bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Presidential Address: Main Currents in Russian Foreign Policy
Authors: Seton-Watson R. W.
Published: March 2007

In my first Address from this chair I chose as my subject ‘The Foundations of British Policy’, in the belief that its study is more than ever incumbent upon ourselves and upon the succeeding generation, and that neglect and incomprehension are among the major causes of the most devastating war in all our history. And if it is an urgent duty, in the interests of future peace, to study and discuss the workings of our own policy, it follows that we must also clear our minds as to the underlying motives of other Powers, both friendly and hostile. The price that we have all had to pay for neglect of German history is even to-day not yet fully understood. But to the plain man Russian policy, with its many shifts of extreme violence, is even more mysterious. Thus the events which brought us together in 1941, in an alliance of twenty years for which there is no precedent, ought to be, nay are, the personal concern of every one of us. These events, the result of Hitler's supreme blunder in invading Russia, represent a rebound from unreasoning isolation and appeasement to a policy first of guarantees, then of increasingly effective intervention, and finally of unswerving ‘jusqu'au-bout-isme’. Are we to assume that that unconventional alliance was merely dictated by passing necessity and is in gradual dissolution, or alternately that it rests upon a solidarity of interests which far outbids ideological aims?
Peel and the Party System 1830–50
Authors: Gash Norman
Published: March 2007

The relations between Peel and his party form a familiar theme, and even in this centenary year of his death there seems little to be gained from a restatement of the problem, or at least from a restatement in the old polemical terms. Yet in raking over the ashes of that controversy one must always be struck by the paradox inherent in Peel's position. If Peel destroyed his party, he destroyed his own handiwork. The man that twice ‘betrayed’ his followers ranks in British political history as the creator of the first modern parliamentary party. The contrast may be stated in the words of M. Halévy: ‘the statesman who ten years before had accomplished such an outstanding work of party organization by a most intelligible reaction had come to execrate the very notion of party politics’. Clearly if we accept the sharp contrast we must also accept the revulsion of feeling to which Halévy alludes. But another line of approach might be to inquire whether the Peel of the thirties was different in any essential aspect from the Peel of the forties. If the contrasting elements in Peel's career have been emphasized at the expense of the elements of continuity, the task is not so much to explain as to explode the paradox.
Presidential Address: The Scandinavian Colonies in England and Normandy
Authors: Stenton F. M.
Published: March 2007

The Scandinavian settlements in England and France naturally invite comparison. In point of time they are little more than a generation apart. The colonies in eastern England were founded between 876 and 879. The beginning of the colony which became the duchy of Normandy cannot be dated so precisely. But there can be no serious doubt that the Scandinavian occupation of Upper Normandy had taken place by the year 918 and there is good reason for believing that it began soon after 911. It is also probable that a considerable number of veterans who had been campaigning in England between 892 and 896 took part in the foundation of Normandy, for there is a definite statement in the Chronicle to the effect that vikings who had made no profit in the recent war crossed to the Seine in the latter year. In any case, the movement from which the duchy of Normandy arose clearly belongs to the same phase of Scandinavian enterprise which had founded the English Danelaw and thrown the kingdom of the West Franks into confusion in the last third of the ninth century.
Bismarck and the Three Emperors' Alliance, 1881–87
Authors: Medlicott W. N.
Published: March 2007

The Alliance of the Three Emperors was Bismarck's attempt to escape from a dilemma which had led him to a typical crisis of nerves and irritability during the early months of 1879. He had soon recognized after 1871 that the interests of the new Germany could no longer be served by war. Could he secure the isolation of the unforgiving French without embarrassing commitments to his friends and potential allies? The maintenance of friendly relations with, and between, Austria and Russia seemed to him the indispensable basis of German predominance in Europe; the worsening of Austro-Russian relations during the long-drawn-out Near Eastern crisis after 1875 had, however, led both his neighbours to grumble at his limited support, although Russia had been very, much more open and indiscreet in her complaints than Austria. Accordingly he decided at the end of 1878 that the very nebulous Dreikaiserbündnis of 1872–3 no longer provided an adequate basis for German security; in October 1879 he formed a defensive alliance with Austria against Russia, and in June 1881 the new alliance of the three emperors was concluded, although the Austro-German alliance remained in force. The collapse of the three emperors' alliance in the first major crisis that it had to face, namely the Bulgarian crisis of 1885–6, suggests that the solution was hardly a happy one.
Bismarck and England in the Earlier period of his Career
Authors: Valentin V.
Published: March 2007

