One of the most famous results of the Norman Conquest was the creation of honors, the sometimes vast collections of land given by William the Conqueror to leading followers. These followers then gave land to the Church and subinfeudated land to their own followers, who often granted away land themselves; indeed, the chain of generosity sometimes continued through several levels. Because subinfeudation and alienation of land were so intimately bound up in the creation of English “feudalism” and the development of English land law, scholars have long recognized the importance of this process. Despite great scholarly interest in the process, however, little work has been done to track and quantify the amount of subinfeudation and alienation on secular honors over a long period of time. Scholars have used Domesday Book to produce pertinent figures, but because so much subinfeudation and alienation occurred on the great honors after 1086 such figures tell us little about how much of their land tenants-in-chief granted away and how much they kept over the long haul. Moreover, they tell us little about subinfeudation and alienation of land by rear vassals.

One of the few remaining points of agreement among Stuart scholars is that the Crown's political difficulties, especially the conduct of foreign affairs and wars, stemmed in large part from inadequate revenues. The Crown's “ordinary income”—so named by scholars but not by law or tradition—was eroded in the early seventeenth century by inflation, royal extravagance, and increased demands upon government. The bulk of the ordinary income came from the Crown lands whose traditional structures and management were unable to compensate for inflation. B. P. Wolffe has shown that medieval monarchs had never viewed Crown lands as a source of revenue in the same manner as parliamentary taxes or the customs. Rather, Crown lands were used primarily for the uneconomical purpose of providing royal bounty to political elites. Wallace MacCaffrey has argued that the royal clients in the bounty system shifted during the Tudor era from the feudal barons to an emerging state bureaucracy. Moreover, by the seventeenth century the list of clients grew again to include members of Parliament, especially the Commons which increasingly held the fate of royal finances in their hands. Finally, Linda Levy Peck has emphasized another profoundly entrenched English attitude, modeled after classical Roman authorities: the Crown must husband its resources against waste or corruption lest it become impoverished and the body politic decay. A monarch without ample treasure could command neither private (i.e., clients) nor public (i.e., national policy) authority.

On Wednesday, 23 February 1647/8, General Sir Thomas Fairfax received a petition from his Lifeguard protesting the terms under which they were ordered to be disbanded. Finding the General unsympathetic, some of the soldiers went to the cornet's lodgings at the Bell in Gray's Inn Lane and carried away the troop colors, hiding them at the Lamb on Snow Hill. The Council of War regarded this act “as a great Disrespect and Dishonor to the General” and interrogated members of the Lifeguard. On Friday, the Council condemned one Master William Clarke to be shot to death for mutiny and disobeying the commands of superior officers. On Saturday, the Lifeguard presented another petition, begging pardon for Clarke and submitting to the General's authority in the most abject terms. Clarke himself also petitioned for pardon, asserting as his motives “the not punctually performing of the Agreement made at Windsor, and to vindicate the General's Honor therein. After some consideration, Fairfax called Clarke in, pardoned him, and set him free.

Few places in early nineteenth-century Britain had as grim a reputation as the Manchester suburb of Ancoats. In this concentration of “dark, satanic mills” and festering slums were some of the worst social problems of the Industrial Revolution. Angus Reach, a journalist with the Morning Chronicle, who visited Ancoats in the late 1840s, described it as “entirely an operative colony” containing “some of the most squalid-looking streets, inhabited by swarms of the most squalid-looking people which I have ever seen.” While making his way through this “labyrinth,” Reach saw no promise of anything better. Even the handful of chapels seemed to complement the scene of hopelessness; in a pathetically futile attempt to carry the eye up to a vision of something better their “infinitesimal” Gothic arches and ornaments only served to reinforce “the grimy nakedness” of the surrounding factories.