In the summer of 1536 several officials and other residents of the Devonshire town of Axminster brought suit in the Court of Star Chamber against a shoemaker named Philip Gammon. They alleged in their Bill of Complaint that Gammon was infected with diverse points and articles of heresy. Chief among these was that Gammon, on a number of occasions, had rejected the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar, saying that “It is not the very body of Christ, but it is a sign and in itself a very piece of bread.”

The case is unique in its time. It is the only action for heresy taken up by the Henrician Court of Star Chamber, a tribunal which normally heard matters touching the enforcement of statute law or breaches of the peace. Familiar with the legal terrain, the plaintiffs also accused Gammon of resisting arrest, threatening a crown officer with a knife, and disobeying royal warrants and commands. Lastly, they asserted that the defendant had been maintained in his illegal activities by the politically potent Carew family, thereby raising before members of the court the specter of the overmighty subject, a haunting prospect to loyal Henrician councillors.

The first statute to become law during the Long Parliament of the 1640s was the Triennial Act, the act “for preventing Inconveniences happening by the long intermission of parliaments.” The statue was enacted in extraordinary circumstances. Ambiguously phrased, substantially amended, and ultimately supported as a means to other ends, the act provided no real solution to the problems which had given it birth. Had it done so, it most assurredly would have failed to pass. The strange tale of the genesis and passage of this act is the subject of this article.

The Triennial Act developed from a bill for annual parliaments introduced by William Strode, MP for Beeralston, Devonshire, on 24 December 1640. Strode's was the first bill for that purpose actually to be introduced since James Stuart had acceded to the throne in 1603. The idea that there should be annual parliaments was not, however, new. Twice during the reign of Edward III statutes providing for yearly meetings of parliament had been enacted. Although these measures were not observed, they had not been forgotten. They had coexisted over the centuries with the belief that the summoning and dissolving of Parliaments was an indisputable prerogative of the Crown and were cited from time to time when men became anxious about subjects' liberties. Sir Francis Bacon reports that during the debate in the Privy Council in 1615, the earl of Exeter “insisted upon a speech of the Lo. Cooke's that there was a law inforce to require a Parliament to be holden every year for redress of the people's grievances.” There is, however, little evidence that Englishmen prior to 1640 believed that the confirmation of these statutes, or enactment of other measures to that effect, was of prime importance.

Authorities on John Bunyan have traditionally failed to associate him with the radical millenarians known as the Fifth Monarchists. Only William York Tindall, in an analysis of Bunyan's millenarian principles, suggested their affinity with the views of the Fifth Monarchy Men. There is, however, an unnoticed passage in one of Bunyan's own works which indicates that he was at one time an adherent of Fifth Monarchist ideology. The work in question, The Advocateship of Jesus Christ (more commonly known under the second-issue title, The Work of Jesus Christ as an Advocate), was published in May 1688, shortly before Bunyan's death. Unlike several of his posthumous works, this book was not concerned with millenarian themes but with Christ's role as an attorney who pleaded the cause of the elect before God the supreme judge. Nevertheless, near the end of this work Bunyan recalled that “I did use to be much taken with one Sect of Christians, for that it was usually their way, when they made mention of the Name of Jesus, to call him, The blessed King of Glory”. Upon reflection—in a climate charged with tension as hostility to James II mounted—Bunyan calmly observed that ”Christians should do thus; ‘twould do them good.” He was not, of course, suggesting a revival of the Fifth Monarchy movement, but reminding his readers that their ultimate sovereign was Christ, not James II.

The passage is not important for its relevance to political conditions in 1688 but for its indication that Bunyan had once apparently been a disciple of the Fifth Monarchists, a fact not hitherto known. Unfortunately, he did not indicate at what point in his career he was attracted to these people, but it was either the period between his conversion in 1653 and his imprisonment seven years later, or the period from about the publication of The Holy War in 1682 to the collapse of the Fifth Monarchy movement in 1685.

