bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Kinship and Friendship: The Perception of Family by Clergy and Laity in Late Medieval London
Authors: Murray Jacqueline
Published: November 2007

One of the most persistent and frustrating problems which the social historian faces is that of gaining access to private lives in the past. This is true for all periods, but it is especially so for the Middle Ages. There are some letters available, but they tend to be scarce and limited in nature. Another type of document which proves a useful means of entry into medieval life is the testament. The information it contains is often of an intensely personal nature and allows the reader to understand the testator's relationships with others.

The wealth of information contained in testaments is only beginning to be fully exploited. In his article “Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Wills as Historical Sources,” Michael L. Zell has demonstrated the breadth of information which these documents contain and points the way to many areas of further investigation. The usefulness of testamentary evidence to trace inheritance patterns and the disposition of property is well established. Eleanor S. Riemer has used testaments from Siena to examine the economic position of women. W. K. Jordan used wills extensively in his three volume study of charity in urban and rural England. More recently, Joel T. Rosenthal employed them to study gift-giving patterns among the English aristocracy. Wills have been used as sources for the study of religious values and popular piety, as a means of investigating the patterns of epidemic disease, and of tracing the spread of literacy. Historians have also begun to use testamentary evidence in the investigation of family life. For the history of the English family, the use of testamentary evidence is just beginning.
Religious Toleration and its Enemies: The Independent Divines and the Issue of Toleration during the English Civil War
Authors: Zakai Avihu
Published: November 2007

“Patterns sanctified by great historiographic traditions,” wrote J. H. Hexter, “tend to become fixed. Frequently these patterns are neither logical nor coherent, but the sanction of use and wont behind them is so powerful that researchers tend to force new materials into the time-honored model.” This contention is nowhere more manifest than in the historiography of the Puritan Revolution, where studies of religious developments and struggles during the English Civil War indeed reveal a “time honored model” and tend to convey an almost univocal argument concerning the Independents and the rise of the idea of religious toleration. “As early as 1643,” wrote one expert on the issue of toleration, “when the English Parliament was obliged to ally with the Scots in the Solemn League and Covenant … the issue of toleration came to the fore.” Consequently, because “the Presbyterian Scots wished to impose their Calvinist order on England, against the opposition on the parliamentary side of a core of Independents led by Oliver Cromwell and Sir Henry Vane the Younger,” the Independents “became the leading opponents of Presbyterianism and supporters of a general toleration.”
The Prince's Mentor: A New Perspective on the Friendship between George III and Lord Bute during the 1750s
Authors: Bullion John L.
Published: November 2007

The effects of the intense personal and political relationship between the young George III and his “dearest friend,” the earl of Bute, are well known to scholars of eighteenth-century Britain. The prince's affection and respect raised Bute, an obscure though well-connected Scottish nobleman, to the highest offices of state and to the absolute pinnacle of power. The earl's instruction and advice governed George's reactions to men and measures from 1755 until 1763. Even after Bute's influence waned following his resignation as First Lord of the Treasury, the lingering suspicions at Whitehall and Westminster that the king still listened to him in preference to others complicated relations between George III, his ministers, and Parliament.

This article examines the origins of the friendship between the king and the earl, and the features of it that strengthened and preserved their attachment during the 1750s. These are questions that have not engaged the attention of many students of the period. The long shadow the relationship cast over politics during the 1760s has intrigued far more historians than its beginnings. They have been content to leave efforts to understand that subject to Sir Lewis Namier, who was inclined toward making psychological judgments of eighteenth-century politicians, and John Brooke, who was compelled to do so by the demands of writing a biography of George III. Both of these men asserted that the personal and affectionate aspects of the connection between the prince and Bute far outweighed the political and ideological during its early years. Their arguments have evidently convinced historians of politics to pass over what made Bute “my dearest friend” and press on to matters they assumed to be more relevant to their interests. The concern of this essay is to demonstrate that this assumption is incorrect. It will show that political and ideological considerations were in fact utterly crucial to this friendship at its inception and throughout its development during the 1750s, with consequences which profoundly affected the political history of the first decade of George III's reign. A mistaken reliance on works by Namier and Brooke has prevented scholars from perceiving these realities. Thus it is necessary to begin by pointing out the serious flaws in their interpretations.
“Would I Could Give You Help and Succour”: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Touch
Authors: Levin Carole
Published: November 2007

In 1462, in defense of the House of Lancaster, Sir John Fortescue wrote that Edward IV could not cure the king's evil, the disease scrofula, by touching the afflicted since to do so one must not only be a king but also a legitimate one. To touch one needed not only to be annointed with holy oil but the person must also be the legitimate heir. Lancastrians claimed that Edward IV could not touch since he was not the rightful king. Wrote Fortescue, he “wrongly claims to enjoy this wonderful privilege. Wrongly … [because] this unction is powerless because Edward had no right to receive it.” Sir John goes on to argue by analogy, and scornfully asks: “Would a woman who received ordination thereby become a priest?” Of course not. Continuing this line of argument, Fortescue adds that a usurper would not be the only one unable to cure by touch.

