Welsh Journals

A REGISTER OF PARLIAMENTARY LISTS, 1660-1761. Edited by David Hayton and Clyve Jones. University of Leicester History Department; Occasional Publication Number I [General Editor: Aubrey Newman]. 1979. Pp. 168. £ 1.75. Writing to the Reverend Dr. Arthur Charlett, Master of University College, Oxford, on 8 February 1699, the bishop of Oxford, the Reverend John Hough, observed, 'The Lords sat yesterday and to-day, till almost six at night, and the subject matter of their debate for the last three days has been, whether their Lordships were of opinion, that the Dutch guards should be kept on for one year? I will not tell you who were pro and con, but at last it was carried in the affirmative by 54 against 38.' l Hough does not explain the reasons for his teasing reticence; he may have felt that 'the Oxford Gazeteer or Oxford Intelligencer', as Charlett was commonly called by contemporaries, did not need to be told, or had better not be told. Whatever the reasons, historians have cause to regret Hough's decision, especially the compilers of this extremely useful compendium of parliamentary lists, whose extensive searches have failed to come up with a complete division list for this particular division, and who must ruefully wish that Hough had been at least as forthcoming in February 1699 as a later correspondent of Charlett's was to be in March 1707 when sending him a list-the only list discovered so far-of English lords voting for the rider to the Union with Scotland Bill that nothing in the bill should be construed as an approbation of Presbyterianism. Of course, all may yet be revealed of what took place behind the curtain of secrecy which Hough drew across the parliamentary events of 8 February 1699, judging, amongst other things, from the revelations which have been made in this area of parliamentary history in the past decade. Since the 1970 colloquium at Leicester, whose deliberations were published three years later as The Parliamentary Lists of the early eighteenth century: their compilation and use, ed. A. Newman (Leicester, 1973), which included an appendix of all known Commons' division lists for the period 1688 1760, hunting division lists has become an increasingly popular and rewarding scholarly pursuit, with The History of Parliament Trust in full cry and leading the pack. Many entirely new lists have been discovered as well as many variants on existing lists, and it may be noted that in both these respects the National Library of Wales has proved a happy hunting ground. Indeed, the very scale of discoveries has led to the present volume, which is much more than an updated and, in some instances, corrected version of the colloquium appendix. 2 Consisting mainly of four types of lists-division lists, forecasts of divisions, canvassing lists of parliamentary managers, and analyses of entire parliaments-it begins at 1660 and ends in 1761; it includes for the first time the listing of House of Lords lists, to which the joint endeavours of Eveline Cruickshanks, David Hayton and Clyve 1 John Wilmot, F.R.S. and S.A., The life of the Rev. John Hough, D.D. (London, 1812), pp. 142-43. 2 Corrections to the manuscript sources cited for items 3, 5 and 18 in the colloquium appendix have been made.