bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Crisis of Episcopal Authority During the Reign of Elizabeth I
Authors: Manning Roger B.
Published: February 2004

The theory behind the Henrician religious settlement was that certain papal and episcopal powers of jurisdiction were vested in the Crown by parliamentary enactments because the Pope and the English bishops had failed to reform abuses in the Church. In the absence of an alternative administrative system, the bishops continued to govern the Church as agents of the royal ecclesiastical supremacy. Although some episcopal powers of jurisdiction were returned to the Elizabethan bishops, the actual authority allowed them did not suffice to effect a reformation or to enforce conformity to the established church. In order to resolve this crisis of episcopal authority the seventeenth-century prelates and divines elaborated theories of divine-right episcopacy, but the Elizabethan bishops found it more expedient to fall back upon extraordinary grants of royal authority contained in ecclesiastical commissions.

I

The Henrician and Edwardian alienations of episcopal jurisdiction are spectacular and dramatic, yet the erosion of episcopal authority began long before the Henrician Reformation. For over two centuries English bishops had been primarily royal servants. They were, by temperament and training canonists and diplomats rather than pastors; like the Renaissance popes they had grown accustomed to compromise rather than providing spiritual leadership. Not only in England, but throughout Western Europe, bishops rarely sat as judges in their own courts. Much of their authority had been permanently delegated to commissaries, who tended to become independent agents. They were, moreover, hard put to resist encroachments upon their ordinary authority by archdeacons and cathedral chapters, while ecclesiastical corporations devoted considerable effort to securing exemption from episcopal visitations.
John Bramhall and The Theoretical Problems of Royalist Moderation
Authors: Daly J. W.
Published: February 2004

It is a truism that the most distinctive features of the peculiarly English genius in politics are moderation and compromise. The sources of this spirit must be sought throughout the whole fabric of English history, but it should be easier to examine some of the stages by which it emerged onto the conscious level of political thought. How long have Englishmen spoken of political moderation as a good in itself? Herbert Butterfield awards to the Whigs the honor of contributing to modern British history their instinct for compromise. Locke has often been thought of as doing the same. But Toryism has come in for its share of the credit, and a student of John Dryden's thought has suggested that the Tory Dryden well illustrates the tradition of avoiding political extremes and reconciling liberty and authority. This is a fruitful suggestion, and it may be carried further by seeking evidence of this tradition in the predecessors of the Tories, the royalists of the Civil War period. These latter, far from being diehards or extremists, were the advocates of a political mean, and tried to defend at once the king's authority and the subject's liberty. In some degree, this is now widely conceded, but the significance of this moderation is not as clear as it ought to be, because its nature is not understood. When it is understood, it will be possible to say that the most important characteristic of seventeenth-century English royalism was not its defense of the king, but its defense of political moderation and limited government.
“The Fittest Subject for A King's Quarrel”: An Essay on the Militia Controversy 1641-1642
Authors: Schwoerer Lois G.
Published: February 2004

The struggle between King and Parliament in 1641-42 for command of the militia was to King Charles I “the Fittest Subject for a King's Quarrel.” As the King himself and a group of pamphleteers, preachers and members of Parliament realized, the controversy was not just a contest for control of military power. The fundamental issue was a change in England's government, a shift in sovereignty from King or King-in-Parliament to Parliament alone. As Charles explained, “Kingly Power is but a shadow” without command of the militia. His contemporaries, representing various political allegiances, also testified to the significance of the contest over the militia. They described it as the “avowed foundation” of the Civil War, “the greatest concernment” ever faced by the House of Commons, and the “great quarrel” between the King and his critics. To some men it was this dispute over military authority and the implications for government which were inherent in it, rather than disagreements about religion, taxes or foreign policy, that made civil war unavoidable.

Concern about military authority first erupted in the fall of 1641 in response to a series of events – rumors of plots involving the King, the presence in London of disbanded soldiers who had returned from the war with Scotland, the “Incident” in Scotland, and above all the rebellion in Ireland which required the levying of an army to subdue those rebels.
The General Election of 1690
Authors: Horwitz Henry
Published: February 2004

In recent years, the “party history” of William's and Anne's reigns has been the subject of renewed interest and controversy, centering especially on the structure of Augustan politics. But amidst the debate over the usefulness and validity of two-party or multi-party analyses, uncharted regions of the political terrain remain to be mapped. Not least among them is the electoral history of the 1690s, and the general election of 1690 is a leading case in point.