Many duties likewise are incumbent on the kings of England in virtue of the kingly office, which are inconsistent with a woman's nature, and kings of England are endowed with certain powers by special grace from heaven, wherewith queens in the same country are not endowed. The kings of England by touch of their annointed hands they cleanse and cure those inflected with a certain disease, that is commonly called the King's Evil, though they be pronounced otherwise incurable. This gift is not bestowed on Queens.
Britain and American Railway Promoters In Late Nineteenth Century Persia
Authors: Galbraith John S.
Published: November 2007

Within the last generation there has been a vast outpouring of scholarship on the characteristics of British imperial policy in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The older orthodoxy that the mid-Victorian years were dominated by a commitment to laissez faire and free trade has been demolished. In the new era scholars quarrel over how “imperial” was “informal empire.” This article is not intended to add to this controversy, but rather to provide insight into the character of British policy in one area, Persia, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on American efforts to build railways and British responses to this attempted intrusion into an exclusive British-Russian sphere of influence.

For both Russia and Britain Persia had great strategic significance. Like Afghanistan, “the walls of the Indian garden,” Persia was important primarily in relation to the defense of the Indian Empire. Russian expansion to the borders of Persia, a weak state, posed the threat that the country would fall under Russian influence and what had been a buffer would become a menace.

British interest in Persia thus involved a strong strategic component which affected economic policy. Unlike Afghanistan it was seen as a promising market for British goods, particularly if transportation to the interior of Persia could be opened up on the Karun River and if British capital could be attracted to build a network of railways which could be a further basis for controlling the Persian economy and thus contributing to British influence at the Persian court. At the same time Britain was determined to thwart Russian plans for railways in the north which could be used to transport troops to the borders of Persia and eventually beyond. Each power assumed the malevolent intent of the other and each was determined to frustrate these foul plans.
“A Needless Sacrifice”: British Businessmen and Business As Usual in the First World War
Authors: McDermott John
Published: November 2007

The First World War ended Great Britain's nineteenth-century world economic supremacy, which had been steadily eroded in the decades before 1914. Within Britain, the war also changed the way in which individuals carried on business, the attitudes of the business community toward government, the government's own policies toward trade and traders, and public opinion on these matters, as reflected in the press. Although it is far too simplistic to claim that the war spelled the end of laissez-faire in Britain, state control of the economy did increase in a country whose economic culture was based on free trade and minimal government interference in business. Moreover, before 1914 Britain had to export to pay its way in the world, and its economy, more than that of any other great power, depended upon peace for prosperity. In this setting, Germany was the biggest European customer for British exports, as well as being the source of vital imports, such as aniline dyes, optical, and electrical goods. Thus the application of economic warfare against Germany and its allies deeply affected the British economy and businessmen who were suddenly forced by official edict to relinquish a traditional market in patriotic support of their government's blockade of the German Empire.
MS Bodl. Canon. Pat. Lat. 131 and a Lost Lactantius of John of Salisbury: Evidence in Search of a French Critic of Thomas Becket
Authors: Barker Lynn K.
Published: November 2007

TheEnglish Historical Reviewfor 1974 published an intriguing proposal by Braxton Ross concerning the early history of Bodleian MS Canon. Pat. Lat. 131, a twelfth-century copy of Lactantius'Divine Institutes. Ross noticed several marginalia that read “Audi Thoma” or “Henriciani Nota,” and he suggested that these might have been penned by an unknown French cleric who wished to criticize Henry II's chancellor, Thomas Becket. From fourteenth-century writings contained on the manuscript's fly-leaves, scholars have long recognized the Bodleian Lactantius as once having been the property of Landolfo Colonna, a canon at Chartres in the years 1298–1328. On paleographical grounds, Ross assigns the manuscript's provenance to central France in the twelfth century. Noting that theIstitutiones Divinaewas a rare text at the time — apparently unknown in England from Alcuin's day until the fourteenth century — and that this “utilitarian” yet “handsome” manuscript was made using two exemplars, Ross concludes that the Bodleian Lactantius originated in “a centre of intellectual vigour and wide-ranging connections.” Three hands corrected the text, all at the site of production. One of these hands has left many remarks that (Ross felt) display the annotator's wide classical and patristic reading and, as the “Audi Thoma” notes seem to suggest, an interest in Thomas Becket and the “Henricians.”
Parliament, Privy Council, and Local Politics in Elizabethan England: The Yarmouth-Lowestoft Fishing Dispute
Authors: Dean David M.
Published: November 2007

In his celebrated presidential addresses to the Royal Historical Society between 1974 and 1976 Sir Geoffrey Elton explored three “points of contact” between central authority and local communities: Parliament, the royal council, and the royal court. Parliament, he argued, was “the premier point of contact,” which “fulfilled its functions as a stabilizing mechanism because it was usable and used to satisfy legitimate and potentially powerful aspirations.” Elsewhere Elton, and other parliamentary historians such as Michael Graves, Norman Jones, and Jennifer Loach, have stressed parliament's role as a clearing house for the legislative desires of the governing class. The author of this article has recently drawn attention to the pressures which private legislation placed on the parliamentary agenda and the attempts by the government to control it. All of this supports Elton's contention that parliament, from the perspective of central government, was indeed a vital means of ensuring stability and channelling grievances.

