Managing Tudor and Stuart Parliaments

Michael Graves has done much to define ideas of management in Tudor Parliaments. From the role of the Privy Council to parliamentary 'men-of-business' and the career of Thomas Norton, Graves has opened up new avenues that relay the importance of systematic, planned management of parliamentary sessions. Managing Tudor and Stuart Parliaments takes Graves' work as a springboard for discussion that then moves well beyond the narrow confines of the Palace of Westminster chambers, to examine how sermons, state openings, patrons, procedure, foreign policy and individuals were all deployed by the government and members of the Lords and Commons to better manage Parliaments throughout the Tudor and early Stuart period.Bringing together essays from nine established parliamentary scholars, the volume offers new insights and reflections on management and the importance of Parliaments to the effective and smooth running of the state. Essays cover anticlericalism; Shekhar Kapur and the Parliament of 1559; William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and the Men-of-Business; Foreign Policy and the Parliament of 1576; The Earl of Essex and Elizabethan Parliaments; the development of Parliament Privilege, 1604-1629; Proclamations, censorship & the English Parliament of 1621; preaching and English Parliaments in the 1620's and the ceremonial opening of Parliament, 1603-1660.