Historians from Boyer and Burnet down to the most recent student of the politics of William's reign, D. A. Rubini in his Court and Country 1688-1702, have commented briefly on this election, describing its conduct and characterizing its results primarily in terms of the rivalry of Whig and Tory. However, in his passing comments on the 1690 election, Rubini does challenge the received notion that the new Commons of March 1690 was “at least moderately Tory” in complexion. Noting that historians have failed hitherto to use the “black lists” published by supporters of the opposing groups during the campaign as a yardstick of its outcome, he goes on to suggest that the Whigs “did considerably better than has generally been supposed and the Tories less well.” His brief, but questioning remarks may perhaps serve, then, as a point of departure for a somewhat fuller account of the campaign and a more detailed analysis of the results of the election which returned the longest lived of William III's parliaments.
The Rise of Colonial Federation as an Object of British Policy, 1850-1870
Authors: Knox Bruce A.
Published: February 2004

When the third Earl Grey attempted, between 1846 and 1851, to promote federations in Australasia, South Africa, and British North America, he found scant support either at home or in the colonies concerned. He failed (except, in a sense, in New Zealand) partly because his schemes were more visionary than practically suited to existing colonial conditions, and partly because measures “imposed by the imperial authority” were apt to encounter difficulties abroad and, therefore, political trouble at home. Following Grey's departure from the Colonial Office, imperial policy makers refrained from prescribing federal systems for the settlement colonies. His abortive plans, however, had consequences during the next twenty years which, though different from Grey's intentions, amply vindicated the ability of the imperial government to exert its authority, and established, in the end, the desirability of colonial federations. For a decade and a half after 1850, the home government repeatedly and successfully frustrated local proposals for federation in the three continental groups of colonies. Then, between 1864 and 1870, it hurried to completion the union of British North America, and set about promoting that of South Africa. At the same time, it refrained from pressing any such development upon Australia, and actually arranged the dismantling of New Zealand's federal/provincial system.

No inconsistency was involved. Britain's policy towards all these colonies was designed in favor of its own interests, tempered by a remarkable consideration of those of the colonies. The chief imperial object during the period in question (c. 1850-1870) was to reduce the country's military and political commitments; and the chosen device for the purpose was encouragement of colonial self-government, in various forms, including republican independence in the Boer states of South Africa.
The Social Composition of the County Magistracy in England and Wales, 1831–1887
Authors: Zangerl Carl H. E.
Published: February 2004

“The revolution is made,” the Duke of Wellington declared in 1833, “that is to say power is transferred from one class in society, the gentlemen of England professing the faith of the Church of England, to another class of society, the shopkeepers being dissenters from the Church, many of them being Socinians, others atheists.” Wellington's political postmortem was, to say the least, premature. The gentlemen of England and Wales continued to prosper, especially in the counties. In fact, most local government historians have argued that the landed classes virtually monopolized the administration of county affairs before 1888 when county government was institutionally restructured by the County Councils Act. The instrument of their control was the county magistracy acting in Quarter and Petty Sessions. K. B. Smellie, expressing a widely-held viewpoint, describes the county magistracy in the nineteenth century as the “rear guard of an agrarian oligarchy,” the “most aristocratic feature of English government.” Yet no one has furnished statistical evidence for this contention on a countrywide basis or for an extended time span. Is the notion of an aristocratic stranglehold over the counties really more impressionistic than substantive? By examining the “Returns of Justices of the Peace” between 1831 and 1887 in the British Parliamentary Papers, a nearly untapped statistical storehouse, it is possible to determine the degree of continuity in the social composition of the county magistracy.

Before doing so, it might be helpful to sketch the changing character of the Quarter Sessions.
The Anglo-Russian Convention and the Problem of Central Asia, 1907–1914
Authors: Klein Ira
Published: February 2004

For the British, the Anglo-Russian Convention was the culmination of repeated efforts, first begun by Lord Salisbury's government in the 1880s, later reiterated by the ministry of Arthur Balfour after the turn of the century, to come to terms with Russia in Asia. What was the effect on the British position in Asia of the agreement which the Liberal administration of Henry Campbell-Bannerman finally obtained in 1907? The actual working of the Convention in Asia has not received close attention. Since Britain and Russia were wartime allies, it appears to have been taken for granted that, before World War I, the Anglo-Russian Convention produced no major disenchantment or dangers for either partner. One purpose of this essay is to show that for the British, the Convention eventually generated serious dissatisfaction, that it failed to fulfill the British aim of halting Russian expansion in areas strategically crucial to the defense of India, and that in Central Asia after 1912, the Anglo-Russian Convention hindered rather than furthered the British quest for security. Further, a thesis of this paper is that Anglo-Russian relations dominated British policy in Central Asia, and that it was British anxiety about Russian expansion in Central Asia which led the British after 1912 to attempt to establish a veiled protectorate in Tibet. This view diverges from that of a recent major work on the once obscure history of Central Asia: inThe McMahon Line, Professor Alastair Lamb emphasized the importance of Sino-Indian relations to the formulation of British policy in Central Asia.
Conscription and English Society in the 1620s
Authors: Stearns Stephen J.
Published: February 2004

Few habitual activities of government engender more dissatisfaction than conscription for military service. Complaints about taxation are, perhaps, more frequent but only because governments wage war more spasmodically than they collect revenues. From the perspective of the twentieth century, which has seen more men pressed into military service than any other period in the known past, the history of conscription and its impact on the political and social order ought to be of some interest.

