This article presents a new perspective on Elizabethan puritanism. In particular, it examines the ways in which the memory of Marian conformity continued to influence religious and political controversy during the reign of Elizabeth I. Drawing upon extensive archival evidence, it focuses on moments when the chequered pasts of Queen Elizabeth, William Cecil, and other chief officers of English church and state were called into question by puritan critics. In contrast to the prevailing narrative of Elizabethan triumphalism, it argues that late Tudor religion and politics were shaped by lingering puritan distrust of those who had revealed a propensity for idolatry by conforming during the Marian persecution. This fraught history of religious conformity meant that, for some puritans, the Church of England had been built on unstable foundations.

John Foster's book, Class struggle and the industrial revolution, with its central focus upon ‘the development and decline of a revolutionary class consciousness’ in Oldham in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, has aroused considerable controversy amongst historians. Indeed most recently Foster's picture of intense, often violent class conflict has been directly challenged by Dr Gadian. He has contended that ‘class collaboration, rather than class war’ was the key to the radical success in the town. On the basis of comparative figures on the size of the workforce in the factories of the various Lancashire towns, he has criticized Foster's emphasis upon the concentration of economic power in the hands of a relatively small number of capitalist families. Moreover he has even claimed that ‘the prevalence of small-scale industry in Oldham did much to enable masters and men to ‘harmonize and unite in some common remedy’, as was possible in Birmingham’.

Not the least of the duties with which Thomas Cromwell was burdened during the period of his ascendancy was the supervision of the lordship of Ireland. There the changes effected in the function and powers of the Dublin administration in the 1530s proved to be quite as important for the development of early-modern Ireland as those occurring in England during the same decade were for that realm. These changes centred on the legislation of the Irish Reformation Parliament of 1536–7 and on the termination of a policy of aristocratic delegation whereby Anglo-Irish magnates, primarily the earl of Kildare, had ruled the lordship on behalf of the king. By the later 1530s the lordship was governed through an English deputy working with a reconstituted Irish council, backed by a small English garrison, and controlled more firmly from London. For all this, recent research has established the overall responsibility of Cromwell.

The government of the parliamentary party during the Puritan Revolution of 1640–60 instituted changes in judicial and legal procedures to maintain its power and subdue its enemies. This study of treason trials conducted by the state will examine their legal basis and the events and activities considered treasonable. It will show the ways in which the concept of treason changed under a revolutionary government, and to what extent those trials conducted during the interregnum differed in their legal—judicial bases and content from those held before the King's death. Although there were hundreds of treason convictions during the interregnum throughout England, either by military courts-martial, or by common-law courts sitting in the provinces — as is shown by the Acts providing for die sale of estates forfeited to the Commonwealth for treason — this discussion will limit itself to trials initiated by the government in London. These state trials illustrate die political use of the treason charge; diey provide a direct link between the enactment of the interregnum treason laws and their implementation by the same legislative body. Not only was the meaning of treason determined, and die machinery of trial set up, by parliament; but who was to be tried was also decided eidier by parliament or die Council of State, and, after 1654, by the Protector and his council. It will dierefore be instructive to examine the types of treasonous action considered sufficiendy threatening to warrant parliamentary attention.

The pamphlet controversy caused by the proposal of William III to maintain a peacetime standing army following the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) tends to be understood as a confrontation of classicists and moderns in which the king's supporters argued that modern commerce had changed the nature of warfare and his opponents drew on classical republicanism to defend the county militia. But this characterization neglects the centrality of the Saxon republic and ancient constitution in the debate. English opponents of the standing army, including Walter Moyle, John Trenchard, and John Toland, went further than adapting the republicanism of James Harrington, who had rejected ancient constitutionalism during the Interregnum, to the restored monarchy. Their thought was more Saxon than classical and, in the case of Reverend Samuel Johnson, it was entirely so. However, the Scot, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, adapted neo-Harringtonian arguments to argue that modern politics could no longer be understood by their Gothic precedents. Above all, the king's supporters needed either to engage ancient constitutionalists on their own terms, as did one anonymous pamphleteer, or, as in the cases of John, Lord Somers, and Daniel Defoe, reject the relevance of ancient constitutionalism and Saxon republicanism completely.

Oliver Cromwell remains a deeply controversial figure in Ireland. In the past decade, his role in the conquest has received sustained attention. However, in recent scholarship on the settlement of Ireland in the 1650s, he has enjoyed a peculiarly low profile. This trend has served to compound the interpretative problems relating to Cromwell and Ireland which stem in part from the traditional denominational divide in Irish historiography. This article offers a reappraisal of Cromwell's role in designing and implementing the far-reaching ‘Cromwellian’ land settlement. It examines the evidence relating to his dealings with Irish people, both Protestant and Catholic, and his attitude towards the enormous difficulties which they faced post-conquest. While the massacre at Drogheda in 1649 remains a blot on his reputation, in the 1650s Cromwell in fact emerged as an important and effective ally for Irish landowners seeking to defeat the punitive confiscation and transplantation policies approved by the Westminster parliament and favoured by the Dublin government.