However, few studies have viewed parliament from the perspective of the local communities and governing elites who sought parliamentary solutions to their problems or even parliamentary resolutions to their disputes with others. The major exception to this has been London. Helen Miller's seminal study of London and parliament in the reign of Henry VIII and Edwin Green's on the Vintners lobby, have been recently complemented by Ian Archer's on the London lobbies in Elizabeth's reign, Claude Blair's on the Armourers lobby, and my own study of the struggle between the Curriers and Cordwainers. These not only reveal the broader context of such disputes, but emphasize that parliament was only one of many arenas available to participants. This important point has also been stressed by Robert Tittler in his study of parliament as a “point of contact” for English towns.
Pierre Le Pennec, Henry VII of England, and the Breton Plot of 1492: A Case Study in “Diplomatic Pathology”
Authors: Currin John M.
Published: November 2007

In his attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of Dr. De Puebla, Spain's first resident ambassador to England, Garrett Mattingly dismissed as unimportant certain unflattering remarks about the envoy made by a royal councillor to two Spanish officials, who knew the councillor as Dr. Pedro Panec. Mattingly, unable to identify Panec, believed him to be insignificant in Tudor service and, therefore, his remarks to be uninformed. Nonetheless, the available sources reveal Pierre Le Pennec as the Spaniards' Dr. Panec, a cleric and lawyer from Morlaix, doctor of civil and canon laws, prothonotary of the Roman Church, king's clerk and councillor, and political agent in Henry VII's foreign service.

Historians of early Tudor diplomacy (when the term is not used interchangeably with foreign policy) have focused on the routine functions of ordinary diplomatic representatives, but Pennec has not merited the interest of Tudor diplomatic historians because he did not serve extensively as one of the king's ordinary diplomats. His only ordinary diplomatic function was in 1499 when he carried procuratorial letters to the Roman Curia for Henry VII.
Piers Gaveston and the Royal Treasure
Authors: Hamilton J. S.
Published: November 2007

Many charges were leveled against Piers Gaveston, the Gascon favorite of Edward II and earl of Cornwall from 1307 until his violent death at the hands of a group of disaffected magnates led by earls Thomas of Lancaster and Guy of Warwick in 1312. One of the most readily accepted has been the accusation that he had maliciously and illegally taken the royal treasure into his own hands and that he had then transported the treasure to his native Gascony. According to the contemporary Annales Londonienses, no sooner had Gaveston been recalled from exile than Edward bestowed the royal treasure upon him in its entirety: “Furthermore he has relinquished to the said Piers the disposition and control of all the royal treasure, jewels, and precious stones.” Other chronicles refer to Gaveston's acquisition of the royal treasure in 1307, linking it to the fall from grace of Edward I's former treasurer, Walter Langton, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (but most often styled bishop of Chester in contemporary accounts of the reign). According to the Annales Paulini, Gaveston, still not satisfied, induced Edward to give him the wedding gifts that the king had received from his new father-in-law, Philip the Fair of France. Moreover, the earl of Cornwall was supposed to have sent this treasure abroad resulting in the pauperization of both king and Crown. To the monastic chroniclers of the fourteenth century, and indeed to the magnates who drafted the Ordinances of 1311, the veracity of these allegations was too well established to require specific proof. Modern scholars, however, require more concrete evidence than the narrative sources supply of Gaveston's alleged wrongdoing. Documentary evidence sheds light upon the various questions revolving around Piers Gaveston and the royal treasure.
Free Market Capitalism: Fundamentally Philistine?
Authors: Schmiechen James A.
Published: November 2007

The Scottish capitalist Samuel Laing, who found great comfort in the belief that in Britain “there is no feeling for the fine arts, no foundation for them, no esteem for them” (Porter, p. 265), raises some important questions with regard the relationship between capitalism and the arts, particularly for Victorian Britain between 1840 and 1880, and, as well, in a more general sense for society today. Is free market capitalism antithetical to culture? Was Britain, in her golden age of capitalism a cultural desert? Was Victorian culture essentially a culture of “rank escapism?” (Porter, p. 254) Did the industrial capitalists regard art and learning as harmful, time wasting, and detrimental to civic virtue? Bernard Porter, in reflecting on Laing's work, suggests yes to all of these questions, and further suggests that Laing just may be the guide to lead us to some important revelations about the historic relationship between capitalism and the arts.
Local Government in a Small Town: A Medieval Leet Jury and its Constituents
Authors: DeWindt Anne Reiber
Published: November 2007

