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A Commonwealth of the People: Popular Politics and England’s Long Social Revolution, 1066–1649 / David Rollison
Review Date: 01 June 2010
David Rollison has written a remarkable work of social and political history: vertiginously ambitious, A Commonwealth of the People showcases England’s constitutional and economic development from the 11th to the 17th century within world histories of nationalism, democratization, and globalization. ‘My subject’, he writes, ‘is the emergence of a “civilization”’ (p. 16).
Justice and Grace: Private Petitioning and the English Parliament in the Late Middle Ages / Gwilym Dodd
Review Date: 30 April 2008
The central place of petitioning in the work of the English parliament has long been recognised: the 18th-century editors of the rolls of parliament included unenrolled petitions in their text wherever they felt able to assign them to a particular assembly, and to this day Members of the House of Commons may deposit written petitions in a bag provided for this purpose at the back of…