Data: Petitioning and Petitioners to the Westminster Parliament, 1660-1788

Raw data for Graph 1: Large Responsive and Initiatory Petitions to the Westminster Parliament, 1660-1788. This Excel file provides the number of large responsive and initiatory petitions presented to each Westminster parliamentary session from 1660 to 1788. These data have been produced from the Journals for the House of Lords and House of Commons, and supplemented by research in the Parliamentary Archives. 'Large responsive' petitions are defined as those petitions submitted on, or after, the second reading of a piece of legislation already introduced to parliament, and which were signed by at least twenty people (in the case of the Lords, for which the petitions survive), or by a collective group for those presented to the House of Commons. 'Initiatory’ petitions are those petitions which were critical and disruptive towards the settlement of 1688 (such as on Economical or Parliamentary Reform). The Excel file lists the session dates, and the number of such petitions presented.