Thomas Scott and the Growth of Urban Opposition to the Early Stuart Regime

Abstract

While the crucial question of the contribution of the troubles of the 1620s to the eventual dissolution of the old political order in Stuart England remains clouded in debate, with historians like C. Russell questioning the whole concept of escalating parliamentary opposition to the Crown in that decade, we are at least beginning to recognize the pattern of provincial unrest and the growing interaction of national and local agitation at this time. D. Hirst in particular has shown how constituencies were increasingly volatile and vociferous, a development which owed a great deal to the expansion of their electorates. In the boroughs country gentry joined forces with anti-oligarchic groups of citizens to broaden the franchise. Here agitation was strongly influenced by the severe economic and social problems of many county towns during the early seventeenth century.