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Collective Biography and the Interpretative Challenge of Early‐Stuart Parliamentary History

2013; Wiley; Volume: 32; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/1750-0206.12049

1750-0206

Nicholas Tyacke,

Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes

The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1604–1629. Edited by Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2010. 6 vols. 4,686 pp. £460.00. ISBN 97811070022589 [the set]. Volume I. Introductory Survey and Appendices. lvi, 611 pp. Volume II. Constituencies. xxvii, 586 pp. Volume III. Members A–C. xxv, 795 pp. Volume IV. Members D–J. xxv, 933 pp. Volume V. Members K–Q. xxv, 813 pp. Volume VI. Members R–Z and Appendix. xxv, 948 pp. King James VI and I and his English Parliaments: The Trevelyan Lectures Delivered at the University of Cambridge 1995. By Russell, Conrad. Edited by Richard Cust and Andrew Thrush. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2011. ix, 195 pp. £62.00. ISBN 9780198205067. With the appearance of The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1604–1629, edited by Andrew Thrush and the late John Ferris, a grand project as first conceived back in the 1930s and subsequently resuscitated in the 1950s, is nearly complete. Thirty-seven volumes have, to date, been published on the period 1386 to 1832, with only the years 1422–1504 and 1640–1660 remaining to be covered. The approach from the outset has been mainly biographical, focusing on the individual lives and political activities of past members of the house of commons. Until lately, coverage of the house of lords was excluded. Volumes devoted to the Lords in the period 1604 to 1715 are, however, currently in preparation, along with further volumes on the Commons after 1832.11 Cannadine, D., ‘ The History of Parliament: Past, Present – and Future?’, Parliamentary History, xxvi (2007), 366– 386; Hayton, D., ‘ Colonel Wedgwood and the Historians’, HR, lxxxiv (2011), 328– 355. Nevertheless, a more fundamental question remains as to whether The History of Parliament – to give the series its official title – is best constructed along such biographical lines. Are parliaments really the sum of their members? Growing awareness of this problem no doubt partly explains the increasingly-lengthy introductions provided by the more recent section editors. Thrush, for example, devotes most of a volume to providing what he describes as an ‘institutional history’ of the Commons in the early 17th century.22 The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1604–1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris ( 6 vols, Cambridge, 2010) [hereafter cited as HPC, 1604–29], i, p. xxii and passim. His contribution is a fine piece of scholarship. But, one may still legitimately ask, what about some of the wider political, religious, financial, and socio-economic aspects of the subject? At the most mundane level, of course, the paucity of records surviving for the early history of parliament provides a compelling reason to adopt a biographical approach. Yet such a justification, in terms of insufficient information, cannot hold good for later periods. A more convincing rationale is that the academic founding fathers of the project saw themselves as being in the business of establishing a mass of hard ‘scientific’ facts, or what today would be called a parliamentary history database. Such an approach had the added attraction of transcending differences of historiographical outlook among some of those involved, notably J.E. Neale and L.B. Namier. For although Namier is said to have been hostile to the kind of whig interpretation of history favoured by Neale, the historian of Elizabethan parliaments, the latter can be found praising the methodology of the former and singling out for special mention his Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (1929). ‘The essence of the game … is to “biograph” everyone, ask the right questions, and assemble the facts in tables where their significance may be readily grasped.’ So Neale stated in 1950, when addressing the Anglo-American Historical Conference. This was the way ‘to get behind the formal architecture of constitutions to the men who worked them’.33 Colley, L., Namier (1989), 46– 61; Neale, J.E., Essays in Elizabethan History (1958), 227, 232, 235. A similar consensus was also possible as regards making available in print the parliamentary diaries which survive from the later 16th century onwards. In the event, the pioneer here was the American, Wallace Notestein, who, from 1921 to 1966, was mainly responsible for the editing of a succession of such diaries dating from the early Stuart period.44 Commons Debates for 1629, ed. W. Notestein and F.H. Relf ( Minneapolis, 1921); The Journal of Sir Simonds D'Ewes: From the Beginning of the Long Parliament to the Opening of the Trial of Strafford, ed. W. Notestein ( New Haven, 1923); The Parliamentary Diary of Robert Bowyer 1606–7, ed. D.H. Willson ( Minneapolis, 1931); Commons Debates in 1621, ed. W. Notestein, F.H. Relf and H. Simpson ( 7 vols, New Haven, 1935); The Journal of Sir Simonds D'Ewes: From the First Recess of the Long Parliament to the Withdrawal of King Charles from London, ed. W.H. Coates ( New Haven, 1942); Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ed. E.R. Foster ( 2 vols, New Haven, 1966). It would, indeed, be difficult to deduce from the rather austere editorial introductions with which these volumes are furnished that Notestein, like his friend Neale, was a so-called whig, subscribing to the view of English constitutional development summed up in Alfred Tennyson's memorable phrase as a process ‘where freedom slowly broadens down from precedent to precedent’. In this scenario, by the end of Elizabeth's reign: ‘parliament was ready to claim a greater share in government and to limit the power of the sovereign’.55 Notestein, W., The English People on the Eve of Colonization 1603–1630 ( New York, 1954), 5, 8 n. 7; The Poems of Tennyson, ed. C. Ricks (1969), 489– 490. Notestein and Neale established a close working relationship in the early 1920s, which was to endure for almost 50 years. Notestein himself never completed the full-scale history that he had sketched out at the beginning of his career in 1924, when he delivered his groundbreaking lecture ‘The Winning of the Initiative by the House of Commons’. His protégé, D.H. Willson, however, fleshed out at book length, in 1940, one part of the argument in his The Privy Councillors in the House of Commons, 1604–1629. The story which they told between them concerned the waning of crown influence over the conduct of business in the Commons, due to procedural changes – notably the use made of committees – and a lack of effective leadership by government spokesmen. Moreover, the introductory account provided by Andrew Thrush is recognizably in this same tradition.66 Notestein, W., ‘ The Winning of the Initiative by the House of Commons’, Proceedings of the British Academy, xi (1924–5), 125– 175; Willson, D.H., The Privy Councillors in the House of Commons 1604–1629 ( Minneapolis, 1940); HPC, 1604–29, i, esp. 369–439. But while Notestein devoted much of his energy to editing MPs’ diaries, from the reigns of James I and Charles I, Neale, in contrast, concentrated on writing up the raw materials for Elizabethan parliamentary history, thereby fulfilling an agenda which he, too, had first adumbrated in 1924 with his article on ‘Peter Wentworth’ and his essay on ‘The Commons’ Privilege of Free Speech in Parliament’. The puritan firebrand, Wentworth, was portrayed both as playing a formative role in the growth of organised opposition in the Commons and as a spokesman for the allied cause of unrestricted freedom of discussion by MPs. Conflict over Elizabeth's ‘church and succession policies … hurried on the growth of the House of Commons, as a hot-house hastens the growth of a plant’.77 Neale, J.E., ‘ Peter Wentworth’, EHR, xxxix (1924), 36– 54, 175–205; Neale, J.E., ‘ The Commons’ Privilege of Free Speech in Parliament’, in Tudor Studies, ed. R.W. Seton-Watson (1924), 285. It was also in 1924, something of an annus mirabilis for Tudor-Stuart parliamentary history, that Usher, R.G. published his article ‘ The Institutional History of the House of Commons, 1547–1641’, Washington University Studies, xi (1924), 187– 254. The Commons’ diaries for the Elizabethan period were eventually to be edited in three volumes by T.E. Hartley. It was not, however, until nearly 20 years later that Neale attempted a general synthesis in his Ford Lectures of 1942. By then his interest in collective biography was very much in evidence. Entitled ‘The Elizabethan Parliament’ and surviving in typescript, the six lectures are a summary version of the famous trilogy of books that Neale went on to produce.88 University College London [hereafter cited as UCL], Neale MSS (uncatalogued): ‘ The Elizabethan Parliament’ (Ford Lectures, 1942); Neale, J.E., The Elizabethan House of Commons (1949); Neale, J.E., Elizabeth I and her Parliaments 1559–1581 (1953); Neale, J.E., Elizabeth I and her Parliaments 1584–1601 (1957). These lectures also serve to refute the claim made by G.R. Elton that Neale changed his mind between writing The Elizabethan House of Commons and