The search for the origins of modern democratic institutions, institutions grounded in what philosophers call “legitimation by consent,” has led historians far upstream into numerous tributaries. Francis Oakley argues that the institutional, practical, and political world in which Romano-canonist theories of consent were actually put to the test, could be found in ecclesiastical communities, the feudal contract, the conciliar movement, and “a myriad of corporate bodies and of cities enjoying de facto an extensive measure of self-governance.” The medieval English village was certainly one of the most important of these corporate bodies. As early as 1933, following in the path of the great nineteenth-century constitutional historians, A. B. White looked in the direction of the medieval village for indications of nascent institutions of self government. However, White devalued the significance of his own findings by arguing that this “self-government” developed in response to the needs of royal administrators, and was, in the end, overshadowed by the centralized power of a Tudor regime. White thus saw village institutions of self government as responses on the part of a local population to “the King's command.”
Jacobitism and the Historian: The Case of William, 1st Earl Cowper
Authors: Jones Clyve
Published: November 2007

In the past twenty years there has been a renaissance in Jacobite studies in Britain and North America. It started with the publication in 1970 of Romney Sedgwick's The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1715–1754, in which the post-1715 Tory party was resurrected from the untimely death to which earlier historiography had consigned it in the face of the so-called Whig hegemony under Walpole and his successors. This section of Sedgwick's volumes was the work of Eveline Cruickshanks, who not only showed that there had been an active Tory party under Walpole, but also claimed that it had been essentially a Jacobite party. Dr. Cruickshanks has, since 1970, produced a book, several articles, and essays expanding her thesis. She has been joined in the quest for Jacobites by many others, and the flow of work on Jacobitism seems unabated. This body of work has, however, left other historians with a good deal of unease, not only over the conclusions reached, but also the methodology used and the sources upon which these conclusions are based (most notably the uncritical use of the Stuart Papers in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle).
George Fox, Millenarian
Authors: Ingle H. Larry
Published: November 2007

“Friends, take heed of setting up that which God will throw down, lest you be found fighters against God.”

The nearly two decades comprising the period of the English Revolution were marked by a widespread interest in the timely appearance of the millennium, the thousand year period of Christ's promised earthly reign. From scholarly biblical studies of Daniel and Revelation to omens such as total eclipses of the sun and rumors of a Nottingham girl returning from the dead to warn a sinful world of approaching destruction, people in revolutionary England were bombarded with “evidence” of divine intervention and the expected arrival of the new kingdom. Parliament's victory in the English civil wars and its execution of Charles I in 1649 dramatically blew away the aura of divinity surrounding the monarchy and promised a new and glorious age. As they read prophecies in Revelation about a New Jerusalem where God would dry all tears and banish death, sorrow, and pain, enthusiasts of the seventeenth century anxiously looked for the Christ who promised, “Behold, I come quickly.” So prevalent were such notions that, as one authority has stressed, popular millenarianism seemed only a small step beyond received orthodoxy.
Gladstone, Lord Ripon, and the Vatican Decrees, 1874
Authors: Altholz Josef L. , Powell John
Published: November 2007

In August 1874, the Marquess of Ripon, until recently a Liberal Cabinet Minister, decided to convert from the Church of England to that of Rome. The Times, which like the rest of the English political world assumed that this ended Ripon's public career, denounced the moral “obliquity” of the man who “has renounced his mental and moral freedom, and has submitted himself to the guidance of the Roman Catholic Priesthood.” In October, the former Prime Minister, William E. Gladstone, asserted in an article on ritualism that the High Church position could not lead to Rome because, among other things, “no one can become her convert without renouncing his moral and mental freedom and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another.” Remonstrances from Catholics (among them Ripon) on the issue of civil loyalty led Gladstone to develop his position fully in a pamphlet in November, The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Expostulation, which in turn provoked one of the major Church-State controversies of the century. Historians have generally assumed that Ripon's conversion was causally connected with Gladstone's outburst.” It was, but with a difference.
A Crisis of Authority: Early Nineteenth-Century British Thought
Authors: Webb R. K.
Published: November 2007

This talk represents a crisis of principle. I have long held that a presidential address to a learned society should not belabor that society with laments or summonses, nor should it ask whither the discipline; rather, it should be a serious scholarly or interpretive effort. But it is an equally compelling principle with me that an after-dinner talk should suit the mood of relaxed good feeling that is likely to characterize the occasion. To answer both requirements is no easy task. In defining a genre new to the North American Conference on British Studies, my two predecessors have admirably fulfilled my criteria, combining the serious scholarship one would expect from their distinguished careers with the precise lightness of touch called for on such an occasion.

