Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-03T07:06:17.471Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Subscriptional Cultures and Petitionary Documents

from Part I - Petitions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2023

Henry J. Miller
Affiliation:
Durham University
Get access

Summary

Public petitions to the Commons were part of a broader subscriptional culture. This chapter examines the nature and extent of petitions to other authorities to reassess the evolution of the UK state during the nineteenth century. During this period, petitions were transformed from being generic requests to power to their more modern meaning as expressive and participatory practices linked to representative institutions. Accordingly, other types of petitions to Parliament concerning contested elections and private bills were hived off into specialised processes. Petitions to the House of Lords, though smaller in scale than the Commons, reinforced the upper house’s authority during an era of democratisation and allowed peers to claim popular backing for their veto power. Addresses to the monarchy were a major form of interaction between monarch and subjects, and called upon the monarch to exercise their political supremacy over the other branches of state. Memorials to government provided a discrete mechanism for interest groups to lobby ministers and officials, and were increasingly adopted by pressure groups. The relationship between the state and the people was recast through petitionary interactions that underpinned and renewed the legitimacy of different branches of the state even in the absence of electoral or institutional reforms.

Type
Chapter
Information
A Nation of Petitioners
Petitions and Petitioning in the United Kingdom, 1780–1918
, pp. 72 - 102
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

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 Dropbox.

Available formats
×

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.

Available formats
×