the two successor volumes: review of Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments 1584–1601, Cambridge Historical Journal, xiii (1957), 187– 189. Elton, of course, went on to become one of Neale's fiercest critics: Elton, G.R., The Parliament of England, 1559–1581 ( Cambridge, 1986); Elton, G.R., Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government ( 4 vols, Cambridge, 1974–92), iii, 156–82. See also Graves, M.A.R., Thomas Norton: The Parliament Man ( Oxford, 1994); Dean, D.M., Law-Making and Society in Late Elizabethan England: The Parliament of England, 1584–1601 ( Cambridge, 1996). His audience in 1942 was treated at the outset to a statistical demonstration that by the time of the parliament of 1597–8: ‘the country gentleman and his brother, the lawyer, had captured the House of Commons’, since ‘of the 419 members who can be sufficiently identified for classification only about sixty were of the citizen and burgess class’. Numbers were, again, invoked at the beginning of the second lecture, in order to demonstrate the ‘phenomenal growth’ of Commons’ membership during the 16th century, from 296 to 462.99 UCL, Neale MSS: ‘The Elizabethan Parliament’, Lecture I, pp. 1–2; Lecture II, p. 1. Having covered county and borough elections, along with ‘procedure’, Neale devoted his three remaining lectures to a ‘chronological study’, the purpose of which was ‘to give … some idea of the main issues before each parliament, and to build up a picture of the house of commons at work, especially in its relations with the crown’. Freedom of speech provided ‘the central theme’, particularly as regards Church reform. By the 1580s, puritan clergy and laymen working together had come to constitute ‘an opposition party on a national scale, with a parliamentary programme’. This culminated in 1587 with a campaign of ‘amazing political precociousness’.1010 UCL, Neale MSS: Lecture IV, p. 1; Lecture V, pp. 11, 22. Albeit the puritans failed to achieve their religious ends, the constitutional consequence was an ‘unstable equilibrium’ between the rival claims of crown and Commons. Moreover, in his concluding peroration, Neale insisted that: ‘Elizabethan parliamentary history is a story of progress’ and, as such, part of the ‘steady march from precedent to precedent’, as well as a ‘prologue to the later drama’ of Stuart parliaments.1111 UCL, Neale MSS: Lecture VI, pp. 18, 24. Note here the apparently Tennysonian echo. Nevertheless, a striking feature of the analysis provided by Neale in these lectures and something on which he further elaborated in the last book of his trilogy is the claim that puritanism by the end of the 16th century was a largely spent political force, its rise and decline closely linked to the fate of the conference movement which Archbishop Whitgift and his protégé, Richard Bancroft, had effectively destroyed in the early 1590s. As a result, during the last two parliaments of Elizabeth, in 1597–8 and 1601, a ‘change in temper and character’ is detectable. Indeed, Neale went so far as to write that the Commons in 1601 exhibited a distinctly ‘secular’ bias.1212 UCL, Neale MSS: Lecture VI, passim; Neale, , Elizabeth I and her Parliaments 1584–1601, pp. 371, 436. This diagnosis, furthermore, would appear to have been broadly in line with that of Notestein; certainly there is not very much about puritanism in his treatment of Jacobean parliaments. It also fits with the starring role he ascribed to that very un-puritan MP, Sir Edwin Sandys, the great admirer of Richard Hooker. According to Notestein, Sandys was ‘the uncrowned king of the Commons in the early years of James’.1313 Notestein, W., The House of Commons 1604–1610 ( New Haven, 1971), 40– 41 and passim; Notestein, W., ‘ The Winning of the Initiative by the House of Commons’, 164 n. 1; Rabb, T.K., Jacobean Gentleman: Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561–1629 ( Princeton, 1998), 13– 16. A much more recent historian, however, who definitely took his cue from Neale, was Roger Munden. Picking up on the theme of the ‘increasingly secular pre-occupations of the last two Elizabethan parliaments’, Munden wrote of the ‘dismal failure’ of the puritans in the Jacobean parliamentary session of 1604, the first of the new reign, and that puritanism if ‘not actually dead … came close to being moribund’. There was now a ‘general lack of enthusiasm’ for Church reform. Munden later broadened his investigation of political developments to cover the years 1597 to 1610. The unimportance of puritanism, he argued, was part and parcel of a general absence in the Commons, of anything worthy the name of ‘opposition’.1414 Munden, R.C., ‘ The