bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Bureaucracy in Elizabethan England: The Office of Naval Ordnance as a Case Study
Authors: Smith Robert J.
Published: November 2007

Tales of the maritime exploits of Elizabethan captains and favorable accounts of their part in shaping England's history are commonplace. For example, the actions of William Wynter's squadron against a French fleet in the Firth of Forth in 1560 led J. E. Neale to remark that “The Elizabethan navy had done its task in its first enterprise with complete efficiency and no fuss.…” Few can dispute the positive evaluation Neale and other historians have made of the navy as an effective arm of defense and foreign policy. An emphasis on the military and diplomatic role, however, has obscured another important aspect of the Elizabethan navy. William Wynter and other Elizabethan seamen also served the navy, and thus the nation, in capacities which have received less attention than their maritime exploits.

In addition to active duty at sea, Wynter served as Master of Naval Ordnance. Although the activities of a bureaucrat were not as glamorous as those of a fleet commander, the valor of the Elizabethan captains would have been of little consequence if the ships in which they sailed had not been properly equipped. It was essential that some sort of administrative network be operative in order to coordinate the needs of the navy with the sources of supply. If the ships were not well equipped and in good repair, neither courage nor skill would have enabled the Elizabethan navy to complete its enterprises efficiently. One of these indispensable functions, that of providing common but essential materials and services, was performed by the Office of Naval Ordnance.
Lord Bute, Newcastle, Prussia, and the Hague Overtures: A Re-Examination
Authors: Schweizer Karl W.
Published: November 2007

Britain's abortive attempt in January 1762 to conciliate Austria and restore the “Old System”—generally known as the Hague Overture—and its subsequent impact on Frederick II of Prussia (then Britain's ally), has never been investigated in detail. Altogether, only two works have ever focused on the episode directly: a brief, but in some ways useful monograph by A. von Ruville, the biographer of Pitt and a later article by W. L. Dorn. Essentially advancing the same interpretation, both authors agree that: Newcastle, by unduly interfering in the Northern Department (held by the Earl of Bute), stands solely responsible for the misleading proposals transmitted to Vienna; and that Bute, lacking a definite policy of his own, submissively followed Newcastle's lead throughout and finally, Kaunitz divulged the story in its most expansive form to Berlin where, as a result, it irreparably damaged Britain's already tarnished reputation. Though forming the nucleus of what is probably the traditional or standard account, endorsed uncritically by most historians up-to-date (among them D. B. Horn, F. Spencer, and R. Browning), these conclusions are highly questionable if not inaccurate, and clearly require substantial revision and modification when reappraised within a wider framework of documentary evidence. Equally, certain important, inter-related aspects have never been studied at all: for instance, the motive forces behind Newcastle's initial formulation of the scheme; the ambivalent role played by Lord Bute; the views and aims of the chosen mediator, Prince Louis of Brunswick; and the deliberations of Baron Knyphausen and Louis Michell, the Prussian envoys in London. This article by utilizing new material from heretofore unexplored sources, aims not only to rectify these and other vital defects, to provide a more coherent, comprehensive outline of events, but also to assess the significance of this episode for Anglo-Prussian relations during a singularly critical period of diplomatic history.
Cromwell's Diplomatic Blunder: The Relationship Between the Western Design of 1654–55 and the French Alliance of 1657
Authors: Battick John F.
Published: November 2007

The principal historians of the Cromwellian period, from S. R. Gardiner to Christopher Hill, have asserted that Oliver Cromwell was a master of statesmanship whose foreign policy was guided by clear, though perhaps archaic, objectives; that his diplomacy was always aggressive, and largely successful; and that with him England entered into her rightful place in the community of nations. These axioms have been repeated in every textbook. The phenomenon is not unknown in recent history where, until A.J.P. Taylor suggested differently, few English writers dared to question the culpability of Adolf Hitler in bringing on the 1939-1945 war. Though Mr. Taylor's views excited critical comment, they have not been without supporters, and are being addressed by historians of the Twentieth century. This essay re-examines the diplomacy of the Cromwellian period, specifically in the years 1654 through 1657. It suggests that a revision of long-established views is in order.

Milestones of English foreign affairs during the Protectorate exhibit an apparent uniformity of policy. From the Treaty of Westminster of April 1654 to the Battle of the Dunes, June 14, 1658, the trend was towards a firm association with France, with the ultimate objective to destroy Spanish power in Europe and the Western Hemisphere. Such a generalization must be treated with caution, however, for it can be demonstrated that the course of English policy between the conclusion of the First Dutch War and the death of Oliver Cromwell was guided less by a desire for an alliance with France than by a series of miscalculations, the cumulative effect of which left the Protector little choice but to join with France, and thereby to assist in the establishment of the hegemony of Louis XIV.
The West Midlands, 1760-1793: Politics, Public Opinion and Regional Identity in the English Provinces during the late Eighteenth Century
Authors: Money John
Published: November 2007

In these Midland districts, the traveller passed rapidly from one phase of English life to another; after looking down on a village dirty with coal dust, noisy with the shaking of looms, he might skirt a parish all of fields, high hedges and deep rutted lanes; after the coach had rattled over the pavement of a manufacturing town, the scene of riots and trades union meetings, it would take him in another ten minutes into a rural region where the neighbourhood of the town was only felt in the advantage of a near market for corn, cheese, and hay, and where men with a considerable banking account were accustomed to say that “they never meddled with politics themselves.”

