The English political landscape changed drastically over the course of the 17th-Century as the ideas and actions of the Stuart kings came up against opposition in Parliament in a series of clashes that would result in trials, wars, and revolutions. English Constitutional Conflicts of the Seventeenth Century: 1603-1689 is a book of transcribed lectures by J.R. Tanner from his University of Cambridge class of the same name in the 1920s, detailing how the English Constitution was put on the course to the present-day.

Beginning with an introductory lecture that set the stage in the history of the Tudor relationship with Parliament, particularly under Elizabeth, and the brooding religious controversies that were about to boil over under the Stuarts and cause so much strife. Tanner then examined the relations between James I and the Parliaments that met during his reign before moving to doing the same between Charles I and Parliaments during his early reign. Next was an examination of Charles I’s 11-year personal and how he was able to find loopholes and stretched laws to get money, but when war came then came Parliament. Tanner then spends a quarter of the book examining the Long Parliament, the various Civil Wars, and the execution of Charles I before moving onto the Purge Parliament then the Parliaments under the Protectorate. Tanner turned his attention to the Restoration of Charles II and how the monarch dealt with his ever-changing first Parliament in his attempts to bring about religious toleration before the Exclusion controversy dominated the latter part of his reign. Finally, Tanner deals with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the ending of the Constitutional changes for the century.

The book begins off dryly until Tanner gets to the reign of Charles I when the conflicts really begin in the Stuart era. The back and forth between the king and Parliament is when things really pick up in the book and it continues throughout the Civil Wars period, the Protectorate, and the Restoration. The anticlimactic final chapter begins abruptly and proceeds rapidly while not really going in-depth as what occurred in his father and brother’s reigns. Given that the book focuses on politics, it is only during the Civil War era that other facets of history really come play.

Overall English Constitutional Conflicts of the Seventeenth Century: 1603-1689 is a good introduction to the Stuart era especially on the political and law front. J.R. Tanner shows his mastery of the subject presented in this short book, even though the transcription of lectures to text. ( )