English historians, conditioned by the real or imagined excesses of later Angevin monarchs, are prone to portray Henry II's administration as burdening the baronage with taxes and extra-legal levies. Even Henry II's normally sympathetic biographer, W.L. Warren, could not escape perceiving “an element of financial extortion” in Henry's dealings with the barons. Warren finds in the pipe rolls a number of assessments to regain the king's good will or to put aside his anger. Included in this list are the fines levied against Hamo of Mascy, Gervase Paynel, Adam of Port (Kingston, co. Hereford), and Gilbert son of Fergus of Galloway. These debtors had much in common. They all played a role in the revolt of Henry's sons in 1173-1174, which led, in part, to their amercement. Adam of Port had been exiled for treason prior to his participation in the revolt, while Gilbert son of Fergus, a descendent of one of Henry I's many bastards, had caused the grotesque mutilation and death of his brother which appalled his royal cousin. All in all, these men were fortunate to have been left with their lives and most of their lands intact. It simply will not do to fix blindly upon unexplained fines from the record evidence to show the extortionist tendencies of the Angevin monarchs.

Since the publication of Christina Garrett's The Marian Exiles in 1938, historians have had to look outside the confines of England and into the structures of the various exile communities on the continent in order to comprehend fully the significance of the reign of Mary I. Garrett's argument was that the large number of Englishmen who emigrated to the continent in 1553 and 1554 represented not a headlong flight from persecution but an organized migration of English Protestants seeking a more felicitous religious climate with the tacit approval of the queen's government. These men and women functioned as a church in exile, responsible only to their own governors, and cut off from the traditional authority of the Crown. Thus, on returning to England after the accession of Elizabeth, this group constituted a coherent faction, the Puritan opposition, which was hostile to the conservative nature of the Elizabethan settlement and dedicated to the establishment of a Calvinist polity.

However, instructive as this theory may be for the emigre communities in Germany and Switzerland, it does not answer a number of important questions which arise from the political activities of the Marian exiles; nor does it adequately investigate the composition and conspiratorial policies of the two other major groups of Marian exiles, the French and the Venetian. Indeed, Garrett does not even discuss the existence of a separate company of expatriates resident in the Venetian Republic, even though in terms of political and intellectual history this community of exiles played by far the greatest role in the organized opposition to the rule of Philip and Mary.

The standard interpretation of 1848 in Britain is that while Continental Europe reached a turning point and failed to turn, as the famous aphorism states, Britain reached its turning point in 1832, turned, and thus avoided revolution in that year of revolutions. The British middle classes, unlike their Continental counterparts, were loyal in 1848. They enjoyed a broader franchise, some reforming legislation already passed, and commitments to various welcome changes in the future made by diverse politicians. All of this gave the British middle classes great confidence in British institutions and their own future under them, as well as the belief that their country was fortunately different from all the other nations. Without the middle classes, the Chartists could have never succeeded with any kind of insurrection. So, while the capitals of Europe echoed with sounds of musketry and cannon, Britain was at peace because her Constitution was essentially better than anything that prevailed elsewhere.

Modern historiography has done little to change this interpretation of 1848 that was first proclaimed by self-congratulatory and relieved Victorians. All the accounts stress the fortunate uniqueness of Britain and the key role of middle class loyalty. Priscilla Robertson wrote, “During the days of 1848, England stood apart, unshaken, apparently unshakable. Her reformers were already in power. …” In a recent study of the 1848 revolutions, Peter Stearns focuses on the ways the middle class abetted Continental revolutions at the same time that they were instrumental in preventing revolution in Britain. These are really restatements of Elie Halévy's classic explanation. While John Saville's treatment of 1848 differs from traditional accounts in several ways, particularly in stressing the vigor of the Chartist left's resistance after April 10, his explanation for the failure of revolution does not. He concludes that the British government could count on “whole-hearted support” much further down the social scale than could Continental governments. Moreover, despite all the newer research on political violence, crowds, and revolution, the standard interpretation of Britain's fate in 1848 remains: middle-class support for the regime was too strong while Chartist support for an insurrection was too weak.

