An analysis of Thomas Mare's English version of The history of King Richard III indicates that the popular mystery cycles influenced his composition. Associated with the celebrations of Corpus Christi Day, the cycles present a series of biblical plays, beginning with the Creation and ending with the Last Judgment. The important themes of tyranny and sacrifice, which this drama explores, also loom large in Richard III. The theme of tyranny is loosely related in the cycles through Lucifer's functioning as the prototype of all earthly tyrants, including More's Richard III. Evidence of the sacrifice, which is at the heart of the mass, can also be found in many biblical scenes. More's reference to Richard's adolescent nephews as ‘innocent babes’ links them to the infants Herod earlier sacrified to his ambitions. Indeed, in Richard III, More does make an intriguing reference to a cobbler performing the role of a ‘sowdayne’ in a play. The suggestion that this drama influenced More's writing is consistent with the speculation that he composed the English version first and then, with the classics in mind, wrote out a separate Latin text, for the two versions have significant differences in imagery, word choice and structure.

The 30 December 1546 date for the finalizing of Henry VIll's will is vindicated and the text re-established as the king's own work, namely (1) the supposed priority of a copy dated 13 December is shown to be erroneous; (2) the hypothesis that the will was manipulated by faction is rejected because (a) a reconstruction of the operating procedure of the Dry Stamp Office indicates the strong probability of the traditional date, (b) analysis of provisions allegedly suggesting forgery reveals no valid grounds for suspicion, and (c) circumstantial evidence; (3) the real interest of the Seymour faction in January 1547 is demonstrated as lying in implementing the king's intentions. An hypothesis is offered as to the king's motives. The prominence given to reformers is explained as projecting forward a movement from orthodoxy to reform which was inherent in the Supremacy. The conciliar provisions for Edward's reign are argued to be an attempt to create a closed regency council which would prevent both faction and individual bids for supremacy. The fact that Edward Seymour could become de facto regent only by a coup which jettisoned the will, is a vindication of Henry's provisions.

This article considers how and why the campaign to reform manners spread from England to Ireland in the 1690s. Together with the links and resemblances between the English and Irish campaigns, the distinctive aspects of the latter are discussed. Important to the Irish activity were the shock of the catholic revanche of 1685–90; the powerful tradition of providential explanation for the recurrent crises; the tense and increasingly competitive relations between the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterians; the rapid growth of Dublin (the main centre for reforming activity) and its attendant social and economic difficulties; and the sense of cultural difference between protestants and catholics. The campaign included an assault on heterodox ideas, notably those of Toland and Molesworth, and paralleled the retributive measures taken against the Irish catholics in the same period.

The focus of this article is upon the extensive debate in France that surrounded the concept, content and application of the rights of man in the years between 1789 and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. Beginning with a detailed analysis of the discussion that surrounded the formulation of the Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen attention turns to two broad strands of criticism directed at the discourse of rights: that articulated by the defenders of counter-revolution (most notably Montlosier, Rivarol and de Bonald) and that associated with the idéologues (Daunou, Roederer and de Tracy). Amongst the former rights were associated not only with a new species of revolutionary government but also with the political, social and moral disintegration of France itself; for the latter, emphasis, via the logic of utilitarianism, fell upon seeking to deprive the language of rights of its radical dimensions and implications. It was left to Benjamin Constant to point out the possible contradictions between the claims of utility and those of rights.

This article continues an examination of the British government's counter-revolutionary organization begun in ‘The Alien Office 1792-1806’, The Historical Journal, XXXIII (1990), which outlined the department's functions and secret service policy. The Swiss and Swabian agencies were one aspect of British foreign secret service; they linked the French princes' secret agents to the British government under the central European control of William Wickham, ambassador in Berne 1794–7, and military and diplomatic subsidiaries. Anti-republican secret committees were set up covering all France, Switzerland, northern Italy and southern Germany, which included members from every grade of society. French republican generals, even Ministers were swayed, allowing infiltration of the French secret police. British control was however limited to the finesse of finance – bribery was implicit. By never offering enough to the leaders and too much to assistants, initial constitutional intentions slid into subversion and assassination. The first complete andfully documented description is included of how, why, and by whom, the French deputies were assassinated at Rastadt.

The mercurial rise of Venizelos, the most prominent Greek statesman of this century, has been a hotly debated issue of modern Greek history. The tendency until recently has been to explain his success in terms of social changes, and to see the rise of the Liberal party as the triumph of modernizing bourgeois forces in early twentieth-century Greece. This article, however, compares Venizelos both with the generation of politicians which preceded him, and with his leading contemporary, Gounaris. It argues that Venizelos's enormous popularity hinged upon his response to the nationalist, quasi-messianicfervour which gripped Greece after its humiliating defeat by Turkey in 1897. Parliamentary government came to be seen as passive and elitist, political parties as causes of national decline. Using his rhetorical skills and the press, Venizelos presented himself as the agent of national regeneration. His attitude towards class politics, and to the very idea of political parties, was complex and ambivalent. Hence, his rise should be interpreted, not in terms of a simple Marxist or whiggish schema, as the product of Greece's bourgeois revolution, but as the expression of a new more confident nationalism, which reinforced the personality-centred quality of Greek politics.

This is an account of one of the more controversial Irish conspiracies of 1641 which allegedly involved Charles I and the earl of Antrim, a prominent Gaelic warlord with extensive connections in all three of the Stuart kingdoms. No irrefutable contemporary documentation to the plot appears to have survived and so the ambiguous and scrappy evidencefor the conspiracy, dating from the 1640s, 1650s and 1660s, has been examined here in an attempt to establish whether the ‘Antrim plot’ was a myth or a reality.

This article uses recently released documents from the Soviet diplomatic archives to examine the Merekalov–Weizsäcker meeting of April 1939. It argues that these documents show that western historians have been mistaken in assuming that this meeting was the occasion for Soviet signals of a desire for détente with Nazi Germany. The significance attached to the meeting in this respect is part of the cold war myth that the USSR's negotiations for a triple alliance with Great Britain and France in the spring and summer of 1939 were paralleled by secret Soviet–German discussions which eventually lead to the Nazi–Soviet pact of August 1939. The article seeks to demolish those elements of the myth that concern the Merekalov–Weizsäcker encounter and to present an alternative interpretation of the provenance and meaning of the so-called political overture by the Soviet ambassador at the meeting.