bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Deprived Married Clergy In Essex, 1553–1561
Authors: Grieve Hilda E. P.
Published: March 2007

In the five years which elapsed between Mary's accession on 6 July 1553 and her death on 17 November 1558 281 institutions to benefices vacant in Essex are entered in Bonner's Register. Ninety–three of these vacancies, or just under a third, occurred as the result of the deprivation of the late incumbent. A similar disturbance of the personnel of the clergy was taking place all over the country during these years, but the figures quoted for Essex cannot be taken as typical, for Dr. Frere found that the numbers and ratios tended to diminish the greater the distance from London.The general nature of this disturbance, however, the processes connected with it, and the problems arising out of it can best be understood when examined in relation to a particular group of the deprived clergy. As Mr. Baskerville has suggested, “it is only by a thoroughgoing exploration of the ups and downs of the lives of the clergy in an individual diocese that the course of current ecclesiastical movements can be adequately comprehended.”
The Manning of the Navy in the West Indies, 1702—63
Authors: Pares R.
Published: March 2007

The manning of the navy in the West Indies presented a great administrative difficulty to the English and French Governments in the eighteenth century, and brought them into conflict with several important interests. These conflicts are worth examination, because they throw light upon the problems which arose when the claims of war and business had to be adjusted to each other.
The East India Company “Interest” and the English Government, 1783-4
Authors: Philips C. H.
Published: March 2007

Thex period 1772–84 was the formative period of British Indian history. During these years Indian affairs were constantly before Parliament; the questions of the relation of the East India Company to the State, and of the home to the Indian administration were dealt with, and the system of government instituted in 1784 was not fundamentally changed until 1858.
Ranulf De Gernons, Earl of Chester, 1129–1153
Authors: Cronne H. A.
Published: March 2007

It is with the greatest diffidence that I venture to present a paper upon a subject which has attracted the attention of a line of eminent historians and genealogists, but still remains one of the most obscure in twelfth-century history. No subject could be more tantalising for an historian than the career of Ranulf de Gernons, fourth earl of Chester. Its importance is manifest in the history of the palatine earldom; in the history of a great Welsh resurgence; in the history of Stephen's England, where the extent of the earl's hereditary possessions and his policy of self-aggrandisement and consistent inconstancy made him a dominating factor in the political and military situation; and above all it is of absorbing interest to the student of feudalism.
Presidential Address: “Guy De Montfort (1265–71)”
Authors: Powicke F. M.
Published: March 2007

This afternoon I invite you to follow me along a bypath which gives access to wide prospects. I have recently had occasion to investigate the history of Simon de Montfort's family after the battle of Evesham. I do not intend to-day to tell an old story, but to try to give to it, or rather to draw from it, the significance which it seems to possess.
Russia and Panslavism in the Eighteen-Seventies
Authors: Sumner B. H.
Published: March 2007

When twenty years after the Crimean War the near eastern question again absorbed the attention of Europe, among the various changes in the setting of the crisis of 1876–8 as compared with that of 1853–6 appears conspicuously the new force styled panslavism. It is the purpose of this paper to attempt some analysis of its growth and its main elements with a view to indicating its position and potentialities on the eve of the crisis of 1876.
The Jacobite Activities in South and West England in the summer of 1715
Authors: Petrie Charles
Published: March 2007

It is now generally admitted that of the two principal Jacobite risings, namely the Fifteen and the Forty-Five, the former, although it never came so near to success as the latter, was infinitely better conceived. Yet those who have not studied it in any detail cannot but be astonished at the alarm which it caused the Government of the day. Mar was a far more contemptible commander than Prince Charles Edward or Lord George Murray, while, on the other side, Argyll was greatly superior to the luckless Cope. As for the English Jacobites, the distinction between their behaviour in 1715 and 1745 seems to have been without a difference, for if a few of them did take up arms on the earlier occasion their intervention had no appreciable effect. In these circumstances it is only natural that the question should be asked what justification there is for the statement that the Fifteen was so much more dangerous to the new dynasty than the Forty-Five. The answer lies in the Jacobite activities in the South and West of England during the twelve months that followed the death of Anne, and, in view of their importance, it is surely no exaggeration to say that they have not hitherto received the attention which they deserve.
The Inquisitional Archives as a Source of English History
Authors: Royh Cecil
Published: March 2007

