Abstract
When Mary queen of Scots met her first Parliament, she encountered an institution that had long played an influential part in Scottish history. The Scottish Parliament was important for its legislation and taxation, but it was even more important as the forum in which the political community assembled to take major decisions about how the government should be configured. This article uses a newly-discovered list of those attending the Parliament of 1563 as the starting-point for an investigation of the political community in Mary's reign.Although our understanding of sixteenth-century politics has been much enhanced by studies focused on “kingship,” many crucial issues concern relationships among people other than the king. For more than half of the century there was no adult monarch present, and government had to be carried on by consensus between a regent and the nobility. Adult monarchs usually had more power than temporary regents, but they, too, had to seek consensus if they were to rule successfully.
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