Transitions and continuities in petitioning in early modern England

Waddell, Brodie and Worthen, H. (2024) Transitions and continuities in petitioning in early modern England. In: Huzzey, R. and Janse, M. and Miller, H. and Oddens, J. and Waddell, Brodie (eds.) Petitions and Petitioning in Europe and North America From the Late Medieval Period to the Present. Proceedings of the British Academy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 155-181. ISBN 9780197267721. (In Press)

Abstract

Early modern England experienced a series of major political changes, including the English Civil Wars (1642-51) and the Glorious Revolution (1688), that had a far-reaching influence on how people engaged with official authority. This chapter examines how the practice of petitioning developed amid the upheavals of this era, attending to transitions but also to deeper long-term continuities. The focus here is primarily on what we might call ‘unrevolutionary’ petitioning, rather than the more well-known ‘radical’ petitioning campaigns that have received the most attention from historians, and which have often been associated with the emergence of the public sphere and modern political culture. The analysis shows that apparently ‘non-political’ petitioning on local or quotidian topics could have a mutually influential relationship with the more ‘radical’ varieties that are already well known. We find that the prevalence of petitioning at local and national level was rising from the late sixteenth century if not earlier, and some practical petitions by veterans and war widows adopted sharply partisan vocabulary from the 1640s onward. Yet, the aims of most petitioners as well as the form and tone of their requests remained remarkably stable across many decades. We should, therefore, seek to understand why petitioning became and remained so popular despite radical shifts in English government and political culture.

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