bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Elizabethan Diplomatic Compensation: Its Nature and Variety
Authors: Bell Gary M. 
Published: February 2004

In view of the large number of financial complaints in Tudor diplomatic correspondence, it is entirely understandable why compensation might be considered a central problem of sixteenth-century foreign service. The feeling conveyed by the diplomats is that their pay was haphazard in its conception, irregular in its distribution, and utterly insufficient in its magnitude; that is, it was thoroughly unsatisfactory in every respect. So consistent and so forceful did these envoys make their case that today it is virtually axiomatic for historians to assume that compensation was chaotic, and that service abroad was always financially debilitating. “Upon none of the royal servants did the disorder of sixteenth century fiscal administration bear harder [than upon the ambassadors],” Professor Mattingly notes. Moreover, “for an ambassador, the chance of financial embarrassment was almost a certainty.” Sir John Neale, another of only a few who have addressed this issue directly, is persuaded that, “it was not exceptional for an Elizabethan ambassador to get into financial straits … generally ambassadors had to face making inroads into their private estates.” Or: “His [the ambassador's] was not a happy lot. His profit and loss account was a statement in two terms of which one was never operative …. Their pay was often irregular and never adequate, and they were lucky if their private estates were not hopelessly mortgaged at the end of an embassy.” Other historians, making only passing reference to diplomatic compensation, simply assume the worst.Yet the diplomats of Elizabeth served, frequently for extended periods, and often repeatedly as well.
The English Village Constable, 1580-1642: The Nature and Dilemmas of the Office
Authors: Kent Joan 
Published: February 2004

Dogberry: This is your charge: you shall comprehend all vagrom men; you are to bid any man stand, in the prince's name.Watch: How if a' will not stand?Dogberry: Why, then take no note of him, but let him go; and presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a knave.(Much Ado About Nothing, Act III, Scene iii)Modern historians who have described the English village constable of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries have largely accepted Shakespeare's Dogberry as an accurate portrayal of this official. They are almost unanimous in regarding the constable as an incompetent agent of royal authority, and like many of his seventeenth-century critics they depict him as uneducated, unprofessional, lazy, and disobedient. A recent study has also revealed that some of the men chosen as constable had “criminal” records. In one Essex village a number of these officials had previously been “in trouble with the courts,” sometimes having broken laws that it would be their duty to enforce when they became constables. Both historians and seventeenth-century commentators frequently attribute such failings to the social unsuitability of the men selected for the office. They claim that the substantial inhabitants of the village sought to avoid such a lowly position, and that it was thus filled by the “meaner sort” of residents who were attracted by its perquisites or were too poor to hire substitutes. Such men, it is contended, were not only ignorant and unable to spare time for their duties but also so lacking in social status that they were easily intimidated and commanded little respect.Several studies of county government do suggest alternative approaches to understanding the constable's alleged incompetence. T.G. Barnes and A. Hassell Smith, for example, attribute the constable's weaknesses not only to the personal and social defects of the men selected for the position; they also suggest that divided allegiances often rendered such officials incapable of action.
Consensus Politics and the Structure of Debate at Putney
Authors: Kishlansky Mark A. 
Published: February 2004

The debates of the Army Council held at Putney church during October and November 1647 have not suffered neglect at the hands of historians and political theorists. Such an explicit examination of the fundamental tenets of government as occurred in the discussion of the franchise is a pivotal event in the history of political thought and it has been treated as such ever since Sir Charles Firth uncovered William Clarke's notes of the meetings. Emphasis upon the content of the dispute over the franchise has served to elevate the Putney debates into a symbolic event, a milestone in the struggle between privilege and liberty which dominated English history for two and a half centuries and English historiography ever since. Rainsborough's dictum that “the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he” encapsulates this theme and has passed into the common stock of historical quotations. Indisputably, succeeding generations of scholars and students will grapple with the meaning of the debate on the franchise and of its place in English political thought.The universal importance that the conflict over the franchise has assumed for political theorists and historians of the longue durée has created some difficulties for students of événement who need to understand the precise historical situation in which the meetings occurred. When abstracted the debates may have sharp contours and poetic proportions; but when viewed more narrowly they take on different, and occasionally changing, shapes.
The Anti-Puritan Work Ethic
Authors: Sommerville C. John 
Published: February 2004