Politics of Accession: James I and the Parliament of 1604’, University of East Anglia MPhil, 1975, pp. 323, 326, 328, 347; Munden, R.C., ‘ Government and Opposition: Initiative, Reform and Politics in the House of Commons 1597–1610’, University of East Anglia PhD, 1985, pp. iv– vi, 177–9. See, however, the rather different account of these events provided in Munden, R.C., ‘ James I and “the Growth of Mutual Distrust”: King, Commons and Reform, 1604–1604’, in Faction and Parliament: Essays in Early Stuart History, ed. K. Sharpe ( Oxford, 1978), 66– 68. Yet Munden also provided an appendix to his unpublished 1985 doctoral thesis, which serves inadvertently to undermine his claims about the insignificance of puritanism. This appendix lists ‘the top 20% “most active” MPs in each session’ between 1597 and 1610. ‘Activity’ is measured in terms of the aggregate of ‘individual nominations to committees’, ‘recorded reports from committees’, and ‘recorded speeches in the House’. Remarkably, each of the three sessional lists, provided by Munden, between 1605 and 1610 is topped by Nicholas Fuller, an MP for London and one of the most radical puritans in the Commons.1515 Munden, , ‘ Government and Opposition’, 325– 329. Applying the same criteria to the Addled Parliament of 1614, Fuller again comes first.1616 Proceedings in Parliament 1614, ed. M. Jansson ( Philadelphia, 1988), 536– 537 and index passim. The only Elizabethan parliament in which he had sat was that of 1593, clashing on that occasion with Edwin Sandys and other supporters of a government measure aimed at redefining recusancy so as to include extreme puritans under the same rubric. But it was in the law courts, rather than on the floor of the house of commons, that Fuller had initially won his spurs, first as counsel for Thomas Cartwright and other puritan ministers put on trial in the Star Chamber in 1591 and then, again, appearing for the defence in two high-profile prosecutions brought by the monopolist, Edward Darcy, in 1594 and 1603.1717 Hartley, T.E., Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, ed. T.E. Hartley ( 3 vols, Leicester, 1981–95), iii, 162, 167; Rabb, , Jacobean Gentleman, 16– 17; Usher, R.G., ‘ Nicholas Fuller: A Forgotten Exponent of English Liberty’, American Historical Review, xii (1907), 743– 760; Wright, S., ‘ Nicholas Fuller and the Liberties of the Subject’, Parliamentary History, xxv (2006), 176– 213; The English Revolution c.1590–1720: Politics, Religion and Communities, ed. N. Tyacke ( Manchester, 2007), 14– 16. Although still surprisingly little is known about the background of Nicholas Fuller, a forthcoming book by Brett Usher, on the Culverwell dynasty, sheds some crucial new light. Thus Usher has established that Cuthbert Fuller, brother of Nicholas, was the brother-in-law of Laurence Chaderton, the two men having married Culverwell sisters in about 1578. Cuthbert Fuller died shortly afterwards and his widow Susan, née Culverwell, then married William Whitaker. Hence Nicholas Fuller was closely connected to the Cambridge puritan establishment, Chaderton and Whitaker going on to become college heads, respectively, of Emmanuel and St John's. Usher also plausibly argues that Nicholas was the nephew of the former Genevan exile and unyielding puritan layman, William Fuller. The latter had begun his career as an auditor in the Court of Augmentations and, as such, is likely to have first got to know Walter Mildmay, the future founder of Emmanuel College. Moreover, the London merchants, Nicholas Culverwell, father of Susan, and his brother Richard, were important figures in helping to sustain Elizabethan puritanism.1818 Usher, B., The Culverwells: The Rise and Influence of a Tudor Family (forthcoming); Bendall, S., Brooke, C. and Collinson, P., A History of Emmanuel College Cambridge ( Woodbridge, 1999), 33– 34, 104; The Seconde Parte of a Register, ed. A. Peel ( 2 vols, Cambridge, 1915), ii, 56, 58; Richardson, W.C., History of the Court of Augmentations ( Baton Rouge, 1961), 280, and ‘Mildmay, Sir Walter’, index refs. Nor can Nicholas Fuller be dismissed as an isolated figure in the first Jacobean parliament. Thus, another very active puritan MP was Sir Robert Wingfield, who during the three sessions between 1604 and 1607, oscillated in Munden's rankings from fourth to second place. Other active MPs by the same measure, listed in descending order, included in 1604, the puritans, Sir Francis Hastings, Sir Henry Beaumont, Sir John Heigham, Humphrey Winch, Sir Nathaniel Bacon, Sir Francis Barrington, Sir Thomas Hoby, Sir Edward Montagu, Sir Edward Lewkenor, Sir William Strode and Thomas Wentworth.1919 Munden, , ‘ Government