The popular (and perhaps not only the popular) impression of the Spanish Inquisition is that it was an organisation of blood and fire, concerned with the enforcement of Catholic uniformity at whatever cost. Of course, it maintained a “tribunal,” before which heretics and unbelievers were haled in order to be condemned to the stake. The outcome of the trial was however a foregone conclusion in every case. Hence the Inquisitional muniments (if they existed) could be of value only as a record of (to use the current jargon) sadism or obscurantism on the one side, and of Protestant endurance on the other. Even scholars such as Lea tended to be affected by the popular tradition: and one may scan those five superb volumes on the Inquisition in Spain and her dependencies in vain for any indication that its archives are of value for the study of human history and ideas.
The Unreformed Diplomatic Service, 1812–60
Authors: Bindoff S. T.
Published: March 2007

The older and more experienced among the witnesses before the Select Committee of 1861 on the Diplomatic Service were generally agreed that the previous half-century had seen that service assume more and more the character of a profession. Among the reasons they advanced to explain this development were the growth of the service during that period —between 1816 and 1860 the total of heads of missions rose from 20 to 37 and the paid staff more than doubled in number—the greater part which it had of late appeared to play in world affairs, and its dissociation from the vicissitudes of domestic politics.
The New Course in British Foreign Policy, 1892–1902
Authors: Penson Lillian M.
Published: March 2007

In one of his characteristic outbursts to the British military attaché at Berlin, the Kaiser complained, ‘All my life I have worked for a good understanding with England, but you do not help me’. This is only one of the oft-repeated complaints, made sometimes to the British ambassador and more often to the military attaché, but its frequent repetition, in varying forms, represented a genuine conviction of German good-will and British lack of response. In the history of the ten years which began in 1892 this reproach has a special significance, for one at least of the important results of the developments of British policy in this period was that the era of co-operation between Britain and the members of the Triple Alliance was ended.
Some Aspects of the History of Chantries in the Later Middle Ages
Authors: Wood-Legh K. L.
Published: March 2007

Macaulay paid every schoolboy the compliment of attributing to him an omniscience which a man of learning might well envy; in what I am about to say this afternoon I fear that I may be going to the opposite extreme and expounding as new, facts with which some of my audience may have been familiar from their youth up. But if I make this mistake, I must plead in extenuation the way in which the medieval chantry has so far been treated. For, whilst almost every other aspect of medieval life has been studied as, at least to some extent, a European phenomenon, the chantry, though its prevalence throughout western Europe has been well known and its importance in the life of the later middle ages generally recognized, has been studied as a matter of local, or at most of national, history, and in many cases antiquarian or genealogical interests have been allowed to obscure the broader ecclesiastical and constitutional questions which it raises or helps to elucidate.
Oliver Sutton, Bishop of Lincoln, and the University of Oxford
Authors: Hill R. M. T.
Published: March 2007

I have chosen as the subject of this paper a study of the relations of Oliver Sutton, bishop of Lincoln from 1280 to 1299, with the University of Oxford, and I should like to begin with a quotation from the work of one of the great medievalists of our generation. In his book, Henry III and the Lord Edward, Sir Maurice Powicke says: ‘It is a great pity that we know so little about these people.’ That is profoundly true. Many of the inhabitants of thirteenth-century history are little more than names to us. We know a few facts about the chancellors of Oxford at this period, and the information that we can gain about Sutton is slight enough. Yet I think that sufficient material has survived to enable us to find out something about his dealings with the university and to understand from them what kind of a man he was.
King John's Reaction to the Interdict on England
Authors: Cheney C. R.
Published: March 2007

Giraldus Cambrensis observed that the interdict laid on England in 1208 inflicted a double wound, involving as it did both the withdrawal of divine service and the plundering of the clergy's possessions. The eagerness of King John in exploiting the situation for his financial profit does not admit of doubt. The estimate of reparations for ablata and dampna arrived at in 1214 was 100,000 marks; this did not satisfy the clergy, and probably the sum was too small to cover all that the king had received by confiscations, prolonging of vacancies, dona, and fines. Although even an approximately correct estimate is now unattainable, an enquiry is still worth while to discover the king's policy and his methods of exaction during the interdict. This paper is primarily concerned with his general seizure of church property in 1208.
Presidential Address: Sir Benjamin Keent, K.B.: A Study in Anglo-Spanish relations in the earlier Part of the Eighteenth
Authors: Lodge Richard
Published: March 2007

During the Anglo-American Conference last July I made the acquaintance of an American Professor who was engaged in a special study of Anglo-Spanish relations in the eighteenth century. She (for the Professor was feminine) made some observations that interested me. She said that the century was often described as the period of a second Hundred Years' War between England and France, but that this might be more accurately described as a Hundred Years' War between England and Spain. She added that the cause of that war was trade disputes. I, with my head full of the asiento and the permitted ship, replied that there were constant quarrels about colonial trade, but she contended that England was equally interested in the domestic trade with Spain itself. Subsequently she was kind enough to send me some interesting papers on Spanish history in the eighteenth century which she had contributed to the Smith College Studies in History.
William of Ely, the King's Treasurer (? 1195–1215)
Authors: Richardson H. G.
Published: March 2007