Historiographical accounts of Harry Truman's recognition of Israel have placed undue importance on this apparently sudden act on 14 May 1948. US Palestine policy has not been placed in the correct historical context of the Cold War. As a ‘Cold War consensus’ developed in Washington in the early post-war period, Palestine emerged as a secondary issue to the major concern that was the ‘Northern Tier’ of Greece, Turkey, and Iran. The US was guided by broad but clear objectives in Palestine: the attainment of a peaceful solution, a desire not to implicate US troops, and the denial of the region to the Soviets. Disagreements between the White House and the State Department were all expressed within these broad policy objectives. Israeli sources have been significant by their absence in the existing historiography of recognition. These sources reveal that for the Jewish community in Palestine, diplomatic victories were of secondary importance to the practical achievement of statehood. From both a Washington perspective, and the perspective from Palestine, US recognition was not regarded as a crucial issue at the time. It was a decision taken within the context of broad US objectives in Palestine, and it did not influence the decision of the Yishuv to declare statehood.

It is a traditional view among historians that nothing so be-devilled Anglo-American relations in their early days as the British wartime practice of impressing seamen. True, the British never asserted any right to impress persons who were not British subjects, but on the other hand such persons often claimed to be American citizens, and it was frequently very difficult to determine whether they really were so or not. Moreover, alleged British subjects were pursued by the Royal Navy on to neutral ships, not only in British ports and waters but also on the high seas, as well as on to British merchant ships and privateers, even when these were lying in neutral harbours. Finally, American naturalization papers were not respected by the British before 1870; until then the rule was, ‘once a British subject always a British subject’. The result was that, according to American official estimates, at least 2410 genuine Americans were impressed by the British between 1792 and 1802, and a further 6057 between 1802 and the beginning of 1812. The latter figure is probably an underestimate, and the grand total of impressed men for whom some colour of American citizenship existed may perhaps reach 10,000. Very many contemporary Americans believed it to be five or six times as much—with no shadow of doubt about the citizenship—but most American historians would now admit that such beliefs were ill-founded.

Very little has been published on British political activity in the province of Baghdad in the nineteenth century. Indeed, those formally responsible for it – officials in India – considered the region insignificant. This article argues, however, that it was not insignificant either to men on the spot or to influential British public figures in London and Constantinople. These men argued for its strategic and commercial potential, based on an inter-continental rather than a narrowly Indian view of policy, and optimism about the transformative material and moral power of steamships. Their pressure was responsible for the introduction of British armed steamers to the Mesopotamian rivers in 1835 and their retention throughout the century. This helped to ensure that the British had greater power in the region than any rival. The British also cultivated good relations with Arabs, expecting Ottoman rule to collapse in favour of something more progressive. The case of Baghdad shows the value for diplomatic historians of seeing Britain's European and Indian strategy as connected. It also raises doubts about the importance to British officials of promoting specific commercial interests abroad: the British in the region were much more concerned with the projection of power, reliability, and even-handedness. For the early Victorian mind, the key to progress was surely not the making of particular tariff arrangements, but the dynamic potential of steam itself.

In his celebrated work England under the Stuarts George Macaulay Trevelyan dismissed in a single sentence the question of the position adopted by the bulk of the English rural population during the Civil War: ‘The tenant-farmer was in no position to avow any political or religious faith but that of his landlord.’ Given this assumption it was logical that Trevelyan and his successors should concern themselves with the problems and opinions of landlords and other, more independent, men and leave the doings of the peasantry to students of agrarian and social history. And so they have, never seriously questioning the proposition that the aristocracy's sympathy for the Crown would be reflected in the attitudes and behaviour of their tenants. Indeed, the king himself had felt confident of the peasants' support, and an assortment of facts and myths have been marshalled post facto to persuade us that his confidence was justified. For example, since peasants were assumed to have been rather simple-minded and very conservative men, it was deduced that they ought to have sided with their monarch. The Great Chain of Being, the accepted basis of heavenly and earthly society, placed kings between man and the angels, surely a height bound to inspire awe in a plain man of the soil. According to some historians, Charles I had been a veritable champion of the poor with his vigorous campaign to enforce the poor laws and his commissions for the prevention of enclosure. His humbler subjects must have been grateful for such paternalism. In any case, as Trevelyan pointed out, the stark reality of their dependent position would have forced tenants to adhere to the party chosen by their landlords, and most landlords who committed themselves to a party joined the king's.