Lord Clarendon created his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England by conflating a narrative history of the struggle between king and parliament which he had written between 1646 and 1648 with an autobiography, covering his life and times up to the Restoration, which he had composed—between 1668 and 1670—after his removal as Lord Chancellor and subsequent exile to France. The finished History, probably completed in 1672, tended—insofar as it was drawn from the autobiography—to be an apology for Clarendon's political career, his autobiographical work begun after completing the History and covering the years after the return of Charles II being unabashedly apologetical. To the extent that the History was drawn from the earlier, narrative history, however, it tended to be analytical rather than apologetical in nature. The original history, according to Sir Charles Firth, “was written with a definite practical purpose: [Clarendon] undertook not only to relate the events of the Rebellion and the causes which produced it, but to point out the errors of policy committed on the King's side. The trusty few who read it would learn from it how to avoid like errors in the future. …” This first version of the later History, however, contained not merely an analysis of the mistakes made by the king and his ministers, but also certain indications as to what were the motives and methods of those who had entered into rebellion against Charles I. Clarendon's conception of the opposition to the king, which was born in the propaganda tracts which he began writing for the king late in 1641 and which he expanded upon and refined in his later political and historical works, did not take the form of a general theory of the rebellion. General theories were not really Clarendon's style. He was an accomplished polemicist with a facility for dealing with matters of theory, but his instincts were those of a narrative historian.

The policy of “Thorough,” the effort at greater efficiency in church and state during the reign of Charles I, is usually regarded as a leading cause of the dissatisfaction that led to civil war. Lawrence Stone has described its objective as “a deferential, strictly hierarchical, socially stable, paternalist absolutism based on a close union of Church and Crown.” To G. E. Aylmer, the king's principal ministers, archbishop Laud and the earl of Strafford, were trying to achieve “more efficient government, and more effective central authority.” Both scholars agree that the methods used to accomplish these goals were of questionable legality. Aylmer credits the two leading protagonists of “Thorough” with good intentions, “cleaner as well as more efficient and absolute government”; but Stone points to the exasperating effect of the policy by noting that “Every aspect of economic life suffered from the feverish interference of bureaucracy whose sole objective seemed to be the extortion of money by the imposition of petty and irritating regulations.” Though these scholars discuss “Thorough” only in terms of its secular aspect, Christopher Hill has devoted considerable space to its ecclesiastical adherents, or to the possible impact that “Thorough” might have had at particular levels of the church bureaucracy.

In the sense that myth is a reordering of various random elements into an intelligible, useful pattern, a structuring of the past in terms of present priorities, nineteenth-century Englishmen were inveterate myth-makers. As liberal and scientific thought shook the foundations of belief, the Victorians erected gothic spires as monuments to a medieval order of supposedly simple, strong faith. While their industrial masses languished, they extolled the virtues of self-made men. Confronted with foreign competitors and rebellious colonials, they instinctively asserted the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. In classic myth-making style, the Victorians set about “reorganizing traditional components in the face of new circumstances or, correlatively, in reorganizing new, imported components in the light of tradition.”

Myth not only serves self-validating ends; it also provides a cohesive rationale, a fulcrum propelling people towards great achievements. If the Victorians were confident and self-congratulatory, they had cause to be: their material, intellectual, and political accomplishments were many. Not the least of their successes was in the sphere of sports and games, a subject often ignored by historians. Especially in the development of ball games—Association and Rugby football, cricket, lawn tennis, and golf—the Victorians modernized old games, created new ones, and exported them all to the four corners of the earth. Stereotyped as overly-serious folk, they in fact “taught the world to play.”

Since sport, more than most forms of human activity, lends itself to myth-making, it is not surprising to find a myth emerging among the late-Victorians having to do with the origins of Rugby football. Like baseball's Doubleday myth, the tale of William Webb Ellis inspiring the distinctive game of rugby is a period piece, reflecting more of the era which gave it birth than of the event to which it referred.

