Today we hear from Dr Andrew Barclay, senior research fellow for our Commons 1640-1660 project. He explores the accuracy of the naming of the so-called Convention Parliament of 1660…
Prior to dissolving itself on 16 March 1660, the Long Parliament had agreed that a new Parliament should meet on 25 April. The elections held over the next six weeks used the old franchises revived for the 1659 Parliament. Unlike then, the new Parliament did not include MPs from Scotland and Ireland. The other obvious difference from 1659 was that it included the traditional House of Lords, not the Cromwellian ‘Other House’. The new assembly was consciously intended as the Long Parliament’s successor, although, crucially, one with a fresh electoral mandate.
But was this a ‘Parliament’? Modern historians have usually said that at this stage it was instead a ‘Convention’, on the basis that it had not been…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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