The passage is from the preface to George Eliot's novel Felix Holt the Radical, written between 1865 and 1867. It describes a world which the writer knew intimately; she grew up in it, and it provided the setting for much of her best work. George Eliot's father, Robert Evans, whose influence profoundly affected the novelist's development, was born in Staffordshire two years before the beginning of the American War of Independence. He was apprenticed to the family trade of builder and carpenter, and rose through “his large knowledge of building, of mines, of plantations, of various branches of valuation and measurement” to become agent to Francis Newdigate of Arbury in 1806. Newdigate had interests in the North Warwickshire coalfield and in the canal navigations which, before the coming of the railway, had played such an important part in the development of the region. It might be inferred from this that he was among the most advanced landowners of the day. Progressive notions in estate management, however, went hand in hand with an enlightened, but profoundly conservative paternalism in political and social affairs: an attitude shared by his steward, whom Marian Evans remembered to have pronounced “the word ‘Government’ in a tone that charged it with awe, and made it a part of my effective religion, in contrast to the word ‘rebel,’ which seemed to carry the stamp of evil in its syllables.”
Daniel O'Connell and the Leadership Crisis within the Irish Repeal Party, 1843-1845
Authors: Quigley Kathleen
Published: November 2007

The main source of the criticism of the political leadership of Daniel O'Connell during the last three years of his life emanated from inside his own Irish Repeal Party. These attacks crystallized around the conflict that arose between the moral force tactics of O'Connell and the more militant and republican and separatist critics of these policies. The indictment of these critics, who became known as the Young Ireland group, has not been seriously challenged by Irish national historians since. Oliver MacDonagh admitted that before 1843 O'Connell had “blazed the trail at Westminster” and had begun the political enlightenment of the masses, involving the Church in his movement. Yet “in the end he failed ingloriously. After 1843 his creation began to disintegrate until two decades later his purposes and techniques seemed almost to have vanished.”

O'Connell's flexible and pragmatic genius during his prime has remained unquestioned. Then he forged, out of the defeat and division of the Act of Union, a political link between the Irish Catholic Lower Nation and the English Protestant Upper Nation, and thereby created the first Irish parliamentary party that could speak with a national voice. What, then, was the basis of these imputations against his last three years? An answer to this question may be provided through a study of O'Connell's particular application of his moral force tactics during his last three years. Two major events will be selected to pinpoint these policies of O'Connell and the conflict within Repeal that ensued. The first occurred in 1843 at Clontarf where O'Connell made a firm declaration on the physical limitations of his objectives. For this he has been reproached for his insincerity and timidity when threatened by the British government. The second occurred in the debate over the College Bill in 1845 in the Repeal Association. There the ideological emphasis of his moral force tactics, namely, his Catholic alliance, was criticized as too divisive and outdated for the Irish national movement. Thus, to O'Connell was attributed both the failure to show bold leadership in a moment of national peril, and an unrealistic and autocratic inability to overcome the sectarian and religious division within Repeal.
Charles Masterman and National Health Insurance
Authors: Mason Francis M.
Published: November 2007

In 1926, Lord Beaverbrook introduced in his Sunday Express a biographical series under the oxymoron: “Splendid Failures.” The purpose was to praise public figures who had been branded failures. The first person Beaverbrook chose as a subject for his new feature was Charles F. G. Masterman, who fulfilled the purpose of the series, Beaverbrook believed, because Masterman's success outweighed his failure to endure on the political scene. Dictating Beaverbrook's choice was Masterman's work in carrying through Part I (which dealt with health insurance) of the National Insurance Act of 1911. Beaverbrook concluded that Masterman should be given “full credit” for this accomplishment. Charles Masterman was not undeserving of Beaverbrook's attention for no one worked with more dedication than he to guarantee the Parliamentary passage of this important Edwardian social reform. Masterman's support for health insurance has generally been acknowledged, but his administrative ability, used to guarantee the practical implementation of the social reform legislation, has seldom been recognized. In fact, Masterman as a political figure has received only limited attention. This perhaps has been the result of the concern by historians with the decline in the fortunes of the Liberal Party as well as their tendency to label Masterman a pessimist. Masterman, nevertheless, regarded health insurance optimistically, satisfied that it represented a positive outcome of his long-time involvement with social criticism and hoping that its success would encourage the Liberal Party to assume a more radical social reform policy.
Religious Nonconformity and Social Conflict: Philip Gammon's Star Chamber Story
Authors: Block Joseph S.
Published: November 2007

In the summer of 1536 several officials and other residents of the Devonshire town of Axminster brought suit in the Court of Star Chamber against a shoemaker named Philip Gammon. They alleged in their Bill of Complaint that Gammon was infected with diverse points and articles of heresy. Chief among these was that Gammon, on a number of occasions, had rejected the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar, saying that “It is not the very body of Christ, but it is a sign and in itself a very piece of bread.”

