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4 - Consensus Destroyed, 1641–1643

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2021

William J. Bulman
Affiliation:
Lehigh University, Pennsylvania
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Summary

This chapter describes and explains the fitful emergence of majoritarian political tactics in late 1641 and 1642 and the crucial turn toward consistently majoritarian decision-making between December 1642 and April 1643. It demonstrates how the House of Commons was unable to maintain its consensual decision-making practices once its members found themselves struggling over how to approach the early stages of the Civil War and their first peace negotiations with Charles I. Under these conditions of structural dislocation, members’ use of majoritarian tactics proliferated. Members who employed these tactics at the time clearly considered them to be emergency measures that enabled them to engage in effective status interaction under extremely trying circumstances. Neither these tactics nor majoritarian decision-making itself had yet become institutionalized. The 1641 controversy over protestations to the printing of the Grand Remonstrance vividly exposed the strains under which the Commons was struggling to continue to function. But the winter of 1642–3 was the clear turning point: consensual decision-making suddenly collapsed amid the emergence of war and peace groupings in Parliament and an array of other remarkable developments in English political culture between 1641 and 1643.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Consensus Destroyed, 1641–1643
  • William J. Bulman, Lehigh University, Pennsylvania
  • Book: The Rise of Majority Rule in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire
  • Online publication: 22 March 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108909648.005
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  • Consensus Destroyed, 1641–1643
  • William J. Bulman, Lehigh University, Pennsylvania
  • Book: The Rise of Majority Rule in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire
  • Online publication: 22 March 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108909648.005
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Consensus Destroyed, 1641–1643
  • William J. Bulman, Lehigh University, Pennsylvania
  • Book: The Rise of Majority Rule in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire
  • Online publication: 22 March 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108909648.005
Available formats
×