There have been in England since 1600 three great monetary controversies. The first—and because of the place which it made for itself in literature, the most famous—was that between John Locke (1632–1704) and William Lowndes (1652–1724); the second arose over the Report of the Bullion Committee of 1810—for or against its adoption; the third was in the early eighteen-forties between the Currency and the Banking Schools. Locke, the Bullion Committee and the Currency School won. Lowndes’ proposal was rejected: the resumption of cash payments was decided upon in 1819: Peel's Bank Act of 1844 was a triumph for the Currency School. In each case the cause of “sound” money prevailed.

This article explores the rural poor relief system of colonial South Carolina. It finds that poor relief was substantially more generous and more readily available in rural areas of South Carolina than elsewhere in British North America, or indeed in the entire Anglophone world. It suggests that this was because elite vestrymen had deep-seated concerns about the position of the white poor in a society that was dominated by African slavery. Generous relief of adult paupers was therefore a public demonstration of the privileges of race to which all whites were entitled. Elites in rural South Carolina also made considerable efforts to provide a free education for pauper children that would inculcate industry and usefulness among those who might become future public burdens. The serious attention paid to the situation of the white poor in colonial South Carolina was therefore part of an effort to ensure the unity of white society by overcoming the divisions of class.

For liberals, especially those who kept to the pure doctrine of Cobden, Egypt became a test case in the 1870s. Disraeli's purchase of the Khedive Ismail's Suez Canal shares in 1875 made its annexation appear a possibility. Two years later Gladstone penned his eloquent warnings as to diis step in his ‘Aggression on Egypt’ article in the Nineteenth Century. The annexation or occupation of Egypt would be, he said, ‘die almost certain egg of a great African Empire that will grow and grow’ until Britain would have territory and commitments throughout die whole of die African continent, and consequent embroilments with France and die odier Powers. There would be no limit to die responsibilities Britain would have to undertake, dealing with ‘all oppression’, and undertaking die ‘entire taxation’. It would end forever die realization of diat lofty aim, die founding not of a terrestrial but a ‘moral empire’ - ‘the enthronement of diis idea of Public Right, as die governing idea of European policy’.

In recent years the word ‘faction’ has come to dominate study of the early modern period. Despite various reservations concerning precisely what is denoted by the term, historians have begun enthusiastically to look beyond the external appearances of political events to identify the hidden, factional, motives which are assumed to have prompted them. Owing in large part to the pioneering work of Drs D. R. Starkey and E. W. Ives, the reign of Henry VIII has been seen as particularly prone to faction, as various ambitious individuals or coalitions intrigued to manipulate the peculiarly pliable character of the king in their favour and to thwart the ambitions of their rivals.

There has been no full study of the Mond-Turner talks and the subsequent conferences between the Trades Union Congress, die National Confederation of Employers’ Organizations (NCEO) and die Federation of British Industries (FBI). This is largely because until recendy die relevant archives and paper collections have not been open for research. From the official government papers, the archives of the Confederation of British Industries and some TUC material, it is now possible for die first time to present a detailed study of diis series of talks, important as a major attempt at industrial co-operation at national level.

This article is a study of political conflicts in Yarmouth during the 1620s and 1630s between a group of puritan aldermen and their anti-puritan opponents. These focused firstly on efforts initiated by Bishop Harsnet to remove the stipendiary lecturers supported by the puritans; and secondly on attempts by the anti-puritan aldermen to introduce a less ‘popular’ form of town government by revising Yarmouth's charter. Throughout these conflicts the anti-puritan side were able to secure considerable backing at court, particularly from Charles I, through employing a rhetoric which highlighted the threat to order and authority presented by a combination of puritanism and ‘popularity’. The article shows how strong fears of this threat were at the heart of the Caroline regime, and how the actions which resulted could cause deep local divisions. It also illustrates the ways in which local interest groups and their supporters manoeuvred around the king to achieve their ends.

This article examines the role of graphic satire as a tool of agitation and criticism during the early 1640s, taking as its case study the treatment of the archbishop of Canterbury and his episcopal associates at the hands of engravers, etchers, and pamphlet illustrators. Previous research into the political ephemera of early modern England has been inclined to sideline its pictorial aspects in favour of predominantly textual material, employing engravings and woodcuts in a merely illustrative capacity. Similarly, studies into the contemporary relationship between art, politics, and power have marginalized certain forms of visual media, in particular the engravings and woodcuts which commonly constitute graphic satire, focusing instead on elite displays of authority and promoting the concept of a distinct dichotomy between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture and their consumers. It is argued here that the pictorial, and in particular graphic, arts formed an integral part of a wider culture of propaganda and critique during this period, incorporating drama, satire, reportage, and verse, manipulating and appropriating ideas and imagery familiar to a diverse audience. It is further proposed that such a culture was both in its own time and at present only fully understood and appreciated when consumed and considered in these interdisciplinary terms.