The seventeenth century, like the twentieth, was wracked with continuous warfare, naked power struggles for international hegemony and fierce ideological combat. As a consequence, while at the beginning of the century no major European state had a standing army, at its end all had. In England, as in the rest of Europe, the century echoed to the banging of the recruiter's drum. Our view of the recruiting process under the Stuart monarchs is framed at each end of the century by two brilliant and brutally satirical portraits, Shakespeare's Falstaff and Farquahar's recruiting officer Captain Plume with his ever present Sergeant Kite. What they tell us is that the crown was horribly served, getting for soldiers the Feebles of mind and body, that providing men for military service (whether pressed or “recruited”) was a dirty, unfair and corrupt process and that the situation under good Queen Anne was the same as it had been under good Queen Bess. This “Falstaffian perspective” on the early Stuart period has never been challenged or examined in detail.
Fox, Grenville, and the Recovery of Opposition, 1801-1804
Authors: Willis Richard E.
Published: February 2004

The revival of the Foxite opposition from the demoralizing effects of its rupture of 1792-1794 and the subsequent secession of 1797 is an important and not fully understood episode in Great Britain's political history. The central feature of that recovery was the alliance struck in January 1804 between Charles James Fox and William Lord Grenville. It was not only to provide the foundation for the “Ministry of All the Talents” of 1806-1807, the whig opposition's sole tenure of office between 1783 and 1830, but it was to have profound effects on the activities of the whig party for at least a decade after the fall of that ministry. The arrangement and reception of the “cooperation,” as it was termed, illuminates the condition and the preoccupations of the Foxite opposition during Henry Addington's tenure in power. The alliance involved the most important political decisions Fox made in the last decade of his life, and the history of its establishment explains many of the workings of his mind after the secession. The actual proposition of association was one of the key incidents in the career of its initiator, Grenville, and it provides much information on a man who remains one of the least understood major politicans of George III's reign. The alliance has as well its own interest as a study of how two opponents with differing aspirations and ideals could form a successful union, each with motivations more complicated than the mere desire for office.
Ireland and the First International
Authors: Boyle John W.
Published: February 2004

Ireland in the eighteen-fifties was quiescent through exhaustion. The great famine of the eighteen-forties had resulted in heavy population losses through death and emigration and demoralized tenant farmers had offered but a feeble resistance to wholesale evictions. The failure of the Irish Confederate risings of 1848-49, the collapse of tenant-right agitation and the disintegration of the Independent Irish Party at Westminster, had left the country sunk in political apathy. The trade union movement did not escape the general paralysis and the Regular Trades Association, a central organization that had developed in Dublin during the eighteen-forties, disappeared. Not until 1859 was there renewed trade union activity in the form of a campaign to abolish night-baking; though it had only limited success, it helped to bring about the appearance in 1863 of a new grouping of Dublin trade unions, the United Trades Association. It was, however, not a trade union organization but the Irish Republican Brotherhood that aroused the country from political torpor.

The I.R.B., known in North America as the Fenian Brotherhood, was a secret oath-bound society pledged to establish an independent Irish republic. Its first leader was James Stephens, who had founded it in 1858 after his return from an exile following the 1848 rising. Its membership was drawn from the rural and urban working class – the sons of small farmers, mechanics, artisans, laborers and petty shopkeepers. In 1861 Stephens skillfully stage-managed the funeral of Terence Bellew McManus, a Confederate exile whose body was brought back for burial in Ireland, and thus aroused an unprecedented interest in “The Organization,” as its members called it.
Lord Salisbury and the Ottoman Massacres
Authors: Marsh Peter
Published: February 2004

In 1876, and again from 1894 to 1896, thousands of Christians in Bulgaria and Armenia, then provinces of the Ottoman Empire, were massacred by Turkish troops, local irregulars known with romantic barbarity as bashi-bazouks, and Moslem tribesmen. The victims were raped or mutilated, many were burned alive. Weeks later streets were littered with corpses. The Armenians, even in the best of times, were subjected to an almost systematic starvation: Moslem tribesmen were permitted to take the crops of Armenian farms when times were peaceful, and to burn them in periods of violence. Naturally such treatment provoked insurrections, which renewed the cycle of repression.

