bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Neo-Malthusians, Eugenists, and the Declining Birth-Rate in England, 1900-1918
Authors: Soloway Richard Allen 
Published: November 2007

Recent studies of the social history of birth control in America have noted the importance of eugenics in securing the acceptance of family planning between the two world wars. Similarly in England the endorsement of contraception as a method of “race improvement” by eugenists in the scientific, medical, academic and ecclesiastical communities greatly enhanced the credence and respectability of the birth control movement. In the anti-racist, genetically more sophisticated climate since the Second World War it is often forgotten how pervasive eugenic assumptions about human inheritance were in learned and socially elevated circles in the early twentieth century. Belief in the inheritability of myriad physical, psychological and behavioral characteristics, identifiable, even quantifiable, in particular ethnic groups and social classes was reinforced by expert scientific testimony, and, perhaps equally important, middle and upper class prejudices.Birth control leaders, whose respectability was always in some doubt, were for the most part no exception and readily mingled with the estimable worthies who adorned the ranks of the elitist Eugenics Education Society founded in 1907. Several officers of the old Malthusian League, including its last president, Charles Vickery Drysdale, and his wife, Bessie, were early if troublesome recruits to the Society, while Marie Stopes, the most dynamic promoter of birth control in England in the inter-war years, joined in 1912, and eventually became a Life Fellow who left the organization a financial legacy, her famous clinic and much of her library, upon her death in 1958.
The Religious Issue in Mid-Victorian Politics: A Note on a Neglected Source
Authors: Arnstein Walter L. 
Published: November 2007

Students of British history continue to experience a certain haziness as to what precisely differentiated the Liberals and Conservatives of the mid-Victorian era, a haziness by no means allayed by the plethora of recent publications on the social and organizational structure of the nineteenth-century political party system. In 1832 political reform had constituted an apparently decisive issue—at least Grey and Russell had strongly favored it and Peel and Wellington had forthrightly opposed it. In the mid-1840s the Corn Laws had supplied a comparable cause for division. The Whigs and Radicals had provided Peel with his majority, and two-thirds of the Tories had disavowed their leader and resisted the abolition of the Corn Laws to the last.Yet neither of these issues would seem to provide a key to the party rivalry of the 1860s. The manner in which Disraeli played the role of political magician in 1867 and pulled the Reform Act of that year out of his hat provides prima facie evidence that political reform as such was not then fundamental to inter-party rivalry. Nor was agricultural protection, the plank that Derby and Disraeli had quietly removed from their party platform a decade-and-a-half earlier. The cause of Italian unification, which had briefly divided parties in 1859 and had spurred Gladstone to cast his political lot once and for all with Palmerston and Russell, had become a fact and was no longer an issue.
Richard II's Yeomen of the Chamber
Authors: Gillespie James L. 
Published: November 2007

Richard II's attempt to transform his kingdom into an absolute monarchy has provided the basic outline for the traditional interpretation of the reign. The role of the royal household and especially of the chamber has always loomed large in such an interpretation. It was the subject of Thomas Haxey's famous complaint of 1397, and it had a special interest for Thomas F. Tout who undertook a very detailed study of Richard's reign in volumes three and four of his classic Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England. Tout credited the king's tutor, Simon Burley, with the development of the chamber staff as an instrument of royal tyranny:
We may feel pretty sure that it was Burley's intelligence which developed the chamber into a special preserve of the court party, so that the chamber knights and esquires could always be trusted to further the wishes of the sovereign. There was no effort to make it an organized instrument of prerogative: it was rather the office which held the reserve of workers for the king's cause, who, as individuals, did what in them lay to carry out their master's wishes.
Raleigh, Hariot, and Atheism in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England
Authors: Webb Susanne S. 
Published: November 2007