The rise and fall of the office of sheriff is a frequent theme in English administrative history. In medieval times sheriffs were the principal representatives of the king in the local community and bore the king's authority and acted in his name. Their courts entertained a wide variety of criminal and civil proceedings. By Tudor times such powers and authority were things of the past. Edward IV had effectively ended the sheriff's power by removing all indictments before the sheriff in his tourn to the Court of Quarter Sessions of the Peace for trial. The sheriff's judicial powers passed to the justices of the peace and his military powers to the deputy lieutenants. What powers did remain were exercised under the supervision of the magistrates both in and out of formal sessions. When James I came to the throne in 1603, the once powerful sheriff presided at elections, distrained and sold goods for the payment of fines, summoned juries, hanged criminals, and carried out other miscellaneous tasks. For most gentlemen of England a year's tenure as sheriff was an expensive inconvenience.

By 1640, however, the sheriff was once again a public figure of some consequence. The first two Stuarts, especially Charles I, had turned to the sheriff to execute many of their financial and administrative programs. Three times James I ordered sheriffs to collect extra benevolences. It seemed to many that Charles I had used the office for inappropriate political purposes. A sheriff had to be resident in his county throughout his term of office so he could not serve in parliament. In 1625 Thomas Wentworth was appointed sheriff of Yorkshire, and the even more troublesome Edward Coke was appointed sheriff of Buckinghamshire. Two years later Walter Long, M.P. was appointed sheriff of Wiltshire, an affront to the electors of Bath who had recently returned him to the House of Commons. When the Long Parliament met in 1640, these events were remembered with considerable bitterness; and the Grand Remonstrance noted “the usual course of pricking sheriffs [was] not observed, but many times sheriffs made in an extraordinary way, sometimes as a punishment and a charge unto them, sometimes such were pricked out as would be instruments to execute whatever they would have done.”

Historians have traditionally emphasized Gladstone's support for liberalnationalist movements, especially in Europe. His great biographer, John Morley, saw him as being captivated by the new doctrine of “nationality” after one of his frequent visits to Italy. Philip Magnus described him as an enthusiastic champion of freedom; and Paul Knaplund made an extraordinary fuss over his gospel of “freedom and voluntaryism.” Even G. E. Buckle, who must be considered a hostile witness, conceded that Gladstone was much more sympathetic to national movements than his famous rival, Disraeli. Gladstone is generally depicted in Victorian historiography as the outstanding champion of liberal and national ideas, especially in Italy, Ireland, Greece, and the Danubian principalities. There survives a vivid picture of the Grand Old Man fighting to the end to save the hapless Armenians from the butchery of the Turks. This image of an unusually devout Christian striving against overwhelming odds to promote the cause of liberty, justice, and humanity is still an integral part of the Victorian mythology.

Yet, as long ago as 1961, Derek Beales did his best to show that Gladstone's approach to the Italian question was, at best, ambivalent. Even before that, S. Gopal had suggested that Gladstone's contribution to Italian unification was inferior to that of Palmerston, Russell or Sir James Hudson. Two Polish sympathizers have drawn attention to Gladstone's failure to promote the Polish cause. A. J. P. Taylor, for all his wit and wisdom, failed to put more than a minor dent in Gladstone's reputation when, in 1957, he dissected that statesman's foreign policy only to find incompatible elements of Cobdenism and Palmerstonianism. Modern scholars, like C. J. Lowe and D. M. Schreuder, have also argued that Gladstone's attitude towards nationalism was suspiciously flexible. But, in curious defiance of all this scholarship, the Gladstonian myth persists. It is the purpose of this article to put this myth to rest by demonstrating that Gladstone was cautiously conservative in his attitude toward nationalist movements and that he put much more store on order and stability than on national liberty.

