The Politics of the Ancient Constitution

The events of the years 1600–1642 have been argued over intensively by historians. Central to these arguments has been a search for the causes of the English Revolution. Many recent historians have denied that the Revolution had any long-term causes, and they have begun to see the period before 1642 in its own terms. These historians have suggested that before the 1640s English politics was based on consensus rather than conflict or opposition.

Glenn Burgess examines the implications of these recent revisions of the early Stuart period for the history of political thought. This book is primarily a study of the political ideas of common lawyers—the ideology of the "Ancient Constitution"—and looks closely at the ideas of such men as Sir Edward Coke and John Selden. On this Dr. Burgess builds a general interpretation of early Stuart political thought.

He argues that before 1625 ideological consensus was maintained in England, not because everyone agreed with everyone else, nor because there was no conflict over matters of principle, but because there were agreed conventions that held together seemingly contradictory political theories. Burgess examines the history of political thought in relation to professional groups—civil and common lawyers, and clerics, primarily—and in terms of the distinctive discourses they produced. After 1625 the boundaries between their discourses began to dissolve and political disputes became more threatening to the nation's stability.

Through this approach, Burgess is able to show why it was that a period of "ideological consensus" was also a period of bitter political conflict.