Institutional memory and contemporary history in the House of Commons, 1547–1640

Abstract

Parliament in the course of a century after 1547 became almost certainly the best-recorded institution in Britain. This essay considers the nature of institutional memory in the late sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century House of Commons. It concerns firstly the nature and quality of institutional memory, and how, while it relied considerably on non-inscribed memory, it changed with the growth of the written record. It discusses the importance of precedent to parliamentarians, and how precedents were identified and selectively used. But more broadly it considers how written records, both of a formal and official nature and a private and unofficial kind, were developed over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in order to generate a narrative about parliament that helps to consolidate its landmark status. As a result, parliament came to be recognised and revered as the key institution in the relationship between the state and the individual.