The case is unique in its time. It is the only action for heresy taken up by the Henrician Court of Star Chamber, a tribunal which normally heard matters touching the enforcement of statute law or breaches of the peace. Familiar with the legal terrain, the plaintiffs also accused Gammon of resisting arrest, threatening a crown officer with a knife, and disobeying royal warrants and commands. Lastly, they asserted that the defendant had been maintained in his illegal activities by the politically potent Carew family, thereby raising before members of the court the specter of the overmighty subject, a haunting prospect to loyal Henrician councillors.
The Last Years of the First Earl of Salisbury, 1610–1612
Authors: Lindquist Eric N.
Published: November 2007

It is generally assumed that the earl of Salisbury's last years were a time of political decline, largely because of the failure of the Great Contract. “In 1610,” one historian has written recently, “Salisbury lost the confidence of both king and Parliament. The collapse of the Great Contract, in which so much of his credit was bound up, was a blow from which his prestige never recovered.” The outlines of the story are familiar. Salisbury, lord treasurer since 1608 and James's chief minister since the beginning of the reign, was securely established in the king's trust and affection at the beginning of 1610. His fall began with court opposition to the Great Contract, opposition which it has been suggested may have been the real cause of the contract's failure. According to Godfrey Goodman, a “great peer” on his deathbed advised the king

not to lose any part of his prerogative, especially the Court of Wards and other great royalties which his predecessors had, for if he should part with these he should hardly be able to govern; that the subject was more obedient and did observe the King more for these than for any laws or other respect whatsoever; that the subject was bound to relieve him and supply his occasions without any such contractings.

The dying peer blamed those who “did endeavour to engross and monopolise the King, and kept other able men out of his service.” From that point, according to Goodman, Salisbury, “who had been a great stirrer in that business, and was the man aimed at, began to decline.”
Toryism to Tamworth: The Triumph of Reform, 1827-1835
Authors: Davis Richard W.
Published: November 2007

The Great Reform Act has received a great deal of much needed attention in the last decade. One mode of getting at its significance has, however, been largely ignored. The mode usually followed, particularly recently, has been to examine what the Whig framers of the Act thought they were about, and then, by means of electoral analysis, whether they achieved their object. The two questions are not necessarily the same, of course. For example, most historians of the period would now agree that Professor D. C. Moore, however valuable and stimulating his contribution to the debate, is wrong about Whig intentions. Some may suspect he is also at least in part wrong about the electoral system which grew out of the Act. That, however, has yet to be proven. Yet, even if we could know all about the reformed electoral system, we would still not know all about the impact of the Great Reform Act. For in history what is important is not only what actually happened, but what people of the time believe happened. It is to this sort of question that I want to turn my attention in this paper. Because one of the best ways to appreciate the great significance of the Reform Act is to examine the change it wrought in the attitudes of politicians, particularly of Tory politicians.

Undoubtedly, the two most important of the recent works on the Act are the books of Professors Brock and Cannon. Essentially, both represent a vindication of the main outlines of the old “Whig interpretation.” Thus, both Brock and Cannon see the Act as a response to mounting pressures out-of-doors, the culmination of a long historical process, and an important turning point in the emergence of a more liberal and broadly based political system. Nor does either doubt that the Act marked an important concession to the middle classes, or that it deserves its old designation of “Great.”
William Pitt, Lord Bute, and the Peace Negotiations with France, May-September 1761
Authors: Schweizer Karl W.
Published: November 2007

The failure of the Anglo-French peace negotiations of 1761—the so-called Stanley-Bussey talks—is usually ascribed to two principal causes: British intransigence over the Canadian fisheries and, closely related, the inadequacy of William Pitt's diplomacy; the fact that he lacked both the technique and personality for successful negotiation. British historians in particular, have tended to assess the course and failure of the negotiations with exclusive reference to the policies of the elder Pitt, another example of the mastery that Pitt supposedly wielded over government and administration at this time. The picture they present is that of a domineering figure, subduing cabinet opposition to his extreme demands with the same harsh tactics he employed against defeated France. In the words of Kate Hotblack (taking a view which is still current), “Until his resignation in October, Pitt dominated the peace negotiations as he had dominated the war.”

