge University Press. For a list of published volumes, containing biographies, constituency histories and introductory surveys, see inside back flap.

Condemned as 'useless and dangerous', the House of Lords was abolished in the revolution of 1649, shortly after the execution of the King. When it was reinstated, along with the monarchy, as part of the Restoration of 1660, the House entered into one of the most turbulent and dramatic periods in its history. Over the next half century or more, the Lords were the stage on which some of the critical confrontations in English and British constitutional and political history were played out: the battles over the exclusion from the throne of the later James II; the key debates over the 'abdication' of William III; the many struggles over the Act of Union with Scotland. This highly illustrated book presents the first results from the research undertaken by the History of Parliament Trust on the peers and bishops between the Restoration and the accession of George I. It shows them as politicians at Westminster, engaging with the central arguments of the day, but also using Parliament to pursue their own projects; as members of an elite intensely conscious of their status and determined to defend their honour against commoners, Irish peers and each other; as a class apart, always active in devising new schemes - successful and unsuccessful - to increase their wealth and 'interest'; and as local grandees, to whom local society looked for leadership and protection. From the proud Duke of Somerset to the beggarly Lord Mohun, from the devious Earl of Oxford to the disgruntled Lord Lucas, the material here presents an initial impression of the nature of the Restoration House of Lords and the men who formed it, showing them in their best moments, when they vigorously defended the law and the constitution, and in their worst, as they obsessively concerned themselves with honour and precedence and indefatigably pursued private interests. Edited by Ruth Paley and Paul Seaward, with Beverly Adams, Robin Eagles, Stuart Handley and Charles Littleton

The House of Lords presented the stage on which some of the critical confrontations in English and British constitutional and political history were played out in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Published for the History of Parliament Trust.