Institutional Practice and Memory – Parliamentary People, Records and Histories: Essays in Honour of Sir John Sainty

Offering political and parliamentary historians an unrivalled selection of specialist essays on various aspects of British parliamentary history from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, this collection celebrates the career of Sir John Sainty, the much–admired former Clerk of the Parliaments. Echoing Sir John’s many interests as well as his published work, the volume presents the contributions of a number of scholars, including Alasdair Hawkyard, Michael McCahill, Jason Peacey and Clyve Jones himself. The authors illuminate a range of legal and political topics relating to the mechanics of Britain’s parliamentary system, focusing especially on the august institution’s officeholders and on the complex technicalities of its quotidian procedures. The material includes a personal memoir of Sir John by Michael Pownal, himself a retired clerk of the parliaments, and extends to scholarly surveys of the telling contributions by the celebrated Surveyor of the Works, Inigo Jones, and a fascinating analysis of the noises and gestures deployed in the House in the Sixteenth Century – apparently anarchic expressions of support and derision that belied arcane and highly formalised rules of engagement. This detailed and specialized collection provides a superb new resource for parliamentary researchers and historians.

Clyve Jones was Reader in Modern History at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, UK, until his retirement in 2006. He also served as the Institute’s collection development librarian, and since 1986 has edited the journal Parliamentary History . A widely published specialist on the British House of Lords in the early eighteenth–century, as well as on the nation’s peerage, his most recent work, as editor, was A Short History of Parliament (2009).