In assessing the events which brought Great Britain and France from the edge of war at Fashoda in 1898 to the alliance of 1914, scholars have paid little attention to the settlement of Anglo-French differences in the independent African empire of Ethiopia. The resolution of Ethiopian problems in 1906 was nonetheless important in forging close Anglo-French relations, especially when viewed within the context of the better-known Entente Cordiale of 1904. By excluding Anglo-French conflicting Ethiopian interests from the already difficult entente negotiations, British and French statesmen removed a potential stumbling block to that important and seminal agreement. In a more positive vein, the subsequent signing of a separate Tripartite Treaty on Ethiopia—the Italians were the third signatory—actively reinforced the Entente Cordiale itself. To the French the Ethiopian agreement was a confirmation of British good faith in implementing the spirit of the entente beyond areas specified in the more important accord of 1904. To the British it was an object lesson that certain imperial interests in Ethiopia should not jeopardize generally improving relations with France. To both countries the Tripartite Treaty of 1906 tidied unfinished business of the entente and eliminated to each nation's general satisfaction a nagging local conflict.

French Foreign Minister Theophile Delcassé had wanted to include Ethiopia in the entente agreement. During the course of the negotiations he suggested to his English counterpart Lord Lansdowne a “comprehensive settlement” of colonial-imperial differences. While individuals in the British Foreign Office considered adding Ethiopia to the larger rapprochement over Egypt and Morocco, the British cabinet decided to postpone Ethiopian matters until after conclusion of the Entente Cordiale. In good part this decision reflected respect for the complexity of strategic, financial, and personal rivalries of the two great imperial powers in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.

The emigration of women to South Africa and the other parts of the empire had been periodically promoted throughout the nineteenth century, but it was that great imperial crisis known as the Boer War which gave such emigration an immediate political and patriotic importance. The emigration of women, especially single women, was increasingly viewed not only as a means of assisting unfortunate, superfluous individuals but as a way of strengthening the empire—a matter of imperial urgency. By 1901 the issue of female emigration had become a part, and some argued the most important part, of the larger question of how to secure the South African colonies to the British Empire in more than name. An organized program for sending single women to South Africa was therefore jointly developed by the Colonial Office and the emigration societies which had long been interested in this work. This alliance between the hard-nosed bureaucrats of Downing Street and the amateurish gentlewomen who ran such organizations as the British Women's Emigration Association seldom, as events proved, operated smoothly, contributing in part to its limited success. This attempt to stimulate the settlement of women in South Africa is important, however, in illustrating the national mood in the aftermath of the victory in South Africa, the increased involvements of women in imperial affairs, and the difficulties facing the advocates of female emigration.

The origins of Joseph Chamberlain's, and hence the Colonial Office's, interest in female emigration is difficult to pinpoint. The preliminary report of 1900 of the Lands Settlement Commission chaired by H.O. Arnold-Forster drew the attention of the office to the demographic weakness of the British position in South Africa.

In 1934-35 more than 11 ½ million adults in Great Britain completed the famous “Peace Ballot” (the official title was A National Declaration on the League of Nations and Armaments) designed to test, and indeed to demonstrate, popular support for the League and “the collective peace system.” The massive response exceeded all expectations and greatly impressed observers. It was, said the New Statesman, “the most remarkable popular referendum ever initiated and carried through by private enterprise.”

But what did the Ballot demonstrate? Did it return a “plain and decisive” answer as Lord Cecil of Chelwood, President of the League of Nations Union and Chairman of the National Referendum Committee, claimed?

Supporters of the Ballot had no doubt about the national verdict. Britons, said Cecil, had shown “overwhelming approval” of the collective system. They were, according to Winston Churchill, “willing, and indeed resolved, to go to war in a righteous cause,” provided that all action was taken under the auspices of the League. The British people were ready to fulfill their obligations under the Covenant, Philip Noel-Baker later wrote. The country was prepared to stop Mussolini by armed force if that should be required.

