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'In The Time Of A Woman, Which Sex Was Not Capable Of Mature Deliberation': Late Tudor Parliamentary Relations And Their Early Stuart Discontents, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The English Civil War is one of the seminal events in Anglo-American constitutional history. Oceans of ink have been spilled in debating its causes, and historians have pointed to a number of salient divisions along economic, social, political, and religious lines. But a related, and equally important, question has gone largely ignored: what allowed the House of Commons, for the first time in English history, to play the lead role in opposing the Crown? How did the lower house of Parliament develop the constitutional self-confidence that would allow it to organize the rebellion against Charles I?

This Article argues that …