bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Presidential Address: Great Historical Enterprises II. The Maurists
Authors: Knowles M. D.
Published: March 2007

Ayear ago our theme was the work of the Bollandists. Their name suggests immediately, to all acquainted with European historiography, the name of another body of religious, many of them the contemporaries of Henskens and Papebroch, and it would be impossible to omit from even the shortest list of great historical enterprises the achievement of the Maurists. The two bodies of men and their work, nevertheless, have little in common save an equal devotion to accurate scholar-ship. What impresses us in the history of Bollandism is its continuity of spirit and undeviating aim over more than three hundred years, during which a very small but perpetually self-renewing group has pursued a single narrowly defined task, which is still far from completion. With the Maurists, on the other hand, it is the magnitude, the variety and the high quality of the achievement that strikes the imagination. While the Bollandists, a small family in a single house, have in three centuries produced in major work no more than a row of sixty-seven folios, the Maurists, in a little more than a hundred years, published matter enough to stock a small library, and left behind them letters, papers and transcripts which have been used and exploited by scholars for nearly two centuries since. Indeed, it would be both impossible and alien to the scope of our interests to attempt the briefest survey of Maurist scholarship in its entirety, and my remarks to-day will be confined to their publications on European history after the decline of the Roman Empire. Who were the Maurists, and wherein lay their peculiar excellence?
Land and Politics in England in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Thompson F. M. L.
Published: March 2007

In every generation since the pace of economic and social change began to accelerate in the late-eighteenth century the wildest hopes, aspirations and fears of the previous generation have been realized. The revolutionary prospect of heeding the will of the people in the 1790's became the conservative measure of 1832. The terrifying demands of the Chartists were well on the way to enactment by 1885, and with the payment of M.P.s in 1911 were substantially achieved, apart from the silliest of all the demands, that for annual parliaments.
Communes and Despots: The City State In Late-Medieval Italy
Authors: Jones P. J.
Published: March 2007

It is a commonplace of political history that in the later Middle Ages the city states of north and central Italy were the scene of a conflict in the theory and practice of government between two contrasted systems: republican and despotic (or in contemporary terminology, government ‘a comune’, ‘in liberta’ etc., and government ‘a tiranno’,signoriaorprincipato). The conflict began about the mid-thirteenth century, and in most places, sooner or later, was settled in favour of despotism.
The Submission of the Clergy
Authors: Kelly Michael
Published: March 2007

The concessions presented by Archbishop Warham and representatives of Convocation to Henry VIII on 16 May 1532 have been the subject of endless controversy, while the background and circumstances of the enactment have received remarkably uniform treatment from later generations. Despite the proliferation of Reformation and Convocation histories since the eighteenth century, historians have, by and large, been content to repeat or elaborate an outline of the event first found in Wake's The State of the Church (1703). According to this interpretation, the King and Cromwell employed the Commons Supplication against the Ordinaries presented in March 1532 to compel the clergy's approval of the articles of 16 May.
Presidential Address: The Emergence of Majority Kulein the Procedure of the House of Commons
Authors: Edwards Goronwy
Published: March 2007

MY subject this afternoon has been chosen because the emergence of majority rule in the procedure of the House of Commons provides some instructive parallels to the subject which I attempted to discuss on the corresponding occasion last year—the subject of the emergence of majority rule in English parliamentary elections. Our starting-point last year was an act of parliament, the statute of 1430 about county elections. Our starting-point this afternoon is a book: a book written in 1565 but first published in 1583, the book known as De Republica Anglorum: the Manner of Government of the Reγm of England, by Sir Thomas Smith, one of the principal Secretaries of State under both Edward VI and Elizabeth I. We start from that book because its chapter entitled “The form of holding the parliament” contains a passage of some length which provides the earliest set description of the majority-procedure of the House of Commons. The forms of that majority-procedure as described by Smith in 1565 remain basically the same in 1964. Smith emphasizes three features.
Political Propaganda in Augustan England
Authors: Speck W. A.
Published: March 2007

The term ‘Augustan’, which students of English literature have found convenient to describe writers and their works in a period stretching roughly from Dryden to Dr Johnson, can also be useful to historians for defining the century between the Restoration of Charles II and the accession of George III. These were the dates I had in mind when I chose the title of this paper, but although I have kept 1660 as a starting point the terminal date is nearer 1740 than 1760, and the argument is largely confined to the period between the Popish Plot and the collapse of the ministry of Sir Robert Walpole.
The Expansion of Liverpool's Carrying Trade with the Far East and Australia 1860–1914
Authors: Hyde Francis E.
Published: March 2007

THE story of Liverpool's carrying trade with the Far East and with Australia embraces many fields of human endeavour and is of interest in demonstrating how individuals in the exercise of their functions as entrepreneurs, merchants and shipowners can adapt their ideas and influence the course of a country's economic growth.
Frankish Colonization: A New Approach
Authors: Verlinden Charles
Published: March 2007