and Opposition’, 326– 328. Including Fuller and Wingfield, these 13 were all in the top 47 and their main estates were located in 11 counties.2020 Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Devon, Essex, Leicestershire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Suffolk and Yorkshire: HPC, 1604–29, iii, 97–102, 142–86, 169–70; iv, 324–33, 574–83, 619–23, 735–40; v, 117–20, 362–9; vi, 473–82, 695–702, 802–6, 806–14. Furthermore, Conrad Russell has argued, in his posthumously-published Trevelyan Lectures, that there was a puritan majority in the Commons at the beginning of this parliament, on the basis of a vote in favour of sitting on Ascension Day – taken on 15 May 1604 and won by 137 to 128. As Russell explains: ‘those who thought it a holy day would not wish to sit’ unlike ‘those who thought it idolatrous to attach holiness to days’.2121 Russell, Conrad, King James VI and I and his English Parliaments: The Trevelyan Lectures Delivered at the University of Cambridge 1995, ed. Richard Cust and Andrew Thrush ( Oxford, 2011), 38. The force of this argument is, however, diminished by the facts that in 1607 and again in 1610, this same parliament adjourned for Ascension Day: HPC, 1604–29, i, pp. xxxv–vi. In similar vein, Thrush writes that: ‘in 1604 a great swathe of puritan members … re-entered the House determined to complete, if possible, the reformation of the Church’.2222 HPC, 1604–29, i, 84. Nevertheless, puritanism does not feature greatly in the subsequent accounts of parliamentary developments provided by either Thrush or Russell. Munden's claim that puritanism was now verging on the ‘moribund’, is also difficult to reconcile with the very considerable evidence of politico-religious agitation in the months after the accession of James I. Much of this took the form of petitions to the new king. One of the most intriguing of these is that dealing with ‘thinges grievous and offensive’ in both ‘Comonwealth’ and ‘Churche’ and probably dating from April, or even March, 1603. The 15 Commonwealth grievances are headed by ‘monopolies or pattents’ while the 16 Church grievances begin with ‘subscription urged upon the ministers to certen articles’.2323 Usher, R.G., The Reconstruction of the English Church (2 vols, 1910), i, 285–333; ii, 358–65; Collinson, P., The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (1967), 452– 459; Munden, , ‘ The Politics of Accession’, 347; TNA, SP14/1, ff. 127–32; Tyacke, N., ‘ Puritan Politicians and King James VI and I, 1587–1604’, in Politics, Religion and Popularity in Early Stuart Britain, ed. T. Cogswell, R. Cust and P. Lake ( Cambridge, 2002), 38– 42. Given the highly-critical remarks also made in this document about leading members of the government, including Robert Cecil, it manifestly came from outside such circles – despite Thrush's wild surmise that the author was Sir Julius Caesar, a civil lawyer and senior judge in the high court of admiralty.2424 HPC, 1604–29, i, 174 n. 71. Thrush's suggestion derives from the plea on behalf of civil lawyers included among the list of ‘thinges grievous’ – itself almost certainly the work of more than one person: TNA, SP14/1, f. 128v. A more convincing candidate in this particular instance, however, is the puritan civilian and former Essex follower, Henry Hawkins: Levack, B.P., The Civil Lawyers in England, 1603–1641 ( Oxford, 1973), 186– 187, 237. This petition may, in turn, relate to two extant lists of proposed parliamentary legislation dating from 1604, one now in the National Archives and the other among the Northumberland manuscripts at Alnwick.2525 TNA, SP14/6, ff. 181–2; BL, Alnwick MS, microfilm 252, vol. 7, ff. 114–15. These lists are transcribed in Dunn, B.R., ‘ Commons Debates, 1603/4’, Bryn Mawr College PhD, 1987, pp. 24– 34. Historians disagree about the provenance of these lists, Thrush, for example, describing them as ‘an ambitious schedule of legislation’ drawn up by ‘the government’, whereas Munden chose to follow Notestein, who, in his last and posthumously-published book of 1971, suggested ‘that two, three, or more MPs confabulating together about the coming session of parliament set themselves to hammer out a list of reforms deemed desirable’, and ‘having completed such a list they passed it around among their parliamentary colleagues who made copies for themselves’.2626 HPC, 1604–29, i, 308; Munden, , ‘ The Politics of Accession’, 152; Notestein, , The House of Commons 1604–1610, pp. 47– 54. The most authoritative discussion of these two 1604 lists of proposed legislation is that by Brian Dunn, again in unpublished thesis form. Revising Notestein's figures, Dunn has calculated that out