I will not, I fear, follow their example in either respect. The grand, refractory subject I have chosen has interested me for many years, but I have not earlier addressed it in either research or writing: it has been rather like the unheard theme that Elgar said was present in hisEnigma Variations. In now making the theme explicit, as Elgar wisely never did, I shall begin by calling attention to some concerns and perceptions among the English Unitarians over a hundred years, concerns and perceptions that I think reflect a crisis of authority. I shall then suggest ways in which that same analysis might be applied to larger, more important and familiar, segments of nineteenth-century intellectual life.
The Transformation of London “Society” at the End of Victoria's Reign: Evidence from the Court Presentation Records
Authors: Ellenberger Nancy W.
Published: November 2007

To its late-Victorian participants, London “Society” was one of those abstractions, like “the young,” that deteriorated with each passing generation. For decades chroniclers of Britain's clannish ruling circles had lamented the diminishing refinement, morals, and breeding of those highest sections of elite society that migrated to the capital each spring for the parliamentary and social “season.” Thus, when the press, with many contributors from the aristocracy itself, launched a new campaign against London Society in the last years of Victoria's reign, the charges had a familiar ring. Society was expanding alarmingly, abandoning its standards, worshipping notoriety and opulence, and abdicating serious responsibilities in the pursuit of frivolous amusement. If the criticisms contained few surprises, the intensity of the alarm was unprecedented. Beginning in 1874, with The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope's novel of a greedy and credulous beau monde, and continuing through a series of journal articles bearing titles such as “The New Society,” “The Deterioration of English Society,” “The Sins of Society,” and “The Enlargement of London Society,” critics subjected the aristocratic elites and the informal institutions of the London season to fierce scrutiny and nearly universal diagnosis of advanced illness.
Continuity & Change in English Provincial Politics: Robert Paston in Norfolk, 1675-1683
Authors: Stater Victor L.
Published: November 2007

The practice of politics and the nature of government in England were transformed in the reign of Charles II, and recently, the scope and significance of this transformation has received renewed attention. For some years the historiographical spotlight focused on an earlier period, and debate centered upon the genesis of the civil wars and revolution. That is changing, but though a number of historians have once again turned their attention to the Restoration regime, a generally accepted account of the changes of the period has not yet emerged. The earlier historical consensus about some of the major issues of the period—the king's political goals, the importance of the Exclusion Crisis, and the impact of the radical tradition, to name a few—has been subjected to a good deal of critical scrutiny of late.
The 1870 Education Bill and the Method of J. S. Mill's Later Politics
Authors: Kinzer Bruce L.
Published: November 2007

The last fourteen years of John Stuart Mill's life (1859-1873), which followed the death of Harriet Taylor, possessed a hefty political content. They saw the publication of his essays on parliamentary reform andConsiderations on Representative Government, his impassioned identification with the North in the American Civil War, the eventful parliamentary career sandwiched between the Westminster elections of 1865 and 1868, and a final phase of activity associated with causes such as women's suffrage and land tenure reform. When Mill acted politically he usually did so with strong feeling, but in his search to give deeply held principles practical effect he understood the need for dispassionate adaptation of means to ends. Both the feeling and the adaptation are evident in his treatment of the elementary education question in 1870, a treatment that vividly illustrates how Mill operated during the decade and a half before his death.

Of the host of legislation Gladstone's first administration proposed, only one item, the 1870 Education Bill, elicited a congregation of public responses from Mill. Of course, Mill's political activity in the several years following his defeat at Westminster in autumn 1868 was not confined to the adoption of a stance on ministerial measures. With respect to women's suffrage and land reform Mill was not about to wait on any government, and his conspicuous connections with the National Society for Women's Suffrage and the Land Tenure Reform Association attracted notice at the time and have been the subject of comment since. Moreover, during his last years Mill continued to cultivate his contacts in the world of London working-class radicalism, particularly with George Odger, William Randal Cremer, and George Howell. Whereas Mill's parliamentary career has been explored in some detail, the political character of his post-Westminster years has received less attention.
Real and Practicable, not Imaginary and Notional: Sir Henry Vane, A Healing Question, and the Problems of the Protectorate
Authors: Mayers Ruth E.
Published: November 2007

The year 1655 might with reason have been described as the “annus horribilis” of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate. January saw the dissolution of his first Parliament, which had signally failed to ratify the Instrument of Government, the constitution imposed by the Army in December 1653. This undermined the already dubious constitutional basis of the government's ordinances, resulting in legal challenges and even recalcitrance among some of the judges. The policy of “healing and settling” had gained at best a grudging acquiescence from the political nation, and the determined enemies of the Protectorate sought to exploit its instability. Former allies of the Army, such as the commonwealthsman John Wildman and the Fifth Monarchists, continued to publish bitter condemnations of the regime designed to incite rebellion; in March, Royalist plotting culminated in Penruddock's abortive uprising. Instability and disaffection at home coincided with military disaster abroad: July brought news of the failure of Cromwell's “western design,” the expedition against the Spanish island of Hispaniola. This was the first major defeat suffered by the New Model, and was received by Cromwell and many of the godly as an indication of divine displeasure.