The Franks were the most successful of the Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, and the problem of the nature and date of their settlement, bound up as it is with that of the origins of the linguistic frontier in Belgium, is one of the most complex of early medieval history. It is also one of the most interesting, for whatever solution we find for it must influence our interpretation of the historical evolution which gave rise to the Frankish monarchy on the one hand and to the modern Belgian state on the other. It involves a multitude of interrelated questions: the origins of the population, language and customary law of the Germanic (Flemish) part of Belgium; the alignment of the linguistic frontier between Flemish, Walloon and German; the extent of Germanic colonization in the former Latin-speaking regions of northern Gaul; and the agrarian organization and the forms of land settlement in the same region.
The Division of the Spoils of War in Fourteenth-Century England
Authors: Hay Denys
Published: March 2007

The desire for booty was a motive in all medieval warfare. The preoccupation of the soldier with spoils, with prisoners, horses, equipment and movable wealth in general, is, however, less evident in the surviving sources of early medieval history than in the records of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Even a cursory knowledge of the period of Anglo-French hostilities between 1337 and 1453 leaves one under no illusions as to the overriding importance to the combatants of the winnings of war. Spoils mattered equally to the rank and file soldier, to the magnate and to the crown. The depredations of the chevauchee in Languedoc in 1355 benefited everyone in the Black Prince's army. ‘Chevaliers, escuiers, brigants, garchons’ were loaded with ‘leurs prisonniers et leurs richesses’.1 Froissart makes Gloucester in 1390 object to a peace with France because of the ensuing discouragement of the ‘poor knights and squires and archers of England whose comforts and station in society depend upon war’.2 And he tells us also how the Sire d'Albret looked back over his military career and regretted the peace which alliance with France had given him. ‘I'm well enough,’ he told an enquirer, ‘but I had more money, and so did my retinue, when I fought for the king of England.’ An army on the move, he explained, often gave the chance of capturing a rich merchant; hardly a day passed without its prize; thus one could afford the ‘superfluitez et jolitez.…Maintenant nous est mort.’
Presidential Address: Thomas Jefferson in American Historiography
Authors: Bellot H. Hale
Published: March 2007

‘The contradictions in Jefferson's character’, wrote Henry Adams, ‘have always rendered it a fascinating study. Excepting his rival Alexander Hamilton, no American has been the object of estimates so widely differing and so difficult to reconcile.’ He was, said Adams in another passage,

curiously vulnerable, for he seldom wrote a page without exposing himself to attack. He was superficial in his knowledge, and a martyr to the disease of omniscience. Ridicule of his opinions and of himself was an easy task, … for his English was often confused, his assertions inaccurate, and at times of excitement he was apt to talk with indiscretion …
The London Goldsmiths circa 1500
Authors: Reddaway T. F.
Published: March 2007

To talk about a London gild is to talk under the shadow of Unwin's learning. To stand in that shadow is inevitably to be overshadowed. My hope to-day is to avoid such comparison and, instead, by drawing on the records of a gild not used at first hand by him, to add something to the picture he drew.
Treason Trials under the Law of Arms
Authors: Keen M. H.
Published: March 2007

On 13 July 1405 Henry de Boynton, knight, was brought before the Court of Chivalry of England, sitting in Berwick at a place called ‘Waleisgreene’, and was there condemned to death for high treason. His crime had been that of levying war against the king in his own realm, in the company of Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland. The evidences of his guilt were a series of warlike acts against the king's lieges, committed ‘si notoirement et si publicement que par nulle tergiversacion nautre excusacion queconque purra estre concele ne denie’. He had ridden in arms, robbed, plundered and taken ransom in the lands of his liege lord, and he had surrendered the keys of Berwick into the hands of the king's enemies, the Scots. He had refused his sovereign entry into the town when the royal host lay before it, so that the king had been forced to fire his cannon at the walls of his own city. These acts amounted to notorious treason, and as such they were judged by John of Bedford, constable of England, presiding in the court, ‘par1 comandement mon tresredoute seigneur et pere le roy avantdit ton liege seigneur’. Boynton was therefore condemned to death, to be hanged, beheaded and quartered, and all his goods and chattels to be forfeit to the king.
Shipowning in England c. 1450—1550
Authors: Scammell G. V.
Published: March 2007

It is a singular paradox that one of the world's leading maritime powers should have virtually ignored the history of its merchant service. Yet such has been the case in England— inevitably, perhaps, in view of the spectacular course of naval and imperial achievement—and this notwithstanding the labours of a host of publicists to demonstrate the importance of the country's shipping as ‘a principal means to advance [its] honour, strength, safety and profit].
Presidential Address: The Historical Study of the Welsh Lawbooks
Authors: Edwards Goronwy
Published: March 2007