For years those who have looked for the contribution of religion to the “spirit of capitalism” have concentrated on the English Puritans and their Calvinist counterparts elsewhere. Those scholars have relied on literary evidence to make their points, and to establish the relationship between Calvinist doctrines or assumptions and an ascetic and compulsive devotion to work. It came as a surprise, therefore, when a rigorously quantitative content analysis of the most popular religious books of Restoration England showed just the opposite—that the most self-consciously “Anglican” authors were those who placed the most emphasis upon work and worldly enterprise as a religious duty. They were also able to integrate this duty with the rest of their theology in a more straightforward, logical manner than the Puritans, for whom the connection is thought to have been psychological, mediated by religious anxiety. Work was, for the most popular Anglican authors, part of a moralistic religion of works. We can even say that such an emphasis was adopted at just the time when Anglicans were facing up to a change in the status of their church and adopting attitudes more characteristic of members of a movement or denomination, which helps to explain why work and effort were coming to seem more important to them.There have been numerous lines of criticism of Max Weber's thesis connecting the doctrine of evangelical conversion and the spirit of economic enterprise. But since the following approach and alternative suggestions do not build on them, we must go back again to Weber's own classic formulation.
RethinkingDas Adam Smith Problem
Authors: Teichgraeber Richard 
Published: February 2004

During the last decade, there has been a steady growth in scholarship concerning the moral and philosophical dimensions of Adam Smith's economic theory. The reasons are various: a determination to take Smith out of the dark shadow cast on him by Karl Marx, the perceived intellectual impoverishment of socialism, and an historical concern for tracing the peculiarly Scottish dimensions of theWealth of Nations(1776). This renewed interest in Smith appears to be more than a sudden intellectual fashion. The now completed publication of the “Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith” provides the basis for the work of systematically reconstructing Smith's intellectual career. Most students of Smith would agree that at the moment this work of reconstruction has just begun.One of the curious features of recent Adam Smith scholarship has been its perfunctory treatment of “das Adam Smith Problem,” a problem that once seemed at the very center of understanding the moral and philosophical dimensions of Smith's work. In the last decades of the nineteenth century a group of German scholars coined that phrase to describe what they saw as a possibly fundamental break between the assumptions that guided Smith's first work,The Theory of Moral Sentiments(1759), and those that supported the economic theory of his later work, theWealth of Nations. On the one hand, Smith's explanation of moral judgment was based upon the psychological principle of “sympathy,” a capacity inherent in every individual which allows a person to “enter into” the situation of another and thereby bring his own “sentiments” into accord with those of his fellow.
Whigs and Paupers: The Reform of the English Poor Laws, 1830-1834
Authors: Dunkley Peter 
Published: February 2004

In 1832, a royal commission was appointed to investigate the operation of the poor laws in England and Wales, and two years later legislation was adopted on the basis of the commission's recommendations. For most contemporaries the passage of this measure, the so-called New Poor Law, seemed to promise significant, perhaps even radical, change in the administration of poor relief. An ancient system of parochial government was to be supplanted in the localities by a series of larger poor law unions and boards of guardians, whose discretion was to be limited by responsibility to a national bureaucratic authority in London. No less dramatic was the relief policy that the new law envisioned. It was generally understood that the poor law commissioners appointed under the act were to direct their main efforts to the establishment of a system of workhouses, wherein relief could be accorded under conditions that rendered the pauper's lot “less eligible,” that is, less attractive, than that of the poorest independent laborer. Through such means, it was hoped, an end might be made to what was seen as a long-established and widespread practice of supplementing the inadequate wages of the laboring poor out of the poor rates.While the tendency of recent work has been to question the practical effect of this legislation on the actual distribution of aid, the problem remains of explaining the motivations and intentions of the men who promoted a measure of such seemingly abundant and far-reaching implications.
The “Peace Ballot” and the “Rainbow” Controversy
Authors: Thompson J.A. 
Published: February 2004

Assessments of the famous “Peace Ballot,” officially “A National Declaration on the League of Nations and Armaments,” have undergone little change since its results were announced in June 1935. Like contemporary observers, historians are unclear on the origins of the ballot, are impressed by the public response, and are uncertain of the meaning of “the most remarkable popular referendum ever initiated and carried through by private enterprise.” Historians will probably never reach a consensus on the exact meaning of the ballot and are likely to go on echoing the diverse judgments of contemporaries. But the origins of the referendum are not obscure, and in The Impact of Hitler: British Politics and British Policy 1933-1940 Maurice Cowling has offered a stimulating thesis that could embrace the ballot and suggest a new evaluation of the political controversy that surrounded the preparation and conduct of that much-heralded “National Declaration.”Cowling has persuasively argued that foreign policy was the form party conflict took in Great Britain in the late 1930s. Politicians conducted it in the light of party considerations. Cowling selected 1935 as the year foreign policy first became “central,” when Abyssinia became the focus of all political discussions. And it was the issue through which Stanley Baldwin reestablished Conservative “centrality” in domestic politics after strong “swings” against the government in by-elections during 1933 and 1934.According to the Cowling thesis, in the class-polarized politics of the 1930s, party leaders had to be especially sensitive to the opinion of the center, which, in 1935, meant presenting policy in terms that the League of Nations Union and its largely Liberal constituency would approve.
“Backers and Stabbers”: Problems of Loyalty in Robert Curthose's Entourage
Authors: Mooers Stephanie L. 
Published: February 2004