These massacres drove a section of the English public to peaks of moral indignation. Nonconformist ministers and liberal academics, and their followers, were imbued with a reverence for the independent individual. High church clergy had rediscovered a religious affinity with the ancient Churches of the Near East. Humanitarian concern for the sufferings of one's fellow men – prison inmates and child laborers at home, for example, or slaves abroad – had been a steady force in the nineteenth century, and fortified these sectarian sensitivities. These Englishmen would have been distressed by the Ottoman massacres even if the British Government had been in no way involved. Since they believed the Government to be in fact gravely responsible, they conducted extensive political agitations.

Britain was the foremost defender of the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire.
The Randlords in 1895: A Reassessment
Authors: Kubicek Robert V.
Published: February 2004

Ever since J. A. Hobson characterized financiers as monolithic and conspiratorial, particularly those who were supposed to have been responsible for manipulating decisively events which led to the outbreak of the South African war, historians have stressed the need to examine their financial activities. However, the South African goldmining financiers have not been as thoroughly scrutinized as the politicians (Chamberlain and Kruger) or the administrators (Loch, Rosmead and Milner). Rhodes, of course, has been much studied, but more as politician and imperial strategist than as a Randlord. One recent exception to this neglect is G. Blainey's study based on an examination of mining techniques and technology. He asserts that a certain sector of the mining industry was hard hit by the policies of the Transvaal government, and that it was Randlords from this deprived sector (the deep-level operators) who triggered the Johannesburg uprising. What follows, based on the records of the mining houses, attempts to answer several questions about the key Randlords in 1895 which have often been raised but not satisfactorily answered. How monolithic and conspiratorial were the Randlords? What devices did they use to generate capital and take profits? What in 1895 were precisely their financial requirements and expectations? Was there, as Blainey suggests, a common concern about capital wants and anticipated profits which distinguished Randlords who participated in the attempt to overthrow Kruger's republic in 1895 from those who did not?

II

Groups which search for profits are no more free of internecine disputes than groups which seek power.
Lord Hugh Cecil's Parliamentary Career, 1900–1914: Promise Unfulfilled
Authors: Rempel Richard A.
Published: February 2004

At the beginning of the Edwardian period no young British politician appeared so assured of a bright future as Lord Hugh Cecil. A son of the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, he was not only of distinguished lineage but possessed great intelligence and eloquence. His parliamentary oratory was compelling despite his lanky, ungainly appearance and nervous gestures. He combined a logical approach with transparent honesty and courage. So sincere was he in his convictions, no matter how eccentric some might be, that even the most sophisticated (and cynical) in the Commons listened to him with respect. Even the normally reserved Annual Register commented admiringly on Cecil's performance in a debate on the 1902 Education Bill. Lord Hugh, it claimed, had made the “most striking speech” — one which “was recognized by the best judges as bringing him within the front rank of modern parliamentary orators.” Two years later that shrewd observer of the House of Commons, Sir Henry Lucy, predicted an even greater achievement for the young Conservative. Lucy asserted that by remaining with his party despite an aversion to Tariff Reform, Cecil would “in due time, succeed to the Premiership held by his father and in succession by his cousin.”

Yet by 1914 no one of prominence expected Lord Hugh to gain (or perhaps even to seek) high office. He remained, as the Guardian later stated, one whose speeches “would always fill the House,” but as a politician to be reckoned with in terms of power, his career was finished.
Third Parties and Voters' Decisions: The Liberals and the General Election of 1945
Authors: Gilbert Bentley B.
Published: February 2004

Political history is the record of the pursuit and exercise of state power. In a democracy the search for such authority usually begins with the contest of elections. Elections, as a consequence, are of great importance and their systematic analysis, particularly the extrapolation of conclusions about popular attitudes from their results, has achieved in the last few years the status of a separate scholarly craft.

Historians have their own way of explaining elections. Traditionally, they tend to concentrate upon comparisons of programs and of party leaders. They assume the electorate made a choice between platforms and personalities and they tend to explain observable results in terms of most easily demonstrable causes. In dealing with the British General Election of 1945, for instance, they argue that the Labor party won because voters found its program more believable than that of the other party. This explanation, of course, is tautological. One is reminded of Calvin Coolidge who explained his victory in the race for governor of Massachusetts by saying that he received the most votes.

Yet of all elections in the twentieth century, the poll of 1945 needs critical investigation. The importance of its results have obscured the complexities of the election itself; historians have been so fascinated by what Labor did in office that they have ignored how the party got there. Labor's victory was as unprecedented as it was unexpected. As neither Churchill nor the leaders of the Labor party could believe, even in the face of much evidence to the contrary, that the electorate would dismiss the man who had led Britain through the war, the mystery of the election derives not from the Labor victory but from the breakdown of understanding between the leaders of the nation and its citizenry.
English Royal Forests under the Angevin Kings
Authors: Young Charles R.
Published: February 2004

Historians have never been properly grateful for that perpetually inquisitive student in medieval dialogues whose chief claim to fame is that he elicited bursts of wisdom from the ever-patient master. To him we owe this rather curious definition of the English royal forest as formulated by the master in Richard fitz Nigel's Dialogue of the Exchequer written about 1178:

The King's forest is a safe abode for wild animals, not all of them but only the woodland ones, and not everywhere, but in particular places suitable for the purpose. That is why it is called “forest” (foresta), as though theeofferesta(i.e. a haunt of wild animals,ferarum statio), were changed intoo.