In August, Cromwell abandoned “healing and settling” for more military counsels, appointing Major Generals to provide security by raising a new militia, financed by punitive taxation of the Royalists, and by imposing godly order on the localities. Despite the initial optimism of the Major Generals, it was plain by the beginning of 1656 that they could not finance the new militia, and that their efforts to impose reform were far from uniformly effective.
“The Methods of Barbarism” and the “Rights of Small Nations”: War Propaganda and British Pluralism
Authors: Ellis John S.
Published: November 2007

The “methods of barbarism” and the “rights of small nations” are perhaps the most recognizable of British slogans arising out of the wars of the early twentieth century. They are instantly associated with the Boer War and the First World War respectively, but seldom are they associated with each other. However, the Pro-Boer rhetoric of “the methods of barbarism” and the First World War propaganda of “the rights of small nations” are intimately linked through their roots in the pluralist Liberal vision of Britishness.

These slogans and the propaganda campaigns that they epitomized must be understood within the context of a multicultural Britain and opposing notions of British national identity. Defining “barbarism” as the oppression of small nations through the brutal use of force, the Pro-Boers associated the term with the Anglocentric vision of the British nation reflected in the “New Imperialism” of the Conservatives. Through their belief in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority, the Conservative imperialists maintained that small nations like those of the Irish, the Welsh, and the Boers would either be assimilated or swept aside by the historical progress of an expanding Anglo-Saxon nation state. In contrast to this notion of Conservative “barbarism,” the Pro-Boer Liberals drew on the Gladstonian heritage of their party in defining the United Kingdom as a multinational state at the center of a multinational empire. They eschewed the use of force in the maintenance of empire and argued that the bonds of imperialism must be based upon mutual goodwill, voluntarism, and the recognition of the principle of nationality.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, propagandists drew upon these contrasting constructions of Liberal cultural pluralism and Conservative cultural uniformity. In terms similar to those employed by the Pro-Boers, British propagandists depicted the First World War as a struggle against German “barbarism” and as a fight to vindicate the “rights of small nations.” Solidly based upon the Liberal construction of the multicultural and multinational nature of Britishness, Britain's role as the champion of the principle of nationality was proclaimed with an eye not only to the international context of Europe but to the domestic context of the British state and empire as well.
A Moveable Feast? Itineration and the Centralization of Government Under Henry I
Authors: Christlelow Stephanie Mooers
Published: November 2007

In this year, king Henry was in Windsor at Christmas, and wore his crown there…. The king spent Easter at Kingsthorpe near Northhampton…. The king spent Whit Sunday at St. Albans. Thereafter, at midsummer, he went with his levies into Wales…. Thereafter he came to Winchester… Thereafter he went oversea [sic] into Normandy.

(Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno1114, versions H and E.)

This fairly representative account of the travels of an Anglo-Norman king in his dominions during the course of one year is testimony to the peripatetic character of royal and ducal administrations in the eleventh- and twelfth-centuries. But, like other sources used in isolation, it barely indicates the intensity of itinerating government reached during the long reign of Henry I (1100–1135), and which was maintained at a heightened pitch in the chaotic decades to come.

Modern historians have recognized that itineration was fundamental to medieval kingship and that it was crucial to the governance of a geographically disparate realm, as kings divided their time between historically separate regions. Itineration was a practical device in the absence of fully-developed governmental institutions as well as an economic necessity, for in partially monetarized economies, it was not always possible to move goods easily from county districts to main centers of power.

Only a handful of recent, comprehensive studies of government in Norman and Angevin England have touched on the subject of itineration. David C. Douglas concentrated on the men who comprised the royal household and who attended meetings of the royalcuriain his analyses of William the Conqueror's (1066–1087) personal kingship.
“Unreasonable and Unbecoming”: Self-Recommendation and Place-Seeking in the Church of England, 1700–1900
Authors: Gibson W. T.
Published: November 2007