Robert Curthose, the eldest son of William I Duke of Normandy and King of England, received many blows of ill fortune during his long life (1051-1134). Most damaging to his image was his inability to emulate his father by conquering England after the great king's death in 1087, and again, after William Rufus's death in 1100. He attempted twice to restore the unity of the two lands, and twice he failed. Moreover, Robert's reign in Normandy was characterized by baronial feuds, civil war, lawlessness, and decentralization of authority, and his policies appeared “weak and blundering”. He enjoyed one glittering period of distinction: during the First Crusade (c. 1096-1100) he proved himself a brave and spirited participant. But upon his return to Normandy, insufficient baronial support and territorial control led in 1106 to his final degradation—the loss of his patrimony, the duchy of Normandy, and his permanent imprisonment at the hands of his younger brother, Henry I. Henry owed his victory, in large measure, to the fact that by 1106 most of Curthose's earlier companions had deserted him.These almost unmitigated failures affected the loyalty of Curthose's companions in adverse ways. As will be shown, factors that frequently influenced political alliances in the Anglo-Norman world—long association, genuine fondness, a need to be on the winning side, and outside pressures—were, in Curthose's entourage, overshadowed by the desire for new acquisitions and the security of landed possessions. Because the duke was unable to safeguard and advance these primary interests, his power base was insecure and his retinue was characterized by shifting membership and short-term loyalty.
Rhetoric and Disguise: Political Language and Political Argument in Absalom and Achitophel
Authors: Zwicker Steven , Hirst Derek 
Published: February 2004

“There was never more need, never greater occasion for the exercise of Moderation, than now in our Age. It's much in the common talk, and in the wishes of all sorts of men, all seem to desire and court it; and yet I believe it was never less understood, less practised.”John Evans, Moderation Stated, 1682.The ironic fate of Absalom and Achitophel is to be fully appreciated as one of the great political poems of the language and only partially comprehended as political argument. Recent criticism of the poem is marked by a widening discrepancy between the ways in which it is understood as verbal and as political artifact. Metaphor and allusion have been carefully and often subtly charted, yet the poem's political rhetoric and its political argument are assumed to be simple coordinates. The tensions, indeed the contradictions, between explicit language and implicit argument are not only unexamined but largely unperceived. The conventional reading, which has become an almost fixed critical response, argues that the poem rises above partisan politics, that it derives from a political intelligence committed to a conservative ideology but indifferent to, indeed contemptuous of, the “party color'd mind.”Generalities about Dryden's temper, the poet as philosophical sceptic, as disinterested critic of extremes, together with the seemingly ingenuous and repeated claims of moderation and balance in the Preface have led a number of critics to understand the narrator's espoused moderation as Dryden's political stance—a judgment which Dryden's contemporaries certainly did not allow.
Panegyric Decorum in the Reigns of William III and Anne
Authors: Williams Arthur S. 
Published: February 2004

The tradition of English verse panegyric began in the reign of James I when the accession of the Stuart line called “for a formal and specific expression of the subject's allegiance and of the values which commend it.” First adapted from Latin models by Samuel Daniel and Ben Jonson, panegyric verse combined praise of the new monarch with conciliatory rhetoric aimed at uniting the king with his subjects. Still regarded as a branch of classical oratory at the beginning of James I's reign, verse panegyric underwent important transformations in succeeding decades. While Abraham Cowley adapted the panegyric themes of national revival and monarchic restraint to his version of the Pindaric ode, Edmund Waller and John Dryden made it a “branch of epic” by depicting the king as an epic hero. Thus enshrined among the neo-classical poetic genres, panegyric verse remained both a potent form of propaganda and an outlet for traditional literary aspirations through the reign of James II.Following the constitutional upheavals of 1688, however, panegyric began to lose its traditional ceremonial function, and in following years the great Tory satirists made the decadence of panegyric conventions an object of their ridicule. Nevertheless verse panegyric did not immediately lose its credibility as literature or its efficacy as propaganda. Writing poems of public praise and celebration remained one way for the loyalists of a new regime—and for others who longed for restoration of the old—to articulate political sentiments, respond to the obligations of political patronage, and fulfill ambitions to write heroic verse.
The Idea of “American Protestantism” and British Nonconformity, 1829-1840
Authors: Maclear J.F. 
Published: February 2004

