This was the question posed by Derek Hirst as part of his important study of representation in early Stuart England. His answer, after a detailed investigation of the surviving evidence, was that the relationship between members of Parliament and their constituents was growing ever closer in the early seventeenth century. Indeed, at the beginning of the Long Parliament, ‘to many both in Parliament and country … the people were no longer merely to be governed, but they were to act in partnership with their representatives in the House’. Despite Hirst's optimistic prognosis, this situation was eminently reversible. The experience of the Civil Wars, purges of Parliament, the execution of the King, and the repeated forced dissolutions of Parliament all had the potential to erode that ‘partnership’. The Protectorate itself could be seen to mark another stage in that process of erosion. In chapters 3 and 4, we saw the way in which elections were managed, with varying degrees of success, the extent to which changes to the constituencies, the new franchise, and the qualifications demanded of voters influenced the make-up of the Protectorate Parliaments, and how exclusions moulded the Commons in 1654 and 1656, creating what some contemporaries viewed as ‘forced’ Parliaments.