This book is an extended and revised version of the Ford Lectures in English History which I delivered at Oxford in the Hilary Term of 1976. I am grateful to the Ford's Electors and the University for conferring this distinction upon me, and to many Oxford colleagues, notably Professor H. R. Trevor-Roper, for their hospitality during my visits.

These lectures had their origin in a paper I contributed to a Festschrift for J. H. Plumb five years ago, and this constitutes not the least of the debts I owe this extraordinary man; though in this case his assistance was quite unwitting, and I want to stress that neither he nor anyone else mentioned here is responsible for the outcome. Subsequently I expanded this paper into three lectures (comprising parts of what are now chapters 2, 4, 5 and 8) which I delivered at the University of Chicago in 1972 on the invitation of the Committee on Social Thought, funded by the John U. Nef Foundation. I am grateful to the members of the committee, particularly Saul Bellow and David Grene, for making my stay in Chicago such a pleasant one, and to John M. Wallace and John Pocock for their helpful and constructive comments on the lectures. Later I had the benefit of advice and information from Dr G. V. Bennett, Dr R. A. Beddard, Professor Geoffrey Holmes, Professor Maurice Goldsmith, Miss Betty Kemp and Dr Blair Worden, as well as much general encouragement from Professors G. R. Elton and J. H. Plumb, previous Ford's Lecturers.