In 1840 and 1841 the Record Commissioners issued two publications whose exactly corresponding titles indicated that they were designed to be parallel compilations. The one, published in 1840 and edited by Benjamin Thorpe, was entitledAncient Laws and Institutes of England. The other, published in 1841 and edited by Aneurin Owen, was entitledAncient Laws and Institutes of Wales. At that time, Owen's work was probably a more considerable achievement of scholarship than Thorpe's, but in due course, with the further development of historical and other relevant studies, many improvements became possible in both collections, and new editions of each therefore became more and more obviously necessary.
Age at Marriage in England from the late Seventeenth to the nineteenth Century
Authors: Outhwaite R. B.
Published: March 2007

In the two centuries after 1700 there occurred upwards of twenty million marriages in England and Wales. It is perhaps forgivable, therefore, that this paper has about it the air of an interim report. It might be thought doubly foolish for an individual, and in this field a professedly amateur investigator, to embark upon any enquiry into past demographic behaviour when there exists that formidable, professional task force, the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. At the last count it had within its lockers, for example, ‘aggregate analyses’ of over 550 English parishes. To provide information about the ages at which people married, however, the Cambridge Group appears to be relying primarily upon ‘family reconstitution’ techniques. It is not necessary to explain these techniques or to describe the remarkable light they have shed on the vital events of the past. With such tools the Cambridge Group have not only crept literally between the sheets of history; its individual members have not been abashed at publishing their preliminary findings. Yet obscurity remains and with it the thought that family reconstitution may not prove entirely adequate to the insistent demands for more information on when and why people married. For the undertaking of full family reconstitution both registration and record survival have to be good, and the method is undermined where there is a great deal of migration, albeit temporary or permanent. Unfortunately many of the most interesting demographic questions revolve around urban behaviour, and town records may be deficient on many of these counts, especially in that vital and perplexing period from about 1780 to 1840.
Presidential Address: Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 4. The Sense of the Past
Authors: Southern R. W.
Published: March 2007

In the first three of these papers I have examined three aspects of the European historical tradition—aspects which I may briefly characterize as classical, early scientific, and prophetic. The models for all these modes were derived from the ancient world, and all three have played an important part in the development of western attitudes to history. Yet no one who looks dispassionately at the works produced by these three modes of studying history will think that they are the main sources of our modern ways of thinking about and writing history. So we must now ask whether it is possible to identify any central tradition in historical study leading to the practice and assumptions of most historians today.
The Political Objectives of Gustavus Adolphus in Germany
Authors: Roberts M.
Published: March 2007

The motives which impelled Gustav Adolf to invade Pomerania in June 1630, and the political objectives at which he aimed in the following two-and-a-half years, were once among the classic battlegrounds of German—and, to a less conspicuous extent, of Swedish—historiography. Since about 1920 the debate has noticeably flagged. Historians have in general been content to take their stand upon positions established by the researches of Bertil Boëthius and Nils Ahnlund. No recent book on the subject has served to keep controversy alive, as the parallel controversy about Wallenstein was reanimated during the inter-war years by the works of Srbik and Pekař; and little new material of any consequence has latterly been made available.
The Investment of Sir John Fastolf's Profits of War
Authors: McFarlane K. B.
Published: March 2007

If we may believe John Leyland, a tradition widely current throughout England in the 1530's attributed some of the costliest building of the later middle ages to warriors who had returned home laden with the spoils of France. Everywhere that the antiquary travelled, from Ampthill in Bedfordshire to Hampton Court near the Welsh border, from Streatlam in county Durham to Farleigh, Somerset, he was told of castles raised in stone and brick ‘ex spoliis nobilium bello Gallico captorurn’, sometimes of a whole mansion paid for from the proceeds of a single battle; and that not merely in the great days of Edward III and Henry V, but also when John of Bedford was ‘governor and regent’ of his dead brother's hard-pressed conquest. So Henry Vffl's subjects, not least those descended from the military captains of the Hundred Years War, were firmly convinced. Members of the Tudor nobility were willing, nay anxious, to swallow some very improbable stories about their family-origins and in a good many cases their faith in a particular forebear's achievement, indeed his very existence, may be open to question. But the fact remains that within a century of Bedford's death the spoils of France were generally regarded as at least a plausible explanation of a family's sudden wealth and of its capacity to embark upon a large-scale building project. There are signs that it had already won acceptance in the lifetime of Leyland's precursor, William Worcester, whose birth in the year of Agincourt and long residence in the household of Sir John Fastolf, the Regent's major-domo from 1422 to 1435, entitle him to speak with more authority.
The Organization of the Cabinet in the Reign of Queen Anne
Authors: Plumb J. H.
Published: March 2007