The purpose of this article is to question this interpretation by showing that Pitt, leading political figure though he was, did not singly control the cabinet and its decisions, but worked more in collaboration with his coministers, most notably his fellow secretary Lord Bute, who played a much greater role in decision-making than has hitherto been recognized. Indeed, if any single factor proved decisive for the deliberations with France, it was their alliance—long in materializing, uneasy in practice, and brief in duration. While Bute sided with Pitt, the latter managed to prevail against his opponents in Council and Britain's policy remained firm; when early in August of 1761, Bute shifted support to the moderates, those favoring last minute concessions on the fishery, Pitt swiftly lost ground and resigned shortly after.
Social Darwinism: The Two Sources
Authors: Ruse Michael
Published: November 2007

“Social Darwinism” means almost as many things as there are people who have written on it; but this paper takes it to be a generic term for theories of human social development and maintenance which are in some way inspired by biological evolutionary theories—this “inspiration” could take the form of seeing human sociality as a straight extension of the animal (and perhaps plant) domain, or it could involve some sort of analogy. In discussion of the roots of social Darwinism two names invariably appear—that of Charles Darwin himself, obviously, and that of Herbert Spencer. Here, however is the end of agreement. Who was the more important and influential, divides scholars right down the middle; as also do the questions of who really came first and whether their doctrines were essentially the same.

Because there is so much disagreement, no one has yet adequately argued to precisely the right conclusion. To anticipate, this paper argues that both Darwin and Spencer represent fundamental advances (or, less normatively, shifts beyond) their common major source, Thomas Robert Malthus; and that although there was overlap (and undoubted mutual borrowing) their positions were fundamentally dissimilar. Consequently, a search for the roots of Social Darwinism yields two sources, Darwin and Spencer respectively, and that what came from these sources was different. This essay begins with a brief discussion of Malthus's views, paying special attention to his relevance to social Darwinian lines of thought, considers the views of Spencer and Darwin on human social structures, and concludes by comparing the two thinkers, noting their similarities, but arguing that these are far outweighed by their differences.
Time, Death, and the Next Generation: The Early Elizabethan Recusancy Policy, 1558–1574
Authors: LaRocca John J.
Published: November 2007

In a recent article, Caroline M. Hibbard noted that recent work on Tudor-Stuart recusancy has focused on the enforcement of royal and statutory policy on the local level and has examined the social composition of the recusant community. These studies have revealed that the recusant community was not dominated by priests, not subject to the political directives of the papacy, and not plotting rebellion. The problem inherent in these local studies, as Professor Hibbard points out, is that they do not explain why the English were anti-Catholic and they do not examine the international character of the English Catholic Community. This article is an attempt to view the recusant problem from the perspective of the monarch and the privy council, because both monarch and privy council were aware of the international character of Catholicism and both stated clearly in their policies toward recusants the grounds of their objection to the Catholic community. An analysis of the recusancy policy established by Elizabeth between 1559 and 1574 reveals that her primary objection to the recusants was not religious but political. The recusants denied a fundamental claim of the monarch: the headship of the church and, therefore, the claim that the monarch was the source of all power within the realm. This article, then, will examine the ways in which she wished to contain a minority who denied her supreme power in the realm and the circumstances which caused the queen and the council to change that policy.
Masturbation and Insanity: Henry Maudsley and the Ideology of Sexual Repression
Authors: Gilbert Arthur N.
Published: November 2007

Throughout the nineteenth century, auto-eroticism was viewed as a great evil, a threat to the individual and to society. At one time or another, nearly every disease which nineteenth-century doctors could not cure was blamed on self-abuse. Summing up the relationship between masturbation and illness, French doctor Eugene Beckland wrote in 1842, “Many physicians of high authority have maintained that two-thirds of the diseases to which the human race is liable have had their origins in certain solitary practices ….” As to the impact of masturbation on society, Dr. Révéillé Parisé observed in 1828,

In my opinion, neither plague, nor war, nor small pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicous habit of onanism. It is the destroying element of civilized societies, which is constantly in action and gradually undermines the health of a nation.

Since 1953, when René Spitz published his important article on the subject, a number of scholars have tried to explain the intense concern with masturbation in the nineteenth century. Spitz argued that the heightened interest in self-abuse reflected the shift to Protestant culture with its emphasis on individual responsibility for sin. More recently, John and Robin Haller used similar arguments to explain it. Other writers such as E. H. Hare and Edward Shorter have argued that one reason why fear of masturbation increased was that people began indulging in the solitary vice to a greater extent than ever before. Men and women were masturbating more—and if they read medical journals on the subject—enjoying it less. Hare speculated that this was because of fear of venereal disease caused by intercourse, a great concern in the nineteenth century. Masturbation was safer. Shorter, who saw masturbation as part of a general increase in sexual appetite, asserted that it was “unlikely that masturbation … was practiced on a wide scale before the premarital sexual revolution.” It is not likely that historians will uncover reliable data on incidence of self-abuse to prove or disprove this hypothesis.
The Revival of the Anti-Maynooth Campaign in Britain, 1850–52
Authors: Wallis Frank
Published: November 2007

