bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Colonial Office and the Annexation of Fiji: The Alexander Prize Essay
Authors: Drus Ethel
Published: March 2007

In 1855, Thakombau, chief of Bau in Western Fiji, was placed in a curious dilemma. He was recognized as the leading chief of Fiji by the United States Government, but at the same time he was held responsible for a sum of $45,000 in compensation for damage to the property of United States citizens. Thakombau had, indeed, aspired to the sovereignty of the entire island group, but he was quite unable to meet the claim. A few years later, on 8 October 1858, a promise was wrung from him to settle the account within a year. Harassed by his inability to do so, he turned to the British Government for assistance, and within a week, on 12 October 1858, he had signed a formal deed ceding the whole of Fiji to Great Britain. This document had been drawn up by the British Consul, W. T. Pritchard, who had only recently arrived in Fiji, but at once proceeded to London to urge the acceptance of the offer.
King Stephen's Earldoms
Authors: White Geoffrey H.
Published: March 2007

WhenStephen was crowned King of England, there were only six English earls: Chester, Buckingham, Surrey, Warwick, Leicester and Gloucester; whilst the King of Scots held the earldoms of Northampton and Huntingdon, which he had obtained by his marriage to the elder daughter of Earl Waltheof. Three of the six earls, it may be added, belonged to a powerful family group, for Leicester was twin-brother of the Count of Meulan, Surrey was their stepbrother and Warwick their first cousin.
William Huskisson and the Controverted Elections at Liskeard in 1802 and 1804
Authors: Veitch G. S.
Published: March 2007

On9 March, 1804, by an overwhelming majority of its few electors, the little Cornish borough of Liskeard chose William Huskisson to represent it in Parliament. Huskisson at once found himself entangled in a complicated quarrel that was none of his making, for the election was a mere episode in the midst of a long-drawn battle. Even a smashing poll was not conclusive, and with great ingenuity Huskisson was kept out of his seat for more than three months. Meantime there raged as pretty a contest as ever delighted a House which took unholy pleasure in disputed returns.
The Development of English Medieval Scholarship between 1660 and 1730
Authors: Douglas David C.
Published: March 2007

Though the subject of this paper is over-large, its purpose was begotten of piety, not presumption. If, therefore, I lack the confidence which pertains to discovery, I am not for that reason without my apology; and I aspire to the hope that the Fellows of this Society may deem it a seemly relaxation to pause from their labours for the space of an hour in order to reflect gratefully upon some of their forerunners in learning. Between 1660 and 1730 English medieval scholarship advanced to a notable achievement, and the names of the chief men who contributed thereto are almost household words to all modern students of medieval England. But the history of that pregnant movement of research has still to be written and few of us would claim that we had made full use of the work of our predecessors. Consequently, since the distant converse of dwarfs with giants conduces to humility, it may be salutary to recall once more this great adventure of English erudition, and profitable, also, with an eye to the present, to speculate upon the cause and character of its astonishing success. The praise of famous men has earned an ancient commendation and even a cork may sustain a draught of fishes.
Fox's Martyrs; The General Election of 1784
Authors: George Eric
Published: March 2007

The story of the overthrow of Fox and North has often, been told. Since the publication of the papers of John Robinson it has been very generally held that public opinion did not express itself at the 1784 election to any great degree. Professor Laprade pillories the view that Pitt was carried into power by a frenzied wave of popular hostility to the Coalition as the incorrect view of every historian from Lecky to Dr. Rose. The landslide theory was indeed unquestioned till the publication of Robinson's papers. Since then it has been generally dismissed. In fact, some writers have accepted the popular hostility theory without consideration of the circumstances of an eighteenthcentury election; they were naturally taken for granted by contemporaries to whom they were all too familiar.
The Results of the Rye House Plot and their Influence upon the Revolution of 1688
Authors: Milne Doreen J.
Published: March 2007

For a detailed account of the activity known as the Rye House Plot the evidence available is inadequate, and the aura of mystery which surrounded the plot at its discovery on 12 June 1683 has never been wholly dispelled since. Its importance, however, lies less in the details of what it actually was than in what Charles II and his government asserted it to be, and in the use to which they put it to destroy the influence of the Whigs. It was through popular reaction to this use of it that the plot exerted the influence it did upon the revolution of 1688.
Some Political and Economic Interactions in Later Victorian England
Authors: Ensor R. C. K.
Published: March 2007

In 1870 the Government of the day had behind it the stronger party in the country; and among its followers in Parliament were the two members for the City of London. Pass a quarter of a century, and come to the Government brought into power by the general election of 1895. Exactly the same two things may be said of it; it too had behind it the stronger party in the country; it too numbered among its followers in Parliament the members for the City of London. Only, whereas the Government of 1870 was Liberal, the Government of 1895 was Conservative. That quarter of a century had witnessed the transfer of the City of London's political allegiance from Liberalism to Conservatism; and therein the City's opinions corresponded to those of the business and moneyed classes generally. So it was, not only in the south of England, but also in the Midlands and Lancashire; though not yet at all to the same extent in Yorkshire, the north-east coast, or Scotland.
The Polwarth Papers A Commentary upon the Historical Manuscripts Commissions Report (1911–1931
Authors: Lodge Richard
Published: March 2007