Queen Victoria wrote in a famous letter to her grandson William II, on June 12th 1899: “I never personally attacked or complained of Prince Bismarck, though I knew well what a bitter enemy he was to England and all the harm he did.” Why did Queen Victoria call Bismarck “a bitter enemy to England”? Obviously her remark was meant in a purely political sense. It was well known, as well to Queen Victoria as to anyone else in that period, that Prince Bismarck had a strong personal liking for England. He had known English and indeed had spoken the language well as a youth, not as well as he spoke French later on, but we have it from reliable witnesses that he was quite able to express himself fluently. There were times when he would hesitate, and instead of the ordinary word would find a most original and telling phrase. Lord Goschen, too, has borne witness to “his racy style of speech.” Until he reached old age Bismarck displayed an astonishing intimacy with Shakespeare and was very fond of Walter Scott.
Medieval Democracy in the Brandenburg Towns and its Defeat in the Fifteenth Century: The Alexander Prize Essay
Authors: Carsten F. L.
Published: March 2007

At the time of the so-called German colonisation to the east of the Elbe, German merchants and artisans entered the Brandenburg Mark, whose rivers, woods, and marshes stretched from the Old Mark to the west of the Elbe to the New Mark to the east of the Oder. The immigrants brought with them the economic methods and social organisation of their homeland. Town life, self-government, and trade quickly developed everywhere, whether the new town was established on an uninhabited site, or on the site of a Slavonic village which gave its name to the new settlement, or a walled town or fortress of the Slavs was transformed into a German town.
The Commons and Medieval Politics
Authors: Richardson H. G.
Published: March 2007

SOME apology may seem necessary for a brief paper that covers nearly three centuries, but, unless we take long views, we are unlikely to get into focus the problem before us, namely, the extent to which the commons participated in medieval politics and the manner in which they did so. Bishop Stubbs, you will remember, found this a matter of particular difficulty. The part played by the commons in relation to taxation and legislation seemed plain enough. But political power, the ‘right of general deliberation on all national matters, is too vague in its extent’, he thought, ‘to be capable of being chronologically defined; nor was it really vindicated by the parliament until a much later period than’ the reign of Edward I, with which he was then concerned. Elsewhere, Stubbs seems to have committed himself to the view that the commons took part in politics in the fifteenth century, although the distinction he formerly drew between politics and legislation he no longer maintained. Quite clearly we cannot consistently maintain a distinction between politics and legislation or politics and finance. ‘The right of deliberation on all national matters’, in Stubbs's phrase, may express itself in the acceptance or refusal of legislative or of financial proposals. But if there are certain national matters from the discussion of which one or other of the ‘estates’ is in practice excluded, then it is reasonable to say that, to that extent, they take no part in politics. To suggest an obvious example: the assent of the lower clergy was necessary to the taxation to which they were subjected; they took no part in general legislation; and they certainly did not exercise the right of deliberation on all national matters. Their participation in politics was therefore of the slightest.
The Use of French in England in the Later Middle Ages
Authors: Suggett Helen
Published: March 2007

The use of French in England during the later middle ages has frequently been discussed, but rather surprisingly a large body of relevant documents has hitherto been almost entirely neglected. The documents in question throw much light both on the purposes for which French was used in this country in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and on the classes who employed it, and show that its use was more widespread and that it persisted longer than is generally supposed.
The Secret Service Under Charles II and James II
Authors: Walker James
Published: March 2007

The reigns of the last two Stuart kings are coloured by the fact that Charles II did not inherit his throne but was restored to it. During the first seven years of the Restoration era a second attempt to overthrow the monarchy naturally seemed possible to Royalists, whose memories of the discomforts of exile were still green. Hence a special organization to watch the movements of malcontents and report on their activities, developed under the control of the Secretaries of State. Contemporary State Papers offer abundant evidence to prove that much of the time of Nicholas and his successors was consumed in dealing with information, poured in by spies stationed in almost every English county, and in those parts of Europe and the New World where regicides and others had taken refuge.
Presidential Address
Authors: Stenton F. M.
Published: March 2007

The place-names which illustrate the character of Anglo-Saxon heathenism have a special claim on the attention of historians. To scholars such as Bede, who wrote when English paganism was still within the range of living memory, it was a detestable superstition, which could not be ignored, but should not be described. Eighth-century writers, and, in particular, Bede, have preserved the names of a number of heathen gods, and recorded the occasion of a number of heathen festivals; they refer to temples, to idols, to altars, and to sacrifices, and their language suggests the existence of different ranks within the heathen priesthood. But it is only a dim impression of the pagan foreworld which can be recovered from their writings, and the points at which it can be reinforced by quotation from later authorities are very few.
A Discussion on the Exploration of Anglo-American Archives
Authors: Hall Hubert
Published: March 2007

The purpose of the coming Discussion may be gathered from the Card of Session and the Notices of the Meeting.