In June, 1829 Ralph Wardlaw, Scotland's leading Congregationalist, wrote to his American friend, Leonard Woods of Andover, explaining the current fascination of America for British Dissenters. “An important experiment is going on there …, “ he noted, “of what Christianity when fairly excited can effect by her own native energies in the support and propagation of her cause, independently of the aids of civil power. I look to it … with high expectation, as I think it of vast consequence that a new practical manifestation of this should be given to the world.” Wardlaw was writing at the beginning of the Jacksonian era in America, a period when Nonconformists inspected American religion with a concentration never again quite equalled. For this scrutiny there were reasons beyond the general fascination with republican novelties. The emergence of a more vital and politically assertive Nonconformity, the eruption of voluntaristic controversy in both England and Scotland, the excitement of the Reform Age, and the perennial anticipation of revivals at home on the scale of the American awakenings all played roles in directing British attention overseas. And as Wardlaw indicated, the element of “American Protestantism” which most intrigued British evangelicals was the apparent vindication of the voluntary system, which with the accompanying phenomenon of revivals raised the prospect of a free spiritual and vital Christianity, indeed a new age in Christian history.Despite its prominence in the literature of the 1830s, this British examination of the American voluntary church has received only scant attention from scholars.
The Limits of Deference: Agricultural Communities in a Mid-Nineteenth Century Election Campaign
Authors: Fisher J.R. 
Published: February 2004

The concept of the deferential society appears superficially to provide a valuable sociological underpinning to the phenomenon of the continuing dominance of the landed classes in nineteenth-century English politics. According to Professor D.C. Moore, whose case is advanced most fully in The Politics of Deference (1976), rural society consisted largely of a network of hierarchically structured communities. These, “what might be called ‘deference communities’ or ‘deference networks,’ (were) the essential action groups of mid-nineteenth century English politics.” Their nature and interaction “helps to explain the perpetuation of this structure (the deferential society), the perpetuation of the related political system, and the peculiar selection and formulation of political issues within the system.” It is difficult to do Professor Moore's subtle reasoning justice in a limited space but it would probably be fair to say that he sees most of the major legislative changes of the mid-nineteenth century as shaped and conditioned by the response of deferential leaders to social and economic change, a response which was designed as much to protect and buttress the existing system as to accommodate the new disruptive forces by major concession.Professor Moore's case depends to a considerable extent on the pervasiveness and dominance of his “deferential communities” in rural society. However, while their existence is undeniable, other historians have expressed reservations as to the emphasis put on their role. Put most simply, in the words of Professor Moore's severest critic, “the electoral history of nineteenth-century Britain cannot be deduced from Bateman's Great Landowners.”
The Norman Empire and the Secular Clergy, 1066-1204
Authors: Spear David S. 
Published: February 2004

Several recent studies dealing with the English church during the Norman period add immeasurably to our understanding of the era, but nonetheless represent a lost opportunity to recreate the actual ecclesiastical milieu, an English church unsevered from its Norman counterpart. Institutional differences surely existed between the two churches, yet much is lost in treating them separately. Indeed, few historians would attempt to study the great eleventh and twelfth-century cathedrals and abbey churches in England detached from those in Normandy. It is therefore the purpose of this paper to examine the customs, ideas, and especially the individuals which the two churches shared.A concerted effort to reexamine political institutions as they once functioned, rather than as a necessary condition for the states which they later became, has already begun. In 1976 John Le Patourel produced an impressive synthesis,The Norman Empire, and asserted that following the Norman Conquest, England and Normandy formed one dominion. It was united by a ruler who was at the same time King of the English and Duke of the Normans, and by a baronial class which had extensive holdings on both sides of the Channel. This supposedly came to an end in 1144 when Geoffrey of Anjou conquered Normandy. A recent review of theThe Norman Empire, which like most reviews speaks of its sterling qualities, nevertheless points out that the sections dealing with the church are, “not given much space … (and) are probably the most derivative in the book.”