Alexander Hume-Campbell, Lord Polwarth, the third son and subsequently the successor of the first Earl of March-mont, belonged to a family which had earned Whig patronage by sufferings in the Whig cause under the later Stewarts. Like many other ambitious politicians, he began his public career in diplomacy. He was sent to Copenhagen in 1716 as Minister Plenipotentiary, and was later raised to the rank of Ambassador. He remained at the Danish capital, without any leave of absence, till 1721, and took an active part in bringing about the reconciliation of Denmark with Sweden, which was one of the most difficult tasks undertaken by British diplomacy in its endeavour to put an end to the long war in Northern Europe. After a short period of leave at home, he was sent to the Congress of Cambray as joint British plenipotentiary with Lord Whit worth. In accordance with the extraordinary custom that prevailed in those days, he carried away with him the official and private letters, both originals and copies, which he had amassed during his two missions. These papers were for a long time stored at the family home, Mertoun House in Berwickshire, but have recently and very properly been transferred to H.M. Register House in Edinburgh. The Historical Manuscripts Commission have issued three volumes of these valuable papers under the editorship of the Rev. Henry Paton. The first volume appeared in 1911, the second in 1916, and the third in 1931. It is understood that two more 243 volumes are to be published.
The Relations between England and Flanders before the Norman Conquest
Authors: Grierson Philip
Published: March 2007

The subject of the paper which I am about to read is one that can reasonably be regarded as of only secondary interest. During the later centuries of the Middle Ages, the relations between England and Flanders occupied a position of capital importance in the history of both countries. During the centuries that preceded the Norman Conquest, these relations were much less close than they were later to become, and correspondingly little is known about their character. But they are by no means devoid of interest, even if considered only as an introduction to the more important subject of the later relations between the two countries, and a study of their history is therefore not without justification. In the main, the period covered in this paper will be the two centuries before 1066. During almost the whole of this time, the counts of Flanders were masters of the region bounded by the Scheldt, the Canche, and the sea, and I shall use the word “ Flanders ” as the equivalent oi the county of Flanders at this date.
Nationality and Language in Medieval England
Authors: Galbraith V. H.
Published: March 2007

A nation may be defined as any considerable group of people who believe they are one; and their nationalism as the state of mind which sustains this belief. Broadly speaking, the sentiment of nationality is much the same in quality at all times and in all places. Its minimum content is love, or at least awareness, of one's country, and pride in its past achievements, real or fictitious; and it springs from attachment to the known and familiar, stimulated by the perception of difference–difference of habits and customs, often too of speech, from those of neighbouring peoples. The historical evidence for the existence of this positive sentiment in early times is largely inferential, a mere deduction from the struggles and mutual hatreds of tribes perpetually at war. But by the tenth or eleventh century there is evidence that medieval man was faintly stirred by the same sort of national impulses as we are, though he felt them in very different circumstances, in a different degree and, often, in relation to other objects. By the thirteenth century the fully developed medieval state had reached a momentary equilibrium, and if it was still “feudal”, it was also, in its way, a national state. Then as now, nationality was in general, though not necessarily, coterminous with a vernacular.
The English Coronation Oath
Authors: Richardson H. G.
Published: March 2007

To the early history of the coronation oath it would be difficult to add, unless, which seems unlikely, some altogether fresh documents are discovered. In any case, the course of history is plain. The king bound himself by a threefold promise to preserve peace and protect the church, to maintain good laws and abolish bad, to dispense justice to all. This oath had been taken by English kings from the tenth century: it was taken by William the Conqueror and by his successors. But more than this, Henry I, Stephen, and Henry II all issued coronation charters. Neither Richard I nor John did so, but Henry III went back to the practice that had been followed by his grandfather, and the great charter as it was reissued in 1216 was, in effect, a coronation charter.
Presidential Address: The Treaty of Seville (1729)
Authors: Lodge Richard
Published: March 2007

The first impulse to make a special study of the Treaty of Seville came from my interest in the career of that eminent diplomatist, Benjamin Keene, on whom I discoursed at some length last February. But at that time my attention was concentrated upon Keene's second mission to Spain from 1749 to 1757, and I only gave a very superficial glance at his earlier mission from 1727 to 1739. In reference to this I stated that he played an active part in bringing about the Treaty of Seville, that he was deposed at the last minute from being the sole English signatory of the treaty by the return of William Stanhope, and that he felt some chagrin because all the credit and reward for making that treaty went to his senior colleague, whereas he himself received no recognition of his services. There was no doubt about his discontent, because I found frank expression of it in his letters, but I was curious to ascertain how far this discontent was justified. The study of this minor problem led me on to consider the importance of the treaty in the history of Europe. I came to the conclusion that it was a notable landmark in the rather tangled diplomacy of the second and third decades of the eighteenth century. The tangle arose from the temporary dislocation of interstate relations in Europe from normal into abnormal grooves, and a prominent cause of that dislocation was that national interests were largely superseded or overshadowed by dynastic claims and uncertainties.
The Office of the English Resident Ambassador: Its Evolution as Illustrated by the Career of Sir Thomas Spinelly, 1509–22
Authors: Behrens Betty
Published: March 2007

