Parliament: The Biography

Parliament: The Biography #1

by Chris Bryant

The history of Parliament is the history of the United Kingdom itself. It has a cast of thousands. Some were ambitious, visionary and altruistic. Others were hot-headed, violent and self-serving. Few were unambiguously noble. Yet their rowdy confrontations, their campaigning zeal and their unstable alliances framed our nation.

This first of two volumes takes us on a 500-year journey from Parliament's earliest days in the thirteenth century through the turbulent years of the Wars of the Roses and the upheavals of the Civil Wars, and up to 1801, when Parliament – and the United Kingdom, embracing Scotland and Ireland – emerged in a modern form.

Chris Bryant tells this epic tale through the lives of the myriad MPs, lords and bishops who passed through Parliament. It is the vivid, colourful biography of a cast of characters whose passions and obsessions, strengths and weaknesses laid the foundations of modern democracy.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Biography

576 pages, Paperback

First published January 30, 2014

About the author

Christopher John Bryant is a British politician and former Anglican priest who served in government as Deputy Leader of the House of Commons from 2008 to 2009 and Under-Secretary of State for Europe and Asia from 2009 to 2010, and in the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Culture Secretary and Shadow Leader of the House of Commons from 2015 to 2016. He was privately educated at Cheltenham College before studying English at Mansfield College, Oxford. After graduating with a further degree in theology, he worked as a Church of England priest as well as having roles at the BBC and Common Purpose.

Reviews

[Lord Bathcanoe of Snark · Rating 4 out of 5]

l do not admire Chris Bryant the man.
l think he destroys the myth that Christians and Socialists are by definition always nice people.
l do admire Chris Bryant the writer. Just tackling a subject of this magnetude has to be admired.
Though it gets bogged down in detail at times, this is a fascinating history of the Mother of Parliaments.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A worthy book but too many names, which came to seem like padding. Get on with the story instead!

[Tom Nixon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came very close to purchasing this book when the Missus and I were over in the UK in April of 2023. I ultimately wound up with an Alistair Reynolds novel and a one-volume look at The Glorious Revolution, but when the Missus took the Eldest Spawn back over there in August of 2024 and asked if I had any requests, this was the first book that popped into my head.

(It’s a signed copy from the excellent Foyle’s— though I don’t think either of us noticed that until she had brought it back to America and put it into my eagerly grasping hands.)

Let’s start off with the author. I think with any book tackling an institution as old and as complex as Parliament, you would, at least, hope that the author has done their research- but in the case of Chris Bryant, he’s done that and has some bona fides of his own— he’s still a Member of Parliament for Rhondda (and Minister of State for Data Protection of Telecoms with the current government). He’s been an MP for about a quarter of a century now so at the very least, he’s spent quite a bit of time in the institution he’s writing about.

The first volume of this two-part biography (‘Ancestral Voices’) covers the roughly five-hundred-year period between the 13th Century all the way up through 1801 when Parliament began to emerge in what most people would consider its modern form. While the institution at first was small- the first mention seems to be around 1258, when a group of knights were summoned to council ‘in Parliament’ around the time of Henry III, what is interesting is that there were attempts to try and limit the power of the Monarchy from the very start.

Don’t get me wrong: in no way does Parliament resemble a democratic institution throughout this book. Towards the end, we see the infrastructure of something resembling democracy emerge. Elections happen on a semi-regular basis. Seats changed hands— but there are also were also things like rotten boroughs and a lot of seats in the House of Commons remained the province of families. (There was a period of time when sitting in the Commons was seen as a training ground for what many saw as the real prize: a seat in the House of Lords.)

But from the very beginning— from Simon de Montfort leading the charge to force Henry III to accept a set of ‘Provisions’ limiting his power, the development of Parliament revolves around limiting the power of the Monarch. And what’s interesting is that various Monarchs- some of whom had dubious character indeed- kind of went along with it- up to a point anyway. (I feel like the Monarchy as an institution quickly figured out that its power rested on the consent if not of the people, then certainly of the Lords/Barons, etc— and they could rally that support or attack that support to suit their own agendas. But they needed to harness it in one way or the other.)

As history creeps closer to Charles I, we see Parliament fighting for its right to free speech— several Members were jailed under Elizabeth I pushing for the right to open speech. I actually didn’t realize any of this, and Bryant spends a whole chapter looking at this and offers a more recent example of a Member of Parliament naming an individual who had a super-injunction against the Press to keep their name out of the papers. (Specifically, footballer Ryan Giggs.) The Press couldn’t print his name because of the court-ordered injunction, but because MPs have a right to speak in the Commons, he could name Giggs and then the Press could quote him without fear of violating the injunction. (This feels quite ridiculous from an American point of view, but it does underscore the importance of the fight of Members to be able to speak freely in Parliament and I understand why Bryant spends a whole chapter on it.)

Charles I gets his head chopped off and even Parliamentarians discover that they have limits to what they’re going to allow. Weirdly, having read pretty extensively on this period over the last couple of years, it is not at all the milestone moment in British democracy that I originally thought. It had the potential to be at several points, but ultimately it falls apart and they make Cromwell pseudo-King and then when his son, Richard is obviously not up to the task they throw in the towel and bring Charles II back in.

What is a pivotal moment for Parliament is The Glorious Revolution which starts to put down limits to the power of the Monarchy and makes it clear that they can’t reign without the consent of Parliament. Party systems (though again, not as we know them today) start emerging and we’re off to the end of the Stuarts and the start of the Hanoverians.

