Further Proxy Records for the House of Lords, 1660–1720*

Proxy voting was a privilege of the members of the house of lords, which was used in their absence. Proxies were normally registered by a clerk of the House in the proxy books which recorded the proxy held and by whom, the date of the proxy or its registration, and, where necessary, the date and reason for its revoking. An examination of the manuscript minutes of the proceedings of the House for 1660–1720, kept by the same clerks who kept the proxy books, has revealed another source for proxies: marginal annotations designed as aide‐memoires to help the clerks to transfer the record of the proxies into the proxy book. A further source for proxies, hitherto ignored, can, for the period 1660–1704, be found in the record in the journal of the Lords of the calls of the House, designed to encourage members to attend or, at least, register their proxies. Both these sources reveal hitherto unknown proxies, though the new sources do not give as much information on the proxies as can be found in the proxy books.