In 1982 I wrote an article on Thomas Scott, the author of Vox populi. The title, ‘Constitutional consensus and puritan opposition in the 1620s; Thomas Scott and the Spanish match’ was self- explanatory; written at the high point of revisionism, and the article used Scott to show that even in a political culture defined by consensual assumptions about the way the political system ought to work, and the interests of the commonwealth defended, it was still possible to locate something like puritan opposition to central aspects of royal policy. One response to this was that Scott was an outlier, too extreme, too untypical, to allow such wide conclusions to be drawn. Nevertheless, I argued, his works articulated, in unusually sharp and coherent terms, assumptions and attitudes, expectations and fears, that were far more widely held. In this paper I want to test, and I hope confirm, that claim through the example of Joseph Mede and his responses to the Parliament of 1621 and its immediate aftermath.
Peter Lake is Professor of History in the Department of History, Vanderbilt University, USA
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