The importance of the reign of king John in the history of English financial administration is now recognized. In part this is due to the relative abundance of official records. For the twelfth century yields little beyond scattered charters and the series of pipe rolls, while the principal series of chancery enrolments begin under John, and for his reign too we possess, although not in continuous series, exchequer enrolments the like of which have not survived from earlier reigns. Of necessity, therefore, much of our detailed knowledge of early financial administration must be based upon what we can learn from this period. And then again, by the time John came to the throne, the exchequer system, as it had been devised and developed by the administrators of the twelfth century, quite obviously required adjustment to deal with the growing mass and complexity of financial transactions.
A Discussion on the Modern Methods for the Study of Medieval History and their Requirements
Authors: Powicke F. M.
Published: March 2007

If our discussion this afternoon is to be helpful, the scope of our subject must be clearly defined. I take it that, by “Modern Methods in Medieval Historical Research,” we mean especially the various kinds of co-operative study which have grown so rapidly in recent years. If this be so, let me say at once, on behalf, I am sure, of my fellow medievalists no less than myself, that we do not imply, by the limitation of our subject, any lack of faith in the supreme value of private and individual investigation. The best and finest work must always be done in solitude. It may not be the most useful work, if by this we mean the work whose every-day value as an aid to study is most apparent, but it must always be the finest work, the most satisfying and the most stimulating. “Have salt in yourselves and be at peace one with another” is a golden rule in scholarship as well as in life; and in the world of scholarship I am not sure that it is not better to have salt in oneself, to have something clear and definite to do with the intention and ability to do it, than to be at peace one with another.
Bede as a Classical and a Patristic Scholar
Authors: Laistner M. L. W.
Published: March 2007

Among the many and complex problems with which the history of Europe in the Middle Ages—and especially the earlier period of the Middle Ages—teems is the character of the intellectual heritage transmitted to medieval men from classical and later Roman imperial times. The topic has engaged the attention of many scholars, amongst them men of the greatest eminence, so that much which fifty years ago was still dark and uncertain is now clear and beyond dispute. Yet the old notions and misconceptions die hard, especially in books approximating to the textbook class. In a recently published volume on the Middle Ages intended for university freshmen there is much that is excellent and abreast of the most recent investigations; but the sections on early medieval education and scholarship seem to show that the author has never read anything on that subject later than Mullinger's Schools of Charles the Great.
Woburn Abbey and the Dissolution of the Monasteries
Authors: Thomson Gladys Scott
Published: March 2007

A prolonged search has recently been undertaken by the present writer with the permission and encouragement of the Duke of Bedford with the object, in the first place, of locating if possible the records of the Cistercian abbey of Woburn and, in the second, of ascertaining what material hitherto unused, or partly unused, exists in the Public Record Office and elsewhere concerning the history of that abbey at the time of its dissolution and immediately subsequent thereto.
The System of Account in the Wardrobe of Edward II
Authors: Johnson J. H
Published: March 2007

Inhis masterly account of the administrative activities of the Wardrobe, ProfessorTout has necessarily been led to say something of its system of accounting; but his treatment of it has been to a great extent incidental to the wider aspect of his subject. In a paper read before this Society in March 1923, Mr. Charles Johnson supplemented Professor Tout's work by a study of the system of account in the Wardrobe of Edward I. The system employed in the Wardrobe of Edward II during the first seventeen years of his reign was essentially the same as that of his father's time. For this earlier part of the reign, then, all that I propose todo is to supplement Mr. Johnson's account by a more detailed examination of certain points, a thorough understanding of which is of some importance to those who may have to interpret the evidence of these accounts on questions of constitutional and administrative history. In addition to this, it is hardly necessary to repeat that the reign of Edward II is of extreme importance in the history of the Wardrobe as a period of far-reaching reforms.
The Relations of William III with the Swiss Protestants, 1689–1697
Authors: Robertson L. A.
Published: March 2007

Diplomatic relations between England and Switzerland have their beginning in the second decade of the sixteenth century. Henry VIII, chagrined at the success of the French at Marignano, sent Richard Pace as his ambassador to the Cantons, with instructions to secure the participation of the Swiss in an invasion of the Milanese to be undertaken by Imperialists and Swiss mercenaries in the pay of England. Pace had little difficulty in recruiting some 12,000 men from the V Cantons of Uri, Schwyz, Zürich, Basel and Schaffhausen, and 2,000 from the Grisons, and in March 1516 a Swiss-Imperial army descended into the Lombard plain under the joint leadership of the Emperor Maximilian and Galeazzo Visconti. The expedition proved a dismal failure, and all efforts made by Pace to induce the Swiss to take part in a second invasion of Italy failed signally. The conclusion of peace between France and the XIII Cantons on 29 November 1516, deprived the English mission of its essential purpose—the utilisation of anti-French sentiment in Switzerland—and in the autumn of 1517 Pace was recalled. The diplomatic intercourse between England and Switzerland in the years 1515–1517 was occasioned purely by the political exigencies of the moment and was founded upon no permanent basis of common interest, political or religious. Hence the mission of Pace has little significance for the development of Anglo-Swiss relations in later centuries.
Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in 1685
Authors: George R. H.
Published: March 2007