The purpose of this paper is two-fold; firstly, to draw attention to hitherto unknown manuscript materials of great value for the diplomatic, military, political and administrative history of Queen Anne's reign, and secondly, to demonstrate by the use of these manuscripts how the cabinet was organized at that time. The manuscripts in question are memoranda made by three successive secretaries of state. Robert Harley made notes of three hundred and seventy-two meetings of the cabinet or lords of the committee from 21 May 1704 to 8 February 1708; Charles, 3rd earl of Sunderland, of two hundred and thirty-six from 13 December 1706 to 4 June 1710; and William, 1st earl of Dartmouth, of one hundred and sixty-eight from 18 June 1710 to 17 June 1711. These memoranda cover the majority of the meetings of the highest executive bodies of the English government during the most vital years of the War of the Spanish Succession. Not only do they show the gradual formation of policy and the development of strategy, but they also throw a great deal of light on the influence both of the queen and of the leading statesmen of her time. These documents vary, of course, in quality. They consist of notes made by the secretary for his own use; sometimes they are little more than mnemonics. A memorandum of Sunderland's on the meeting of the cabinet on 26 March 1710 runs: ‘Board of Ordnance, & Com. of Ireland to attend on tuesday morning eleven a clock’, which is not very revealing. Sunderland, however, was rather a lazy man, but fortunately most of his notes are fuller than this. Harley, on the other hand, loved information for its own sake.
The King's Prisons before 1250
Authors: Pugh R. B.
Published: March 2007

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was a recognizable, if indefinite, distinction between the king's prisons and the prisons of his subjects. It is only with the king's prisons that this paper is concerned. Nor with all of these; for those royal prisons (mostly castles) which temporarily harboured state prisoners and prisoners of war it almost wholly ignores. The theme, in short, is common gaols for common suspects.
The Role of the London Missionary Society in the Opening Up of East Central Africa
Authors: Hanna A. J.
Published: March 2007

On 1 February 1876 the London Missionary Society decided to establish a mission on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. It was a bold and almost a foolhardy decision, for the route between the lake and the east coast of Africa was more than 800 miles in length, without either roads or ordered government, and over this enormous distance the mission would have to maintain some contact with the outer world if it was to survive. Not without hesitation and misgiving did the Directors commit themselves to so hazardous an undertaking. But interest in the lake region had been aroused by the journeys of Livingstone and Cameron, and a certain wealthy citizen of Leeds, named Robert Arthington, had offered the Society a contribution of £5,000 on the express condition that a mission to the peoples bordering Lake Tanganyika should be undertaken. The offer seemed too generous and imaginative to be refused. The vast lake, with its thousand miles of coastline, was a great natural highway by which to reach and evangelize the villagers who dwelt around its shores. It was not the only lake with such possibilities, and only a few months previously, as it happened, the Free Church of Scotland had sent out a mission to Lake Nyasa, and had supplied it with the sections of a steamer.
Presidential Address: Council and Cabinet in the Mainland Colonies
Authors: Bellot H. Hale
Published: March 2007

The cabinet in Great Britain is an emanation of the privy council. The councils in the royal colonies upon the American mainland, like those in the West Indies, were, in the language of the royal instructions to colonial Governors, ‘our’ councils, and at the beginning of the eighteenth century there was a prospect of a like development overseas. Yet it did not occur. The offspring of the colonial council in America is the senate of the United States. That body, like the colonial councils, has both legislative and executive functions. At the start it numbered a mere twenty-six members; and it was expected that the president, following the practice of colonial governors, would seek its advice in the discharge of his office. His cabinet had a quite different pedigree. It was envisaged in 1787 as something ‘[our Government] has always wanted, but never yet had.’ But it was, and still is, a meeting, not of ministers having seats in one or other of the houses of the legislature and collectively responsible to it, but of heads of departments individually responsible to the president. And it was historically, not a cabinet after the English model in a state of arrested development, but paradoxically a device of the legislature adapted to a presidential system. Why, it may be of interest to enquire, did this happen?
The Origins of the Manor in England
Authors: Aston T. H.
Published: March 2007

COMPARATIVELY little has been written recently on the origins of the manor. The exposition given by Maitland and Vinogradoff and closely followed by Sir Frank Stenton has been modified for certain areas; it has seldom been questioned as a whole. The basis of early society, according to this view, was the free ceorl, owning absolutely one hide of land or its equivalent, and owing only royal dues, such folk-worthy and law-worthy men being associated together in free, lordless and nucleated villages. The gap between these men and medieval villeins, between these free villages and the manor, was bridged in a variety of ways. Grants of royal rights to ecclesiastics and laymen exposed the ceorls to the pressure of great lords who took advantage of economic insecurity, wars, famines, plagues, commendation and similar factors to depress them so that, in the end, in place of their free ownership of a hide, they came to hold normally between a quarter and a whole virgate or less, on most onerous and servile terms. Some place was, indeed, allowed to the creation of tenancies by lords themselves, but this was largely incidental. ‘The central course of Old English social development’, wrote Sir Frank Stenton, ‘may be described as the process by which a peasantry, at first composed essentially of free men, acknowledging no lord below the king, gradually lost economic and personal independence.’
The Protestant Constitution and its Supporters, 1800–1829
Authors: Best G. F. A.
Published: March 2007

