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Members of the house of lords had the right to enter their dissent from a decision reached by the House into the journal, the formal record of the Lords' proceedings, by signing their names against the record of the decision. Further, members could enter a protest, which normally consisted of a reason or a series of reasons for the dissent together with their signatures. The first such protest originated in 1641 and, though it is still possible to enter a protest, the last one was in 1998. Little official evidence has survived to illuminate the procedure of how protests were entered into the journal. This evidence (largely consisting of draft journals for 1660 to 1690 and protest books since 1831), along with other unofficial sources, is examined to determine how protests may have been organised and entered into the record of the House. This organisation may mean that the record of protests that has survived is incomplete and that some names of lords who originally protested were not entered into the final manuscript journal. This may have important implications for the historian of parliament. The surviving records of protesting may have distorted the understanding of the politics of individual lords and party affiliations within the house of lords.