A Parliament was inevitable from the moment James II was proclaimed King of England on 6 February, 1685. Two days later the new sovereign informed Barrillon, the French ambassador, of his intention to convene Lords and Commons in May. With a prudent regard for his relations with Louis XIV, he took care to explain that he embarked upon this course so speedily in order to show the English that he was not afraid, and to render more acceptable his intended proclamation directing the continued collection of revenues from customs and excise. He also indicated that an immediate summons was essential if he were to gain credit for such action.
Robert Bacon and the Early Dominican School at Oxford
Authors: Smalley B.
Published: March 2007

ROBERT BACON is the first Dominican master at Oxford about whom anything certain is known. Prof. J. C. Russell has collected those details about his life which can be found in chronicle and record sources. To summarize:—Bacon was already a master in 1219, when he was presented to a living at a church in Oxfordshire. He resigned in 1227, probably in order to become a Dominican; he is said to have received the habit from Jordan of Saxony, who was in Oxford in 1229/30. Bacon continued his teaching until his death in 1248. He was a friend of Grosseteste and a friend and schoolfellow of St. Edmund Rich, and he seems to have shared their views on politics. Matthew Paris tells us that Bacon preached an outspoken sermon before the king and certain bishops in 1233, when the barons had refused to meet Henry at Oxford. The king would never have peace, Bacon said, until he removed the bishop of Winchester and Peter des Rievaux from his counsels. Paris couples Bacon with another English Dominican, Richard Fishacre, who died in the same year, in a glowing tribute to the two friars. Both had a great reputation for scholarship, ‘in theologia et in aliis scientiis’, and for preaching: ‘populis gloriose praedicaverunt verbum Domini’. Bacon served on a number of commissions and was active in connexion with the Oxford Jewry. Professor Russell concludes that ‘these tasks show him a man of business ability often entrusted with responsibility’.
Parties and Party Organization in the Reign of Charles II
Authors: Browning Andrew
Published: March 2007

THE rise of political parties in the reign of Charles II was an inevitable consequence of the increase in the power and prestige of Parliament during the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth. By 1660 Parliament had advanced far beyond the stage at which it could be content with merely criticizing the Government, or presenting its more substantial grievances for the royal consideration. It was now prepared to express decided opinions on all matters of national concern, and even, though rather hesitatingly, to assume the direction of policy both at home and abroad. Within a few years Charles in a memorable speech was to give the Commons the severest rebuke of which he was Capable for invading his most fundamental prerogative, that of making peace and war, and not merely desiring him ‘to enter into such leagues as might be for the safety of the kingdom’, but telling him ‘what sort of leagues they must be, and with whom’.
The Development of London as a Centre of Conspicuous Consumption in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Authors: Fisher F. J.
Published: March 2007

Of all forms of historical writing, that which deals with particular places is perhaps the most pregnant with the possibilities of boredom, for the general reader can seldom hope to share the parochial enthusiasms by which the study of local history is so often inspired. But local history, and particularly urban history, can be approached from two different points of view. It can seek to portray the changing pattern of life within the few square miles which it takes for its field of study. Or it can endeavour to interpret that changing pattern as a symptom of greater changes in the nation as a whole. For, as the sociologists are never weary of reminding us, a town is essentially a social product. It is. brought into being by forces external to it. It continues to exist because, and only so long as, it serves a social purpose. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the population of London and its immediate suburbs grew much more rapidly than the population of the country as a whole. Confronted by that fact, one of the obvious tasks of the historian is to make clear the purposes which that metropolitan expansion served; to indicate the wider developments of which it was a symptom; and to explain why, to contemporaries, it appeared as a symptom of disease rather than of health in the body politic. For that the growth of London was widely considered to be a morbid growth is incontestable. Topographers and chroniclers might write with admiration and affection of the city whose contours they described and whose history they told.
The Naval Defence of British North America 1739–1763
Authors: Graham G. S.
Published: March 2007

