This four volume set contains the biographies of 3,175 individuals who sat in the House of Commons in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, providing not only a picture of political affiliations, aim and motives in seeking Membership, but also a study of other preocupations: the contrast between the code of chivalrous conduct and the reality of military service; the competitive pursuit of wealthy heiresses; the sometimes ambivalent relations between the laity and the Church; and their fluctuating success and failures in the scramble for patronage and preferment from the Crown and baronetage...

The History of Parliament - The House of Commons 1558-1603 contains 2.668 biographical articles and 241 constituency articles. The biographies include many of the powerful political figures of Elizabeth's reign such as Sir William Cecil, Sir Robert Dudley, Sir Amias Paulet, Thomas Sackville and Sir Christopher Hatton, as well as the middling figures like Laurence Tomson and Richard Topcliffe, the 'parliament men' Thomas Norton and William Fleetwood and the firebrand Peter Wentworth. "All writers of Elizabethan history shall now refer to these biographies for the most reliable information...

These five volumes cover the period of Britain's long wars with France, and a huge expansion of the business of the House of Commons: Charles Abbot, Speaker from 1802-1817 estimated that the amount of business carried on in the House had quintupled between 1761 and 1813. They include the period of the Union with Ireland and the introduction of 100 Irish MPs. They contain 2,142 biographical articles and 314 constituency articles. The biographical pieces include works on Henry Addington, Sir Frances Burdett, Edmund Burke, George Canning, Viscount Castlereagh, Henry Dundas, Charles James Fox,...