Divisions, Majority Rule and Political Culture in the Tudor and Early Stuart House of Commons*

Abstract Since the 1970s, revisionists have argued that the pre‐Civil War house of commons practised ‘consensual’ politics, a claim which has received powerful support from William Bulman's recent work. They have noted the relative infrequency of divisions and have claimed that those few divisions which did occur usually decided trivial matters. This article challenges this interpretation. It draws on procedural manuals, journals and diaries to analyse all divisions from 1552 to 1628. It shows that divisions often decided important matters, such as the fate of public bills and the details of how the monarch was to be supplied. Far from lamenting the practice of division, members of the lower house saw it as a decisive and legitimate way of resolving disagreements. The article concludes by suggesting that the house of commons shared more in common with other majoritarian English institutions than revisionists have suspected.