In nineteenth century Britain, many evangelicals looked upon the Catholic Church as the incarnation of Antichrist. Their particular interpretation of the Protestant Bible, and especially the Book of Revelation, made it important for them to fight the enemy of true religion. During the 1850s and 1860s the most significant example of this struggle was the campaign to abolish state funding of the Catholic seminary at Maynooth in Ireland, a subsidy which parliament had approved in 1845 over the protests of a national anti-Maynooth crusade. It is the crisis of 1845 upon which historians have concentrated their studies. The furor over the endowment of Maynooth subsided, but when the Papal Aggression affair of 1850–51 stimulated “No Popery” sentiment, the ultra-Protestants of Britain revived their agitation against Maynooth. The impelling force behind this renewed campaign was principally doctrinal, based on a view of Biblical truth which cast the Catholic Church in the role of Antichrist and made Maynooth appear to be the center of rebellion, disloyalty, and immorality for all of Ireland. One scholar has written that the Antichrist idea intensified feelings of anti-Catholicism and influenced parliament as late as 1851. This essay will demonstrate that the utilization of the Antichrist motif, when combined with several other negative notions about the Catholic Church, helped produce and sustain a revival of anti-Catholicism in the form of the campaign against Maynooth, well beyond the events of 1851.
Dating Civil War Pamphlets, 1641–1644
Authors: Greenberg Stephen J.
Published: November 2007

The English Civil War and Interregnum produced an astounding number of political tracts, pamphlets, and broadsides that have long fascinated historians and bibliographers. The lack of any effective control over pamphlet content after the elimination of the Court of Star Chamber in the summer of 1641, coupled with the use of printed propaganda by both the king and Parliament, combined to create a body of free-speaking literature that is unmatched in scope and daring. Extensive microfilming and cataloguing projects have made the pamphlets widely accessible to study, but have failed to answer basic questions about the nature of the pamphlets themselves. Fbr example, how soon after an event could a pamphlet be available? How many pamphlets were actually being printed (and when) as opposed to what was being entered in the registers of the Stationers' Company of London? In other words, what could a concerned citizen find for sale at the bookstalls on a given morning?

It is probably impossible to answer these questions for more than a fraction of the pamphlets. Yet, by examining what records do remain, it is possible to gain at least a sense of what the pamphleteers were capable of in serving a public avid for news.
Parliament and the Governance of Elizabethan England: A Review
Authors: Jones Norman L.
Published: November 2007

For thirty years J. E. Neale’s portrait of the Elizabethan parliaments was the stuff of textbooks. Highly political and bedeviled by puritanical protobolsheviks, the Virgin Queen’s parliaments were painted as the nursery in which the modern parliamentary system, characterized by an organized Opposition, was born. In the last decade, however, Neale’s interpretations have been challenged and overturned, making obsolete most of the histories of Elizabethan England available to students. The purpose of this article is to assess the new research on Elizabethan Parliaments, to summarize what we now know about the role Parliament played in governing England, and to suggest what remains to be done.

In order to make sense of the newly emerging history of Elizabeth’s parliaments it is important to recap the working assumptions that dominated the first great era of Elizabethan parliamentary history, the Neale/Notestein age. Much of the recent work on Parliament has been in reaction to these mens’ work.
A Country Divided? English Politics and the Nine Years' War
Authors: McJimsey Robert D.
Published: November 2007

The accession of William III began a revolution in English foreign policy. Under the Dutch king's auspices England joined a Grand Alliance against the France of Louis XIV and shouldered the burdens of a principal partner in a major continental war. Not only did the war place grave financial strains upon the state; the formulation, administration, and execution of war policy also became areas of continual concern. These concerns combined to raise general questions about England's proper role in European affairs and about the proper application of English power in service of those interests. They also cast William III and the politicians into a constitutional no-man's land in which the royal monopoly over war and peace had to contest with the need to secure annual supplies. It has been the historian's task to explain how William III's “continental commitment” to land warfare, alliances, and defense of European liberties survived this political struggle.
Arguments for an Execution: Queen Elizabeth's “White Paper” and Lord Burghley's “Blue Pencil”
Authors: Heisch Allison
Published: November 2007

