Dr Paul Seaward

History of Parliament Research

I have returned to being Director of the History of Parliament after a three-year break as one of the British Academy / Wolfson Foundation Research Professors appointed in 2017. The BA/Wolfson project will result in a book dealing with the history of Parliament as an institution over the long term, taking a thematic approach. Before joining the History of Parliament in 2001 I was a clerk in the House of Commons for thirteen years, including stints as clerk of the Public Service, Public Administration and Employment Committees, and periods in the Public Bill and Journal Offices. In 1984-88 I was the A.H. Lloyd Research Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge.

You can find out more about the 'Reformation to Referendum' project on my blog.

Research and Publications

Apart from the project on parliamentary history, I am engaged on a biography of Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, and am joint editor, with Martin Dzelzainis, of the Oxford edition of the works of Clarendon.

Apart from the project on parliamentary history, I am engaged on a biography of Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, and am joint editor, with Martin Dzelzainis, of the Oxford edition of the works of Clarendon.

Publications include:

‘Why the History of Parliament is not written’, in Writing Parliamentary History, ed. David Hayton (Special issue of the journal Parliamentary History, forthcoming)

‘The History of Parliament’ in Handbook of Parliamentary Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Legislatures, ed. Cyril Benoît and Olivier Rozenberg (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, forthcoming)

‘Anglican Royalism and the Origins of the Second Anglo-Dutch War’, in War, Trade and the State: Anglo-Dutch Conflict 1652-89, ed. David Ormrod and Gijs Rommelse (Woodbridge: the Boydell Press, 2020)

‘A Sense of Crowd and Urgency?’ Atmosphere and Inconvenience in the Chamber of the Old House of Commons, in Space and Sound in the British Parliament, 1399 to the Present: Architecture, Access and Acoustics, ed. John Cooper and Richard Gaunt (Special issue of the journal Parliamentary History, 2019)

‘Parliament Observed: the Gallery of the Old House of Commons’, in Revisiting the Polite and Commercial People: Essays in Georgian Politics, Society and Culture in Honour of Professor Paul Langford, ed. Elaine Chalus and Perry Gauci (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019)

‘Parliament’, in The Oxford Handbook of Andrew Marvell eds. Edward Holberton and Martin Dzelzainis, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

‘The Life of Clarendon: History and Memoir in England and France’, in Clarendon Reconsidered: Law, Loyalty, Literature, 1640–1674, ed. Philip Major (London: Taylor and Francis/Routledge, 2018)

‘Institutional Memory and Contemporary History in the House of Commons, 1547–1640’ in Writing the History of Parliament, ed. Paul Cavill and Alex Gajda (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018).

‘The view from the devil’s mountain: Clarendon, Cressy and Hobbes, and the past, present and future of the Church of England’, in ed. Janet Clare, From Republic to Restoration: Legacies and Departures (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018).

‘Parliamentary Law in the Eighteenth Century: from Commonplace to Treatise’ in Essays on the History of Parliamentary Procedure, ed. Paul Evans (London: Hart Publishing, 2017)

‘Clarendon and the Act of Uniformity’, in ‘Settling the Peace of the Church’: 1662 Revisited, ed. N.H. Keeble (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)

'Financing Political Careers in Great Britain, 1868-1997’, in Lebenswelten von Abgeordneten in Europa, 1860-1990, ed. Adéla Giuji?ovà et al. (Dusseldorf, Verlag, 2014).

‘Divisions, Tellers and Management in the 17th-Century House of Commons’, Parliamentary History (2013).

‘Politics and Interest, 1660-1781’; ‘A Society of Gentlemen, 1660-1781’; ‘An Anglican Foundation, 1660-1781’: three chapters in A History of Oriel College, Oxford, edited by Jeremy Catto (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

(ed.) Speakers and the Speakership (a multi-authored volume of essays published as Parliamentary History, 29, 1 (2010)),

(ed., with Ruth Paley and Beverly Adams, Robin Eagles and Charles Littleton) Honour, Interest and Power: An Illustrated History of the House of Lords, 1660-1715 (Boydell and Brewer 2010),

‘The House of Commons, 1660-1707’ and ‘The House of Commons since 1949’, in A Short History of Parliament, ed. Clyve Jones (Boydell and Brewer, 2009),

(ed.) Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth (Oxford, 2009) (volume XI in the Clarendon edition of the works of Thomas Hobbes),

(ed.) Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon The History of the Rebellion: a new selection (Oxford World’s Classics, 2009),

‘Clarendon, Tacitism, and the Civil Wars of Europe’, in The Uses of History in Early Modern England, edited by Paulina Kewes (Huntington Library Quarterly vol. 36 (2005)),

(with Paul Silk) ‘The House of Commons in the Twentieth Century’, in Vernon Bogdanor (ed.), The British Constitution in the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2002,

(ed., with Mark Goldie and Tim Harris) The Politics of Religion in Restoration England (Basil Blackwell, 1990),

The Restoration, 1660-1668 (Macmillan 1990),

The Cavalier Parliament and the Reconstruction of the Old Regime (Cambridge, 1989).