This is an age of academic Conferences and Discussions whereby we may hope to keep in touch with one another and with other historical organisations, in this country and abroad.
The Economic and Social Effect of the Usury Laws in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Campbell Sybil
Published: March 2007

I have just been reading “Three lectures by the late Sir Israel Gollancz,” printed for private circulation and kindly lent to me by Dr. Hubert Hall, in which the following passage occurs: “Long before Shakespeare thought of dealing with the theme, when Shakespeare was still young—a school-boy—the story of the Jew with reference to the same story that we have in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice had been enacted on the English stage. As early as 1579 we have a reference to it, but the play was lost; we know it only from Gosson's reference.” The author goes on to explain that” in 1579 we have already two elements that make up The Merchant of Venice; the Pound of Flesh motive on the one hand and, on the other, the Choice of the Caskets, combined into one play, The Jew, ‘representing the greedinesse of worldly chusers, and the bloody minds of usurers.’
The Nature and Use of the Westminster Abbey Muniments
Authors: Tanner Lawrence E.
Published: March 2007

The Muniments of Westminster Abbey form one of the largest and most important collections of medieval and later manuscripts in England in private or semi-private hands. No English Cathedral or Abbey Church has so complete a collection of documents dealing with its history and internal administration, and the fact that Westminster, apart from its London properties, had manors and estates all over England, and that the documents connected with these have been largely preserved, gives the collection an importance from various points of view which is only gradually becoming recognised by scholars and students.
The Household of the Norman Kings
Authors: White Geoffrey H.
Published: March 2007

The great offices of state have their origin in the offices of the royal household of the Norman kings, most of which offices existed in Normandy before the Conquest. The duke of the Normans had his stewards and his butlers, his chamberlains and his constables, when he invaded England; and when he became king of the English his officers accompanied him. For they were still his personal officers; who served him wherever he might be. It was not until his dominions were divided between his sons that occasion arose for the appoint; ment of separate officers for England and Normandy; and after Henry I had recovered Normandy from his brother, he did not maintain separate officers for the duchy. It was not until 1133 that Henry I took the first step towards the division of the chief offices by granting to Aubrey de Vere the office of master chamberlain of England, while the Tancarville family remained hereditary master chamberlains in Normandy.
Was there a Tudor Despotism after all?
Authors: Hurstfield. Joel
Published: March 2007

In the reign of James I, Sir Walter Ralegh, a prisoner in the Tower and under sentence of death, occupied some of his leisure in writing a History of the World. Unfortunately, he never got beyond 130 B.C.; but in his Introduction he did pause to comment on more recent history. Now that Elizabeth I was dead, he felt able to speak quite freely about her father:
No Peace beyond what Line?
Authors: Mattingly Garrett
Published: March 2007

This inquiry began with some sentences in James A. Williamson's magnificent study Hawkins of Plymouth:

‘In peace or war in Europe', says Williamson, ‘there was no peace beyond the line. The phrase is often quoted by people who do not explain what line they mean. The Tropic of Cancer will not by itself answer the question, neither will the lines of demarcation. “Line” is in fact a misquotation which should be “lines”. The “lines of amity” were verbally agreed upon by the French and Spanish negotiators of the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559. They were to be the Tropic of Cancer and the prime meridian passing through Ferro in the Canaries. On the European side of both lines the treaty was to be binding; west and south of them it was to be disregarded. The agreement was a belated recognition of what had long been the practice.’
Presidential Address: The Royal Household and the Welsh Lawbooks
Authors: Edwards Goronwy
Published: March 2007

On the corresponding occasion last year, I ventured to offer some remarks on the subject of medieval Welsh lawbooks, and more particularly on the editing of them. When edited, they serve as historical evidence. I therefore propose on this present occasion to consider the sort of historical evidence that they contain, and the kind of historical question that they raise. As I have to operate within the narrow compass of an hour, I must limit my field of view, and this can be done quite simply. A Welsh lawbook was made up of a series of what, in the absence of a recognized technical term, may conveniently be called ‘tractates’. I am going to consider just one of those tractates. It is, in more than one sense, the most easily distinguishable of them all. It is also the one that forms the very first part of the text of the Welsh lawbooks, coming immediately after the opening prologue. From its situation at the very beginning of the text, it should be the most inescapable document in the lawbooks—though, as Edgar Allan Poe demonstrated in a famous story, a document situated in the most obtrusive position is precisely the one that may most easily escape notice. It is quite a sizeable document, running to some twenty pages of modern print. It is extant both in medieval Latin and in medieval Welsh.
The King's Councillors in Fifteenth–Century England
Authors: Brown A. L.
Published: March 2007

In the late fourteenth century the kin' council in England came to have its own secretariat. The oldad hocarrangements for writing its documents were replaced by a paid ‘clerk of the council’ charged to write records of business done and preserving some sort of council archive; by the early fifteenth century it had become normal practice to record not only many decisions but the date and the names of those present at the time; and these arrangements continued unbroken through the fifteenth century and were considerably expanded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sometimes, and this is the exception rather than the rule,somedecisions were entered in books or journals, such as the ‘Book of the Council’ covering the years 1421 to 1435, but the normal method of recording decisions was in the form of endorsements on draft documents or petitions, sometimes in the form of memoranda. In 1500 many thousands of these documents must have existed on the files of chancery and the privy seal, particularly the privy seal, where they had been sent to authorize the issue of letters giving effect to council decisions. Since then, unfortunately, most have been destroyed or dispersed. Some, in general the more striking items, were taken from the files by Sir Robert Cotton, came to the British Museum, and were published by Sir Harris Nicolas in the 1830‘s. The others, the more numerous, are in the Public Record Office in various collections, and are almost entirely unpublished.
Lloyd George and Churchill as War Ministers
Authors: Ehrman John
Published: March 2007