The British people and their rulers have always been concerned about the possibility of an invasion of their island home by a hostile power striking at them from the European continent. Arthur Balfour, the Prime Minister who did so much to modernize the defense arrangements of his country in the early years of the present century, was especially concerned with this problem of invasion. He called it “This eternal and most important question of our safety against invasion.” In 1908 an entirely new element was introduced into this area of strategic thinking when it was realized, for the first time, that Britain might be invaded from the air. Until this year the British could take comfort from the often quoted words of Admiral Lord St. Vincent to a group of nervous fellow peers at the time of the French invasion danger early in the nineteenth century: “I do not say they cannot come, my Lords, I only say they cannot come by sea.” Now, as a result of unprecedented technological developments it was possible for a vigilant and forward-looking observer to contemplate an air assault upon the United Kingdom that would put Lord St. Vincent's pithy maxim in an entirely new light. Eventually, the fear of air attack assumed a dominating position in the minds of British defense planners; but the origins of this problem have not been studied closely by scholars, even though they deserve attention.

The failure of the Anglo-French peace negotiations of 1761—the so-called Stanley-Bussey talks—is usually ascribed to two principal causes: British intransigence over the Canadian fisheries and, closely related, the inadequacy of William Pitt's diplomacy; the fact that he lacked both the technique and personality for successful negotiation. British historians in particular, have tended to assess the course and failure of the negotiations with exclusive reference to the policies of the elder Pitt, another example of the mastery that Pitt supposedly wielded over government and administration at this time. The picture they present is that of a domineering figure, subduing cabinet opposition to his extreme demands with the same harsh tactics he employed against defeated France. In the words of Kate Hotblack (taking a view which is still current), “Until his resignation in October, Pitt dominated the peace negotiations as he had dominated the war.”

The purpose of this article is to question this interpretation by showing that Pitt, leading political figure though he was, did not singly control the cabinet and its decisions, but worked more in collaboration with his coministers, most notably his fellow secretary Lord Bute, who played a much greater role in decision-making than has hitherto been recognized. Indeed, if any single factor proved decisive for the deliberations with France, it was their alliance—long in materializing, uneasy in practice, and brief in duration. While Bute sided with Pitt, the latter managed to prevail against his opponents in Council and Britain's policy remained firm; when early in August of 1761, Bute shifted support to the moderates, those favoring last minute concessions on the fishery, Pitt swiftly lost ground and resigned shortly after.

In his pioneering study of the British electoral system, David Butler notes that “One of the main problems of the historian of the second Labour Government is to discover what action the Liberals took to exact the fullest return for their support in the division lobbies.” Owing to the preponderance of economic issues in this period, however, scant attention has been focused on the constitutional question of electoral reform which had the greatest bearing on the relationship between the Liberal and Labour parties in Parliament. Robert Skidelsky's Politicians and the Slump, the most thorough economic and political analysis of the Second Labour Government, is curiously jejune on this subject. Recent biographers of Ramsay MacDonald and David Lloyd George, the Labour and Liberal protagonists, describe in detail a series of joint enterprises between the parties, but they fail to delineate the precise nature of their relationship in light of the critical electoral reform question. And Butler was never able to come to close quarters because of a paucity of primary sources. Now, however, it is possible to merge these separate strands, along with a neglected Conservative view, into a comprehensive explanation of the Liberal-Labour nexus.

Despite much suspicion by contemporaries, especially among Conservatives in Parliament and the press, of a supposed Lib-Lab “bargain, ” it was repeatedly denied by prominent Liberal and Labour members. In light of the inability of historians to produce even a shred of evidence to the contrary and the glaring lack of legislative cooperation, it must be concluded that there was never any formal alliance between the two parties. Nevertheless a strong, and as yet unspecified, attachment did exist as a result of the unique parliamentary circumstances emerging from the general election of 1929. What emerges is an unattractive picture of political manuevering, calumny, and subterfuge where the potential allies worked at cross-purposes—the object of the Government being to create conditions favorable to retaining office while the Liberals desired some greater prospect for attaining office in the future. Despite their interdependence, the party leaders were never able to reach an agreement on the vital issue of electoral reform, which would involve some possible sacrifice of their individual ends. The result was a process of mutual destruction which contributed to the fall of the Second Labour Government and opened the way for a Conservative bid for power.