Fortunately, the master had already discussed the essential point that the forest was an area of special jurisdiction subject to a special law:

The whole organization of the forests, the punishment, pecuniary or corporal, of forest offences, is outside the jurisdiction of the other courts, and solely dependent on the decision of the King, or of some officer specially appointed by him. The forest has its own laws, based, it is said, not on the Common Law of the realm, but on the arbitrary legislation of the King; so that what is done in accordance with forest law is not called “just” without qualification, but “just, according to forest law.”

Although modern scholarship suggests that the arbitrary nature of forest law in the thirteenth century was exaggerated, there can be no question that it had a bad reputation among contemporaries, who raised the cry that it placed the protection of wild beasts above that of men.
London and the Rebellions of 1548-1549
Authors: Beer B. L.
Published: February 2004

During the years 1548 to 1549 England experienced the most serious rebellions since the end of the fifteenth century. Although the worst disturbances occurred in the West of England and Norfolk, few areas of the country were wholly unaffected. In London the Mayor and Aldermen made elaborate military and security preparations to prevent revolt from within the City and to ward off possible attacks from the outside. City authorities succeeded in maintaining order, but in the political crisis that followed, London threw its support to members of the Privy Council who were disillusioned with the leadership of the Duke of Somerset and contributed, perhaps decisively, to the overthrow of the Protectorate.

This paper examines events in London during these troubled years and attempts to assess its influence on national politics. Evidence of discontent in the City is studied to determine whether rebellious parties actually threatened law and order or whether City authorities merely took preventive measures in response to events elsewhere in the country. In addition the City's intensive preparations for defense are considered in detail. As the chronicler, Charles Wriothesley, recorded, beginning on July 3, 1549, “my Lord Mayor began to watch at night, riding about the City to peruse the constables with their watches, and to see that they keep the hours appointed at the last Court of Aldermen holden at the Guildhall, for the preservation and safeguard of the City because of the rebellions in divers places of this realm.”
Ernest Belfort Bax: 1854-1926 The Encounter of Marxism and Late Victorian Culture
Authors: Pierson Stanley
Published: February 2004

The career of Ernest Belfort Bax provides a special perspective on the early development of British Socialism when, as someone observed, “generals without soldiers” were using Marxist ideas to scout a new path into the future. For Bax, as the only philosophical thinker among the early British Marxists, set out to develop the broader meaning of the new theory for his countrymen. This article will examine Bax's interpretation of Marxism with particular attention to his view of history, his approach to ethics, and his metaphysical position. It will also consider Bax's role in the movement and his relations with the three central figures in the early development of British Marxism — Henry Mayers Hyndman, William Morris and Friedrich Engels. Finally the article will attempt to explain the reasons for Bax's departure from a strict Marxism and suggest its implications for the development of Marxism and for late Victorian society

Bax, like so many of those figures who assumed the leading roles in the early development of European Socialism, grew up in a prosperous middle class family. His social background combined the economic affluence and evangelical piety which gave such a distinctive stamp to mid-Victorian life. For the young Bax, as for numerous other spirited sons of the English bourgeoisie, family wealth provided access to a wider world of culture and ideas. He soon discarded the simple piety and religious dogmatism of his upbringing. Indeed, he developed a deep hatred of middle class beliefs and conventions.
Lord Cromer's ‘Ancient and Modern Imperialism’: A Proconsular View of Empire
Authors: Chamberlain M. E.
Published: February 2004

In 1909, two years after his retirement as British Consul-General in Egypt, Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer — knighted in 1883, he was created Baron Cromer in 1892, viscount in 1899 and earl in 1901 — was invited to be the President of the Classical Association. It was a duty which he took very seriously and he prepared his Presidential address on “Ancient and Modern Imperialism” with immense care. In the course of this preparation he consulted many of the most distinguished scholars of the times, among them Gilbert Murray, then Professor of Greek at Oxford, J. B. Bury, then Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, F. J. Haverfield, the Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford, Sir William Ramsay, the Regius Professor of Humanity at Aberdeen University, Edwyn R. Bevan, a Hellenistic scholar much interested in Indian questions, Gertrude Bell, an archaeologist and expert on the Near East and Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, one of the most famous journalists of his day and an authority on Russia. After he delivered the address in January 1910 Cromer entered into further correspondence with the Conservative leader, A. J. Balfour; John Buchan who, although he is probably best remembered today as a writer of adventure stories, had been Alfred Milner's private secretary in South Africa, 1901-03 and was subsequently to be Governor General of Canada, James Bryce, the author of the classicThe Holy Roman Empire, a former cabinet minister and at this time British Ambassador in Washington; and Sir William Ridgeway, the President of the Royal Anthropological Institution.
The Making of the Angevin Empire
Authors: Hollister C. Warren , Keefe Thomas K.
Published: February 2004