Ecclesiastical patrons used a broad range of criteria to select clergy for preferment to livings and dignities in the Church of England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The qualifications of nobility, of academic standing, of services to the Church and State, of a patron's influence and strong churchmanship were among those that were most common. But a further factor affected advancement: that of self-recommendation. Ecclesiastical historians, particularly those of the Victorian era, have tended to see this as a morally questionable, if not corrupt, method of gaining advancement—and one which was primarily a feature of the Hanoverian Church. Indeed the traditional view of ecclesiastical history, though increasingly under challenge, regarded the Hanoverian and Victorian Churches as standing in strong contrast to each other. This contrast has tended to include the quality and recruitment of the clergy. Yet, there was no fundamental difference in the methods used by patrons in distributing livings and offices in the Church in these two centuries. Crown livings and senior posts in the Church were distributed by ministers and patrons who were prone to favor, influence, and persuasion. It was to this system that self-recommendation was directed, in the hope of securing preferment. Because of the success of personal solicitation, self-recommendation remained a factor in nominations to places in the Church throughout the nineteenth century. Even when it was declared unacceptable for the appointment to senior Church offices by Gladstone in 1881, self-recommendation remained in existence in a covert form.
“We Are Threatened with…Anarchy and Ruin”: Fear of Americanization and the Emergence of an Anglo-Saxon Confederacy in England during the American Civil War
Authors: Dubrulle Hugh
Published: November 2007

In an October 1861 letter to Charles Sumner, the prominent Republican Senator from Massachusetts, William Howard Russell,The Times’correspondent in America, explained England’s attitude toward the American Civil War: “In England we are threatened with Americanization which to our islands would be anarchy & ruin, & the troubles in America afford our politicians & writers easy means of dealing deadly blows at Brightism which is often attacked under the guise of war & the troubles in America.” Indeed, as Russell claimed, the conflict allowed those who identified the radicalism of John Bright with Americanization and disorder to present a plausible case to the English public. Americans, so this argument went, were but Englishmen transformed by Americanization, a social and political process that fostered a licentious individualism and a pernicious egalitarianism. This transformation had not only precipitated disorder in America, but the deterioration of civilization. England could also succumb to Americanization if it allowed Brightism to achieve dominance by extending the suffrage and introducing a radical, middle-class Parliament. The consequent implementation of free trade and destruction of privilege would lead to political and social democracy, making Americans of the English in England. From this perspective, Bright was an American in the most pejorative sense of the word.
Politics and Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England: The Case of Elizabeth Poole
Authors: Brod Manfred
Published: November 2007

Elizabeth Poole, “the Abingdon prophetess,” makes a brief appearance, often as a footnote, in several standard political histories of the seventeenth century. However, only two attempts seem to have been made to evaluate fully her significance in the politics and religion of the period, one by Professor Firth in his edition of the Clarke Papers and one by the American scholar Dorothy Ludlow in a thesis published in 1978. Firth’s attempt was uncharacteristically superficial, and he limited himself to retailing Royalist propaganda on the subject; while Ludlow, although she brought together much of the available information, was more concerned with Poole as a woman than as a political activist. This article attempts to put her life and public activities into a wider context. It argues that her example shows that it was not impossible for women of the time to function at the highest political levels. What was significant about Poole was her failure to achieve political aims that were not in themselves unrealistic or lacking in influential support. Finally, this article postulates that female political activity at the decision-making levels was limited to a mode that could support or oppose general political strategies but was ill-suited to the furtherance of specific policies or actions.
Thomas Perronet Thompson, “Sensible Chartism” and the Chimera of Radical Unity
Authors: Turner Michael J.
Published: November 2007

Radical disunity and diffusion of effort were cardinal features of mid-nineteenth-century British politics, but only infrequently has Chartism been viewed in this context. Some historians of Chartism prefer to stress its economic roots, or treat it as a rational response to political events, or regard it as a collection of local mobilizations rather than an organized national movement. Others focus upon its democratic ideology and practice, its significance as a mass activity involving “outsiders” (the unskilled, women, the Irish), its symbols, dress, and other forms of display, or upon the deployment of military and police to combat Chartism at times of serious disorder (notably in 1839, 1842, and 1848). Some commentators regard Chartism as the basis for mid-Victorian working-class liberalism, commending the intelligent artisans of London who drew up the Charter, and condemning the violence of the Chartist North. For Dorothy Thompson Chartism was a political movement inspired by concern about threats to workers’ rights. Gareth Stedman Jones has argued that Chartist agitation marks a continuation of familiar pre-1832 radical aims and rhetoric, and that it must be explained with reference to the nature of the state, not class consciousness or the trade cycle.
The Creed of Eliza’s Babes (1652): Nakedness, Adam, and Divinity
Authors: Semler L.E.
Published: November 2007

The theological position of the anonymous female author ofEliza’s Babes: Or The Virgin’s Offering(1652) is yet to be established with any certainty. This essay intends to go some way towards clarifying this point by analysis of her text in relation to various doctrinal options available to her in the contemporary religious climate. A brief introduction to this little-studied book precedes a preliminary sketch of the author’s beliefs drawn from internal evidence. The sketch will serve as a starting point from which to proceed to analysis of three particularly interesting passages inEliza’s Babes:the poem, “To a Friend for her Naked Breasts” (p. 56); the prose meditation, “On ECCLES. 9.7. Goe eat thy bread with joy, &c” (pp. 80-84); and the poem, “My Descent” (pp.45-46).
The British Museum and the Virtual Representation of Culture in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Goldgar Anne
Published: November 2007