In March 1915, when the Dardanelles campaign was at its crisis, F. S. Oliver, the author of The Endless Adventure, who had long known many of the leading political figures and the background to politics of his day, wrote to his brother in Canada: ‘The only two men who really seem to understand that we are at war are Winston and Lloyd George. Both have faults which disgust one peculiarly at the present time, but there is a reality about them and they are in earnest, which the others aren't.’ This affinity was recognized by the two men themselves. Churchill's admiration and affection for Lloyd George are well known. ‘There could be no doubt…’, he has written, referring of all years to 1940, ‘that he was our foremost citizen’; and his final verdict on Lloyd George's death was ‘The greatest Welshmanhellip; since the age of the Tudors’. Lloyd George returned the affection to the full, and the admiration to a great, though not to the full, extent. ‘Men with such gifts’, he once remarked of Churchill, ‘are rare—very rare. In an emergency they ought to be utilized to the full, and if you keep a vigilant eye on their activities, they are a greater asset than a legion of the conventional sort.
Byzantium, 1081–1204: An Economic Reappraisal
Authors: Hendy M. F.
Published: March 2007

The Byzantine Empire of the period 1081–1204 is generally con sidered to have been culturally brilliant but economically decadent. The standard against which this decadence is measured is the situation supposed to have existed during the ninth and tenth centuries when the Empire consisted basically of the Balkan coastlands, the Aegean islands and Asia Minor, and when it possessed a flourishing agriculture dependent upon a free peasantry which also supplied the manpower of its army and navy, a vital urban life, and control of its extensive internal and external trade. Its revenue was therefore assured and its coinage stable. By the twelfth century it had lost the greater part of Asia Minor which had formed the factor essential to its agricultural, military and urban life. The first two were now largely in the hands of feudal magnates who commanded ruinously expensive but unreliable mercenaries, and the trade of the Empire had fallen under the control of the Italian merchant cities. The reduced revenue was incapable of standing the strain placed upon it by increased expenses, the difference being made up by the debasement of the coinage—which caused further chaos in economic life.
England and the Empire in the Early Twelfth Century
Authors: Leyser K.
Published: March 2007

The Norman conquerors of England had at first little cause to seek connexions with the empire of the Salian kings and they had nothing to fear from it. Before William sailed on his expedition, he enlisted, it is true, not only the goodwill of the papacy, but also that of the young Henry IV. Henry, who at the age of fifteen had by German custom reached his majority, seems to have made it known that men from Germany could go to host with William, should the latter wish it. Some of the Flemish knights who took part in the venture may have come from those fiefs of the count of Flanders which were held of the empire rather than of the kingdom of France. Bruno, in his Book on the Saxon War, would have his readers believe that the Salian king, when preparing his revenge against the Saxon rebels in 1074, sent for help also to William, who is supposed to have replied that he dared not leave England. But in the same year, only a few months earlier, it had been rumoured that the Conqueror was advancing against the Lotharingian frontiers of the Reich and about to seize Aachen at the invitation of Archbishop Anno of Cologne.
Presidential Address: Great Historical Enterprises III. The Monumenta Germaniae Historica
Authors: Knowles M. D.
Published: March 2007

Last December we considered the work of the Maurists, who were at once a product and an ornament of a very brilliant phase of French learning and scholarship. This afternoon we turn to another great nation in what was, perhaps, the golden age of its influence upon the thought and academic disciplines of Europe.
Gladstone and Russell
Authors: Prest J. M.
Published: March 2007

Who could have foreseen that even fifteen years after Peel's death, Peel's most ardent disciple would accept the lead of the House of Commons at the hands of one of Peel's more scornful foes? Seldom has a political combination been based upon wider differences of upbringing, character and belief, than that of Gladstone and Russell. Striking as it was that they should ever have formed a government, their ministry has not attracted much attention. It is not difficult to see why Gladstone's biographer, Morley, followed the example set by Lord John Russell's, Spencer Walpole, and passed hurriedly over an episode so brief and, apparently, so barren. Only one man has since had much to say about the eight months' ministry of 1865–66. In The Rise of Gladstone to the Leadership of the Liberal Party, W. E. Williams concluded that throughout 1866 Russell provided the inspiration, and that if Gladstone was a learner all his life ‘one of his wisest teachers was Lord John Russell’. Although I think one must be careful to distinguish between a man's receiving a letter and his being influenced by it, I do not wish to challenge this judgment on the events of 1865–66 so much as to elaborate it, by touching briefly on the whole relationship between the two men from the time Gladstone entered the House of Commons to the time Russell died, dividing it into four periods: from 1832 to 1855, from 1855 to 1865, from 1865 to 1866, and from 1866 to 1878.
Presidential Address: Anglo-American Rivalries and Spanish American Emancipation
Authors: Humphreys R. A.
Published: March 2007

