John Selden is famous, but not at all well known. His fame was earned as a lawyer (one of the cleverest, and absolutely the most learned, in 17th-century England), and as an MP who played a significant role in English political history from the 1620s to the 1640s. In the earlier period he helped to lead the House of Commons's opposition to Charles I, being awarded several years of imprisonment in the Tower of London for his pains; but in the 1640s his energies turned more to opposing abuses of parliamentary power, such as the “Act of Attainder” against the Earl of Strafford — a kind of murder by legislative decree — or the exclusion of bishops from the Lords.
He also earned a place in English religious history, through his decisive interventions in the Westminster Assembly. This was an advisory body, set up by Parliament in 1643 in order to work out how to convert an episcopal Church of England into a Presbyterian one. Again and again, Selden succeeded in blocking or overturning the arguments of the dominant Scottish Presbyterians, who had to go scurrying back to their studies to do more homework. The eventual changes to the system of Church gov
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