Durham E-Theses POLICY AND POWER: IDEAS, POLICYMAKING AND PRACTICE IN 1670S ENGLAND CRESSEY, MICHAEL,JAMES How to cite: CRESSEY, MICHAEL,JAMES (2017) POLICY AND POWER: IDEAS, POLICYMAKING AND PRACTICE IN 1670S ENGLAND , Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12258/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 POLICY AND POWER IDEAS, POLICYMAKING AND PRACTICE IN 1670S ENGLAND Michael J. Cressey A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History Durham University Autumn 2016 Abstract This thesis is about how and why Restoration-period political culture changed in England in the run up to the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament in March 1681. It argues that it was the tension between Charles II’s desire and attempts to rule personally and his opponents’ desire and attempts to prevent him from doing so, which drove politics and change during the 1670s. It suggests that while people in the Restoration period were concerned with developing, representing and debating issues, ideas and identities, that intellectual process was only one part of political culture. The other was a much broader practical concern with how those ideas could be turned into reality through policymaking and practice. This thesis aims to explore these more practical concerns and to show that it was the contest for the power to turn ideas into policy and then to turn that policy into practice which proved decisive in the gradual breakdown of relations between the king and his opponents throughout the 1670s and in the final dissolution of parliament in 1681. In order to explore this other practical side of political culture, which has not yet received a great deal of scholarly attention, the thesis will draw upon methods and source material outside of those traditionally used by political historians and in doing so will try to make a meaningful contribution to an emerging historiographical trend, perhaps best described as the ‘process turn’. Contents Introduction p. 1 Chapter 1: The king learns government p. 22 Chapter 2: The king does government p. 66 Chapter 3: Parliament fights back p. 101 Chapter 4: The constitution breaks p. 138 Conclusion p. 170 Appendices p. 176 Bibliography p. 181 List of Abbreviations BL British Library Burnet Burnet’s History of My Own Time: From the restoration of king Charles the second to the treaty of peace at Utrecht, in the reign of Queen Anne, Volume II, (ed.) Airy, O. (Oxford, 1900) Cal. treas. bks. A Calendar of Treasury Books, (ed.) Shaw, W. A. (32 vols, London, 1904-62) Coleman newsletters Edward Coleman newsletters, Harry Ransom Centre, Pforzheimer MS 103C, Box 6 CJ Journal of the House of Commons CSPD Calendar of State Papers Domestic EHD English Historical Documents 1660-1714, (ed.) Browning. A. (London, 1953) Entry Book Entry Books, A Calendar of Treasury Books, (ed.) Shaw, W. A. (32 vols, London, 1904-62) Entring Book The Entring Book of Roger Morrice (1677-1691), (ed.) Goldie, M. et. al. (Woodbridge, 2009) Evelyn’s Diary The Diary of John Evelyn, (ed.) Bray, W. (New York, 1901) Grey debates Grey’s Debates of the House of Commons, (ed.) Grey, A. (London, 1769) History of England The History of England, During the Reigns of K. William, Q. Anne and K. George I.: With an Introductory Review of the Reigns of the Royal Brothers, Charles and James (London, 1744). History of Parliament The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660-1690, (ed.) Henning, B. D. (3 vols, London, 2006) HHC Hull History Centre HLRO House of Lords Record Office HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission Letters of Charles II The Letters, Speeches and Declarations of King Charles II, (ed.) Bryant, A. (London, 1968) Lutterell, Brief Relation A brief historical relation of state affairs, from Sept. 1678 to Apr. 1714 vol. I (Oxford, 1857) LJ Journal of the House of Lords McKenzie and Bell A Chronology and Calendar of Documents Relating to the London Book Trade, 1641-1700, (eds.) McKenzie, D. F. and Bell, M., vol. II (Oxford, 2005) Minute Book Minute Books, A Calendar of Treasury Books, (ed.) Shaw, W. A. (32 vols, London, 1904-62) Newdigate Newsletters addressed to Sir Richard Newdigate, now in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C. ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Pepys’ Diary The Diary of Samuel Pepys, (eds.) Latham, R. and Matthews, W., vol. 9 (Berkeley, 2010) State Trials A Complete Collection Of State-Trials And Proceedings For High- Treason And Other Crimes and Misdemeanours, (ed.) Hargrave, F. (1776) SP State Papers, The National Archives, Kew Statutes at large The Statutes at Large from the Magna Charta, to the End of the Eleventh Parliament of Great Britain, Anno 1761 [continued to 1806], (ed.) Pickering, D. (46 vols, Cambridge, 1762-1807) Statutes of the Realm Statutes of the Realm, (ed.) Raithby, J. (9 vols, London, 1810-25) The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author's prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Acknowledgments Writing a thesis turned out to be everything that those people who talked about climbing mountains and standing on the edges of precipices, as I started the journey, said it would be. No part of what follows would have been possible without the keen interest and relentless generosity of a number of very important people. Among the most important of all have been my academic supervisors, Alex Barber and Stephen Taylor. Alex in particular has shown more patience, encouragement and commitment to my work than any supervisor should have to. He has always been on hand with useful suggestions for reading, constructively critical commentary on my ideas, and sharp insight into the academic profession and discipline of history at large. I am grateful for his supervision, his friendship, and his still unrelenting insistence that drinking decaffeinated double espressos is a perfectly ordinary thing to do. The thesis would also not have reached an end without the valuable input of my examiners, Richard Huzzey and Jason Peacey, both of whom were as helpful as they were thorough. I am especially grateful that they managed to turn the viva voce into what ended up being just an enjoyable chat about interesting subject matter. I could not have written this piece of work without the unyielding support of my mum and dad. Whether through home-cooked meals and laundry, or by taking dictation in the final fraught months before submission, their willingness to help in whatever way they could throughout this process has never wavered. I fear I may never be able to repay them fully. In a similar way, I am grateful to my grandad for always being interested in and believing in what I was doing. I regret now that I was unable to find a place for Corelli Barnett’s The Collapse of British Power in this thesis, and I promise that I will get around to reading it one day. I have also been kept going by the kind friendship of Michael Peake and Paul Jarman, who both, in their own way, were always able to provide welcome reminders that a world outside a PhD thesis does exist. And finally, I am thankful to Daisy. Her patience, positivity, and unimpeachable ability to appear interested in even the most boring details of early modern political culture have never failed to make me happy. This work was supported by the AHRC through grant number AH/K502996/1. 1 Introduction This thesis is about policymaking and political practice in 1670s England. It will distinguish between politics and policy, as contemporaries did, and will argue that political culture at this time was shaped as much by the day to day competition for the means of exercising power, or how politics was done, as it was by the longer development of the ideas and ideologies which underpinned political practice, or why politics was done. It aims to explore political culture in the run up to the dissolution of the Oxford parliament in March 1681 and to suggest that it was the tension between Charles II’s continuing attempts to develop and implement policy personally and different groups in parliament’s efforts to introduce a more collective and collaborative method of making and implementing policy which drove political change in this period. On the morning of 20th March 1669, Samuel Pepys visited his friend William Coventry, member of the house of commons for Great Yarmouth and a former privy councillor, in the Tower of London.1 Whatever they thought of his supposed irreligion, his brazen obstinacy, or his Machiavellian approach to politics, Coventry’s contemporaries agreed that he was, as even his old nemesis the earl of Clarendon described him, ‘a man of quick parts and a ready speaker, unrestrained by any modesty or submission to the age, experience or dignity of other men’.2 Pepys himself admired and affirmed his friend’s ability to speak ‘with so much reason, and eloquence so natural’.3 And when he visited him in the Tower that day in March, Coventry’s conversation seems to have been no different.