From the beginning of the revolutionary movement in Spanish America, wrote Sir Charles Webster, nearly thirty years ago, the influence of Great Britain was established ‘by two main agencies—her trade and her fleet’.
Nationalism in Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages
Authors: Obolensky Dimitri
Published: March 2007

The divergent views held by historians and sociologists as to what does and does not constitute nationalism will, I hope, provide me with some excuse for not attempting here a general definition of this phenomenon. Nor will I presume to adjudicate between the opinions of scholars like Hans Kohn who, confining their attention to Western Europe, will not hear of nationalism before the rise of modern states between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, and of historians like G. G. Coulton who, after surveying the policy of the Papacy, the life of the Universities, the internal frictions in the monasteries and the history of medieval warfare, concluded that nationalism, which had been developing in Western Europe since the eleventh century, became a basic factor in European politics by the fourteenth. My paper is concerned with the medieval history of Eastern Europe: an area which I propose to define, by combining a geographical with a cultural criterion, as the group of countries which lay within the political or cultural orbit of Byzantium. The subject is vast and complex, and I can do no more than select a few topics for discussion. These I would like to present as arguments in support of three theses.
The Gordon Riots: a Study of the Rioters and their Victims
Authors: Rudé George F. E.
Published: March 2007

THE Gordon Riots made a profound impression on contemporaries. They took place at a time of acute political crisis, at the most dangerous moment of the American war, when the country, after numerous defeats and counteralliances, found itself virtually isolated. At their height, on the night of 7 June 1780, London appeared to onlookers to be a sea of flames. ‘I remember’, wrote Horace Walpole on the 8th, ‘the Excise and the Gin Act and the rebels at Derby and Wilkes’ interlude and the French at Plymouth, or I should have a very bad memory; but I never till last night saw London and Southwark in flames!' Sébastien Mercier, in his Tableau de Paris, wrote nine years before the attack on the Bastille that such ‘terrors and alarms’ as were spread by Lord George Gordon in London would be inconceivable in a city as well-policed as Paris.
Presidential Address: The leighs in South Carolina
Authors: Bellot H. Hale
Published: March 2007

‘MyLord Somebody’, wrote a colonial pamphleteer in 1764,—‘My Lord Somebody has a friend, who has a cousin who needs a place, or stands in somebody's way, and so we may come by a governor.’ What was said, justly or unjustly, about governors was believed likewise of the lesser officers of the crown. My subject is the history of two of these placemen, Peter Leigh (1711–59), chief justice of South Carolina from 1753 to 1759, and his son Egerton (1733–81), attorneygeneral from 1765 to 1781.
The Foundation of Norwich Cathedral
Authors: Dodwell B.
Published: March 2007

In medieval chronicles the establishment of a cathedral at Norwich is related to the simony of Bishop Herbert of Thetford and his subsequent repentance. For this sin he sought absolution in Rome and, on his return to England, moved the see to Norwich. There (and later writers have assumed that it was an act of penance) Herbert built and endowed a magnificent cathedral in which he installed monks in the place of secular priests. It is the purpose of the present paper to examine this story and to add to it what is known of the building of the cathedral and the endowment of its priory.
The Oculus Sacerdotis and Some Other Works of William of Pagula
Authors: Boyle L. E.
Published: March 2007

One of the results of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 was a heightening of interest in the cure of souls, and the years that followed the Council saw a generous effort on the part of prelates to provide, in accordance with the Lateran directives, a better–educated clergy who could bring the laity to a reasonable understanding of the essentials of Christian belief and practice. In England, during the reign of Henry III, nearly every diocese contributed to the movement for reform, chiefly by statutes modelled upon or deriving from decrees of Innocent III's great council. The Council of Oxford in 1222, the Council and Constitutions of the Legate Otto at London in 1237 and of the Legate Ottobono at London in 1268, catered in varying degrees for the Church in England as a whole.
Dr. Joseph Priestley, John Wilkinson and the French Revolution, 1789–1802
Authors: Chaloner W. H.
Published: March 2007

LIKE Jacobitism and Chartism, the study of the influence of the French Revolution on British politics and public opinion has attracted a good deal of sentimental interest, but it is a curious fact that with the exception of Professor Alfred Cobban's anthology (The Debate on the French Revolution, 1789–1800 (1950)), A. H. Lincoln's Some Political and Social Ideas of English Dissent, 1763–1800 (1938), and a few scattered articles comparatively little appears to have been published since 1926 on the subject. It has therefore never been examined in the light of those trends in historiography associated with the names of Unwin and Namier.
The Origins of the Office of Coroner
Authors: Hunnisett R. F.
Published: March 2007

