The “House of Lords” of Jonathan Fitzgibbons's new monograph was the “Other House” established by the Humble Petition and Advice in 1657. Names mattered, and a not inconsiderable part of this book examines the contemporary and historiographical tussle over whether this chamber was a revived House of Lords or something else. Behind such details were intellectual, political, and constitutional struggles over the nature and purpose of the Protectorate and its governing structures. Some contemporaries and most historians have seen the establishment of this second chamber as an essentially conservative measure pointing in the direction of travel for the Protectorate towards pre-1649 constitutional forms (including kingship). Associated with this is the tendency to place the revival of an upper house on a timeline leading inevitably to the Restoration and the return of a House of Lords populated by hereditary peers and bishops. Fitzgibbons looks to challenge these positions by arguing that the Other House was, in fact, the product of a period of vibrant constitutional experimentation intimately connected to political struggles under the rule of Oliver Cromwell and his son Richard.

The opening chapter connects the Protectoral Other House with the political thought of the 1640s rather than that of the Restoration. The parliamentarians had fought in part to secure a larger constitutional role for the Commons, and on several occasions it was suggested that Lords membership be approved by the Lower House. Expediency drove constitutional innovation that, with the revolution of 1649, saw the Rump declare itself the supreme power in the state and the House of Lords abolished. This produced a difficult legacy for Oliver Cromwell. His problems with parliaments derived from the fact that many of those elected were hostile to his policies. His initial remedy was the unpopular expedient of excluding them from sitting. This evolved into providing a legislative check on the Commons through a new second chamber, something that seemed particularly necessary in the aftermath of the furor over James Nayler.

Fitzgibbons provides a thoroughly researched discussion of the political background to the establishing of the Other House and continues with a prosopographical analysis of its membership. Although many anticipated that those old lords not disqualified through sequestration would be restored, in fact only seven were summoned to its first meeting. Instead, Cromwell packed the chamber with his dependents, allies, and kinsmen; nearly a quarter had familial ties to the Protector. Fitzgibbons's argument that charges of nepotism “need qualifying” because Cromwell had to nominate “men he knew were faithful to him” (101) is circular and unsatisfying. Similarly, his position that this House did not represent “the harbinger of a social revolution” (102) as claimed by its critics because only eight out of sixty-two members were below gentleman status, surely understates the radical discontinuity this assembly's social composition represented compared with the pre-1649 House of Lords. Fitzgibbons tries valiantly to offer some assessment on members’ religious positions, but this is very difficult and the best that can be said is that it was “diverse” (113), with a general sympathy for liberty of conscience but also a strong showing for Presbyterians of various stripes. The attempt to accommodate different shades of opinion ultimately satisfied no one, and one Scottish Presbyterian characterized the assembly as “a medlee, a hotch-potch, a pleasing of both sydes” (121).

Fitzgibbons's discussion moves on to an analysis of the Other House in the second and third Protectorate Parliaments which largely consisted of struggles with the Commons about the chamber's legitimacy and its legislative and executive competencies. Fitzgibbons usefully connects these debates with those of the 1640s over the principle of Commons supremacy. Indeed, one member asked, “what have we got by the war?” (141) if they recognized what was essentially a new House of Lords. However, others acknowledged the necessity of compromise to move the Protectorate off the rocks of infighting. As Samuel Gott colorfully put it, he was “as little pleased with these Lords as any man,” but the Commons were “but one leg, and cannot go but hop up and down without them,” adding he had “seen a man walk very well with a wooden leg” (182).

The problems of settlement and compromise, however, were writ large in the case of the army. Fitzgibbons makes a convincing case that the Other House was much less packed with military Cromwellians than has been suspected. In fact, it was their weakness there that helped precipitate the army's move against Parliament and the recall of the Rump in 1659, fearful that the Other House was insufficiently strong to press the army's demands and act as a brake on anti-army sentiment in the Commons.

This is a detailed and thoughtful book, and Fitzgibbons is in command of his subject. The wider claims about the scope of its historiographical interventions and revisions can be somewhat overstated, but there is no question that this will become the standard text on the second chamber in the 1650s. At times it betrays its origins as a doctoral thesis with rather too many quotations and footnotes, so that it can resemble a running commentary on Thomas Burton's Diary (1656–1659). But writing the history of an institution that has left such a meager archival trail is difficult indeed, and Fitzgibbons has produced a meticulous and scholarly study that will be of considerable benefit for future scholars.