About the Book:People and Parliament offers a fresh and rounded perspective on the English Revolution of the 1640s. It uses detailed evidence to show how the economic requirement for parliament’s services, especially legislation, underpinned a demand for political change. It suggests that this took shape through a working “discourse” of ideas about the status of representative forms. The growing significance of the sovereign legislative function provided both the practical and philosophical impetus for parliament to assume a permanent place in political life.