ONLY a hundred years ago the question whether or not there had been coroners in Roman Britain could still be seriously discussed, for two pieces of evidence had created a widespread belief that they had existed long before the Conquest. The Mirror of Justices, a thirteenth-century treatise, credits king Alfred with the appointment of coroners and sheriffs in every county, and a rhyming charter, purporting to have been granted by Athelstan to Beverley Minster, restricts the holding of inquests upon dead bodies within its liberty to its own bailiffs, specifically excluding any ‘other coroner’. Later legal writers, especially Coke, strengthened and prolonged the authority of The Mirror of Justices: they unquestioningly accepted the section on the coroner and embodied it in their works. Maitland, however, has brilliantly exposed the wilful mendacity of its author. The rhyming charter is an obvious forgery; the earliest extant version of it has been attributed on palaeographical and linguistic grounds to the reign of Edward II, when it was probably composed.
The Problem of Papal Power in the Ecclesiology of St. Bernard
Authors: Gray J. W.
Published: March 2007

Born in 1090, dying in 1153, Bernard Abbot of Clairvaux lived through the aftermath of that great ideological upheaval which is generally (though rather misleadingly) known as the ‘Investiture Contest’. As he played a leading part in the religious life and ecclesiastical politics of his age it is not surprising that his massive output of sermons, treatises and letters should have given rise to an even more massive output of historiographical comment and interpretation. It is equally understandable that modern Bernardine studies should have tended to concentrate on the question of Bernard's attitude to the basic ideas of the eleventh-century reform movement—and, in particular, to the expression which was given to these by Gregory VII during his stormy pontificate. Yet, as Dr Kennan has recently pointed out, so far from providing a clear answer to this question these studies confront us with a ‘bewildering garden … from which a student can pluck an interpretation of Bernard's … theory as Gregorian, anti-Gregorian,…proto-protestant or any one of a variety of other hues’. Can order be brought into this chaos, or do these various interpretations reflect an inherent ambiguity in Bernard's own thought?
Games People Played: Drama and Ritual as Propaganda in Medieval Europe
Authors: Bullough D. A.
Published: March 2007

On 6 January 1378 King Charles V of France took his place in the centre of the top table at a banquet given in honour of a distinguished guest, his uncle the Emperor Charles IV. The setting in the Palais de la Cité, the company and the menu were appropriately sumptuous. Resplendent hangings covered the wall behind the marble table: the noblest guests sat at five large tables, each raised on its own platform; and divided from them by barriers were other tables with seats for more than 800 knights. The entire company was treated to three elaborate courses, each of ten dishes. Then, from its previous place of concealment at the end of the hall, a massive model of a ship emerged carrying a crowd of armed warriors, among them persons identifiable by their arms as Godfrey of Bouillon and other leaders of the First Crusade, together with Peter the Hermit, looking—we are told—as much like the descriptions of him in the chronicles as possible. Propelled smoothly along the floor by men concealed within, it crossed in front of the top table and was then turned round to face towards the centre. An even more massive structure was next brought forward—this time representing the city of Jerusalem, complete with battlemented walls and towers defended by men dressed as Saracen warriors, with the Temple high in the middle and rising still higher above it a tower on which was another figure in Saracen dress ‘crying the Law’ in Arabic. The Crusaders then descended from the ship and attacked the city with scaling ladders, from which some were made to fall off, until finally the knights entered the city, tossed the unfortunate defenders over the walls and raised in triumph the banners they had brought with them: after which the dinner finished.
The St Albans Chroniclers and Magna Carta
Authors: Holt J.C.
Published: March 2007

The St Albans chroniclers, Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris, present a unique version of the documents of 1215. This, as it appears in Wendover's chronicle, consists, first, of a text of Magna Carta drawn from the 1215 version for its introduction and first clause, and thereafter from the re-issues of 1217 and 1225; secondly, of a text of the Charter of the Forest based on the versions of 1217 and 1225, and in the St Albans version falsely attributed to King John; finally, of a version of the forma securitatis of 1215 which includes sections found nowhere else, either in record or in chronicle. It is, in short, a complete muddle, and it was not improved by Matthew Paris, for he copied it into his Chronica Majora and then later proceeded to patch it with sections drawn from the 1215 text.
Reflections on the Medieval Empire
Authors: Ullmann W.
Published: March 2007

If it is true that any worth-while historiographical analysis aims at a better understanding of past events or institutions, the present subject is in no need of justification. For it is admitted on all sides that the medieval empire constituted within the central medieval period a historic entity which to a very large extent shaped and influenced the destiny of many parts of Central, Eastern and Southern, and to a lesser extent also of Western, Europe. No particular effort is required to visualize what great attraction the vast extent of the medieval empire, whose core was thoroughly German, can easily exercise upon minds which are susceptible to the view that the present should continue the past. Amongst German historians there has been for exactly a century an almost morbid obsession with the medieval empire, not, however, in its purely historical setting, but in its bearing upon modern Germany. Why was it that German historians have debated the question so hotly whether or not medieval imperial policy was justified? After all, to all intents and purposes the medieval empire has been dead for more than 600 years: why should it then provoke so much excitement, so much heartsearching, so much emotional historiography? Nothing even faintly resembling this phenomenon do we find in English or French historiography.
The Domesday Teamland: A Reconsideration
Authors: Moore J.S.
Published: March 2007