UNTIL the eighteenth century, British naval operations rarely strayed outside the strictly European theatre. Engagements in North American waters were isolated enterprises, having little connection with the decisive area of battle which lay off the west coast of Europe in the vicinity of the British Isles. This concentration of forces in home waters was deter-mined as much by structural, technical and hygienic deficiencies as by strategic doctrine. Disease and gales were always the worst enemies, and in the manner bf continental armies, the ships of the Royal Navy sought winter quarters in or after November. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, improvements in naval architecture and the technique of navigation, as well as methods of preserving food and protecting health (slight as they may appear to this age), enabled ships to keep at sea for longer periods, and at greater distances from their home ports.
Problems in the Interpretation and Revision of Eighteenth-Century Irish Economic History
Authors: Cullen L. M.
Published: March 2007

The economic history of Ireland in the late seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies unfolded in an age marked by considerable legislative interference by the British parliament in Irish affairs. The impact of this interference was all the greater because the executive in Dublin was, from the point of view of an Irish colonial nationalist, constitutionally irresponsible, answerable to the king's ministers in London rather than to the Irish legislature. It is not surprising that against this background colonial nationalism emerged at an early date. The interpretation of economic issues fell inevitably under the shadow of constitutional controversy and rising colonial nationalism. In the eyes of contemporaries, and subsequent Irish historians who have borrowed largely both their facts and interpretation of events from the writings of the period, economic development was subsidiary to political issues; not only subsidiary but its achievement or negation a product of policy.
The Mental World of Hernán Cortés
Authors: Elliott J. H.
Published: March 2007

So many books and articles have been devoted to the life and career of He´rnan Cortés that it may well seem presumptuous to add to their number. But there is still no satisfactory biography, and it is only quite recently that his writings—his ‘letters of relation’ to Charles V, his general correspondence, and his military and administrative directives—have been subjected to the close critical scrutiny which they deserve. In particular, Dr. Richard Konetzke has drawn attention to the constructive aspects of Cortés's career as the founder of a colonial society, while an Austrian historian, Dr. Viktor Frankl, has analysed with extraordinary ingenuity Cortés's idea of empire and his indebtedness to Spanish medieval traditions and ways of thought. Other important contributions have been made by Mexicans:Dr Manuel Alcalá, who has drawn an extended parallel between
The Norman Conquest
Authors: Brown R. Allen
Published: March 2007

Though with the passing of October 14 the major junketings are perhaps over, the year is still 1966, the nine-hundredth anniversary of the Norman Conquest of England, and such an occasion, I trust, is a sufficient excuse for reading a paper to you on the subject. There are many more qualified than I to undertake the task, but at least I can claim to have been working—though scarcely alone—on a book about the Conquest over the last few years, and the vastly enjoyable experience has prompted certain thoughts which become increasingly strongly held as I progress. Some of those thoughts I should like now to put together into what I hope may be a coherent pattern.
Presidential Address: Anglo-American Rivalries and the Venezuela Crisis of 1895
Authors: Humphreys R. A.
Published: March 2007

Historians should be grateful to President Cleveland. It was his insistence on the arbitration of the dispute between Britain and Venezuela over the boundary of British Guiana that led to an intensive search in Spanish, Dutch, British and other archives for the evidence of European activities between the Amazon and the Orinoco during the three centuries after the discovery of America. The documents so found and printed are essential for any understanding of the historical background of the Anglo-Venezuelan dispute and of great interest to the colonial historian in general.
Puritans and ‘the Dark Corners of the Land’
Authors: Hill J. E. C.
Published: March 2007

The century between Reformation and Civil War saw a slow but steady expansion of the cultivated area of England—by bringing new lands under the plough in outlying regions like Devon and Cornwall, Cumberland and Westmorland; by extension of cultivation to forests, wastes and common lands; and by drainage. The same century also saw an expansion of the area of London's trade, and of London influence. Corn and dairy products were being shipped to the capital from Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland. London merchants began to purchase wool direct from North Wales, Wiltshire and the West Riding. Welsh cottons and cattle depended on the London market: early in the Civil War the gentry of North Wales petitioned the King for safe conduct across the fighting lines for their herds. Merchants in Shrewsbury and Hereford kept up trading connexions with the capital throughout the Civil War: Worcester merchants tried to do the same.
The End of Isolation: Britain, Germany and Japan, 1900–1902 (The Alexander Prize Essay)
Authors: Monger G. W.
Published: March 2007

At the end of the nineteenth century the British Empire was under great pressure. Several factors had combined to produce this: the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, which had united her two most dangerous antagonists; the growth of powerful new fleets like the Russian, German and American; the decline of ancient non-European monarchies like China, Persia and Morocco, and the appearance in their place of a power vacuum. But none of these new developments would have been so threatening without the novel interest of the great continental nations, and of the United States, in Imperial and naval expansion. Before, Britain had been the only Great Power able or willing to give such issues priority in the formation of her policies. Now she was no longer alone, and the new competition seemed to threaten the very existence of her Empire.
Some Second Thoughts on the Third Anglo–Dutch War, 1672–1674
Authors: Boxer C. R.
Published: March 2007