“La Diplomatie,” wrote a distinguished French author, “est vieille comme le monde et ne périra qu'avec lui.” There are no problems as to the origins of the ambassador as the word was originally understood; that is, the accredited envoy of one ruler or state to another. Ambassadors in this sense, by whatever term they might be designated, have existed since the earliest times, the inevitable product of the necessity for communication between authorities prevented by the requirements of their office from personal intercourse.
The English Factory at Lisbon: Some Chapters in its History
Authors: Lodge Richard
Published: March 2007

I take it that to most English readers the history of Portugal is less familiar than that of any other of the western states of Europe. One reason for this is that there are few books in English on the subject, and those which have been written are rather outline sketches than detailed studies. I imagine that the ordinarily well-informed person, if asked what he or she knew about Portugal, would reply: Oh! Vasco da Gama, Catharine of Braganza, the Methuen Treaty and the taste for port, the Lisbon earthquake, the Marquis of Pombal, and the Peninsular War. I doubt whether any Professor of History could offhand give the names and dates of the Portuguese kings.
The Problem of Highland Discontent, 1880–1885
Authors: Hanham H. J.
Published: March 2007

After the rising of 1745 the Highlands were rapidly tamed: within quite a short period the young men who in a past generation would have rallied to the support of their chiefs in domestic disputes, were gradually drawn off to fight in foreign wars, to settle in the colonies, or to help govern India. By the time of the great Sutherland clearances of 1807–20 the Highlands had been so far pacified that scarcely a hand was raised against the destruction of much-loved homes. Gradually the impression got abroad that the descendants of Rob Roy were gentle creatures, a bit rough perhaps in their habits, but easily domesticated and loyal to the powers that be in church and state. And this impression seemed to be confirmed by Queen Victoria's experiences at Balmoral, and by the friendly reception given to the wealthy tourists whom the works of Sir Walter Scott lured to the Highlands.
Les Cahorsins, hommes d'affaires Français du XIIIe siècle
Authors: Renouard Yves
Published: March 2007

Les marchands de Cahors ou Cahorsins ont joué un rôle de quelque importance dans la vie économique et financière de l'Angleterre au XIIIe siècle. En 1948, M. Denholm-Young terminait le solide article qu'il leur consacrait en suggerant que l'emploi, de plus en plus courant à partir du milieu du XIIIe siècle, du terme ‘cahorsin’ au sens d'usurier découlait de l'ampleur de l'activité commerciale des marchands de Cahors dans l'Europe du Nord-Ouest durant la période antérieure; le déclin de leur commerce à la fin du XIIe siècle n'aurait plus permis de comprendre le sens primitif et simple du mot ‘cahorsin’, tandis que la prospérité persistante des hommes d'affaires italiens, dont ils avaient été d'abord les concurrents souvent heureux, aurait maintenu l'intelligence du premier sens du terme parallèle ‘lombard’, dont étaient affublés les usuriers au XIVe siècle. En 1950, M. Wolff reprenait la même hypothèse dans une communication au Congrès des Sociétés savantes du Sud-Ouest de la France, réuni précisément à Cahors, auquel j'avais moi-même présenté des faits qui la renforçaient. Je voudrais ajouter aujourd'hui à cette évocation du rôle des marchands de Cahors dans la vie économique de la Chrétienté au XIIIe siècle quelques traits nouveaux que m'ont révélés mes recherches sur l'histoire du duché d'Aquitaine et essayer de faire ressortir et d'expliquer le singulier éclat et la brièveté de leur trajectoire économique.
The Development of the European States System since the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Hinsley F. H.
Published: March 2007

After years of intense specialization in historical studies —in the history of ideas, of science, of historiography; in economic history, diplomatic history, administrative history, social history, legal history, world history, which last is fast becoming another specialism—there is perhaps no subject of historical enquiry that would not benefit from an attempt to amalgamate the results of all these disciplines. This is certainly true of international relations. The valuable labours of diplomatic historians have done no more than erect a scaffolding of established facts. In the work of understanding and explaining those facts we have not made much progress since von Ranke and Albert Sorel. Von Ranke's famous essay in interpretation, ‘The Great Powers’, was written more than 125 years ago, before the rise of specialist studies. For this reason, as well as on account of the preoccupation of his generation with national mission and divine intention in a universal scheme, it necessarily fell back on a mystical conception of the society of states, on a spiritual conception of the role of the individual state—on what must now be regarded as general history of the worst kind.
The Hudson's Bay Company and its critics in the eighteenth century
Authors: Williams Glyndwr
Published: March 2007