During the last half of the twelfth century the kings of England ruled a vast constellation of lands stretching from Ireland to the Mediterranean, known traditionally, if not quite accurately, as the “Angevin Empire.” While the empire lasted, its rulers were the richest and strongest in Christendom. When King John lost Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Touraine, he also lost much of his income and influence, and the kings of France became the great royal figures of the thirteenth century. It is the purpose of this paper to explore the origins of the Angevin empire, and in particular the union of its two chief components — the Anglo-Norman state and the county of Anjou. Did the empire come about by accident or by political design? And if by design, who was its architect? Was it Henry I, who arranged the crucial marriage between his daughter Maud and Geoffrey, heir to Anjou? Was it Geoffrey, or Maud? Or was it their son, Henry Plantagenet — the ultimate beneficiary of the marriage?

At first glance, the empire would seem to have been conceived in the calculating mind of Henry I, who could hardly have failed to grasp the implications of a marriage joining the Anglo-Norman heiress to the Angevin heir. Indeed, many treatments of the subject, both old and recent, have suggested that the Angevin empire arose from King Henry I's “immensely grandiose designs” to absorb Anjou. But did Henry I have any such desire, or any such intention? The question can only be answered after a careful analysis of Henry I's diplomacy, both in its general contours and in its relation to Anjou.
John Hawkins's Troublesome Voyages: Merchants, Bureaucrats, and the Origin of the Slave Trade
Authors: Pollitt Ronald
Published: February 2004

There is nothing particularly subtle about a coat of arms with a crest depicting “a demi-Moor proper bound in a cord.” Nearly anyone can deduce from it that the bearer of these arms was probably a figure in the black-slave trade. Deductions along those lines would be right on the mark in the case of this particular heraldic device, for it was granted in 1565 by Queen Elizabeth I to John Hawkins on the recommendation of Sir William Cecil and the Earl of Leicester. The arms commemorate the origin of the English slave trade during the first decade of Elizabeth's reign. Under closer scrutiny, they reveal a wealth of further information about late Tudor history, telling us something about the nature and direction of economic enterprise in the 1560s, the interests of some of the key personalities of the period, and the ways in which diverse elements of society and the state combined their resources for mercantile purposes. Altogether, the crest of John Hawkins constitutes a remarkable lens through which can be seen in microcosm the variety, aggressiveness, and daring which have come to characterize Elizabethan England.

During the past quarter century, a number of distinguished scholars have analyzed Elizabethan overseas enterprise, of which the Hawkins slaving voyages were an important part. Lawrence Stone was the first to ask fundamental questions about the late Tudor economy in a provocative essay published in 1949. The same year saw the appearance of James Williamson's revised biography of John Hawkins, replete with substantial new material drawn from Spanish sources.
Arminianism and the English Parliament, 1624–1629
Authors: Schwartz Hillel
Published: February 2004

“Oh, Mr. Pym, this breaks the heart,” lamented Sir Richard Grosvenor in the House of Commons in 1629; “if God be God, let us follow him, and if Baal be God, let us follow him, and no longer halt between two opinions.” The Baalites, it was clear to the Commons, were the Arminians, who threatened “the very ruin and desolation if not dissolution of Religion in this land.” Such was the threat of Arminianism that when the Commons presented its Protestations on March 2, the first article read,

Whosoever shall bring in innovation in Religion, or by favour or countenance, seek to extend or introduce Popery or Arminianism or other opinions disagreeing from the true and orthodox Church, shall be reputed a capital enemy to this Kingdom and Commonwealth.

This was no ordinary condemnation of schism or theological haggling. The members of the Commons shared a strong suspicion of Arminianism as a political as well as religious heresy. They had a clear idea of what English Arminianism was and who was an Arminian. Before 1624, no Englishman had even been accused of Arminianism, either in Parliament or in contemporary literature devoted to religious controversies. How did the definition of English Arminianism develop between 1624 and 1629? How did Arminianism, originally a moderate Dutch Calvinism, come to be considered along with Popery as a treasonable theology?

At the turn of the seventeeth century, Jacobus Arminius, Divinity Reader at the University of Leyden, had proposed a theological compromise between Supralapsarian and Infralapsarian Protestantism.
Organic Biography: The Death of an Art
Authors: Hughes K. J. , Horowitz Peter M.
Published: February 2004

The influential Wellek and Warren, in their Theory of Literature, view biography as the servant of a scholarly master. They concede that certain biographies have their own “intrinsic interest,” but the main bias of their work is towards the perception of biography as a quarry from which facts are to be mined and then put to other uses.