As the Professor of Modern History at Cambridge observed in his perceptive study of England and the Dutch Wars: ‘The wars themselves demonstrated not a few of the characteristics of modern warfare; there is a foretaste here of the bitter national feeling, the unscrupulous use of propaganda against the enemy, that were to become more familiar later. To some extent these weapons of war were deliberately manufactured and exploited by governments in the time of the Dutch wars, but equally certainly they were sometimes natural and spontaneous phenomena.’ Professor Charles Wilson confined his masterly analysis to the first two Anglo–Dutch wars. In this paper, I propose to consider the same points with reference to the third of these conflicts, and to trace in outline the major shifts and vagaries of public opinion on both sides of the North Sea.
The Last Years of English Gascony, 1451–1453. (The Alexander Prize.)
Authors: Vale M. G. A.
Published: March 2007

In the allegorical romance of Le Jouvencel, King Amydas complained to his son-in-law of the ‘slow poison in my stomach which will one day kill me.’ The romancer,—Jean de Bueil, admiral of France and count of Sancerre,—was referring to the presence of the English within France during the last phase of the Hundred Years War. Charles VII, with his habitual pessimism, was pictured in the Jouvencel taking counsel from his advisers on the best means of ridding his kingdom of the English. That object was achieved in fact as well as in romance between 1449 and 1453. A medal struck to commemorate the expulsion of the English carried the optimistic legend:

When I was made, everyone in France, without dispute, obeyed the prudent king, loved by God;—except at Calais which is a strong place.
Diplomacy and War Plans in the United States, 1890–1917
Authors: Grenville J. A. S.
Published: March 2007

In 1890 America was at peace, the golden age appeared to be at hand; unfettered by the miseries of European strife, in prosperous rather than splendid isolation, the American people confidently looked forward to an even more exciting future. But a new age of danger was rapidly approaching; the nineteenth-century conditions of American safety—geographical isolation, the British fleet, as it turned out, the ‘hostage’ of Canada in American hands, and the balance of power in Europe—were passing away. The era which had seen the new world fattening on the follies of the old was coming to an end; soon the follies of the old world impinged on the peace and prosperity of the new. Within three decades the contest for world power fought out in Europe, and the rise of the youngest of the great nations, Japan, was to endanger the safety of the United States. Yet few Americans recognized the full import of these changes and the need for fresh policies.
Presidential Address: Great Historical Enterprises IV. The Rolls Series
Authors: Knowles Rev. M. D.
Published: March 2007

The publication of the Chronicles and Memorials of GreatBritain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, known familiarly as the Rolls Series, was the outcome of a movement set on foot early in the nineteenth century by Henry Petrie. Petrte (1768-1842), who began life as a dancing master, made himself a learned and zealous antiquary, and acquired a knowledge, unrivalled in his day, of the materials for early English history. He was patronized by the second earl Spencer (1755-1834), then engaged upon the enrichment of Althorp library, and in 1818 a meeting of noblemen and gentlemen was convened at Spencer House to induce the government to support a scheme for printing the early sources of British history. The project was approved by the then prime minister, Lord Liverpool, and took shape in an humble address of the House of Commons to King George IV (25 July 1822), begging for the publication of manuscript sources of history; as a result of this Petrie, who had been appointed Keeper of Records in the Tower of London in 1819, assembled extracts from various sources for the period before the Norman Conquest, which were published posthumously in 1848 as Monumenta Historical Britannica. This was a selective collection, modelled on the Recueil of the Maurist Dom Bouquet, which Guizot had continued in France. Petrie's Monumenta was inordinately costly, while it failed to give real satisfaction to historians.
The Irish Viceroyalty in the Restoration Period
Authors: Beckett J. C.
Published: March 2007

In 1660 someone transcribed into the ‘Town Book’ of Belfast a copy of ‘Verses presented to General Monck’:

Advance, George Monck, and Monck St George shall be,

England's restorer to its liberty,

Scotland's protector, Ireland's president,

Reducing all to a free parliament;

And if thou dost intend the other thing,

Go on, and all shall cry God save the king.
Economic Regulation and the Cloth Industry in seventeenth-century England
Authors: Cooper J. P.
Published: March 2007