The many non-theological controversies which ranged about the Church of England in the first three decades of the nineteenth century fell into two classes, the one inspired by the deficiencies in the church's physical equipment for performing its allotted functions as the state's religious establishment, the other by the superiorities and advantages enjoyed only by its members. The controversies in the latter class went the deeper. In discussing ‘church reform’, the fact of establishment could be taken for granted: but in discussing the legal disabilities and social inferiorities under which both Protestant and Roman Catholic nonconformists suffered, the establishment's superiorities had to be defended against liberals who maintained that an established church could do without them, and its very existence as an establishment had to be justified against the charges of those Protestant dissenters and secularists who maintained that established churches were iniquitous, oppressive, and absurd. The discussion thus ranged freely between the poles of political practice and political philosophy, and joined the immediate problems of the hour to the most serious philosophical and theological problems with which thoughtful statesmen could be concerned.
The Commons Supplication against the Ordinaries in the Light of some Archidiaconal Acta: The Alexander Prize Essay
Authors: Bowker Margaret
Published: March 2007

In the first three decades of the sixteenth century the ecclesiastical courts were harshly criticized.1 This criticism had had a long history, but it was sharply focused (at least in London) by the case of Richard Hunne.2 The unpopularity was used by Henry VIII, with great skill, to bring Convocation into subjection, and ultimately to force its acceptance of the royal supremacy. Convocation was intimidated in 1531 by a charge of praemunire for their exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction,3 and in 1532 by the Commons Supplication against the Ordinaries.s But why was this Supplication submitted? Apparently it was not a diplomatic move to reinforce Henry’s papal negotiations; nor can it be seen simply as a means devised by Cromwell to deprive the clergy of their legislative rights. As Dr Kelly has shown, most of the Supplication was not about these rights. The fact that they subsequently proved crucial should not lead us into confusing intention and result. The intention of the document is to attack the ecclesiastical courts quite as much as the legislative power of the Church. Clauses 2–7 deal directly with judicial problems. What exactly lies behind this intention? Why were the courts so unpopular and felt to be so threatening?
Presidential Address: Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 2. Hugh of St Victor and the Idea of Historical Development
Authors: Southern R. W.
Published: March 2007

A YEAR ago I took the opportunity presented by this obligatory address to survey the working out of a classical formula for historical writing during the three hundred years which separate Einhard's Life of Charlemagne from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. History written in accordance with these rules had many merits, and its emphasis is often right, or at least illuminating, but it never had a more than uncertain hold on the matter-of-fact world. Geoffrey of Monmouth was a historian who followed the old rules, but he did his job so well that he could have no successor except in the realm of romance. This is no place for us, and it is time for us to come down to earth again.
New Light on the Invisible College the Social Relations of English Science in the Mid-Seventeenth Century
Authors: Webster Charles
Published: March 2007

It is difficult to compose an account of the development of experimental science in seventeenth-century England without reference to the Invisible College. Indeed its grandiose title has come to be applied almost indiscriminately to any informal group of scientists, and no doubt this popular usage will continue, regardless of the conclusions reached by this or any other specialist paper. But such popular usage should not obscure the relevance of the Invisible College to certain serious historical problems. First, it is necessary to establish the identity of the scientific group which captured the imagination of the nineteen-year-old Robert Boyle. The College not only provided his initiation into science, but also inspired such strong motivation that Boyle became preoccupied with natural philosophy. For the rest of his life science was pursued not so much as a gentlemanly diversion, but in the spirit of a religious mission. Secondly, the Invisible College is relevant to any appreciation of the factors involved in the remarkable expansion of English experimental science which began shortly before the establishment of the Invisible College in 1646. This movement rapidly generated a whole spectrum of informal scientific groups and culminated with the formation of the Royal Society in 1660.
The Quest for Concealed Lands in the Reign of Elizabeth I (The Alexander Prize Essay)
Authors: Kitching C. J.
Published: March 2007

Concealment has proved one of the most inscrutable aspects of the land market following the English Reformation. It has received only passing reference in standard works on the period, and the gravity of the problem has never been fully appraised by historians, even though the discovery and disposal of concealed property exercised administrators and speculators alike more than any other aspect of the land market for much of the reign of Elizabeth, and consequently left an abundance of documentation.
Two Models of Public Opinion: Bacon's ‘New Logic’ and Diotima's ‘Tale of Love’ (The Prothero Lecture)
Authors: Beer Samuel H.
Published: March 2007