Bryant devotes a chapter apiece to the Scottish Parliament and Irish Parliament. Scotland has a slightly different origin story than England’s and on paper seems to have far less power and probably would have had Scotland not had a run of bad luck with its Monarchs leading to lengthy minorities that had to be governed by someone. What I didn’t know is that the Union of Parliaments of England and Scotland had less to do with popular sentiment and more to do with the fact that the failure of the Darien scheme left Scotland with something of a fiscal crisis on its hands. Parliamentary union was the price of a fiscal bailout.

Scotland was reluctant to merge but did so. Ireland on the other came in kicking and screaming— its vote was far tighter than Scotland’s and carried with it all the historical baggage that went along with England and Ireland, even then.

Overall: I have to get the second volume to this book. If you’re going to write a two-volume anything and the reader immediately knows they’ve got to get their hands on volume two, then you should know you’ve written something pretty damn awesome and Bryant has. This is a bit dense in parts (and the early chapters were I think somewhat hampered by the fact I’ve just read a history of the Plantagenets and so a lot of the events described overlapped with things I had just read about) but it was also incredibly readable. I kept turning the pages and there were fascinating aspects of this (free speech, Scotland, Ireland) that I had known nothing about.

Readable, informative, and written by someone who obviously knows what they’re talking about. My Grade: *** out of ***

[Colin Mitchell · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting subject. I felt that it got a bit bogged down with individuals and missed the subject. So often the nobles changed their titles or lost their heads. The book picks up once the Stuart kings are consigned to history and by the 18 century, parliament begins to have the structure that we recognise today but still a few too many anecdotes, that seem like padding.

[Darcy · Rating 5 out of 5]

For some reason we often find ourselves looking back to, "the good old days," thinking of a time when things were simpler, more sedate, and easier to live in. As we all know, there has never been such a time and the troubles and difficulties we experience are pretty much the same ones that have plagued humankind throughout history. This point was driven home in the terrific book written by Chris Bryant. As he deftly illustrates, politics is just as cut-throat, manipulative, and full of shenanigans in the early evolution of parliament as it is today.

I confess to being shocked at the tumult that accompanied the building of democracy in the United Kingdom. So much so that it is amazing that the institution survived, much less grew. For example, piss off a king? You were dead. Upset the ruling factions? Your head was removed from your shoulders. Back the wrong players? A spot of being hung, drawn and quartered was your reward. These guys were brutal and yet society still churned out men who were willing to take a stand even when they knew a wrong word would have you languishing in the tower of London. No kidding, there are page after page of well meaning politicians who ended up with their head on a spike. (To be fair, there are a few today I would not mind meeting the same fate, but really!)

With all of this carnage going on, the institution still managed to grow, by fits and starts, often at the whim of the ruling monarch and slowly began to benefit the nation. Yes, corruption abounded, but here and there good was done. The author also shows the role Catholicism, Protestantism and Anglicism played along with the influence of the crown before democracy began holding sway. Even that was harried by literally buying elections, but progress it did. Executions made way for duels of honor, some of which were comical, others, not so much, and the British Isles began to reform themselves.

Fascinating, with a massive cast of characters, this is a well-told look at an institution that survives to this day. Volume one only takes us through to the 18th century, but does include a look a Scotland and Ireland as well. While definitely a warts and all look at history, it provides the reader with an unvarnished look at an age old institution and one that is worth the read.

[Katherine Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Densely packed with detail and impeccably well-researched, the book nonetheless founders on the border between a 3 and 4 star rating because the overwhelming lists of names make large sections of it, particularly in the latter half, at times both tedious to wade through and difficult to parse. In the end, I went with 4 because I did get a lot out of reading it, but be warned

[Trevor Stubbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seeing British history from a parliamentary perspective is a good exercise. Well researched.

[David Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a tad dense, particularly in the early chapters - where I was both less aware and therefore less interested - in the well written narrative. However, as the nascent parliament develops, the book becomes more absorbing as there is more for Bryant to get his teeth into, in terms of significant episodes and more colourful characters. Also the decision to move to more thematic chapters to intersperse the narrative - dealing with Scotland and Ireland separately as well as a chapter on duelling - makes for an easier and therefore more productive read. I expect the second volume to be more consistent as he brings the story up to date. And, it's not as if he is going to care about a mixed review - as they beget the Corbyn era, he will have bigger things to concern himself with!

[Chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. This was a real slog to read. Too many lists of names of people who crop up once or twice, but have relatively little significance in the grand scheme of things. Few facts are put into historical context - yes, a law made in the 16th Century might have been a big deal at the time, but we're left none the wiser as to whether it stood the test of time. Also, the book deviates from Parliament far too often, exploring nooks and crannies in the monarchy and the country at large which tell us little about the subject at hand.

[Jonathan Underhill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A masterful attempt to pull together what is, by necessity, a dense and wide ranging subject. It's not an easy read, but in honesty one should not expect it to be.

I would however echo the points made by others that there are moments where we descend in to long lists of names and/ or titles which require some careful consideration before one is able to fully make sense of what is being suggested.

[Pinko Palest · Rating 1 out of 5]

the title is misleading. This is not any kind of a biography of parliament, but rather a series of anecdotes about various personalities in the past. Very thin on detail. About how parliament worked at the time, or how it was elected, or even what it was meant to do. Also, surprisingly conservative for a Labour member of parliament: doesn't even mention the Levellers, with Christopher Hill, AL Morton and N. H. Brailsford not even making it to the bibliography

[Richard Thomas]

See my review for Volume 2.