There seems to be little doubt that for the majority of biographies Wellek and Warren are correct, and their conclusions readily find support among the most serious surveys of the biographical tradition. Yet a disinterested bystander would surely observe with great curiosity how frequently in our age older and apparently outmoded factual mines are replaced by new ones. Moreover, he would surely be puzzled as he scrutinized the biographical scene more carefully and discovered in the background a number of works written between 1640 and 1851, which retain a perennial fascination and freshness and show no signs of becoming outmoded, despite numerous objections that they are unreliable and generally untrue. These works, which shall be called primary organic biographies, are defined below and include Walton's Lives, Burnet's Life of Hale and his Life of Rochester, Johnson's Life of Savage and his “Life of Thomson,” Goldsmith's Life of Nash, Boswell's Life of Johnson, and Carlyle's Life of Sterling.

Universally regarded as works of art but castigated in varying degrees for the alleged unreliability of their facts and thus for their departure from the straight and narrow path of truth, the primary organic biographies are part of a tradition that critics have consistently failed to understand.
Rex et ministri: English Local Government and the Crisis of 1341
Authors: Jones W. R.
Published: February 2004

Edward III's foreign ambitions, which in 1337 precipitated the Hundred Years' War, generated such severe financial pressures at home that eventually the fiscal crisis became a political one. Exasperated by the inability or unwillingness of the government of regency under Archbishop Stratford to provide him with money and matériel for his continental campaign, an outraged Edward returned to England on November 30, 1340, determined to purge the government of those corrupt and disloyal officials whom he blamed for his humiliation. The attack on the chief ministers, especially Stratford, who was both primate and principal councillor, created a political crisis of considerable proportions, wherein some dominant issues of medieval English politics — the liberties of the church and clergy and the role of the baronage in political decision-making — were re-stated and re-argued. Modern historians have focused their attention on the more dramatic aspects of the crisis of 1341, particularly its “constitutional” implications. Lapsley, Clarke, and Wilkinson, for instance, examined the conflicts of the king with Stratford and with the baronage — events reminiscent of the confrontations of Henry II with Thomas Becket and of Edward II with the Lancastrians. Tout explained the administrative reforms of the early part of Edward III's reign, which, by subjecting the great offices of state to the control of the king's itinerant household, were designed to transform the administrative system into a device for purveying supplies and cash to feed the English war-machine. More recently, E. B. Fryde has described the ordinary and extraordinary financial techniques employed to subsidize the king's expensive foreign policies.
Gentry Honor and Royalism in Early Stuart England
Authors: Marston Jerrilyn Greene
Published: February 2004

You have the satisfaction in your conscience that you are in the right; that the King ought not to grant what is required of him …. but for my part, I do not like the quarrel and do heartily wish that the King would yield and consent to what they desire; so that my conscience is only concerned in honour and gratitude to follow my master.

In this way Sir Edmund Verney, the patriarch of an old Buckinghamshire gentry family, explained his decision to side with the King in the Civil War, a choice which cost him his life at the battle of Edgehill. In 1642, many English gentlemen were confronted with a similar choice. It is significant that Verney attributed his choice of King over Parliament to “honour and gratitude.” In Sir Edmund's explanation we may find the basis on which many English gentlemen supported the King in 1642.

The political behavior of the Royalist gentlemen in the 1640s is part of a problem which has long plagued historians of the English Civil War. The economic interpretations proposed by both R. H. Tawney and H. Trevor-Roper stimulated much interest because they seemed to provide what had long been sought — a theory that could consistently account for the political choices of upper class gentlemen in the 1640s. When tested, however, neither theory proved satisfactory. Careful studies of key institutional bodies like the Civil Service and the Long Parliament revealed no significant social or economic differences between Royalists and Parliamentarians.
Gibbon's Architectural Metaphor
Authors: Johnson James William
Published: February 2004

It has long been a critical obligation for commentators on the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to remark on Edward Gibbon's failure to explain the reasons for that fall. Historians in particular have been bothered by this: both J. B. Black and D. M. Low have fretted over Gibbon's refusal — or inability — to deal with the ultimate meaning of the events he describes or, in the last three volumes, to “propound and answer questions explicitly.” Readers of the History, on the other hand, may feel that the historian belabors too often the “causes” of events, those “connections in a sequence.” Regularly, Gibbon reminds us that he is dealing with a process of degeneration involving successive stages of decay; and both within individual sections and at the close of units, he carefully recapitulates that the policies of Augustus or Septimius Severus, the strengthening of the Pretorian Guard, the spread of Christianity, the weakening of senatorial authority, monetary and land policies, the invasions of the Goths and Huns were all “causes” for the decline of the Roman Empire.

