‘A Place To Speak One's Conscience In’: Disciplines of Debate in the Protectorate Parliaments, 1654–9

Abstract

AbstractThis article is a study of the operation and culture of debate in the house of commons during the English Protectorate. Drawing principally upon the manuscript diaries of Thomas Burton and Guybon Goddard, it will explore the substantial degree of contingency and flexibility which parliamentary debate permitted within a commonly‐understood framework of disciplines. While these troublesome parliaments are commonly associated with insoluble conflict between members, it will be demonstrated that debate was conceptualised as a mechanism for resolving conflict rather than merely as a forum for expressing conflict. By first analysing the peculiar and often informal ways in which parliamentary discipline worked to identify and correct ‘disorderly’ behaviour, and then evaluating what that reveals about members’ expectations of what debate was supposed to achieve, this article will uncover an underlying parliamentary culture in which the institution of debate was highly valued as a means for reaching agreement. The tightrope between freedom and moderation of speech could be tricky to negotiate, but it was the admittedly imperfect synthesis of the two which best characterised the debates of the Protectorate Parliaments.