As the Hudson's Bay Company prepares to celebrate its tercentenary it is not mere academic perverseness which prompts a paper on a period in the Company's history when it was threatened with extinction. Longevity has its own fascination, and crucial in the story of the Company's growth into one of the great business enterprises of the modern world was its survival amid the bitter criticism directed at chartered companies in the eighteenth century. Small and apparently vulnerable, it showed unexpected stubbornness in resisting attacks which overwhelmed several of its fellows. The controversies which buffeted the Hudson's Bay Company also help to illuminate those mercantile pressure groups working against monopolies in the mid-eighteenth century, and reveal something of the friction at home which accompanied the steady expansion of British commerce overseas.
The Generals and the Downfall of the German Monarchy, 1917–1918
Authors: Eyck E.
Published: March 2007

Every modern war brings to the forefront the fundamental problem of the relations between the highest civil and the highest military authority. The German Empire never succeeded in solving this problem.
The State and Landed Interests in Thirteenth Century France and England
Authors: Miller Edward
Published: March 2007

Before coming to the substance of this paper, I feel that I must define its purpose somewhat more closely than I have done in the title which I have given to it. A study of the state and landed interests, of course, could embrace most of the domestic and much of the external histories of France and England in the thirteenth century, I shall be concerned with much less than that—with a problem which nevertheless seems to me to be of the first importance in any study of the social and economic policies (if that phrase be not too anachronistic) of medieval governments. I mean the break-up and alienation of feudal tenements in the thirteenth century, some of the causes and consequences thereof, and some of the attempts made to deal with the difficulties thereby occasioned. This still remains a large subject, and at best this paper is an attempt at synthesis, even of vulgarisation, which rests, in the main, upon the work of others. In particular, I have drawn heavily upon Professor Plucknett's study of the legislation of Edward I, and I was encouraged to venture upon some comparisons with France because he has also shown, I feel, that such comparisons may not be without value.
The Population Trend in England between 1300 and 1348
Authors: Harvey Barbara F.
Published: March 2007

It is now widely agreed that the economy of western Europe contracted in the later Middle Ages, but the causes of this depression and its time-limits are still disputed. Professor Postan argues that the depression was intimately connected with a decline in population beginning early in the fourteenth century and brought about by the operation of Malthusian checks and soil exhaustion. His argument may be briefly summarized. Population grew rapidly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the cultivated area was continuously extended. By 1300, however, both processes had gone too far. The plough had invaded marginal lands—in this context the term means poor lands—unsuited for permanent cultivation and subject to soil exhaustion. The precarious balance between population growth and the means of subsistence depended on the possibility of fresh colonization. When this was at an end, as it was, to all intents, by 1300, Europe was left with a population which it could not feed. Early in the fourteenth century, therefore—perhaps even in the 1290's—famine and disease brought about a long-continued rise in the death-rate, and this, later to be intensified by the plague, aggravated the decline in productivity. Thus the famine of the years 1315–17 was not merely a tragic episode of a kind likely to occur as long as the harvest of one year provided the bread of the next; it marked a turning-point in demographic history.
County Politics and a Puritan Cause Célèbre: Somerset Churchales, 1633(The Alexander Prize Essay)
Authors: Barnes Thomas G.
Published: March 2007

The origins of that strange amalgam of constitutional and religious issues which provoked England's civil war have not yet been fathomed. The painstaking researches of the historians of parliament have established that from early in Elizabeth's reign, the Commons assumed an increasingly Puritan complexion; from the 1621 Parliament until the last stormy session before the Personal Rule, the constitutional crisis came forward to meet and merge with the religious in the first of the three stirring resolutions voted by an expiring Commons in defiance of Mr. Speaker. Yet, the identification of sacred concerns with secular by the few hundred who sat in St. Stephen's was not the norm for the greater England beyond Westminster. Parliament had moved further and faster in the 1620's than had the country, the constitutional questions alone having been bruited about the countryside. The religious issue—the growing divergence in faith and practice within the Church—had not been generally perceived by a nation largely unaware of Laud and his adherents on the one hand and the ‘Preciser sort’ of Puritans on the other. During the Personal Rule, however, the religious issue became a matter of common knowledge, concern, rumour, and controversy. Under the impact of Laudianism, Puritanism grew more extremist. The inexorable destruction of the Elizabethan settlement, ground between an ever more rigid orthodoxy and an increasingly radical heterodoxy, forced the countryman to choose sides in matters religious. Once the identification of religious heterodoxy with political opposition was accomplished, the necessary ingredients for civil war were mixed, awaiting only the loosening of royal and episcopal authority in the Long Parliament in order to work their destructive ends.
The Wealth of England in the Eleventh Century
Authors: Sawyer P. H.
Published: March 2007