On the morning of 8 February 1587 (n.s.) Mary Stuart was executed at Fotheringay Castle in Northampton for her complicity in the Babington Plot—the last of the great conspiracies to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I and to place her distant cousin Mary on the English throne in order to re-establish England as a Catholic state. Particularly because of remarks Queen Elizabeth allegedly made to William Davison, to whom the execution warrant was entrusted, nearly every modern historian who has written about the trial and death of Mary Stuart has speculated about the possibility that Queen Elizabeth, particularly in the days immediately preceding Mary's beheading, considered assassination of her cousin as a politic alternative to the axe. Although Elizabeth's chief councillor, Lord Burghley, wished to proceed with what (at least publicly) he regarded as a legal activity, it has not been at all points clear how he was able to persuade the queen to take the steps necessary to accomplish the execution; because Mary was her relative, because she was female, because the doctrine of Divine Right of Kings (to which Elizabeth frequently resorted as proof of her own authority) specified that monarchs were subject to God's judgment alone (and not civil law), and finally, because of the foreign policy implications of executing a woman who was French, Queen of Scotland, near heir to the English throne, and a devout Catholic, Elizabeth hesitated to proceed.
Party Turns? Or, Whigs and Tories Get Off Scott Free
Authors: Harris Tim
Published: November 2007

The Restoration period has attracted renewed scholarly interest in recent years, with the result that many of our commonly held assumptions about politics in the reign of Charles II have come under increased critical scrutiny. Nowhere is this more true than for the Exclusion Crisis and the subsequent Tory Reaction. For a long time we thought we had the dynamics of this period worked out: the Exclusion Crisis gave birth to two parties—the Whigs and Tories—with the Whigs being the anti-Catholic, exclusionist, and Parliamentarian party, who carried with them the support of the people out-of-doors, and the Tories being the party of divine-right, absolute monarchy, anti-populist in their outlook, putting their belief in the sanctity of the hereditary principle before the interests of the people. The Whig challenge was essentially defeated with the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament in 1681, and thereafter the 1680s saw a drift towards monarchical absolutism, until this trend was defeated by the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89.
Forgery and the Literacy of the Early Common
Law
Authors: O'Brien Bruce
Published: November 2007

The birth of the common law in medieval England
has given rise to a long paternity suit. Too often
most of the credit is given to Henry II and his
advisers burning the midnight oil crafting assizes
for the governance of the realm. Here, the king
created something new: a system of royal justice,
namely the king's court at the Exchequer and the
eyre, in which justices passed judgment based on
common rules and kept records of their
proceedings. The problem with this picture is that
it forgets that, when Henry and those advisers
sprang to the task at hand, constructing a royal
law for the entire realm, the tools they needed
for the task were already in their hands. The
county courts, for example, on which Henry II's
extension of royal jurisdiction over seigneurial
courts depended, were in place and eager to
administer royal laws. The Anglo-Saxons had set up
these shire, as well as hundred and wapentake,
courts long before, in the tenth and eleventh
centuries. Almost as important, the literacy that
Henry must have relied on to communicate his
orders to the Exchequer, eyre, counties, hundreds,
and wapentakes was ready and waiting. This legal
literacy, in fact, should be considered the sine
qua non of the common law, for without it, the
centralization of the courts, which was the
catalyst for the emergence of the common law,
would have remained a royal fantasy. From where
did the extensive literacy of the late
twelfth-century kingdom come? Without an answer to
the question of how the late twelfth-century
kingdom had become so literate, the explanation of
the development of the common law, dependent as it
was on its rolls and writs, is sadly
incomplete.
“Communion of the Saints”: Spiritual Reciprocity and the Godly Community in Early Modern England
Authors: Willen Diane
Published: November 2007

Lady Joan Barrington, a puritan matriarch esteemed among the godly as a “lady elect,” experienced a profound spiritual crisis in 1628. She felt anxiety and melancholy over the prospects for her own salvation after the death of her husband Francis. Among those attempting to provide her comfort and counsel was the puritan divine Ezekiel Rogers, her former chaplain. Holding a Barrington living in Yorkshire, Rogers wrote regularly to his benefactress and friend in Essex. In years past he had sought the benefit of her counsel and prayers. Now, in February 1630, he advised Lady Barrington to consult not only her minister but also “the society of God's saints.” He warned against her tendency to keep to herself: among her neighbors were “such as coulde helpe…by telling what God had done for their soules.” This refrain—the importance of mutual help and edification among the godly—Rogers repeated in subsequent correspondence. In January 1632, he suggested various methods to reach understanding and assurance, including the telling postscript: “I much advise you to seeke helpe by the communion of the saintes.”

Ezekiel Rogers was recommending a practice common among the godly. Laity often turned to one another for mutual support, spiritual advice, and constructive criticism in order to cope with the great burdens imposed by the obligation of godliness and the desire for assurance. Owen Watkins identifies such “mutual exhortation” as one of the features of the puritan way of life.
Word and Sign in Elizabethan Conflicts with the Devil
Authors: Sands Kathleen R.
Published: November 2007

