This is a companion to G. R. Elton’s The Tudor Constitution and E. N. Williams’s The Eighteen Century Constitution, and covers the period. It is a collection of documents illustrating constitutional, political and ecclesiastical history, and it is divided into four parts. The first part, "The Ancient Constitution", is devoted to the reigns of James I and Charles I; the second, entitled "The Era of Experiment", covers the Civil Wars and the Interregnum, from 1640 to 1660; the third deals with the restored monrachy of Charles II. A final section deals with certain problems of central and local government common to the whole period.

          There are 146 documents, some of them from manuscript sources, many of them not recently reprinted or easily available. Professor Kenyon provides a full commentary on the documents, in which he incorporates a review of the background history. Spelling and punctuation are modernized and there is a classified list of documents.

          The publication of this selection and introduction to the Stuart period gives the expert as well as the student for whom it is intended a complete selection of documents for the whole period from 1485 to 1815.