It is appropriate that an American should address himself to the subject of public opinion. For, in terms of quantity, Americans have made the subject peculiarly their own. They have also invested it with characteristically American concerns. Most of the work done on the subject in the United States is oriented by a certain theoretical approach. This approach is democratic and rationalist. Both aspects create problems. In this paper I wish to play down the democratic problem, viz., how many of the voters are capable of thinking sensibly about public policy, and emphasize rather the difficulties that arise from modern rationalism. Here I take a different tack from most historians of the concept of public opinion, who, taking note of the origin of the term in the mid-eighteenth century, stress its connection with the rise of representative government and democratic theory.
‘Parnellism And Crime’, 1887–90
Authors: Lyons F. S. L.
Published: March 2007

The Home Rule crisis of 1885–86 is generally held to mark a water-shed in the history of Anglo-Irish relations. This it undoubtedly does, though not necessarily for the reasons commonly advanced. The crisis was certainly important in the sense that it obliged the Liberal and Conservative parties to define their attitudes towards Irish self-government and thus to demonstrate to the Irish nationalist party in the House of Commons that their main hope for the future lay with Mr Gladstone and those Liberals who had remained faithful to him after his declaration in favour of Home Rule. But the course of events during 1886 demonstrated just how far the Irish demand still was from being met. The inadequacies of the Home Rule Bill itself, the split in the Liberal party, the firm negative of the Conservatives, the violence of the Ulster Protestant reaction, the veto of the House of Lords which had not even to be deployed in 1886 but was there for future use when necessary—all these things suggested that Home Rule, if it came at all, would not happen overnight at the waving of any Parnellite wand, but would require years, perhaps decades, of labour before it came within sight of achievement.
The Theory and Practice of Censorship in Sixteenth-Century England
Authors: Loades D. M.
Published: March 2007

A student of the sixteenth century is always tempted to represent his period as being one of unprecedented change and new departures. In the case of my present subject the temptation is particularly strong, because printing was a new invention, and the technical problems and opportunities which it presented to governments were also new. Nevertheless it would be most misleading to begin a discussion of Tudor censorship with Sir Thomas More's restrictive proclamation of 1530, or even with the introduction of printing to England in 1476. The concept of society, and of the duties and responsibilities of government, which censorship was to reflect was deeply rooted in the past, and was not fundamentally challenged until the puritan revolution of the seventeenth century.
Councils and Councillors of Henry IV, 1399–1413
Authors: Kirby J.L.
Published: March 2007

The one important, indeed invaluable, source for the history of the council in the early-fifteenth century is the Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England, 10 Richard II–33 Henry VIII, edited by Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas and published by the Record Commission in seven volumes in the years 1834 to 1837, but in so far as the title of this work implies a formal and continuous record of proceedings it is misleading, for, unlike parliament, the council left no regular account of its activities. The Rolls of Parliament, even though their account of the proceedings is one-sided, official and incomplete, do at least record such bare facts as the dates of meeting, the names of the Speakers, and usually the dates of adjournment; but there are no similar rolls for the council. The phrase ‘privy council’ in Nicolas's title is also something of an anachronism, at least for the early part of the period covered. At this time the future privy council was generally known simply as the council or the king's council, although it was sometimes called the continual council to distinguish it from the larger body known to contemporaries as the great council. This distinctionis usually made in official records, but chroniclers often referred indifferently to either body as the council, and the differences are not now always apparent to us.
The Losing of the Initiative by the House of Commons, 1780–1914
Authors: Cromwell Valerie
Published: March 2007

Over forty years ago with great elegance and scholarship Professor Notestein gave his famous Raleigh lecture on ‘The Winning of the Initiative by the House of Commons’: in this he developed the thesis that amongst the reasons for the great yet inconspicuous change ‘between the time of Elizabeth and that of the Long Parliament in the relation of the Council to the Commons’ was that

Almost without observation, Privy Councillors ceased to guide the Commons. And, quite as much unobserved, with no document or charter to serve as a milestone, there came into power in the Commons a group of leaders, who had no official connexion with the Government, who had no common tie, except those of the opinions and feelings that bound English country gentlemen together. These men without purpose or intent but to do the next thing that came to hand, created a new leadership. With the establishment of that leadership the Commons gained the real initiative in legislation.
The ‘Royal Independents’ in the English Civil War
Authors: Pearl Valerie
Published: March 2007