Gloriana, Britomart, Astraea, Belphoebe, the Sun in Splendor, England’s Moses, the new Deborah, the Phoenix—Elizabeth I possessed a generous wardrobe of public personas. Monarchy, chastity, divinity, and other intangibles played in the early modern mind as images, personifications, embodiments—the invisible rendered visible. As Clifford Geertz has observed, the Elizabethan imagination was “allegorical, Protestant, didactic, and pictorial; it lived on moral abstractions cast into emblems.” These emblems were culturally ubiquitous, appearing in books and broadsides, painted and carved portraits, architecture, tapestry, jewelry and clothing, armor and weapons, monumental funerary sculpture, wall and ceiling decoration. University students neglected Aristotle in favor of fashionable continental emblem books, and the taste for embellishing houses with emblems extended from the monarchy and aristocracy to the landed gentry and the rising middle class. Peter Daly stresses the psychological impact of emblems on the early modern mind when he observes that emblems were “as immediately and graphically present in this period as illustrated advertising is today.”
Videotaped Interviews with British Historians, 1985–1998
Authors: Adelson Roger , Smith Russell
Published: November 2007

There is an important collection of videotaped interviews with British historians that is now available in London. The Publications Department of the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) has produced twenty-eight videotaped interviews with prominent historians in Britain. More tapes are to be released with others scheduled for production in the future. The historians who have already been interviewed are senior British historians who have made their scholarly contributions since World War II. All the interviews are conducted by younger colleagues who have specialized in the same or related fields of history. Interviewers explore the influences that have shaped the work of the senior historians and encourage the latter to reflect upon their background, training, publications, and careers. Because the historians are selected by an IHR committee, the members of which are mostly economic historians, senior social and economic historians have been more fully represented in the IHR videotapes than other historians. Of the twenty-eight interviews, fifteen of the historians have written mostly about the modern period (nineteenth and twentieth centuries), eight are historians of the early modern period (from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries), three are medievalists, one is a classicist, and one is a historian of science. Concluding this article is an alphabetical list of all the historians interviewed in this series.
Sensational Stories, Endangered Bodies: Women’s Work and the New Journalism in England in the 1890s
Authors: Malone Carolyn
Published: November 2007

The cry of labor has seized the world’s ear. The Press, the Legislature, and the world at large is listening to the voice of labor…. When this journal first resolved to secure a hearing for all working-class questions, there was scarcely a column of a leading London newspaper which was then open. Now, following our lead, every great daily paper has its labor section…. Nor is it only the press which is watchful. It is the readers of the Press….

This self-promoting editorial in the Star in 1891 made a critical point: labor issues were becoming a standard feature in daily newspapers. Sweating, loopholes in factory legislation, and the famous Dock and Match Girls’ strikes were among the subjects found in the pages of papers such as the Star. This trend in reporting was part of the “New Journalism” that developed in England between the 1880s and 1914. In an attempt to cater to the tastes of mass audiences, there was a shift in emphasis from parliamentary and political news to sports, gossip, crime, and sex. Papers, for instance, reported on the brutal Jack the Ripper murders in the East End of London. New journalists and editors, like W. T. Stead and Thomas P. O’Connor, also produced interviews, exposes, and political editorials in order to influence public opinion and promote what Stead called “government by journalism.” Stead produced what has been called the most successful piece of scandal journalism of the nineteenth century, “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon,” which depicted young girls for sale to older men. Passage of the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, which raised the age of consent for sex to sixteen, was one of its political consequences.
Crisis Management: Parliament and Political Stability, 1692-1719
Authors: McJimsey Robert
Published: November 2007

Ever since J. H. Plumb published his Ford Lectures, The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1679-1725 (1966), the topic of political stability has gripped the attention of England’s early modern historians. In particular Plumb’s characterization of the politics of 1679-1722 as “The Rage of Party” was refined by Geoffrey Holmes, whose British Politics in the Age of Anne ushered in a variety of studies of political warfare in what has come to be known as The First Age of Party. These and succeeding works have elaborated and confirmed the existence of deep and severe differences between Whig and Tory partisans, differences renewing animosities extending back to the Civil Wars and generating a self-perpetuating struggle for power. The consequences of this “rage of party” for the formation and execution of policy were daunting. In particular party rage placed three important restrictions on the executive’s room for maneuver. By rendering all political alliances unstable, partisanship limited the ability of the governments of William and Anne to operate as combinations of the parties. Partisanship also put all government servants under the constant threat of defending their conduct from year to year. And partisanship dictated certain policy options while frustrating others.
On Misidentifying Puritans: The Case of Thomas Adams
Authors: McGee J. Sears
Published: November 2007

