The Representative of the People? by Derek Hirst - 9780521019880

The Representative of the People?Voters and Voting in England under the Early Stuarts\nAuthor(s): Derek Hirst\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521019880, 978-0521019880\nSynopsis\nContested elections became a fact of political life for the first time in early-17th-century England as the gentry pressed for seats in a parliament which was growing increasingly important. Dr Hirst examines politics from the point of view of the ordinary man before the Civil War. He asks what an election and being represented meant: what kind of person voted; how did he vote and why; and what might he gain by it. England was not yet shaped in the oligarchic mould that characterised it in the 18th century, and a striking feature of this period was the extent to which parliamentary politics was open to a large social group. Inflation and peasant survival on the land, and resistance to oligarchy in the boroughs (suppo.