Preoccupation with the policies of governments as a major theme in the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is now unfashionable with economic historians. However, masters of Oxford colleges and professors of social history can afford to be out of fashion. According to Mr Hill, ‘The Middle Ages in industry and internal trade also ended in 1641, when the central government lost its power to grant monopolies and to control the administration of poor relief. Attempts to prohibit the activities of middlemen, whether in industry or agriculture now ended…Guild regulations and the privileges of town oligarchies, long opposed by the common lawyers, became far more difficult to enforce…in the long run England's economic liberty, unique at that time in Europe, had a stimulating effect, especially noticeable after 1688 confirmed the political gains of the earlier revolution.’ Or as Professor Perkin claims '… the landed rulers of England… from the Restoration adopted the dynamic policy of laissez-faire in internal industry which Adam Smith… was to advocate in foreign trade.’ ‘Laissez-faire… was the direct consequence of the breakdown at the Civil War of the “Privy Council” system of central control.
Decadence or Shift? Changes in the Civilization of Italy and Europe in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Authors: Koenigsberger H. G.
Published: March 2007

The idea that certain periods and certain countries were outstanding in their contribution to civilization is as old as the writing of literary and art history. ‘All ages have produced heroes and politicians’, wrote Voltaire in his Siècle de Louis XIV; ‘all peoples have experienced revolutions: all histories are practically equal for him who does not want to remember anything but facts. But whoever thinks and, what is rarer still, whoever has good taste, will count only four centuries in the history of the world.’ According to Voltaire, one needed to remember only the Greece of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the Rome of Caesar and Augustus, Medicean Italy, and France in the century of Louis XIV. Almost two hundred years earlier, Vasari had pointed to the same phenomenon in Italy. In the introduction to his Life of Michelangelo he says that God in his mercy had shown pity on the vain endeavours of man by sending down to earth a spirit who could work perfection in every art and profession, in painting, sculpture and architecture, no less than in moral philosophy and poetry. And since Florence was more deserving of this grace than all other cities, because of the great and marvellous achievements of Cimabue and Giotto, of Donatello, Brunelleschi and Leonardo, he wanted ‘to crown the perfection merited by all these achievements through one of her citizens’.
The Treaty of Brétigny, 1360
Authors: Le Patourel John
Published: March 2007

The course of events, military and diplomatic, which led from the battle of Poitiers (19 September 1356) to the ratification of the treaty of Brétigny (24 October 1360) was fully worked out, half a century ago, by Delachenal, in his great Histoire de Charles V. His narrative, and his treatment of the policies and ambitions underlying the events, have won general acceptance. He had studied the French evidence apparently exhaustively and showed himself to be well acquainted with the English documents. It was he who first suggested that a document bound up into Cotton MS. Caligula D.III was a draft of the terms agreed upon in May 1358, and this, among other things, enabled him to give a connected and intelligible account of the diplomacy of these years, which is poorly documented even by medieval standards.
The Council of the West
Authors: Youings Joyce A.
Published: March 2007

Nearly thirty years ago, Dr Caroline Skeel searched both the public records and local archives for material relating to the ‘Council in the West Parts of the Realm’ established by Henry VIII. She could find out practically nothing about its proceedings, but, in a paper read to this society, she did put forward a number of suggestions regarding the purpose of the council and the reasons for its comparatively short life. These suggestions have been the basis for the necessarily brief references to the Council of the West in subsequent histories of the period. It has become generally accepted that the council was established for the purpose of tightening up the machinery of justice and administration in an unsettled part of the kingdom, and in particular as a means of forestalling the trouble which was expected to follow the dissolution of the monasteries in the region. Its early disappearance has been attributed to various causes, sheer redundancy, local opposition and Henry's desire to placate the common lawyers.
The Origins and Early History of the Keeper of the Peace
Authors: Harding Alan
Published: March 2007

The office of the justice of the peace developed during the fourteenth century from that of the keeper of the peace who held inquests and received presentments, and the process has been traced in great detail by Professor Putnam. In 1925, Professor Cam assigned some records of a keeper's inquests to 1277 and so carried the beginnings of the earlier office well back into the thirteenth century.Custodes pacisof a still earlier period Professor Cam dismissed as ‘extraordinary’ keepers, ‘whose existence is explained by the special conditions arising out of the struggle between the king and the baronial party’. But these earlier keepers are not confined to the period of civil war; a survey of them is necessary to the history of the justice of the peace, and it is this which the present paper attempts to provide. Lambard's description of these early keepers is useful as a starting-point:

The Sheriffs I call ordinary Conservators of the Peace, because their authority was then ordinary, always one, and the same well enough knowen: But the extraordinary Conservator, as he was endowed with an higher power, so was he not ordinarily appointed, but in times of great trouble only, much like as the Lieutenants of shires are now in our days. And he had charge to defend the coasts and country, both from foreign and inward enemies, and might command the sheriff and all the shire to aid and assist him.

