When considering Ireland and Scotland during the Protectorate Parliaments, historians have tended to concentrate on two areas. First, they have emphasised the role of Irish and Scottish members of Parliament as supporters of the Protectorate in the kingship debates of 1657 and the union debates of 1659. While there is much truth in this approach, it is also problematic, as it tends to emphasise their importance as a ‘bloc’ of votes, to be manipulated by English interests, when it is by no means clear that Irish and Scottish members formed a single body. Secondly, historians have examined the three sets of elections, which are seen as a test of how representative the members were, and thus how successfully ‘union’ had been imposed – or embraced – in the localities. This approach can also be misleading, as it encourages an analysis of returns purely on an ethnic basis, in other words, whether members were ‘English’ or ‘Irish/Scottish’ in their backgrounds. This obsession with ethnicity ignores any divisions within Irish or Scottish society, which may undermine a sense of an agreed ‘national interest’ to which local members would subscribe; it also glosses over the possibility that Englishmen may have been as effective at representing constituents' concerns as natives, and, because of their greater influence in England, they might even have been more attractive as representatives.