of a total of 126 suggested bills, 56 are common to both lists. The titles of many of these bills also make it extremely unlikely that they emanated from the government. Under the heading ‘matter of estate’ they include: ‘an acte for the confirmation of the great charter and some additions of liberties of his majesty's princely grace’ and another ‘declaring sundry priveledges, liberties and orders of the common house in parliament’. A subsequent section ‘concerninge the reformation of the churche’ itemizes ‘an acte for the refourming of certaine points in the book of common prayer, and the rytes and ceremonyes of the church, and the establishment of a learned mynistry’ and, among further measures, ‘an acte againste pluralities of benefices and non residences’. At least as controversial, however, were some of the suggested ‘acts concerninge the generall relief and comfort of the realm’, such as those ‘declareing the common lawes of the realme concerninge priveledges, monopolies, and lycenses’ and ‘against purveyors’.2727 Dunn, , ‘ Commons Debates, 1603/4’, 4–7, 24–34. Dunn did not commit himself as regards the provenance of these lists. The precise origins of these various legislative proposals remain shrouded in obscurity, as does the genesis of the petition or memorial presented to King James concerning ‘thinges grievous and offensive’ in Commonwealth and Church. Apropos this last, however, the present writer has argued that it emanated from some of those associated with the late earl of Essex and his failed coup in 1601, and that their chosen messenger was Sir Henry Bromley, who rode post-haste to Scotland in March 1603. Bromley had the requisite entrée having attended the christening of Prince Henry at Stirling in 1594 and kept in touch thereafter with the Scottish court. He was also a long-standing supporter of James VI's claim to the English throne, a former Essex conspirator, and a puritan in religion. Furthermore, he was specifically identified in April 1603 as being a puritan emissary to the new king. Apart from his collaboration with Peter Wentworth over the succession question, the main evidence that Bromley was, indeed, a puritan is twofold: first, his apparent passing of a religious test administered by Thomas Cartwright, Stephen Egerton and Walter Travers, at the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Palmer in 1591, and second, a religious treatise dedicated to him in 1595, which includes calls for a ‘learned ministry’ in order to ‘deface idolatrie’ and advance the ‘gospell’.2828 Tyacke, , ‘ Puritan Politicians and King James VI and I, 1587–1604’, 21– 44. Nevertheless, scepticism has been expressed about the foregoing analysis by Ben Coates, author of the entry for Sir Henry Bromley in the Thrush volumes. His principal counter-argument is that in 1593, Bromley ‘entertained’ Bishop Richard Fletcher of Worcester at Holt Castle and was, therefore, no puritan, a deduction that seems to confuse good manners with religious outlook.2929 Coates, B., ‘ Sir Henry Bromley’, in HPC, 1604–29, iii, 316– 319. Ironically, however, Coates and his colleagues, elsewhere in these volumes, also provide further evidence of the puritan links of Bromley. In an excellent piece of detective work, Coates himself reveals that Francis Ligon, brother of Bromley's fellow Worcestershire MP in 1604, Sir William Ligon, was a patron of puritan preachers, including Thomas Cartwright.3030 Coates, B., ‘ Sir William Ligon’, in HPC, 1604–29, v, 129– 131. Again, Andrew Thrush notes that in 1605, Anne Fuller, daughter of Nicholas, married Sir John Offley, albeit failing to correlate this with the fact that in the previous year, 1604, Sir John's great-aunt, the widowed Anne Offley (née Beswick), had married Sir Henry Bromley at St Lawrence Pountney, London, as his fourth wife.3131 Thrush, A.D., ‘ Sir John Offley’, in HPC, 1604–29, v, 550– 551; Coates, , ‘ Bromley’, 316; The Heraldic Visitation of Staffordshire in 1614 and 1663–4, ed. H.S. Grazebrook (1885), 224– 226. This family connection between Bromley and Fuller is especially intriguing. Lastly, Simon Healy provides evidence that Humphrey Winch was a puritan, which serves to demonstrate that at least five of the six other MPs associated with Wentworth and Bromley over the succession question, in 1593, were all of the same religious persuasion.3232 Healy, S., ‘ Humphrey Winch’, in HPC, 1604–29, vi, 802– 806; Tyacke, , ‘ Puritan Politicians and King James VI and I, 1587–1604’, 23– 25. Granted that most elections at this period were not contested and that MPs were, instead, ‘selected’, it does not follow that the process was ideologically neutral. The motives of candida