England was a rich country in the eleventh century, far richer than most neighbouring parts of the continent, and this explains the many raids and attempts at conquest which the English suffered in that century. It was the wealth of England, not the inadequacy of the English defences, that tempted so many continental adventurers to come here in search of loot and tribute.
English Provincial Towns in the Early Sixteenth Century
Authors: Hoskins W. G.
Published: March 2007

English historians have concentrated almost exclusively upon the constitutional and legal aspects of town development. They have concerned themselves with the borough rather than the town, with legal concepts rather than topography or social history, just as the agrarian historians have been pre-occupied with the manor rather than the village. Local historians of towns and villages have, with two or three notable exceptions, followed suit in this ill-balanced emphasis. The result is that we know surprisingly little about the economy, social structure, and physical growth of English towns before the latter part of the eighteenth century.
The New History and the Sense of Social Purpose in American Historical Writing
Authors: Pole J. R.
Published: March 2007

Historians have often been inspired by the power of spiritually high ideals or socially good intentions, sometimes by both. Orosius, a disciple of Augustine, composed his Seven Books of History Against the Pagans to prove that nations which had submitted themselves to non-Christian rulers had thereby incurred a series of disasters. The legend that Brutus of Troy had founded Britain was thought useful by King James I. Both in the earlier and later stages of the development of concepts of verification with regard to historical records, the idea of a past whose example points the way to present and future conduct or which gives validity to the régime of the present has been an extraordinarily potent instrument of social policy. The social instrumentalists who emerged, among the political scientists, econo-mists, sociologists, philosophers and historians of the western world about the end of the last century were hardly less ambitious than their predecessors. Among them, the American school was particularly confident of what could be achieved by wresting the study, teaching and writing of history from the hands of its orthodox exponents and redirecting the entire subject in the interests of social advance. There is an obvious temptation to describe this school as historical utilitarians, a word that suggests itself particularly because of their long emphasis on the use and usability of the past. But the term is inappropriate. Utilitarianism is a system which envisages the greatest good of the greatest number; whereas an instrumental view could be directed to special problems or be intended to promote the interests of a particular group.
The Early History of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1920–9
Authors: Pelling Henry
Published: March 2007

THE Communist Party of Great Britain, like the Communist Parties of most other European countries, was founded shortly after the Russian Bolshevik revolution. It was unique among the Communist Parties of the major countries in being the result of an amalgamation of small revolutionary groups rather than a product of the schism of a large existing organization. The British Labour Party did not split as a result of the Russian revolution: the Communist Party grew up out of elements which for the most part had had a separate existence on the Labour Party's left wing.
The Monetary Pattern of Sixteenth-Century Coinage:The Prothero Lecture 1970
Authors: Grierson P.
Published: March 2007

THE equipment of any well-appointed counting house in the late sixteenth century would include, as a matter of course, one or more money-books illustrating and evaluating all coins likely to come its master's way. Such money-books had originated in the late fifteenth century, when the invention of printing had made it possible to illustrate the officialordonnances, tariffs, orplacardslisting coins approved for circulation and giving their legal values. The earliest ones were no more than flysheets: a Flemish one of 1499 illustrating the nine ‘good florins of the Electors’, an English one of 1504 illustrating two English groats and a Flemish double patard. In the early sixteenth century these flysheets grew into small brochures, as their publishers found it convenient to take account of coins not mentioned in official proclamations but found commonly in circulation. They were, in fact, becoming illustrated versions of the privately compiled lists of coins and values which are known to us from the time of Pegolotti onwards. In due course they attained the status of substantial volumes, their format being often made tall and narrow, like that of account ledgers, so that they could stand with these on the merchant's shelves.
The Duke of Bridgewater's Trustees and the Coming of the Railways
Authors: Mather F.C.
Published: March 2007

When Francis Egerton, third duke of Bridgewater, died in 1803, he left his canal and coal mines to a body of three trustees. Financial interest was thereby severed from control, for whilst the income from the properties went to the late duke's nephew, George, Lord Gower, later to be marquess of Stafford and first duke of Sutherland, the management was committed to a superintendent, who was appointed by the will and vested thereby with an almost arbitrary and exclusive authority.
The Papacy, The Patarenes and the Church of Milan
Authors: Cowdrey H. E. J.
Published: March 2007