Few historians of the Long Parliament would regard the form of Church government as the first concern of the parliamentary leaders in their negotiations with the king. Contemporary historians considered that the early struggle was not about religion. The royalist Clarendon, the parliamentarian Thomas May, even Richard Baxter, a deeply religious Puritan, were unanimous. To the aristocracy and gentry, it was essentially a conflict over political power and public safety. Religious fervour would inspire the New Model Army, rouse the London citizens, and stimulate the printing presses. But how many members of Parliament or of the gentry in 1640 supported fundamental religious change? Sir Edward Dering told the Commons on 20 November 1641 that he had heard no one there declare themselves for either Presbyterianism or Independency. When Baxter described the composition of the Rump Parliament, he did not see it as the culmination or fulfilment of a religious movement, the expression of Independency.
The Imitation of Christ in late Medieval England. (The Alexander Prize.)
Authors: Lovatt Roger
Published: March 2007

In a well-known passage at the conclusion of his preface to the Confutation of Tyndale's Answer Thomas More expressed his fears about the possible effects of the public controversy in which he was then engaged. ‘I would advise any man’, he wrote, ‘neither to rede these heretikes bookes nor myne, but occupye theire mindes better, and standing firmely bi the catholike faithe of thys .xv.C. yere, never ones muse upon these new fangled heresies.’ It was inappropriate, More suggested, for ‘the people unlearned’ to be concerned with ‘what may well be aunswered unto heretiques’; rather they should occupy themselves ‘beside their other busines in praier good meditacion, and reading of suche englishe bookes as moste may noryshe and encreace devocion. Of which kind is Bonaventure of the lyfe of Christe, Gerson of the folowing of Christ and the devoute contemplative booke of Scala perfectionis wyth such other lyke.’
Presidential Address: Collective Mentalities in mid-Seventeenth-Century England: IV. Cross Currents: Neutrals, Trimmers and Others
Authors: Aylmer G. E.
Published: March 2007

Among the most striking changes from the text-book generalisations of my school days is the emphasis given nowadays to those who were not committed to either side in the Civil War, those who tried and in some cases succeeded in keeping clear of the conflict altogether. Indeed so great has been the stress on neutrals and neutralism and on the general reluctance to take sides and to begin fighting at all in 1642, that we are in danger of having to explain how a mere handful of obstinate or fanatical extremists on each side contrived to drag the country down into the abyss of Civil War. I have said enough in my previous addresses in this series to make my own position clear on that. Among Royalists, including the King himself, there were enough who believed that rebellion must be put down, whether they were more concerned to defend the constitutional prerogatives of the Crown, the government and liturgy of the Church, or the whole existing fabric of society. Correspondingly there were enough Parliamentarians who believed that religion, liberty and property were in deadly peril, through the design for Popery and arbitrary government. If these beliefs had been confined to a few dozen or even score of men on each side, it is not credible that a war would have begun in 1642, where fighting broke out be it noted in Lancashire, Yorkshire and Somerset before the preparations and manoeuverings of the two main armies led up to the campaign and battle of Edgehill.
Victorian Historians and the Royal Historical Society (The Prothero Lecture)
Authors: Burrow J. W.
Published: March 2007

SUPERFICIALLY regarded, the foundation of the Royal Historical Society a hundred and twenty years ago belongs to that spate of foundations of academic societies and specialised disciplinary journals, on the continent and in the United States as well as in Britain, which occurred in the concluding decades of the last century and around the beginning of this. Indeed if mere date of foundation were all that counted the Society is considerably more venerable than, for example, the Royal Economic Society, which, even under its earlier title as the British Economic Association, will not celebrate its centenary until 1900, and the British Academy which will not do so for two years beyond that. The Royal Anthropological Institute is three years younger than ourselves, though admittedly it represented an amalgamation of two earlier societies, the Anthropological Society of London which enjoyed a somewhat notorious existence through the eighteen sixties and the still older Ethnological Society. Our Transactions had been published, albeit intermittently, for fifteen years before the first issue of the English Historical Review in 1886. They had not, it has to be admitted, been fifteen glorious years. Although by the mid-'eighties matters were beginning to improve and the names of some notable historians, Acton, Creighton, Seeley, appear on the membership rolls, the productions of the Society and much of its membership were far from distinguished and it still had some way to go to establish itself as a respected institution.
Riot Prevention and Control in Early Stuart London
Authors: Lindley K. J.
Published: March 2007