It has long been accepted as fact that Raleigh was an important figure in a coterie of maverick intellectuals, generally referred to as the School of Night. The assumptions are that this coterie was a structured group; that it concerned itself with iconoclastic attitudes toward religion and philosophy, politics, literature, and the sciences; and that the Raleigh coterie was in active opposition to a rival group, the members of which included the Earl of Essex, the Earl of Southampton, and William Shakespeare. However, two concerns need clarification to evaluate the evidence that Raleigh was a member of such a group: were the attacks on him as an atheist justified, and what were his attitudes toward intellectual pursuits ? It would then be most practical to ascertain on what evidence the School of Night theory is based, how it is presented and interpreted by twentieth century scholars, and whether or not earlier accounts of Raleigh ascribe to such theories, examining along the way what Raleigh's beliefs were as can be determined by his writings and what contemporary attitudes were toward Raleigh and his associates. It may then be possible to judge if there is justification for asserting that Raleigh was a leader--or even a member--of such a group, and indeed, if any such group is likely to have existed.In 1592, in answer to Elizabeth's proclamation against the Jesuits, Father Robert Parsons published his Responsio in which he deplored the notion that Raleigh might become a privy councilor and thus introduce an atheistic policy into England, through the agency of his conjurer, usually taken to be Thomas Hariot. An Advertisment, the English summary of the Responsio, repeated the charge but did not speculate on Raleigh's appointment to the Privy Council. “Of Sir Walter Raleigh's school of atheism by the way, and of the conjurer that is M[aster] thereof, and of the diligence used to get young gentlemen to this school, wherein both Moses and our Savior, the Old and New Testament are jested at, and the scholars taught among other things to spell God backward”.
The Dynamics of Violence in Chartism: A Case Study in Northeastern England
Authors: Maehl William Henry 
Published: November 2007

The theme of violence in Chartism has always attracted historians. To a large extent, although less so recently, they have accepted the Chartists' division of themselves into advocates of “moral” and “physical” force. Historical writers have found a ready supply of stirring quotes in Chartist speeches to illustrate the passions of a people aroused. And they have dwelt on the actual and potential demonstrations of violence with a lingering fascination. Yet, in all this discussion there has been little systematic examination of the phenomenon of violence in Chartism or any attempt to assess its relative degree of intensity. True enough, recent study by George Rudé on protest and crime in the first half of the nineteenth century has been illuminating, and Dorothy Thompson provided some stimulating analysis in the introduction to The Early Chartists. But no full scale study of the role of violence yet exists.A helpful move in that direction was made recently in an article by Thomas Milton Kemnitz on the variety of Chartist strategies. Alongside the traditionally recognized policies of moral and physical force, Kemnitz argues that there was a third strategy of intimidation through “the language of menace.” Its chief practitioner, he suggests, was Feargus O'Connor, who modelled his Chartist agitation on experience with Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform. Although Kemnitz presents no explicit evidence that O'Connor consciously adopted a course which stood midway between moral and physical force, it is certainly demonstrable that the effects of O'Connor's actions were psychologically rather than physically coercive. Kemnitz assists us when he suggests that we think of Chartist pressure in terms of gradations of coercion rather than just two alternatives.
Chamberlain's Folly: The National Defence Contribution of 1937
Authors: Shay Robert P. 
Published: November 2007

When the officials at the British Treasury sat down to sketch out their proposals for the 1937 budget, they knew that they had a problem. During the previous year the Government had been forced to embark upon a costly five year rearmament program by the massive growth of the German military establishment, and the bills for that program were beginning to fall due. £180 million had been spent for defence in 1936, £60 million more than during the previous year, but £100 million less than the military services estimated would be necessary in 1937. The Services' estimate was in the words of Edward Bridges, a Treasury under-secretary, “a good deal higher than anything which I anticipated in my gloomier moments.” He knew, however, that there was little chance that it would be reduced. The question immediately at hand was where the funds could be found to pay for the burgeoning cost of defence not only in the coming year, but in the years to follow.Another Treasury under-secretary, Fredrick Phillips, estimated that they could not realistically expect to raise more than £180 million of the £280 million they required from existing taxation. Although the canons of orthodox finance, to which the Treasury usually adhered, dictated that taxes should be increased to meet the deficit, everyone at the Treasury realized that such a measure would extinguish the growing prosperity which the Government had so laboriously and successfully nurtured since the economic collapse of 1931. Reluctantly they decided to resort to the fiscal device which Neville Chamberlain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had once disparaged as “the broad road that leads to destruction”: borrowing.
Social Structure, Voting Behavior and Political Change in Victorian London
Authors: Baer Marc B. 
Published: November 2007

During the past several years published studies of nineteenth-century parliamentary elections in several regions have failed to satisfy all those who have wished for a thorough understanding of the electoral structure of Victorian Britain. Perhaps the most important statements about these elections have been made by D.C. Moore, for he has been one of very few researchers to place his findings into a theoretical structure. Professor Moore's model for voting behavior is that of the deference community, which may be described as a group of individuals who, having close contact through occupation, residency, or other interests—or several of these—acknowledged a limited number of individuals as their social, economic and ideological leaders. According to Moore the deference community is a more powerful explanatory device than models based on class or individualism. He supports this with poll book data which suggest that, at least for rural constituencies prior to 1867, group networks were stronger than the ties of social status, and more apparent, than is evidence that electors voted only for their particular interests.What influenced the decay of the deference community, Moore would argue, were those forces seemingly omnipresent every spring in Western Civilization classes—industrialization, urbanization, and migration. Moore suggests that the three forces weakened the traditional social nexus and hierarchical relationships. Voters thereafter could be recruited by Victorian election managers directly, that is as individuals and not as members of a community.
Lay Anglicanism and the Crisis of the English Church in the Early Seventeenth Century
Authors: Schwarz Marc L. 
Published: November 2007