Between 1046, when the Emperor Henry III reformed the papacy, and 1099, when Pope Urban II died, a very drastic change came over the loyalties of the church and city of Milan. In 1046, these loyalties were chiefly local; their centre was St Ambrose, the fourth-century bishop of Milan who was its patron saint. Apart from certain rather artificial purposes of propaganda in its long struggle for precedence over Ravenna and Aquileia, Milan did not actively look to the see of St Peter; nor was it, in practice, subject to Roman interference. Politically, it did, indeed, acknowledge an ultimate loyalty to the emperor; but this was because, so long as he ruled his kingdom of Italy from a distance, he was a safeguard for Milan's virtual autonomy in spiritual and temporal affairs. Milan had the appearance of a proud and self-sufficient metropolis, subject only to the ecclesiastical and civil rule of its own archbishop. But, after 1056, its order and independence were rudely challenged when the Patarene movement gave rise to nineteen years of civil strife. The Patarenes sought help from Rome, where they found some ready and effective allies amongst the reformers. Milan, accordingly, reacted by showing itself actively hostile to the papacy; for a while, its citizens called upon the Emperor Henry IV to be active in vindicating his rights. Then, in 1075, tne Patarenes suffered a sudden collapse and ceased to be an effective movement.
Presidential Address: Collective Mentalities in mid-Seventeenth-Century England: III. Varieties of Radicalism
Authors: Aylmer G. E.
Published: March 2007

SINCE the terms radical and radicalism were not in use before the nineteenth century, it may fairly be asked what they signify when applied to the mid-seventeenth century. The simplest answer is a pragmatic one: by radical I mean anyone advocating changes in state, church or society which would have gone beyond the official programme of the mainstream puritan-parliamentarians in the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly of Divines. In the Parliament I therefore exclude here the ‘political Independents’, alias the War Party, other than the handful of pre-1647–8 republicans. In the Assembly I exclude the ‘Five Dissenting Brethren’, who were the spokesmen of moderate Congregationalism, but outside it I include some religious Independents whose radicalism will be presently defined. To borrow another nineteenth-century figure of speech, if we look to the Left of the mainstream Puritans and Parliamentarians, what a bewildering profusion of groups and individuals appears. It is scarcely necessary to have studied the period at all to be familiar with the names of many such sects or movements, if not perhaps of all: Anabaptists, Antinomians, Behmenists, Brownists, Comenians, Diggers, Familists, Fifth-Monarchy Men, Grindletonians, Levellers, Mortalists, Muggletonians, Quakers, Ranters, Seekers, and Socinians. Yet simply to reel off such a list is to omit many interesting and remarkable groups and individuals: would-be reformers of the professions and of law, medicine and education, free-traders, agricultural improvers, philo-semites and proto-feminists, to mention only some of the most obvious. Any reader of Thomas Edwards'Gangraenaand other contemporary commination or of Christopher Hill'sThe World Turned Upside Downand his other writings will be familiar with most of them and no doubt with others too.
Power, Status and Precedence: rivalries among the provincial élites of Louis XIV'S France
Authors: Mettam Roger
Published: March 2007

During the past thirty years most historians have acknowledged that it is anachronistic to describe Louis XIV as an absolute monarch. Many of them have turned their attention towards the various elite groups whose power and privileges coexisted with those of the crown in the very different, and sometimes fiercely separatist, provinces which formed the kingdom of France. A few have attributed such great influence to local nobles and institutions that the royal government seems to have been reduced to impotence. This impression, clearly too extreme, has been created first by a preoccupation with those issues and periods where the crown was in conflict with many, or in the case of the Frondes with almost all, of its leading subjects, and a disregard for the more numerous occasions when the king and at least some élite groups had identical or compatible purposes. Secondly, it has arisen from a neglect of the informal channels of communication which were often more important than the formal administrative structure for linking the court and the provinces, and for conducting the everyday routine of government. The most important of these was the network of ‘brokers’, often influential governors and bishops, by which provincial requests for highly prized royal patronage—whether titles, orders, offices, privileges or pensions— were conveyed to the ministers and to the king himself. The possibility of personal advancement was a vital consideration for members of the upper social échelons as they calculated their responses to ministerial instructions and enquiries.
The ‘Mother Gin’ Controversy in the Early Eighteenth Century
Authors: Clark Peter
Published: March 2007

DURING the second quarter of the eighteenth century there were successive waves of public agitation over the spirits trade—in 1726, 1728–9, 1735–8 and again in 1748–51. Opponents of ‘Mother Gin’ and her supporters waged a multi-media propaganda war, through tracts and sermons, broadsides, ballads, satirical verse, petitions, posters and prints (though Hogarth'sGin LaneandBeer Streetcame only as a final, splendid coda to the attack on gin, in 1751). Parliament in this period enacted a series of measures to deal with the problem. The most dramatic and draconian of these was the 1736 Gin Act, whichwas hurried through Parliament in a few weeks and threatened to close down the spirits trade overnight. The Act, with secondary legislation in 1737 and 1738, caused such a landslide of protest and opposition in the capital that it had to be abandoned and later repealed. In this paper I want to concentrate on the 1736 Act, looking at its background and aftermath. As we shall see, the controversy raises important questions not only about the organisation of the drink trade and consumption patterns in the early eighteenth century, but also about the social and political processes of legislation–the activity of interest groups, the attitude of government, and the problems of enforcement.
Burial and Status in the Early Medieval West
Authors: James Edward
Published: March 2007