The contradiction between the reactions of critic and casual reader is merely apparent. His commentators grant that Gibbon assayed explanations for the events he recounted; but, they say, his purported “causes” are not primary or even secondary ones. They claim, in fact, that the explanations seldom account for the single chains of events he describes, much less for the long, intricate process that Gibbon sees as steady and unmitigated decline.
English State Trials in the 1790s: A Case Study
Authors: Prochaska F. K.
Published: February 2004

On October 10, 1800, a group of whigs and radicals met in the Shakespeare Tavern to celebrate the anniversary of the first election of Charles James Fox for the city of Westminster. But there was little to be festive about. The speeches, toasts, and songs betrayed a sense of despair tinged with nostalgia. Fox and the Lord Mayor, Thomas Erskine and Lord Bessborough, all toasted “the Memory of the Liberty of the Press” and joined in a song, written for the occasion, which reflected the general disillusionment:

HOW chang'd are the times, and our people of late,When my brother John Bull has no use for his pate?A head without tongue ev'ry wise man maintains,Is just as absurd as a tongue without brains.Sing ballinamona or a,No head without tongue then for me.Fine laws have been made, for the good of the land,And our heads are now placed where our heels us'd to stand,Topsy-turvy's the word where fair Order and birth,And this once land of plenty's now chang'd to a dearth.Sing ballinamona, &c.No plenty of starving for me.But still it is some consolation to think,How little we need either victuals or drink,For the Minister's able, who fram'd these wise laws,Has given to a Justice the key to our jaws.Sing ballinamona, &c.No justice to lock jaws for me.When enslav'd thus the People, the Ministers thenSend to Botany Bay all who dare to complain,And religion they mock, when we've scanty of meat,For they publish a Fast, when there's nothing to eat.
Rosebery and Liberal Imperialism, 1899-1903
Authors: Jacobson Peter D.
Published: February 2004

“Liberal Imperialism” has been a confusing label ever since the Boer War, when it was first widely applied. It was then a source of controversy within the Liberal party, much of it centering around Lord Rosebery, who introduced the term. Some of his contemporaries considered Liberal Imperialism to be marked by dangerously aggressive policy, while J. A. Spender, who also lived through these years, later interpreted it as a revival of the Palmerstonian spirit. More recently historians have treated it as ideology. Bernard Semmel has called it “social imperialism,” placing its origins in the 1880's. G. R. Searle has argued that many of Rosebery's Liberal Imperialist ideas were part of an ideology of “national efficiency,” a set of ideas that crossed party lines and that emerged in 1900 as a consequence of wartime failures. “Liberal Imperialism” has also been used to refer more generally to the “imperialism” of Liberals before as well as after the outbreak of the Boer War. I shall argue that Liberal Imperialism is best understood, not as ideology, but as the rhetoric of party infighting during the Boer War, that it is best to confine the use of the label to the period of the war and its immediate aftermath, and that the spirit of the ideas used by Liberal Imperialists, particularly as regards their perspective on the Empire, was defensive and pessimistic. In these years the Liberal right — no less than the Liberal left, with its attack on “imperialism” — was engaged in reassessing Britain's world position.
The British Empire as a “White Man's Country”—Racial Attitudes and Immigration Legislation in the Colonies of White Settlement
Authors: Huttenback R. A.
Published: February 2004

It has been said with at least the spirit of truth that the British Empire was founded in a fit of absence of mind. And certainly the growth of Great Britain into a power on whose possessions the sun literally never set was not the result of clearly conceived policy or of some governmental master plan emanating from the corridors of Whitehall. Religious deviationists, commercial adventurers and jailers in quest of prisons were more often than not the founders of British colonial settlements. Given such a history, it is not surprising that enthusiasm for empire grew but slowly in Britain and that no lofty rationale for imperial advance was for many years forthcoming. Eventually, humanitarianism, evangelical Christianity and the “civilizing mission” associated with “bearing the white man's burden” combined to produce an imperial philosophy of sorts — a rather undefined dedication to “fair play” and an official determination that all subjects of the crown, regardless of race, color, religion or ethnic background, should be equal before the law.

The common conception of Empire was reflected in an article in the April 1896 issue of the North American Review. “Wherever her [Britain's] sovereignty has gone,” the writer, David Wells, contends,

two blades of grass have grown where one grew before. Her flag wherever it has advanced has benefited the country over which it floats; and has carried with it civilization, the Christian religion, order, justice and prosperity. England has always treated a conquered race with justice, and what under her law is the law for the white man is the law for his black, red and yellow brother… If injustice is done him, the English courts are open to him for redress and protection as speedily and impartially as to any white man.