One striking feature of the debates in the early stages of the Long Parliament was the universality with which the policies of the Caroline bishops were condemned. There is no more vivid evidence of how widespread lay disaffection from the episcopal bench had become by 1640 than the breadth of criticism leveled against it from all sides of the Commons. The new model Anglicanism erected by archbishop Laud and his supporters was shown to be a jerry built facade, a cadre of generals without battalions, a clerical elite without a lay following.Among those who most forcefully challenged the policies of the prelates was Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, scholar, author, and host of the Tew circle, that discussion group of liberal laymen and clerics, immortalized by Clarendon, which met at Falkland's country seat in Oxfordshire during the 1630s.1 His views were particularly important, first because he was widely respected for his integrity and seriousness of purpose. As C.V. Wedgwood points out, for example, “Falkland was one of those men who carry in their faces and manner the unmistakable marks of extreme conscientiousness. When Falkland spoke, it was not from impulse, but conviction. …” Second, Falkland was known to be latitudinarian in his opinions, thus not affected by dogmatism on the one hand or zealotry on the other. His ideas would consequently be all the more significant, since they represented the results of considered examination rather than the fruits of doctrinaire sentiment.
Religious Patronage of Angevin Royal Administrators, c. 1170–1239
Authors: Turner Ralph V. 
Published: November 2007

Ecclesiastical benefactions by English barons have provided topics for a number of scholars, but the professional civil servants, proto-bureaucrats, who first appeared in the twelfth century, are another group whose gifts to the Church deserve more study. In England, such men appear as early as Henry I's time, but they become more numerous in the reign of his grandson, Henry II. At first, such royal servants were men of all work, doing whatever the king assigned to them at the curia regis, in the counties, and abroad. By the last years of Henry II and in the reigns of his sons, however, some specialization was taking place, and this becomes easier to see in Henry III's early years.It is next to impossible to probe these royal administrators' minds. They left few letters, no personal recollections, and they earned only a few anecdotes—mainly hostile—in the chronicles. For a number of years, I have been studying a group of fifty-two of these men, whose careers span the last third of the twelfth and the first third of the thirteenth centuries, chosen first chiefly because of their connection with the work of royal justice. They form a representative sample, ranging in rank from the justiciar to knights of the counties, from archbishops to men in minor orders, including roughly equal numbers of clergy and laity. They range from close associates of the king to largely local officials (see Appendix I).
Milites as Attestors to Charters in England, 1101–1300
Authors: Fleming Donald F. 
Published: November 2007

While discussing the status of knights in the eleventh century, F. M. Stenton observed briefly in a footnote:
the word miles is rarely added as a mark of distinction to the names of individuals granting or attesting charters of the twelfth century. In the course of the thirteenth century it becomes customary for the principal lay witnesses of a charter to be distinguished as milites, and to many clerks of this age knighthood entitled a witness to the prefix dominus in front of his name.
The Funeral of Henry Percy, Sixth Earl of Northumberland
Authors: Broce Gerald , Wunderli Richard M. 
Published: November 2007

The staging of aristocratic funerals was among the variety of ideological controls and display employed by Henry VIII to reduce the great magnate families of the north and place the country under central authority. An examination of the funeral of Henry Percy (1502/03?–1537) may be especially instructive because of the important and unusual relationship between the Crown and Percy. In fact, the sixth earl's funeral is worth examining in detail because it clearly reflected not only this personal and family relationship but also one step in the transfer of power from the north to the court.It was not at all unusual that the College of Arms should have been a main instrument by which Henry VIII manipulated the ceremony. As marshalls of aristocratic Tudor funerals and prominent participants in them, the heralds of the College customarily used the occasions to convey an abundance of political information whose display was intended to serve the interests of the Crown. This included information about the rank of the deceased, his or her relation to the Crown, and the enduring authority of the elite, all of which could be represented in symbols so conventional that their array and magnificence would communicate clear meaning. Henry VIII's subordination of the College and his support for it — increased prestige and employment for the heralds, for example, and their expansion from registrars to regulators of armorial bearings or insignia — may therefore be seen as attempts to help manage the aristocracy in a time of rapid social change.
The Duke of Northumberland's Army Reconsidered
Authors: Braddock Robert C. 
Published: November 2007