The notion that London conforms to an urban crisis model in the seventeenth century has recently been challenged in a bold reassessment of how the City adapted to change and coped with its problems at a grass-roots level. Too much stress, it is argued, has been placed upon disorder in the capital, wrongly depicted as constantly prone to rioting and criminality, to the neglect of its ordered and stable features which enabled London to weather a period of unprecedented political upheaval without a popular uprising. Yet has disorder in seventeenth-century London received too much emphasis, and just how effective were the endeavours of municipal and other authorities to maintain peace on the streets? This paper will attempt to gauge the seriousness of the problem posed by periodic rioting in the capital, and the efficacy of measures of riot prevention and control, in the period from James I's accession to Charles I's departure from London, allegedly driven out by uncontrollable tumult and sedition, in January 1642. No answer to these questions would be complete, however, if the investigation were simply confined to the area under the lord mayor's jurisdiction, for disturbances which began in the suburbs could soon cross over the City's limits or the citizens themselves could participate in disorders outside those limits.
The New Police, Crime and People in England and Wales, 1829–1888
Authors: Jones D.J.V.
Published: March 2007

My subject is the new police of the nineteenth century. It was said of policemen in Mid-Wales in the later part of that century that, after five years of looking at sheep, their minds turned to emigration, drink and suicide. Writing this paper has been a comparable travail. My initial enthusiasm for the topic has been somewhat crushed by the weight of evidence and the models of police historians. The evidence is vast and problematical. Thisis not the world of the historian of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Great parliamentary and government papers, an ever-widening range of local and national statistics, countless newspaper files, court records and police books await the historian of the nineteenth century. Much material is still being catalogued, and a great deal of police evidence has yet to be collected.
Family, Community and Cult on the Eve of the Gregorian Reform
Authors: Moore R. I.
Published: March 2007

One of the most obvious novelties of the eleventh century is the appearance of the crowd on the stage of public events. It would not claim to rival its counterparts in Antiquity or the Renaissance in the permanence of its presence or the scale of its activity, still less in the vividness with which it can be portrayed, or the wonders of analysis that can be performed upon it by its historians. Some of them, indeed, might hesitate to distinguish categorically between thepopuluswhich attacked the clergy of Milan in 1056 or formed an army for Peter the Hermit and that which surrounded the tomb of a Merovingian saint or attended the court of a Carolingian lord. But to indulge that hesitation to the point of silence would be to grant to semantics priority over common sense. It is impossible to contemplate the events of the eleventh century, to observe the turbulence of Florence in the 1060s or the Flemish and Rhineland cities in the 1070s, to hear a Gregory VII appealing to the people to boycott their priests and spurn their bishops, a Sigebert of Gembloux lamenting ‘sudden unrest among the populace, new treacheries of servants against their masters and masters’ mistrust of their servants', or a Marbod of Rennes protesting that to denounce the errors of the clergy before the people was ‘not to preach but to undermine’, without conceding not only that a new fear of social upheaval had been generated, but that in some manner it was founded in reality, that the course of events had been changed, and changed significantly on occasion, by the availability of the force of popular indignation to those who knew how to raise it. And quite clearly ‘knowing how to raise it’ was, for the greater part of the century, a religious matter, at least in the sense that the language that stirred the passions of the mob was religious language: the cry that brought out the crowds was that priests were unchaste, or simoniacal or corrupt, a whole generation and more before it became effective to raise the shout for a commune, or against the Jews, or towards the holy places.
Food Production and Policy in the United Kingdom, 1914–1918The Alexander Prize Essay
Authors: Dewey P. E.
Published: March 2007

Historians are in general agreement on the problem of United Kingdom food supplies during the First World War. The broad picture is as follows; during the first eighteen months or so of the war, supplies both from home and abroad were well maintained. The government therefore had no need to intervene, either in procuring or distributing food, although it took certain measures to safeguard future supplies for the Army. During 1916, however, the position changed; there had been poor harvests both in the United Kingdom and the Americas (the chief source of imported food), and the German High Command were known to be planning a new, ‘unlimited’ submarine campaign, with the aim of sinking as much shipping as possible (whether British or neutral), in order to drastically curtail imports of food and war material, and thus force a British surrender.
From Office-Holding to Civil Service: the Genesis of Modern BureaucracyThe Prothero Lecture
Authors: Aylmer G. E.
Published: March 2007

One of the historian's most difficult tasks is to distinguish between mere alterations of idiom, fashion or expression, and substantive changes of attitude and behaviour from one epoch to another. Efficient reforming ministers and officials can be found at work in English central government in (I should guess) every century from the twelfth (if not earlier) to the twentieth. Yet are these men and their achievements as important in explaining the development of administration as technological innovations such as new kinds of paper, the printing press, shorthand writing, the typewriter and the duplicating machine, and finally the telephone and its electronic successors? The most characteristic features of bureaucracy in the everyday, commonsense usage of the term—pen-pushers at desks, jacks-in-office, delays, high-handedness, form-filling, record-keeping, and so on—can of course be found many centuries before there was a modern civil service; that is, one with competitive entry examinations, grades, salaries, security of tenure, retirement pensions and the rest. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the description ‘persons in offices’ or simply ‘officers’ was normal, rather than office-holders, while the designation ‘civil servants’ was slow to take hold even during the nineteenth century.