EARLY medieval archaeology can be said to have its origins with the investigation of burial: with Otto III's opening of Charlemagne's tomb in 1000; with medieval and early modern reports of the discoveries of the graves of kings or warriors; and, most notably, with the discovery at Tournai in 1653 of the grave of an early Frankish king, Childeric. And, until very recently, the study of burials dominated the subject. This is only natural. Graves are easily recognisable when discovered accidentally; often they were intended to be, and have remained, a very visible part of the landscape. Surviving royal burials are, of course, very rare. But there are over one hundred thousand excavated graves of lesser personages from the period betweenc. 450 andc. 1000: an astonishing mass of data which forms a significant proportion of the total available evidence for the early Middle Ages and which needs to be assessed and taken into count by any early medievalist interested in the totality of the period. And it can be argued that cemeteries offer rather more opportunity than the written sources to understand the world of those below the status of kings and bishops, and to do so without the ecclesiastical bias that the written sources have. We nevertheless have to remember that graves are not the unconscious waste products of society, like most of the data studied by an archaeologist: rubbish pits, building remains and so on. Bodies were deliberately and carefully placed in the ground, along with whatever accompanied them. Those responsible for the burial made a whole series of choices about the manner in which they carried out this action. A burial, like a written text, is a product of conscious mental activity, and subject to many of the problems of interpretation and analysis with which historians are familiar.
The English Campaign against Luther in the 1520s (The Alexander Prize Essay)
Authors: Rex Richard
Published: March 2007

SINCE the days of John Foxe, ecclesiastical historians of the 1520s have concentrated on the Odysseys and Passions of the earliest English Protestants. Their Catholic opponents, with the notable exceptions of John Fisher and Thomas More, have been largely ignored. The object of this essay is to redress the balance by examining the English commitment to orthodoxy in the 1520s, a commitment made primarily by the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, but seconded enthusiastically by the academic community. It aims not to rewrite the entire ecclesiastical history of the decade, but merely to draw attention to an important though neglected element in the story. Nevertheless, it hopes to be a contribution to the reassessment of the English Reformation that has been carried out in much recent research. The essay is primarily an investigation of polemics, rather than of politics or of popular religion. Beginning with Henry VIII's decision early in 1521 to take up the pen personally against Luther, it draws out the connection of this with the promulgation in England ofExsurge Domine, the Papal condemnation of Luther, and suggests a solution to the vexed question of the ‘real’ authorship of Henry'sAssertio Septem Sacramentorum. It investigates the continuation of this polemical assault on Luther by English scholars; and examines its international dimension, gathering evidence of the patronage and cooperation extended to Luther's continental opponents by the English authorities. In conclusion it proposes that the strongly orthodox commitment of the English authorities in the 1520s ebbed away only as the pressing needs of the ‘King's Great Matter’ occasioned competing, and ultimately conflicting, intellectual priorities.
The Resettlement of England after the Barons' War, 1264–67
Authors: Knowles C. H.
Published: March 2007

The confiscation and redistribution of the estates of the supporters of Simon de Montfort after the battle of Evesham plunged much of England into confusion. Such was the magnitude and violence of the social upheaval that even after the publication of the Dictum of Kenilworth in October 1266, and the general surrender of the rebels in the following summer, had brought organized resistance to an end, the country was still tense and uneasy. In August 1270, King Henry III abandoned his intention of accompanying his son the Lord Edward on crusade and made it known that he had taken this decision because ‘the prelates, magnates and community of the realm, consider it neither expedient nor safe that both of us should leave the kingdom’. Yet when Edward returned to England as king in August 1274, only seven years after the capitulation of the last rebel stronghold of the Isle of Ely, the situation had undergone a striking transformation. The bulk of the Montfortians had already regained possession of their lands and were being reassimilated into the political community. The theme of this paper is the nature of that recovery, and the light it throws on the operation of the land market and the character of the rebellion of 1264–7.
Lollardy and Locality
Authors: Davies Richard G.
Published: March 2007

There can now be no doubt of the intellectual substance and cohesion of early Wyclifitism as expressed in the writings of educated clerks in immediate contact with the man himself. Most would accept, too, that this coherence was successfully transferred from Latin to English. However, although these Wyclifite scholars recognised the need for a corpus of literature to cater for a non-academic audience and provide the basis in ideas for a sustained movement, they had difficulty in supplying it. This might seem to offer easy comfort to those who are already doubtful whether people called Lollards could or did grasp Wyclifitism; whether they just amputated the bits they liked, debased or perverted them, or really did not take anything on board at all. Even some less cynical would agree that the Church itself played a large part in shaping Lollardy's ideas and characteristics: such is so often the way in the birth of protest movements. Indeed, to some hardliners ‘Lollardy’ seems little more than a scare-story invented by the Church in order to damn a large but motley crew of critics and dissenters. Or, if not the Church, then those historians in whom hope triumphs over experience.
The Origins of Public Secrecy in Britain
Authors: Vincent David
Published: March 2007

