ABSTRACT
When Henry VII seized the English throne in 1485 he could have had no inkling of the importance Parliament would come to have in the future. Yet he made a small contribution to the growth of its importance himself, when he prudently arranged for his first Parliament to recognize his right to the crown in one of its first acts. Nevertheless, the process by which parliament, an irregularly held meeting of the estates of the realm, became Parliament, sovereign over Britain, was a tortured one. Every monarch from the first Tudor to the last Stuart found them to be difficult to deal with, fractious, often obstructive, and, in the case of Charles I, downright treasonable. And yet kings and queens were almost touchingly optimistic about the value of these troublesome bodies. In a crisis, even kings whose experience might have taught them otherwise – like Charles I in 1640 – called them together in hopes of a solution to the realm’s problems. The people were no less convinced of their value; looking to them for reform, and hoping that a new meeting of the kingdom’s representatives would restore social harmony.