In the preceding article, Dr. William Tighe has drawn attention once again to a central mystery surrounding those ill-understood weeks between the death of Edward VI and Queen Mary's triumphal entry into London which I initially commented upon in this journal in 1974. The problem involves the rapidity with which Northumberland's army collapsed. The traditional interpretation has long been that the duke's forces consisted only of unreliable mercenaries and that he lacked support from the ruling elements which could have given him the means to carry out his coup. In my article I suggested that this was not the case. Gentlemen had been willing to risk their lives in his cause, and although it was impossible to know the relative strengths of the two sides with precision, I found no evidence that contemporaries found them to be unequal. Nor did I find support for Professor Jordan's contention that Northumberland was a reluctant conspirator who really wanted to surrender power and retire to his estates. Examination of accounts in the files of the great wardrobe also led me to conclude that so far as the gentlemen pensioners were concerned, military men had supported the coup while politicians had taken the side of legitimacy. Admittedly the definitions were not precise, but in the absence of other records, it seemed to enhance understanding of the deliberations taken in those fatal days.Since the publication of my article, other scholars have also pointed to the vigor and quality of Northumberland's leadership. Dale Hoak has recently extended the “rehabilitation” of the Duke of Northumberland begun by Barrett Beer. Hoak showed that Northumberland was far from reluctant to use force and political guile to achieve his purposes. He took control of the royal household in order to control access to the king. He also created a special household bodyguard, known as the gendarmes, to secure his coup and overawe potential troublemakers. To complete the picture of a man determined to hold on to power, Hoak showed how Northumberland had managed to manipulate the young king by planting suggestions which the boy then incorporated into his desires. Thus the alteration of the succession should be seen as Northumberland's own scheme to retain power, and not the dying king's. Although the gendarmes had proved too costly to maintain and had to be disbanded, Northumberland's plan was clear: maintain control of power by using the king's household in both its military and political aspects.
“The Rope That Connects Me Directly with You”: John Wain and the Movement Writers' Orwell
Authors: Rodden John 
Published: November 2007

No British writer has had a greater impact on the Anglo-American generation which came of age in the decade following World War II than George Orwell. His influence has been, and continues to be, deeply felt by intellectuals of all political stripes, including the Marxist Left (Raymond Williams, E. P. Thompson), the anarchist Left (George Woodcock, Nicolas Walter), the American liberal-Left (Irving Howe), American neoconservatives (Norman Podhoretz), and the Anglo-American Catholic Right (Christopher Hollis, Russell Kirk).Perhaps Orwell's broadest imprint, however, was stamped upon the only literary group which has ever regarded him as a model: the Movement writers of the 1950s. Unlike the above-mentioned groups, which have consisted almost entirely of political intellectuals rather than writers—and whose members have responded to him as a political critic first and a writer second—some of the Movement writers saw Orwell not just as a political intellectual but also as the man of letters and/or literary stylist whom they aspired to be.The Movement writers were primarily an alliance of poet-critics. The “official” members numbered nine poets and novelists; a few other writers and critics loomed on the periphery. Their acknowledged genius, if not leading publicist, was Philip Larkin, who later became Britain's poet laureate. Orwell's plain voice influenced the tone and attitude of Larkin's poetry and that of several other Movement poets, especially Robert Conquest and D. J. Enright. But Orwell shone as an even brighter presence among the poet-novelists, particularly John Wain and Kingsley Amis, whose early fictional anti-heroes were direct descendants of Gordon Comstock in Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) and George Bowling in Coming Up for Air (1939).
Levellerism in Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century Britain
Authors: Donnelly F. K. 
Published: November 2007

This article explores the connections between the seventeenth-century Leveller movement and the democratic radicalism of the period 1790 to roughly 1840. At first glance the two appear to have much in common. Both were concerned with the extension of the franchise, the idea of a written constitution, and the equality of citizens before the law. Various commentators on the subject, including some historians, have suggested that such a continuity does indeed exist. Unfortunately this conclusion has been based for the most part on vague connections indicating a lack of solid research on this topic. An exception in this regard is the 1962 essay of Olivier Lutaud which traced many of the linkages of Leveller ideas and phrases in European literature.By contrast historians of seventeenth-century England have tended towards a too ready acceptance of a discontinuity between the Levellers and the democrats of the post-1788 era. They have been content to consign the Levellers to “relative oblivion” and “near-oblivion,” and to assert, quite erroneously, that Leveller pamphlets were not reprinted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the same time we must be aware that the historian of early nineteenth-century radical movements is not confronted with a powerful body of evidence indicating strong Leveller-radical connections. The influence of Levellerism on subsequent radical-democratic movements was subtle and somewhat oblique in nature.