The first modern crisis of public secrecy was set in motion in the Spring of 1844 when a little-known Italian exile began sending himself letters in which he had placed grains of sand, poppy seeds or fine hairs. The discovery that the additional contents were disappearing in transit confirmed Joseph Mazzini's suspicions that his correspondence was being opened by Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, at the request of the Austrian ambassador. There then followed what Graham's first biographer described as a ‘paroxysm of national anger’ as the extent of clandestine domestic espionage was exposed. A powerful coalition of working-class radicals and Parliamentary Liberals came together to protest at the use of ‘the spy system of foreign states’.‘The proceeding cannot be English,’ thunderedThe Times, ‘any more than masks, poisons, sword-sticks, secret signs and associations, and other such dark ventures. Public opinion is mighty and jealous, and does not brook to hear of public ends pursued by other than public means. It considers that treason against its public self.’
‘A King Across the Sea’: Alfred in Continental Perspective
Authors: Nelson Janet L.
Published: March 2007

I BEGIN with the quotation in my title: ‘Alfred, a king across the sea’. It is actually a tenth-century label rather than a strictly contemporary one: it was used by Flodoard of Rheims inc.960 when he summarized a letter sent to Alfred by Archbishop Fulk of Rheims inc.890. How Fulk himself had addressed Alfred we don't know. But, according to Flodoard, what he said was ‘amicable’: he ex-pressed satisfaction on hearing of the appointment of a good man, Plegmund, to the see of Canterbury, because he had heard that ‘a most perverse sect’ had spread among the English and Plegmund was the man to cut it down. This sect held that bishops and priests could have women secretly living with them and that anyone who wished could mate with kinswomen of his own family and have incestuous relations with women consecrated to God and have a wife and a concubine at the same time. Fulk ended by demonstrating to Alfred the error of such views.
Plebeian Marriage in Stuart England: some Evidence from Popular Literature
Authors: Sharpe J. A.
Published: March 2007

THERE is a considerable body of opinion which holds that marriage in early modern England, and especially marriage among the lower orders, was uncaring, affectionless, and entered into for economic rather than emotional reasons. This view was, for example, axiomatic to those writing from a feminist perspective in the 1970s. Thus Sheila Rowbotham felt that in the pre-industrial world The peasant judged his woman by her capacity to labour and to breed more hands for toil…among the peasantry women were essential in the family economy. The peasant's wife bore children which meant more hands to toil and she laboured herself. She was like cattle, a means of production.
The Survival of the British MonarchyThe Prothero Lecture
Authors: Cannon John
Published: March 2007

I USE as my epigraph a famous remark by Joseph Chamberlain— fit to be included in that rich anthology of unlucky forecasts, of which classic examples are Pitt's fifteen years of peace in February 1792, and Neville Chamberlain's ‘I think it is peace for our time’, in 1938. To Charles Dilke, Joseph Chamberlain wrote, in 1871: ’The Republic must come, and at the rate at which we are moving, it will come in our generation.’1
From Humanism to the Science of Man: Colonialism in Africa and the Understanding of Alien Societies
Authors: Ranger T. O.
Published: March 2007

IN his ‘English Contributions to Renaissance Colonisation’ Professor Quinn treats one only of the interactions between humanism and overseas expansion. He does not here discuss, as he has done elsewhere, the stimulus to speculation about human history and society which was given by the discovery of new worlds of custom. He concentrates rather upon the ways in which those who advocated, planted and managed colonies were inspired by or appealed to humanist learning, and in particular the example of Rome. In much the same way I am not centrally concerned in this paper to discuss the stimulus given to academic enquiry by the intensified encounter of Europe with the rest of the world during the last hundred years. My main concern is with the ways in which those who advocated, pacified and administered colonies were inspired by or appealed to the new sciences of man.
Skills and the Diffusion of Innovations from Britain in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Mathias Peter
Published: March 2007

This paper stems from an initial interest in the relationships between science and technology in the eighteenth century. Hence its concern lies principally with the nature of technical innovation and the sources of technical change during the Industrial Revolution. Exploring the ways in which new technology is diffused can shed light on the nature of technical change itself, which is a complex amalgam of influences governing invention, innovation (the bringing of inventions into productive use) and the diffusion of new techniques. Taking as a topic the diffusion of technology, particularly in machine-making and engineering, between Britain and Europe in the late eighteenth century is thus not meant to be a peg on which to hang wide-ranging animadversions on the differing economic fortunes and pace of advance of Britain and Europe, or a discussion of why industrialization came first and fastest to Britain and lagged elsewhere: it is a much narrower enquiry into seeing what light the processes and difficulties of diffusing new technology cast upon technical change itself at this time.