This article examines the ways in which debates on ecclesiology in the Church of England served as a venue for the examination of political precept. It argues in particular that polemical sources – whether sermons, pamphlets, or longer works – reveal that discussion of conformity, the nature of the church, and its doctrine and discipline led to a broader examination of law, sovereignty, parliament, and the political costs of religious discord. Underlying the dispute was a fundamental tension over civil and sacred authority, and the relationship between politics – the realm of human custom and history – and doctrine – the realm of the divine and immemorial. The article offers a number of revisions to current discussions of the history of political thought, while pointing to the importance of religious discourse for our understanding of the political tensions that existed in the years prior to the English civil war.

In the 1930s the British peace movement expanded rapidly from a preserve of small elitist peace societies into a mass phenomenon. More specifically, it was in the period from the Manchurian crisis to the Italo-Ethiopian war that what has been loosely called ‘pacifism’ gained political weight. Whilst its effect on the making of foreign policy has been the subject of much historical inquiry, the manifestations of the peace debate, including the famous Peace Ballot, can best be explained in the domestic context of party and pressure-group politics. The divisive nature of war rejection as an issue then becomes clearly apparent. Indeed the argument that the peace movement was a point of consensus can only be valid at a superficial level. One can agree with Marwick that a ‘middle opinion’ preferring peace to war developed in the thirties.1 But in public discussion about collective security pacifists caused schisms which hindered the clarification of party and pressure-group policies.

In December 1721 the Irish parliament threw out the heads of a bill to establish a national bank in Ireland, and both houses passed resolutions which leave no doubt that the bank was perceived as a major constitutional threat. It has been clear to all historians that opposition to the bank was not based on a simple assessment of its economic viability, but it is much less clear that the political considerations that were involved have been as fully appreciated. L. M. Cullen has drawn attention to the extent to which eighteenth-century accounts of the Irish economy are coloured by non-economic criteria, and in particular ‘by a nascent constitutional agitation and economic nationalism’ in the 1720s. ‘An economic mythology established itself very quickly with the writings of the 1720s and the political concerns which manifested themselves in that decade providing the base of arguments which were repeated in subsequent writing.’ If this is true, then it is no less necessary to have a clear account of those political concerns than to have an economic history that is free of them.

The wars in Ireland in 1689–91 have attracted considerable attention from historians, most recently in the fine study by Dr Simms, but what happened in Ireland while James II was still on the English throne has been comparatively neglected. One major reason is that evidence on this period is patchy and often unreliable. Of the state papers, the last letter in the Public Record Office from one of James's chief governors is dated 31 August 1686, although the second earl of Clarendon's own copies of his letters while lord lieutenant continue until his return to England early in 1687. Only a handful of Tyrconnel's letters from this period survive. Copies of Irish letters sent by James and his secretary of state, the earl of Sunderland, can be found in the secretaries' letter books, but copies of their more confidential letters were not entered. Sunderland was careful to destroy incriminating material at the Revolution, so much of what survives is routine and innocuous. For the rest, the Ormond papers, a mine of information for half a century of Irish history, peter out after 1686. Thomas Sheridan's ‘Narrative’ is well informed and, I think basically reliable, but its usefulness is reduced by its imprecise chronology. Strict control of the press in 1685–8 ensured that few pamphlets of Irish interest were published, while few of those produced after 1688 have much other than polemic to offer the historian of James's reign.

From 1861 to 1865, English politicians and journalists watched with passionate interest as the United States seemed to tear itself apart over the question of slavery. During these years, English public men, politicians and writers of all qualities and degrees, gave extensive airing to their views both of slavery and of American democracy. This extensive commentary on the American conflict, and the subsequent revival of interest in parliamentary reform, have made the divisions in English opinion on the war a useful testing ground of mid-Victorian social and political attitudes. Early studies, written from the perspective of the northern victory, the abolition of slavery, and the martyrdom of Lincoln, found it difficult to comprehend the extent of pro-confederate sympathy in England. On the slavery question, the mid-Victorians seemed to have lost the abolitionist enthusiasm of their evangelical forebears in the Clapham Sect. In order to fathom this failure of English judgement, historians attempted to show that the more articulate minority, the upper echelons of mid-Victorian society, sided with an aristocratic, slave-owning south, while the less articulate majority, middle-class radicals and the working class, sided with a democratic, abolitionist north.

In the last forty years the accepted portrait of the parliamentarian party during the Great Civil War has changed almost beyond recognition. A score of books and articles have been devoted, with much debate, to reinterpreting the nature of the factions comprising that party. By contrast, the accepted view of its opponent, the royalist party, is still that established by Gardiner over a hundred years ago. This situation is not unduly surprising. Some of the principal sources for a study of the royalist party, such as the journals of the royalist parliament, were destroyed at the end of the war. Furthermore, the royalists may seem ultimately less significant objects of study than their rivals, in that they lost the war and therefore contributed nothing, save as a menace, to the subsequent formation of English polity and the making of the modern world. Though not surprising, such an attitude is none the less indefensible. Considerable material for such a study does survive. Clarendon's comments, whether in his History1 or his Life2, are well known. By contrast other retrospective sources, notably Prince Rupert's ‘Diary’, a summary of his career by an unknown admirer,3 are almost unused. These may be compared with the contemporary evidence of hundreds of letters preserved in the British Library, Bodleian Library and local record offices. In favour of such a study, it may be argued that until the royalist party is understood the nature of the Great Civil War cannot be properly appreciated. Moreover, the significance of the parliamentarian victory for a future England is only clear if some suggestion can be made of the possible consequences of a royalist triumph.