The earliest keepers supplemented the sheriffs in the policing of the countryside, especially in times of crisis and during the threat of invasion; and these ‘great troubles’ were frequent enough to make the keeper an increasingly permanent official.
The Church in England between the Death of Bede and the Danish Invasions
Authors: Fisher D. J. V.
Published: March 2007

Until a few years ago, it was customary to assume that the pre-Conquest Church in England enjoyed two golden ages—between the arrival of Theodore of Tarsus and the death of Bede, and the age of St. Dunstan; and that from Bede's death until the Danish invasions, and from the death of Dunstan until the Norman Conquest, the Church stagnated and even declined. Justice has now been done to the last phase of the Anglo-Saxon Church. More tentatively it has been suggested that its shortcomings in the eighth and ninth centuries were less serious than had once been supposed. It is the purpose of this paper to question whether for the earlier period the process of rehabilitation has gone for enough.
The Origins of the Commission System in the West India Trade The Alexander Prize Essay
Authors: Davies K. G.
Published: March 2007

The half-century which followed the capture of Jamaica in 1655 was characterized by the consolidation rather than by the expansion of the English interest in the West Indies. In the political sphere this consolidation took several forms. The acquisition of Jamaica, by far the largest English West Indian colony, and the termination of proprietary rule in, the Caribee Islands in 1663 brought the greater part of the English West Indian empire under the direct administration of the Crown. As a corollary to this extension of Crown rule, the creation of effective institutions for the government of these and other colonies became a matter of urgent necessity. After a series of experiments in the decade following the Restoration, the constitution in 1672 of the Council of Trade and Plantations inaugurated 'a more thorough system of colonial control than had been established by any of its predecessors'. The sum effect of these developments was that London became, in a way that it had never been before, the place where all the major decisions affecting the destinies of the West Indies were taken. From London there issued not only Crown-appointed governors and a stream of Orders-in-Council, but also declarations of the King's pleasure on such minor questions as appointments to colonial judgeships and seats in colonial councils.1 To London there flowed, besides acts of colonial legislatures for approval or rejection, a torrent of complaints and petitions for redress.
Presidential Address: State Trials under Richard II
Authors: Plucknett T. F. T.
Published: March 2007

With the accession of Richard II, the political plot thickens. Crisis follows crisis, and each time there is a spectacular state trial. At times there is an air of good humour, even indulgence, in the conduct of these affairs, but as the reign proceeds they become more grim, ending in such savagery as is rare in our political history. Modern historians have contributed much new material to the study of this reign, and yet the result is not an increase of clarity; the more we learn, the more obscure the whole story becomes. There seems an unmistakable likeness between the successive crises and their accompanying state trials, and yet it is hard to define it in terms of politics. They seem to be all of them variations—one might say Enigma Variations—upon an undisclosed theme which still eludes us.
The Social Origins and Provenance of the English Bishops during the Reign of Edward II
Authors: Edwards K.
Published: March 2007

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.
The Other Face of Mercantilism
Authors: Wilson Charles
Published: March 2007

‘In England’, Sir John Seeley once wrote, ‘it is our custom to I alter things butto leave their names unaltered.’ Anyone who wished to test the truth of the dictum historiographically might examine the history of the word ‘mercantilism’. It has borne many, sometimes oddly conflicting, meanings, but they have had at any rate one thing in common: they have all been in some degree unpalatable to those reared in the traditions of English liberal thought. It was as the conspiracy of a mercantile minority out to line its pockets at the expense of the rest of the community that the system was first depicted by the classical economists. The interpretation of the German school of historical economists a century later was certainly no less distasteful to the liberal mind. To Bismarckian Germans it might appear seemly to condone the pursuit of aggression and covet its rewards. But even Chamber-lainites—like W. A. S. Hewins—amongst English historians had their doubts, and to George Unwin state ‘policy’ was simply a sham—the supreme illustration of the evils of bigness. The economic actions of the political body were not even the early thrustings of a lusty infant, but the morbid twitchings of disease. And Unwin, who believed that historians should be concerned with the life of communities, not with the actions of states, found more sympathizers in his profession (one suspects) than Cunning-ham, who was nearer to the German tradition. Others, misliking what they took to be the moral and intellectual confusion of mer-cantilists and their works, agreed to deny any title of coherence to folly so diverse and deplorable.
People and Government in Southern Asia
Authors: Tinker Hugh
Published: March 2007

Almost everywhere in southern Asia, forms of government have derived from the Hindu concept of kingship. The Sukraniti, a medieval political treatise, provides a statement of later Hindu belief:

The King is the ruler, protector, and benefactor of the people …he is lord of this earth because of his deeds in the previous births … The King should make the subjects acquire the habits of performing their duties by the use of his terrible sceptre… The Prince who is virtuous is a part of the gods….