Although the Domesday survey has long been used effectively to illuminate many aspects of English history in the eleventh century, attempts to use it for reconstructing the contemporary rural landscape and structure of landholding have been less frequent and less successful. This has partly been caused by the fact that most commentators since the days of Maitland and Vinogradoff have concentrated on the making of Domesday rather than on its actual contents. However, even the series of Domesday Geographies by Professor Darby and his collaborators is marred by the failure to determine the meaning of the formula terra unius carucae or its equivalents. This expression has been translated in the present paper as ‘teamland’, rather than the ‘ploughland’ favoured by most modern writers on Domesday, because use of the latter synonym would prejudice the later argument by presupposing the argued identification of the Domesday ‘land for one plough’ with the field-hide or carucate found in later manorial records.
The Nose of Wax: Scripture and the Spirit from Erasmus to Milton
Authors: Porter H.C.
Published: March 2007

Erasmus' Folly, orating in 1511, accused modern theologians of treating the scriptures ‘as if they were of wax’. Similar charges were to be commonplace in the sixteenth century. John Fisher, preaching in 1521, maintained that heretics have always ‘turned the wrong side of the scriptures outward, following their own brain and fantasy’. Thomas More, also, criticized the Reformers because they ‘abuse’ the scriptures, comparing Tyndale in 1532 to ‘a butterfly fallen on a lime twig, which the more it striveth and fluttereth, ever the faster it hangeth’. On this conservative side, the Erasmian image was personalized by the Dutch Albert Pighius, who referred in 1538 to ‘someone’ as saying ‘both truly and merrily’: ‘The scripture is like a nose of wax, that easily suffereth itself to be drawn backward and forward, and to be moulded and fashioned this way and that way, and howsoever ye list’. Now, that idea of a ‘nose of wax’ had been used against the papists by Tyndale in 1532: they ‘make it a nose of wax, and wrest it this way and that way, till it agree’.
Government in Provincial England under the Later Stuarts
Authors: Forster G. C. F.
Published: March 2007

In a paper presented on St George's day one may be forgiven for thinking of England, and not even simply of England as a nation but of provincial England, described by Professor Everitt as ‘a union of partially-independent county states’. He and other historians have paid fruitful attention to the ‘county communities’—and the urban communities too—of Tudor and Stuart England. But much of their research has been devoted to the period before 1660, and most of what little we know about the provinces under Charles II and James II is concerned with economic change, landownership, the professions, political faction and religious persecution. Recent work on government in the localities during the Interregnum has suggested that, contrary to earlier suppositions, ‘changes are often hard to seek’ and that local authorities carried out their duties ‘in much the same way as their predecessors’. Nevertheless, the impression survives that after the Restoration provincial government, like Punch, was not what it had been, that it did not recover from the upheavals of the 1640s and 1650s, that local governors were left to their own devices, and that inertia set in largely because of ‘the long decline in central interference in local administration’.
Arbitration and the Law in England in the Late Middle Ages (The Alexander Prize Essay)
Authors: Powell Edward
Published: March 2007

The central problem facing the student of public order in England in the late middle ages is to reconcile two conflicting lines of research. On one hand the institutional historians, through their studies of the central courts at Westminister, the provincial circuits of assize and gaol delivery and the justices of the peace and coroners in the counties, have proved beyond doubt the sophistication of the late-medieval legal system. On the other hand the historians of crime have shown equally clearly that the courts were often incapable of keeping the peace or of doing justice. Indeed the late-medieval period has long been notorious as one of widespread uncontained disorder. Reviewing the secondary literature on the subject Professor Bellamy concluded: ‘Not one investigator has been able to indicate even a few years of effective policing in the period 1290–1485.’
Presidential Address: Feudal Society and the Family in Early Medieval England: II. Notions of Patrimony
Authors: Holt J. C.
Published: March 2007

Notions are potent but nebulous, often direct and determining in their effect but themselves indeterminate in origin and structure. My title is designed to circumvent two lines of thought which have largely circumscribed the study of inheritance in the eleventh and twelfth centuries hitherto. First, I shall say something here and there about succession, but it will be only a subsidiary part of the argument. Heritable title was not diminished by unsettled rules of succession. On the contrary, in the eleventh century as in the thirteenth, it was emphasised and nourished by the claims and counter-claims of competitors. In such disputes the opposing arguments were couched in a common language; it is the language, therefore, that will be my first concern. Second, for this same reason I shall also pay scant attention to the jurisdictional aspects of inheritance. To be sure, in post-Conquest England inheritance amounted not to a title but to a claim upon a lord; heritable title was realised when the lord admitted it; no concession by a tenant was as secure as it could be made until his lord had confirmed it.
The Political Beliefs of Winston Churchill
Authors: Addison Paul
Published: March 2007