This essay reexamines the fall of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, in the last coup of Henry VIII's reign. Further evidence of Surrey's purported treason is uncovered. A study of his poetry reveals his allegiances, in religion and politics. The nature of the group which aligned against him – the ‘conjured league’ – is analysed, and the way in which he was betrayed, by whom and why, is discovered.

It has been argued that the general election of 1852 marked the zenith of clerical influence in Irish politics in the nineteenth century. If so, it marked a barren use of power. The present paper is concerned with how such influence was acquired and why it was so curiously exercised; or, more precisely, with these questions in so far as the catholic hierarchy was concerned.

Recent scholarship on the Restoration period in Italy (1815–60) has put the accent on regional diversity and on particular developments within the different pre-unification states. In particular, recent studies on the Kingdom of Sardinia have added much to our view of the Piedmontese nobility's peculiar character and ability to maintain its identity through time. Equally, detailed studies of the economy of nineteenth-century Tuscany have emphasized the importance of banking and silk manufacturing, whilst studies of governmental policies in the Papal State have shed new light over a particular administrative monarchy's attempt at pursuing a policy of reconciliation between modernization and conservatism. Whilst these studies have shown the significance of regional developments during the Restoration, other studies have argued that the process of ‘inventing’ the Italian nation-state has led to a conscious obliteration of regional administrative and juridical traditions and have shown the way to the construction of an up-to-date regional synthesis of a historical period which is much more than a simple prelude to the unification of the country.

The historical verdict on the General Court of the East India Company has often been an unfavourable one. The Court, the ultimate sovereign body within the company, has invariably been described in terms similar to those which used to be applied to the eighteenth-century house of commons: it has been seen as a corrupt, disorderly, and disreputable political institution. Macaulay set the general tone in 1840 when he painted a typically vivid picture of proceedings at the General Court in the mid-eighteenth century. ‘The meetings’, he wrote, ‘were large, stormy, even riotous, the debates indecently virulent. All the turbulence of a Westminster election, all the trickery and corruption of a Grampound election, disgraced the proceedings of this assembly on questions of the most solemn importance’. This unflattering and somewhat impressionistic sketch has occasionally received uncritical acceptance from modern-day historians, and indeed it may be endorsed by contemporary observations of particular events at the Court. In 1767, for example, a first-time visitor to the Court room at India House in Leadenhall Street was appalled by what he saw, and he came away with the impression that this was ‘the most riotous assembly I ever saw’. And yet, on numerous other occasions commentators were full of praise for the good order and high standards of oratory at the Court. This has prompted two of the leading modern authorities on the history of the company in Britain to comment favourably on the quality of debate at India House during the eighteenth and early-nineteenth century.

Following the Atterbury plot of 1722 the earl of Orrery, one of the prominent English Jacobites, told James III that they must bend all their efforts ‘to lull the Government asleep and make them believe there are no further thoughts of designs against them’. Their efforts were never to be realized, for to the English government ministerial idleness where Jacobites were concerned was a luxury it felt it could not afford. By 1716 the government had been made too well aware of the threat this group presented to its position. Reversal could only be avoided through close vigilance and the early detection of plot and conspiracy. Their earlier experiences of attempted plots, near assassinations, foreign aid, open rebellion, and the inability to gauge the movement's strength, created in the ministers between 1715 and 1745 an almost pathological fear of a Stuart restoration. It was never to subside but only to increase with each passing year, reaching its climax during the administration of Robert Walpole. Dissatisfaction with the existing system under the Hanoverians and the presence of an alternative choice on the continent were two facts that could not be overlooked. Jacobitism as a rallying cry for the disaffected in England, Ireland, and Scodand was an obvious reality. Each ministry, in varying degrees, pursued what appeared to it to be the hideous, all-pervasive force of Jacobitism – a force that seemed to assume infinite proportions the less visible it was to the eye. Jacobites must be hunted out, their secrets penetrated, their plans squashed. The best evidence of this pre-occupation of the government with fear of a Stuart restoration lies in an examination of its methods of securing intelligence through the post office, the employment of spies, and personal interviews with the Jacobites themselves.

Eighteenth-century architect-builders were a small group, but important for understanding the market strategies of knowledge-based experts in an age of rapid growth in technical information before the creation of modern professions. This article confronts a teleological historiography of emerging professionalization. It is focused on Robert Mylne and several of his contemporaries in Edinburgh and London, including a number of successful London-based Scots who were active as architects, builders, engineers, and surveyors, and self-styled in all these areas when it suited them. It supplies an account of what it took for building experts to establish themselves and flourish in big cities and the ways in which such experts navigated, controlled, and accommodated an environment of unregulated expertise that largely suited contemporary practitioners. Individual, family, and collective market strategies are examined in detail and the final section is a close analysis of the activities of the Architects Club in the 1790s.