On April 1, 1833, the debate in the House of Commons over the foundation of Sir John Soane's Museum took a surprising turn. The suggestion by Sir Robert Peel that perhaps Soane's collection could be deposited in the British Museum instead of in his own house led the discussion away from Soane into complaints—now brewing for decades—over the accessibility of that public museum. The most eloquent speaker was William Cobbett. Told by another member that “any person decently attired” would be admitted to the British Museum, Cobbett remarked that “those who had not decent dresses were required to pay for the maintenance of the Museum…. The chopstick in the country, as well as the poor man who mended the pavement in town, had to pay for the support of this place; and, if they derived no benefit from it, they ought not to be compelled to pay for it.” Similarly, on March 25, 1833, Cobbett argued that the subsidy of the museum should not be increased: “Why should tradesmen and farmers be called upon to pay for the support of a place which was intended only for the amusement of the curious and the rich, and not for the benefit or for the instruction of the poor? If the aristocracy wanted the Museum as a lounging place, let them pay for it.”
The First Modern Refugees? Charity, Entitlement, and Persuasion in the Huguenot Immigration of the 1680s
Authors: Hintermaier John M.
Published: November 2007

When Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, he perpetuated the long tradition of foreign Protestants seeking shelter in England. England’s place as a religious refuge began after the Reformation; the resulting foundations of Stranger churches meant that a pre-existing community could advocate for the refugees. Yet, the religious attitudes that previously fostered an economy of entitlement for religious exiles no longer exercised the influence they once had. This meant that there was a distinct possibility that the Huguenot refugees of the 1680s could have become the first modern refugees.
British Writers, American Readers: Women’s
Voices in Wartime
Authors: Leventhal Fred M.
Published: November 2007

For several years I have been exploring
the projection of Britain in America during the
late 1930s and the early 1940s. My focus has been
on aspects of cultural propaganda initiated for
the most part unofficially, although often with
government complicity. Simply put, I have been
concerned to discover what ordinary Americans were
seeing and hearing and reading about England in
the crucial years before the onset of the Second
World War and, even more significantly, in the
period from the summer of 1939 to American entry
in December 1941.
Options for an Imperialist Woman: The Case
of Violet Markham, 1899-1914
Authors: Riedi Eliza
Published: November 2007

Recent years have seen growing interest
both in the influence of the British Empire on
metropolitan culture—what John M. MacKenzie
described as “the centripetal effects of
Empire”—and in the relationships between gender
and imperialism. Early studies of European women
and imperialism described the activities of women
as “memsahibs,” travellers and colonists in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
challenged the notion that “women lost us the
Empire,” and began to analyze the roles of white
women in the “man’s world” of imperial rule. More
recently attention has been drawn by Vron Ware,
Barbara Ramusack and Antoinette Burton to the
complex relationships between British and
colonized women and, by Burton especially, to the
ambiguities of “imperial feminism.” Nevertheless,
apart from the well-documented female emigration
societies, and the isolated study of Flora Shaw,
colonial editor of The
Times, by Helen Callaway and Dorothy
O. Helly, the considerable activities of women as
imperial propagandists have received little
attention. This article traces the imperial
activism of Violet Markham, the daughter of a
Northern industrialist and sister of a Liberal
M.P. who, roused from the aimless existence of
Victorian young ladyhood by the Boer War, spent
much of the Edwardian era promoting the cause of
the British Empire. Through a study of her
imperial career it explores the options available
to an imperialist woman in an era when women were
barred from formal politics, and when imperial
politics in particular were considered a
“masculine” preserve, and considers the
obstacles—practical, ideological and
psychological—which confronted her.
Royalty, Virtue, and Adversity: The Cult of
King Henry VI
Authors: Craig Leigh Ann
Published: November 2007

In 1471, King Henry VI of England died in
the Tower of London amid disputed circumstances.
Between his death and Henry VIII’s break with Rome
in the 1530s, he was venerated as a saint and
martyr. Modern historians have generally dismissed
this cult as a political phenomenon, created and
used by the Tudors as they sought legitimacy.
While there is some truth in that assessment,
political allegiance was only a part of the
impetus for the participation of Henry’s devotees
in the cult. Alongside carefully crafted (and
perhaps, artificial) portrayals of Henry’s virtues
lay something else his former subjects found
compelling: his very real political failures, and
more importantly the adversity that they
engendered. Henry’s devotees used these royal
adversities as the basis from which to imagine a
sympathetic relationship between themselves and
“good King Herre” in which he had great concern
for their fatal and near-fatal emergencies. These
neglected devotional aspects of Henry VI’s cult
are the subject of this article.