Dr Robin Eagles, Editor of the House of Lords 1660-1832 project kicks off our new series, ‘Named Parliaments’. Here, whilst highlighting a number of Named Parliaments in the seventeenth century, he explores the debate of parliament versus convention or assembly in the early modern period…
The
question of what is and is not a Parliament might seem a simple one, but on two
occasions during the reign of James I, efforts were made to reclassify
unsatisfactory Parliaments as mere ‘conventions’. This was true of the 1614
‘Addled Parliament’, as it had failed to pass any legislation, and James I also
attempted to downgrade the 1621 Parliament, insisting it had not been one either.
Doubt might also be expressed about the status of some of the experimental
bodies that met during the turbulent years of Civil War and Interregnum, the
‘Nominated Assembly’…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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