According to a familiar interpretation, London was parliamentarian in the English Revolution, and was instrumental in the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the English republic which endured for eleven years. London was the arsenal, the treasure–house and the recruiting ground for the revolutionary cause; it was the Paris of the English Revolution. In this article I shall argue that from early 1646 – a year after the formation of the New Model Army – London was deeply divided between those who wanted the terms agreed by the Houses to be imposed on Charles rather than negotiated with him, and those who wanted a speedy end to the war, a mutually agreed peace, the disbandment of the army and the imposition of religious uniformity. By 1647 the rulers of London were dominated by an implacable hatred of the revolutionary army, and bent their efforts to restoring Charles to his throne. In this policy they enjoyed the warm support of a majority of the City's population, who repeatedly demonstrated their anti-revolutionary convictions. in both word and deed. The army's political support in London was drawn mainly from the artisan and tradesman classes (many of them non-citizens), and from the suburbs. To a large extent it was the assiduous efforts of one man – Philip Skippon, major-general of the New Model infantry – which kept London in the parliamentary camp during the second civil war.

This article assesses the relationship between the imposed Central African Federation (1953–63) and the ways in which East and Central African thinkers and leaders conveyed and pursued the possibilities of decolonization. Existing literature on federalism in twentieth-century Africa fails to place regional projects in dialogue, studying in isolation East Africa and Central Africa, ‘utopian’ and oppressive regionalisms. But such clear dividing lines were not articulated in the four discursive ‘sketches’ of East and Central Africa that this article brings to light: those of anti-Federation organizations in Nairobi and Ndola in 1952; students at Makerere College (Kampala) in 1953; mobile Malawian activists in regional and pan-African forums around 1955–8; and East African party publicity representatives around 1958–60. At each of these critical moments, thinkers creatively constructed various relationships between geographical space and chronological change, through the lens of a broader, interdependent East and Central Africa, as a means to fend off perceived threats to a precarious advancement towards a democratic future. Attending to the evolution of these ideas shows not only how the Central African Federation placed material constraints on regional solidarity, but how ‘thinking regionally’ could support the case for national borders, even before decolonization.

This article sets out to explore the extent and to test the limits of the history of sexuality in twentieth-century Germany. It examines the ways in which sexuality can be explored from above and below. Drawing on medical-legal definitions of sexuality, feminist debates about sexuality, the science of sexology, and advice literature, the article sets out the state of debate together with ways that it might develop in the future. Arguing in favour of a milieu-specific history of sexuality, it suggests ways that the study of youth cultures and teenage magazines together with everyday, oral history and biographical approaches might help to arrive at this. It then goes on to chart new approaches, particularly with regard to sexuality in the Third Reich, and suggests ways that these reshape our understanding of sexuality in post-war Germany, East and West. Arguing against a reductive emphasis on a society being either ‘pro-’ or ‘anti-sex’ and calling for a clearer definition of what is meant by ‘sexual liberalization’, the article points to a more multi-layered and contradictory understanding of sexuality, which is still in the process of being written.

Processes for the identification of criminal suspects tell us a great deal about wider cultural assumptions and social prejudices regarding somatic difference; its causes, relative degree, and consequence. If early modern Europeans had something approaching a forensic science, it was astrology, which has recently garnered renewed attention from historians of ideas. Rather than assume astrology's seventeenth-century decline in the face of revolutionary natural philosophy, what follows suggests that English astrology remained significant for mundane bodily discrimination, in the context of both a more deliberate, gradual reform and the tenacity of centuries-old humoral physiology. More importantly, scrutiny of astrological practice, and the logic underpinning its lasting currency, can reveal much about the significance of bodily contrasts and the meanings ascribed to them by Tudor-Stuart folk.

Anna Gambles's Protection and politics (1999) established the existence of a sophisticated and pervasive conservative economic discourse in Britain in the decades before Repeal. This article argues that the imperial aspect of that discourse – comprising ideals of imperial economic integration, imperial preference, and British navigational prowess – has been mistakenly understood as a response to ‘the imperialism of free trade'. In fact, these ideals were evolved primarily as the intellectual response of the West Indian lobby to the Anti-Slavery Society's campaign for the emancipation of British colonial slaves. Emancipation was regarded as a prospective economic disaster for the British plantation system and so the years after 1823 witnessed the vigorous and sophisticated defence of West Indian slavery by rhetorical and discursive means traditionally ascribed the label of ‘conservative economics'. This article argues that the imperial economic discourse hitherto considered ‘conservative’ should more properly be recognized as ‘pro-slavery’, something underscored by the pro-slavery sympathies of the writers credited with the articulation of this discourse, and by the almost exclusive relevance of its arguments to West Indian, as opposed to other colonial possessions.