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.

Since the publication of J.H. Hexter's Reign of King Pym in 1941 the idea of a middle group has been a lynchpin of English Civil War historiography. Before Hexter historians believed that with the coming of the Civil War members of Parliament split into two factions, the war party and the peace party. Hexter, however, demolished this crude dualism by demonstrating the existence of a middle party in the early days of the Long Parliament, a group of hybrid of M.P.s who seemingly defied classification. Members such as John Glynn and John Clotworthy supported measures from both the war and peace parties.

While the composition of the middle group, especially on the fringes, shifted periodically, it maintained a basic core of members and a discernible ideology. Its outlook was moderate and best expressed in the Grand Remonstance and the Nineteen Propositions. The members identified with this middle group steadfastly upheld the constitution and the monarchy, but believed that specific limitations on the monarch must be implemented to preserve the constitution.

Perhaps inspired by the work of Hexter, other historians approached the Civil War era in similar fashion. Hexter believed that the middle group collapsed with Pym's death in 1643; yet Valerie Pearl has argued that it lingered oh through 1644 under the leadership of Oliver St. John. Following Pym's death, Pearl contended, St. John followed the moderate path prescribed by Pym in supporting measures from both the war and peace parties and by supporting the earl of Essex, the consensus choice for military commander.

In October of 1899 war broke out between Great Britain and the Transvaal Republic following a Boer attack upon Natal and Cape Colony. Thus opened what was destined to be the most melancholy chapter in imperial history.1 Although Britain ultimately achieved military victory, the circumstances surrounding the start of the war and the methods by which it was fought provoked serious domestic division and crisis, especially within the opposition Liberal party.

Because of the Boers' apparent aggression against British territory in South Africa, the majority of Britons, irrespective of social class, responded with an unprecedented display of outraged patriotism and national pride. The war was characterized by no less a critic than Keir Hardie as “the most popular ever waged in England.” “Mobs of workingmen”, he complained, “nightly invade and smash up public meetings held in the interests of peace and assault the speakers with stones.”

From the start, however, a small minority, derisively called pro-Boers, dissented from the national consensus, attacking Unionist policies and motives, and waging one of the most sustained anti-war campaigns in modern history. Though the movement encompassed socialists, trade unionists, clergymen, journalists, and a variety of intellectuals, at its core was a bloc of parliamentary Radicals and Lib-Labs which consistently espoused a position independent of the official Opposition. Variously denouncing the war as unwise, unnecessary, and unjust, the Radical bloc enunciated views during the war years which strikingly foreshadowed the anti-imperial rhetoric of a more modern era.

Propaganda overseas was vital to Britain in the Second World War. She could not easily confront her enemies alone and survive, much less win. It was imperative to keep her allies united, her empire and the commonwealth loyal, and neutrals benevolent—or perhaps, even, to get them committed to her side. These were the objectives of British propaganda overseas in war time. Despite foreign-office objections, the Committee of Imperial Defense (CID) in the mid-1930s gave responsibility for this work to the Ministry of Information (MOI), which was to be established on the outbreak of war. Meanwhile, ministry machinery had to be planned, and the policies which would govern its work had to be determined. These responsibilities were given in 1936 to Sir Stephen Tallents, public relations controller for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Britain's leading expert on advertising publicity. Yet, neither the machinery nor a policy was ready when the war began in September 1939. The ministry and the country, as Phillip M. Taylor has indicated, was inarticulate, if not quite speechless, at the start of the “war of words.” Britain was able only to conduct propaganda to enemy countries, because plans for that work earlier had been removed from MOI control.

Conflicts in the planning process created this situation in which two factors stand out. MOI planners were hampered at the start by departmental and personal feuding, which was permitted because no war emergency existed, and, after 1937, by the adherents of appeasement policy who dominated Whitehall. Stephen Tallents stood on the firing line most visibly as the government, led by an economy-minded treasury, discouraged planning any propaganda machinery for war time which might even hint at serious propaganda deployment in peace time.