Lord Lieutenancy of Cambridgeshire under Charles I, 1625-1640

The main goal of this dissertation is to examine the county of Cambridgeshire using the Lord Lieutenancy and its control of both militia affairs and its function as the key instrument of royal policy within the shire. In addition, it will examine the Lord Lieutenant, Theophilus Howard, 2nd earl of Suffolk, and his deputy lieutenants who formed the foundation of a ruling elite for Caroline Cambridgeshire. It was this ruling elite which was able to hold down faction and turmoil within the shire and perform the myriad of divisive and constitutionally objectionable tasks handed down from the crown, such as collection of the forced loan and the expansion of ship money into inland counties. Through this examination, the findings are that the Lord Lieutenant had almost no real contact with the shire he was in charge of, leaving the year-to-year running of militia and local government to his deputy lieutenants. It was the deputy lieutenants with their long family history of residency and office holdings within the shire, that formed a core of officials who were able to use their position within the Lieutenancy to shield the shire from distasteful crown policies while still being able to supply Charles with men and money on time and in full when other shires in England were falling into chaos and riots. However, this influence could only withstand so much, and in the end, Charles's reliance on his Personal Rule and fiscal innovations made these tasks impossible to perform and forced the institution into collapse.