In June, The History of Parliament and St James’s House celebrated the publication of their latest collaboration, Monarchy and Democracy: a History of Leadership. Jennifer Davey, Director of the History of Parliament , discusses the contents of the book.

We are delighted that our latest publication with St James’s House, Monarchy & Democracy: a History of Leadership, has been released. This book marks the 325th anniversary of the Act of Settlement, one of the most consequential constitutional statutes in British political history, and explores the relationship between Crown and Parliament since the 13th century: a story shaped by crisis, compromise, misunderstanding, and adaptation to the changing needs of the state. Rather than a simple contest between liberty and authority, or a steady march towards parliamentary sovereignty, it offers a compelling and accessible account by leading experts.

It begins in medieval England, when Parliament met irregularly at the monarch’s discretion and the Crown stood at the apex of political authority, governing through patronage and prerogative. Parliament granted taxation, passed statutes and offered counsel, but all three functions assumed the Crown’s primacy.

In the Tudor period, expanding bureaucracy, war, and the English Reformation drew Parliament into political life. The result was not parliamentary government but a growing interdependence with the monarchy, whose terms remained unclear. By the seventeenth century, disputes over taxation, prerogative and religion hardened into incompatible ideas of sovereignty, leading to Civil War. The execution of Charles I in 1649 shattered the assumption that monarchy was an unquestionable constitutional foundation.

The Interregnum exposed the difficulty of governing without monarchy, while the Restoration of 1660 showed that monarchy could not be restored unchanged. The events of 1688–9 transformed Parliament’s role: the removal of James II and accession of William and Mary established that monarchy could be conditional, and that succession itself could fall under parliamentary control.

Although the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought relative constitutional stability, the relationship between Crown and Parliament continued to shift. Cabinet government, the premiership and party politics altered the practical operation of power without radically changing formal structures. Monarchs still influenced politics, but increasingly through convention rather than command, while Parliament expanded both its authority and its claim to represent the nation.

By 1911, the balance had shifted decisively. The Parliament Act curtailed the Lords and ensured that the elected House would prevail. Royal assent remained formally essential but constitutionally unthinkable to withhold: what had begun as monarchy governing with parliamentary assistance had become a parliamentary state governing in the monarch’s name.

This joint publication traces this transformation without assuming its inevitability, treating Parliament and the Crown as institutions shaped by circumstance, personality and necessity. The constitutional order that emerged by the early twentieth century was the product of centuries of accommodation and conflict—a reminder that Britain’s uncodified constitution was not the absence of design, but the accumulation of history. You can read more about the project here.

JD