Alasdair Hawkyard’s description of The House of Commons 1509–1558 as an “introductory survey” to S. T. Bindoff’s three volume The House of Commons, 1509–1558 (1982) underplays the significance of his own efforts and achievements (1). While drawing extensively upon the biographies and constituency surveys of Bindoff’s volumes, Hawkyard has worked far beyond them and has evaluated and assessed the full range of sources that are extant for the House of Commons between 1509 and 1558. By his own reckoning, and long recognized by historians of Parliament, gaps in the archival evidence for the House of Commons during this period are notorious. The challenge, then, for any historian who attempts a general chronology of the personnel and procedure of the Henrician, Edwardian, and Marian House of Commons is to narrate change that accounts for the numerous lacunae in the documentary record. Moreover, the vast range of relevant sources makes this task a most onerous and frustrating one. Hawkyard’s simple solution is to produce a thematic account while “maintaining a historic sequence within each theme” (3). Through such an approach, each theme is illuminated by moments of “misfortune and notoriety” (16). Deaths, embezzlement, matrimonial misconduct, and sartorial standards sit alongside short excursions into more famous events of Commons’ business. All add dynamism, color, and drama to this meticulous account of mid-Tudor parliamentary administration and its development. Hawkyard successfully depicts “an institution experiencing great political and religious upheaval and change” (2).

In place of an overarching narrative The House of Commons 1509–1558 uses each of its thematic chapters to construct a chronology of parliamentary procedure. From “Elections and Electoral Practice” in chapter 1, through categories of “Members” (chapter 2) and “Organisation” (chapter 3), Hawkyard builds toward accounts of the “The House in Session” (chapter 4) and “Legislation” (chapter 5). While these themes somewhat artificially disentangle coeval procedures and processes, especially in the latter two chapters, this structure provides a clear account of the range of individual organizational and legislative stages in the life of the Commons. In keeping with the survey genre, each chapter contains helpful subdivisions that depict each component element of a particular theme. The contents pages exhaustively list each subsection for ease of reference. Appendixes complete the volume, providing further reference materials that will support the scholarship of graduate students making their first foray into parliamentary administrative history, while experienced historians will find the inclusion of detailed information about constituencies and by-elections a helpful aide-mémoire.

Tantalizingly, Hawkyard only makes passing reference to his general argument and historiographical contribution. Perhaps that is to be expected in a survey. But aside from a short discussion of the “great tradition of sixteenth-century parliamentary history” (7), The House of Commons 1509–1558 generally omits any significant engagement with the relevant scholarship. Such an omission seems like a missed opportunity to make explicit some important correctives to a field that has often focused on sui generis individuals or particular events without fully appreciating the “activity, flexibility and evolution” of the House of Commons between 1509 and 1558 (4). Beyond a few introductory comments, Hawkyard’s argument that the period witnessed “a remarkable picture of consistency and regularity of practice and behaviour” is overwhelmed in subsequent chapters by the weight of detail and information he has marshaled (4). Nonetheless, an attentive reader will appreciate a volume that challenges hindsight judgments and assessments of the mid-Tudor House of Commons based on later parliamentary practice.

Hawkyard’s work makes an important contribution to the Parliamentary History: Texts and Studies series. Necessarily cautious, The House of Commons 1509–1558 will serve as a worthy companion to Bindoff’s study. But it should also be read on its own merits. Hawkyard has produced a fine piece of scholarship, elegantly walking the fine line between detailing the everyday and mundane of parliamentary business while providing an account of the House of Commons in a significant period of British history.