The new political theology of obedience to the prince which was enthusiastically adopted by the Church of England in the 1530s was essentially founded upon Luther's new interpretation of the fourth commandment. It was mediated to an English audience by Tyndale, but his ideas were not officially adopted as early as some recent research has suggested. The founding of royal authority on the Decalogue, and thus on the ‘word of God’, was a particularly attractive feature of this doctrine, which became almost the defining feature of Henrician religion. Rival tendencies within the Church of England sought to exploit it in the pursuit of their particular agendas. Reformers strove to preserve its connections with the broader framework of Lutheran theology, with the emphasis on faith alone and the ‘word of God’, while conservatives strove to relocate it within an essentially monastic tradition of obedience, with an emphasis on good works, ceremonies, and charity. The most significant achievement was that of the Reformers, who established and played upon an equivocation between the royal supremacy and the ‘word of God’ in order to persuade the king to sanction the publication of the Bible in English as a formidable prop for his new-found dignity.

In the period 1520–50 there was a large English community in the Veneto. This has traditionally been associated with the household of Reginald Pole, who is believed to have dispensed learning and patronage to those who went to the University of Padua in search of a continental education. However, an examination of both primary and secondary sources for the life of Pole suggests that he was only one of a number of reference points for young English scholars and travellers. Of equal, and perhaps greater, importance was the household of Edmund Harvell, a merchant who became English ambassador to the Republic. His household was philo-protestant in tone, and linked to Venetian dissenters and literary circles. These two central figures presented English scholars with the chance to experience the varying strands of Venetian political and religious philosophy at a time of great intellectual vitality. Men such as Richard Morison and Thomas Starkey returned home to write books about English government and society. When their work is set against the Venetian milieu of Harvell and Pole, we can gain a greater understanding of those Venetian influences which underpinned English political thought in the Tudor period and beyond.

The period from 1550 to 1640 saw a tremendous rise in the amount of litigation initiated in England. Although the pattern of this great expansion is known, its social meaning is not yet clear. Litigation has, paradoxically, been interpreted as both the barometer of a breakdown in social relations, or alternatively as a functional means of dispute settlement. Here this problem will be addressed by placing the initiation of litigation within the context of the social practices and events which led to disputes, and also by looking at how contemporaries reacted to, and interpreted these events, both publicly and privately. Most litigation arose out of economic disputes concerning credit and contracts, and this was a result of the growth of marketing in the period. Such disputes were seen as threatening to the social order, and were something which contemporaries took very seriously. The primary means of dealing with disputes was to attempt to initiate a community negotiated Christian reconciliation between the disputing parties in order to maintain social peace and concord. But as the market grew more complex, and disputes became more difficult to resolve, increasingly the authority of the law had to be invoked. This in turn led to the development of a more pessimistic language of social relations which stressed that any form of positive sociability could only be maintained under an institutional umbrella created by the threat of authority. As a result, community relations and reconciliation, although still defined in terms of Christian love and charity, came to be seen as more functional than normative because of the massive interjection of the civil law into day to day life.

This article presents new and conclusive evidence to resolve the long-running controversy over whether the loyalist association movement of 1792 was spontaneous or was crafted by government. It shows that Pitt and his colleagues did not know in advance of John Reeves's proposals for the Crown and Anchor association before they were published on 23 November and it suggests who Reeves's original collaborators probably were. It then goes on to show how Pitt and his cousin, Lord Grenville, confronted with many demands and proposals for associations at this time, quickly seized upon the Reeves project as the most adaptable to their own ends and produced a new draft, redefining his proposals in the directions they were prepared to see such a movement take. This they induced Reeves to publish as a second declaration on 26 November and they went on to promote as the example and inspiration for a wider association movement.

The essay examines the forced resignation of the duke of York as commander-in-chief of the British army in 1809 as a case study in the complexities of patriotism during the Napoleonic war. The recent work of Linda Colley and others has emphasized the conservative use of wartime patriotism as a means of defending the established political order in general and royalty in particular. But the parliamentary and outdoor pressure that prompted the duke to step down in response to suspicions that he had permitted his mistress to trqffick in army commissions indicates that staunch supporters as well as critics of the status quo did not hesitate to invoke patriotism as a means of criticizing royalty when it was thought to have neglected its duty to set a good moral example to the nation. There is no question that a large majority of the duke's critics felt that royalty was integral to what they believed was Britain's uniquely privileged position in the world. But the York affair suggests that a great many ‘patriotic’ Britons felt that the royal family had to be protected from its own occasional indiscretions as well as from the Napoleonic peril.

The merging of the Lutheran and Calvinist (Reformed) confessions to form the United Church of Prussia was one of the most controversial policies pursued by Frederick William III after 1815. By the late 1830s it had provoked a large and well-organised movement of opposition, particularly among those ‘Old Lutherans’ in Silesia and neighbouring provinces who refused to abandon their liturgical traditions. This article examines the government's attempts to complete the process of unification through measures designed to atomize and silence Lutheran protest. Neither Prussian law nor Prussian law enforcement agencies, the article suggests, furnished an adequate foundation for Frederick William III's confessional policy. The unsuccessful campaign against Old Lutheranism exacerbated latent tensions between the executive and judicial branches of the administration and revealed the limits of government power and authority in the sensitive area of confessional policy. The aggressive and systematic confessional statism of the administration under Frederick William III was unprecedented in Prussian history; in this as in other areas of policy, the term ‘Restoration’ misrepresents political reality in post-Napoleonic Prussia.

The debate over Free Trade was central to modem British history. This essay shifts attention from party politics to the changing discourse and perception of state and economy within the business community. It distinguishes three phases in the erosion of liberal political economy: reciprocity, defensive tariff reform, and modernizing protectionism. An analysis of the changing argument for protection points to the emergency of a new politico-economic settlement in the age of war and coordinated capitalism. The Free Trade culture of individualism and market was displaced by a new economic vision of combination and regulation. In political culture, however, state and economy continued to be viewed as separate spheres. Instead of a corporatist system, the new settlement between state and business was marked by a dissociation of economic from political pluralism.

Between June 1940 and September 1942 the French colony of Madagascar was a part of the Vichy French empire and a life-line for supplies to French Indo-China. Governor Paul Annet's island administration assumed a critical importance to Britain and South Africa after the fall of Singapore in February 1942. Conscious of the precedent of Vichy's two-fold capitulation to Japanese demands upon Indo-China in August 1940 and July 1941, both the British and the American governments feared that Annet might follow suit, conceding to Japan the use of Madagascar's principal ports and air bases. This threat led to the invasion of Madagascar by British empire forces. The attack began in May 1942 and was completed by October. Much to General Charles de Gaulle's lasting annoyance, the Free French movement played no part in these operations, although the British installed a Free French administration at Tananarive in December. This article examines the Madagascar invasion in the light of this exclusion of the Free French. It measures the strategic importance of the island against the political damage caused to Anglo-Free French relations by the British rebuttal of de Gaulle. It is argued that the British government utilized the Madagascar takeover as a means to keep the French national committee in check, disregarding Free French proposals as a result. Albeit temporary, this generated political confusion within Madagascar itself.