House of commons 1754 - 1790 vol.1

With these three volumes, covering the period 1754-1790, the publication of the History of Parliament begins. As a historical project, it is of long standing. The practicability of such a history was being widely discussed midway between the world wars, and in 1929 the first lord of the Treasury appointed a committee with instructions to report on the "materials available for a record of the personnel and politics of past Members the House of Commons from 1264 to 1832, and on the cost and desirability of publication. It is noteworthy that at this early stage in the consideration of the History stress was already laid on two principles which have governed all that has since been done upon the work its concentration on the House of Commons and its treatment of the Members as indivi duals, whose parliamentary activities should be approached through the study of their lives and personal relationships. In 1932 the Committee issued a report which favoured a history of this kind and assembled valuable information about the archives from which the necessary evidence might be derived.

By this time, the idea of the History was arousing widespread interest, due in the first instance to the enthusiasm of Colonel (afterwards Lord) Wedgwood, then Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme. Within four years from the appearance of the report, he had compiled and H.M. Stationery Office had published the first of three volumes intended to cover the history of Parliament from 1439 to 1509. A second volume was published in 1938. The projected third volume never appeared. In fact, the evident need to reconsider the plan of the work as a whole, combined with the restrictions of a war-time economy, meant that suspension of publication became inevitable.