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window) was reinforced. Sir Henry Slingsby, in Yorkshire, expected ‘a happy parliament where the subject may have a total redress of all his grievances’; John Bampfield, in Somerset, wrote: ‘For ever be this parliament renowned for so great achievements, for we dream now of nothing more than of a golden age’. In part this was a religious hope for redemption, very marked among the godly – Stanley Gower wrote to Sir Robert Harley: ‘We cease not to pray for you and that great assembly… if the Lord turn away our captivity we shall be like them that dream’.9 Exiles returned and foreigners arrived hoping that this was a moment for the perfection of reformation – the eyes of Christendom were now on the negotiations in London.10 Perhaps the most significant fact about the new parliament was that it could not be dissolved – whereas in May no-one could have known that they were witnessing the summoning of the ‘Short’ parliament, it was more obvious in November that they were witnessing the meeting of a long one. The price of the money to pay for the Treaty of Ripon was to be the redress of grievances. And, after eleven years, a relatively unpopular ecclesiastical policy, an invasion from Scotland and the collapse of financial reforms based on the prerogative, there were a lot of potential grievances to hear.

Elections in the autumn of 1640 were, like those earlier in the year, unusually contentious and eighty-six elections were contested. Since many of these were two-member constituencies, it seems that one quarter of the Commons had gained their seats through a public contest. Inflation had reduced the real value of the property qualification in the counties – fixed at possession of a 40 shilling freehold, which was now a relatively small sum. As a result the electorate was expanding. In the boroughs it was increasingly common to challenge the right of the Corporation to select members on behalf of the inhabitants. Such disputes were referred to the Commons Committee for Privileges, which frequently ruled in favour of wider franchises. As a result of these developments perhaps one in three adult males had the right to vote in 1640, and in many cases they had a choice of candidates too. Although in many elections only two candidates were presented for the two seats, reflecting an aversion to public contests and a preference for ‘selection’ over ‘election’, even where no effective choice was offered to electors there were still opportunities for the middling sort to apply independent pressure. In eighteen counties, and a number of significant boroughs, petitions were drawn up in the name of the candidates, and presented to them for delivery to Parliament. In some cases they had been read out and acclaimed at meetings of the county court when the elections had been organized.11

It is certainly clear that many members arrived with a powerful sense of the strength of provincial feeling, and of their obligation to represent it. When official business opened in the Commons speaker after speaker presented petitions covering what was quickly to become pretty familiar ground. Among the petitions piled up on the desk of John Rushworth, the clerk of the House of Commons, was the text of a speech by Sir John Colepeper, member for Kent. ‘I stand not up with the petition in my hand, as others have done’, he declared, ‘I have it in my mouth, and in charge from them that sent me hither to present the grievances of the county of Kent’. Like many others he expressed concern about the fate of religion, complaining both of the great increase of papists due to the neglect of the laws against them and of the ‘intruding and countenancing of divers new ceremonies in matters of religion’. This dislike of Laudianism was particularly evoked by the placing of the communion table altar-wise and ‘bowing or cringing to or towards the same’. His complaints against the Convocation, although they included the ‘etc oath’, were primarily constitutional: the canons had been passed by a Convocation which had turned itself into a synod, without warrant, following the