On the titlepage of his collection of sermons,The Happinesse of the Church(1618), Thomas Adams styled himself “preacher” at St. Gregory’s, London. The term could indicate puritan leanings, and in the nineteenth century Robert Southey went so far as to call Adams “the prose Shakespeare of puritan theologians… scarcely inferior to Fuller in wit or to Taylor in fancy.” Adams often used the word “puritan” pejoratively. Historians, however, have classified as puritans people who rejected the term for themselves, just as political analysts-sometimes justly-classify as “liberals” or “conservatives” politicians who cavil at these terms. The problem, as always, is one of definition, and Adams affords an excellent opportunity to test the adequacy of our definitions. Like “humanist” or “republican,” “puritan” is one of those terms that have come to have a meaning that transcends the circumstances in which they originated. I argue that Adams was not a puritan; he was instead a mainstream Calvinist episcopalian of the kind so convincingly described by Patrick Collinson in his Ford lectures. Nevertheless, an attempt to place Adams in the spectrum of religious opinion has a value beyond merely getting one individual situated. Scholars have contradicted each other in their placing of Adams, and this analysis, by getting him right, will throw light on our understanding of the varieties of Calvinism in early Stuart England.
Heroism, Heroics and the Making of Heroes:
The Anglo-Zulu War of 1879
Authors: Lieven Michael
Published: November 2007

In recent years a number of studies have
examined the function of heroic narratives in the
propaganda of empire and the construction of
“Britishness.” Graham Dawson has argued that such
narratives “became myths of nationhood itself
providing a cultural focus around which the
national community could cohere.” In the light of
the nineteenth-century chivalric ideal, the
Victorian military hero was expected to be “the
embodiment of the virtues of bravery, loyalty,
courtesy, generosity, modesty, purity, and
compassion, and endowed with an indelible sense of
noblesse oblige towards
women, children and social inferiors.” The English
and upper-class image of the “British” hero
served, among other things, to inculcate these
supposedly English characteristics in the Irish,
Scottish, and Welsh. Courage was taken for granted
as the essential characteristic of British
imperial officers in the Victorian period but,
while courage is a personal quality and is not in
itself a quality belonging to the public domain,
heroism is, by contrast, something definitionally
public. The courageous man becomes a hero only
when he is declared to be one. The roots of the
hero are in dramatic narrative, which spans the
epic myth and the reality of war. The hero is
“made” whether in a dramatic fiction or in the
representation of events, though the latter
produces the problem of molding reality to the
requirements of the genre. Military heroes in the
genre of the imperial adventure story and in the
representation of “real” events are hardly
distinguishable, for they are “made” to serve the
same purposes. The hero is part of a story and, as
Northrop Frye has argued, that story or
langue has certain
generic features throughout history. On the other
hand, though the hero is made, the individual can,
and often did, prepare and present himself for the
role.
From Soldier to Peasant? The Land
Settlement Scheme in East Sussex,
1919—1939
Authors: Lockwood Carol A.
Published: November 2007

The English rural myth suggested that
being close to the rhythms of nature, as opposed
to being immersed in the irritations and pollution
of city life, would create a settled, healthy,
content, and loyal population. By the inter-war
period the rural myth depicted an appealing image
of self-sufficient, independent peasants living an
uncomplicated lifestyle based on agricultural
pursuits. In the aftermath of the First World War
this picture of a golden countryside was popular
and admired by social reformers, members of the
government, and the general public. The coalition
government incorporated this myth into its
post-war social legislation and created in 1919 a
land settlement scheme for newly demobilized
soldiers aimed at establishing a new base of
smallholding agricultural workers to populate the
countryside. The myth may have been appealing, but
it turned out to be economically not
self-sustaining and politically it got little more
than lip service. A myth cannot be attained
through mere legislation. This article examines
the land settlement scheme in East Sussex during
the inter-war period and argues that even in an
area seemingly well-suited to such a program, the
scheme was neither practical nor successful in its
attempt to put the myth into practice.
Labour's Rise and the Liberal Demise: A Quantitative Perspective on the Great Debate, 1906–1918
Authors: Fair John D.
Published: November 2007

It all started with George Dangerfield's classic description of the circumstances surrounding the demise of Liberal England prior to World War I. He summarily recognized “that the abandonment of respectable punctilios and worn conventions, which was such a feature of society after the war, had already begun before the war.” Though drawn largely within a social context, it was obvious that Dangerfield's portrayal, especially after the precipitate decline of the Liberal Party in the interwar period, was fraught with political implications. An incubation period of almost a generation followed, but by the early 1960s The Strange Death of Liberal England, by virtue of its brilliant style and sweeping interpretation, had gained international recognition and set the tone for historiography of the Edwardian era. In his 1985 assessment of Dangerfield's impact, Peter Stansky concludes that his “interpretation will not die; no matter how often it may be knocked on the head, it has shaped the way the period is viewed….There can be few works that are so vital after fifty years, as likely to survive for another fifty or as enjoyable to read.” At the outset of the new millennium, Strange Death has lost little of its incandescence.

An important aspect of the book's magnetic appeal is the groundwork it provided for the great debate over the rise of the Labour Party and the decline of the Liberals. Did these phenomena occur suddenly as a result of the First World War or were they already well in place in the pre-war years, especially from 1910 to 1914? The foremost challenge to Dangerfield's thesis, thereby instigating the controversy, came from Trevor Wilson's 1966 study, The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914–1935, which ascribes Liberal misfortunes largely to a crisis of leadership during the war.