The literature relating to Winston Churchill is by now so extensive, and our evidence about him so abundant, that the approaching completion of the official life by Martin Gilbert may seem to herald the end of historical inquiry into Churchill for at least a generation. This may be so; but it is more likely that he will continue to be the focus of animated discussion. Churchill, like Roosevelt or Trotsky, has inspired a perennial curiosity which springs as much from complexity of character as from fame. A. J. P. Taylor has justly applied to him Dryden's couplet: ‘A man so various that he seemed to be, not one, but all mankind's epitome.’ Admittedly, there are individuals so prejudiced for or against Churchill as to lack interest in assessing him. But for anyone who overcomes this barrier, Churchill holds the fascination of a rare species of animal which no one can easily place in the scheme of creation. A part of this curiosity stems from the fact that Churchill as a policy-maker was both peculiarly inspired and peculiarly disaster-prone. Military historians, evaluating his strategic conduct of the Second World War, are pursuing a controversy which began at Gallipoli in 1915. Political historians, too, are intrigued by the fact that Churchill's judgment was so prescient on some issues, and so mistaken on others. Like Churchill's contemporaries, they tend to detect in him strands of genius interwoven with strands of folly.
Bureaucracy and Ideology: Britain and India in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Stokes E. T.
Published: March 2007

Historians love to sail under bare poles with the spares tophamper of theoretical disquisition. Yet in the last resort their differences resolve themselves largely into differences of methodology, and nowhere more patently than in the history of bureaucracy where contingency anda prioriideas have long contested for the key position in historical explanation. This must be the excuse for an historian of colonial rule who finds himself driven to study the richer historiography of bureaucracy in metropolitan Britain and to trace out its movement with the simplicity of caricature before he can settle to his satisfaction the mechanics of historical causation in government house and secretariat.
Marino Sanudo Torsello and the Lost Crusade: Lobbying in the Fourteenth Century The Alexander Prize Essay
Authors: Tyerman C. J.
Published: March 2007

At Avignon on 24 September 1321, a wealthy, middle-aged, well-connected and widely travelled Venetian merchant, Marino Sanudo, called Torsello, presented to Pope John XXII a book which he had been composing over the previous fifteen years, the Liber Secretorum (or Secreta) Fidelium Crucis, the book of the secrets of the faithful of the Cross. The full title explained the subject matter: the protection of the faithful, the conversion and destruction of the infidel and the acquisition and retention of the Holy Land in peace and security.
Presidential Address: The Rise and Fall of English Landed Families, 1600–1800: III. Did the Gentry Rise?
Authors: Habakkuk John
Published: March 2007

I want first to consider some of the statistical evidence that there was an increase in activity in the land market during the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth. It has long been known that there was a substantial increase in fines levied during this period, i.e. in the fictitious suits which were, in substance, conveyances of land. Mr. Meeking observed in his introduction to the Surrey Feet of Fines for the period 1509–1558 that ‘the average number of Fines levies each Term rose so steeply that the number of Surrey Fines levied in the years 4 & 5 Ph & M (1557–8) is more than five times as great as those levied during an average year of the period 1509–1530’. Professor Stone's calculations based upon the fines for three counties suggest that the number more than doubled between 1560 and 1620. A rough count for the country as a whole shows as one would expect a more moderate but still considerable increase; the annual number in the 1580s was under 3,000; in the 1590s it was over 3,000; and by the early seventeenth century it has risen to over 4,000. Besides the evidence of the fines, some information can be derived, though for a shorter period, from the returns of the income received by the Receiver-General of the Alienation Fines; this consisted of the fees payable on the writs which initiated the fictitious suit and also on licences and pardons connected with the alienation of property heldin capite.This income bore a relation to the value of the property; though the value for this purpose was not the true value, the income gives some clue to the fluctuations in the aggregate value of transactions, and not merely in their number.
Methodism in Irish Society, 1770–1830
Authors: Hempton David
Published: March 2007

JOHN WALKER, sometime fellow of Trinity College Dublin and arch-critic of everyone's religious opinions but his own, wrote his Expostulatory Address to the Methodists in Ireland during one of the most remarkable outbreaks of rural revivalism in Irish history. Walker, who inevitably founded the Walkerites, not only condemned Methodist acquisitiveness, but also drew up a list of its Arminian sins after the style of the eighteenth-century Calvinistic polemicists. He alleged that Methodists were idolatrous in their veneration of Wesley, hypocritical in their class-meeting confessions, irrational in their pursuit of religious experience, arrogant in their supposed claims of Christian perfection and heretical in their interpretation of the doctrines of justification and sanctification. The chief importance of Walker's pamphlet was the reply it provoked from Alexander Knox, Lord Castlereagh's private secretary. As an admirer of Wesley's transparent piety and of the beneficial influence of Methodism on the labouring classes, Knox wrote a sensitive and sympathetic riposte.