‘Promotion’, says Holy Scripture, ‘cometh neither from the east, nor from the west: nor yet from the south’. Clerical aspirants knew better than the psalmist the strange geography of preferment in Restoration England, where the return in 1660 of the Stuarts did much to encourage in churchmen a greater sense of direction and purpose. Our present study is to elucidate one particular period in the history of preferment, that spanned by the short-lived and little-known Commission for Ecclesiastical Promotions which sat at the height and at the helm of the Tory Reaction. To place the Commission in its proper perspective, however, something must be said of the Restoration Settlement itself. It was, of course, no accident that the hereditary monarchy and Anglican Church returned together. Sir Edward Hyde, foremost of the statesmen at the exiled Court and, from January 1658, lord chancellor to Charles II, had bent his energies to achieve this very end. Yet, for the Church, it was a re-establishment rather than an unqualified restoration, for the loyalist nobility and gentry-the real architects of Sion's delivery-were careful not to resurrect Laud's persecuting prelacy. To understand the changed circumstances in which the Church found herself, it is essential to take account of what was not, as well as what was restored. Neither the imperious Court of High Commission nor the self-incriminating ex officio oath was brought back. Shorn of the chief weapons with which she had formerly harried the more wayward of the political nation, the Church returned as part of the only workable constitution England had ever known, that is as a buttress of monarchy.

During the past ten years, historians of early modern Europe in Britain, France and the United States have shown an increasing interest in the history of education. Doubtless encouraged by the contemporary formulation of an educational sociology, they in turn have begun to investigate the form and function of education in pre-industrial societies. For the most part, however, research has been limited to the study of elementary education with the purpose of understanding the effect of its expansion on literacy and popular attitudes. Less attention has been paid to the social history of higher education, particularly to the role of the universities. The one exception is the case of Oxford and Cambridge for which studies abound through the efforts of Professor Stone and his pupils. But outside England, apart from Kagan's work on the Spanish universities, studies have been few and limited to accounts of patterns of attendance over relatively short periods of time that give little indication of the general picture. Indeed, information about the history of attendance at most universities in the early modern period has still to be gleaned from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century studies – useful as sources of administrative history, but seldom revealing on questions that interest the present-day historian. Apparendy, too, there is little chance of the position improving in the future. With the exception of a project envisaged by the French early modernists, Chartier, Frijhoff and Julia, interest in the social history of universities seems to be diminishing.

This article examines the co-operation between unionists and liberals in inter-war Glasgow. As with the parliamentary challenge of labour, unionists and liberals were confronted at the local level also. The usual response was some sort of municipal alliance or pact. In Scotland, where unionist support for continuing links with liberals was particularly pronounced, this took the form of specific ‘moderate’ parties created to contest local elections. This strategy was markedly successful in keeping labour out of office. The moderates secured their majority in Glasgow by completely dominating the middle-class wards and winning a number of working-class seats. Moderate success is examined through the essential unity of the middle-class vote, the more limited local franchise, and religious sectarianism. However, it became increasingly difficult for the moderates to satisfy both their middle-class and working-class supporters. The sudden emergence of a militant protestant party in the depths of the depression provided a temporary vehicle of protest, which split the moderate vote and allowed labour in to power in 1933.

During the second world war, Syria and Lebanon lay on the fringe of the major Middle Eastern military campaigns fought between the Allied and Axis powers. They stood, however, at the focal point of relations between the British and the Free French, due to the anomalous situation which arose in the Levant states in 1941.

This article argues that those termed ‘liberals’ in the United States had the opportunity in the late 1940s to use overseas case studies to reshape the ramshackle political agenda of the New Deal along more specifically social democratic lines, but that they found it impossible to match interest in the wider world with a concrete programme to overcome tension between left-wing politics and the emerging anti-totalitarianism of the Cold War. The American right, by contrast, conducted a highly organized publicity drive to provide new meaning for their anti-statist ideology in a post-New Deal, post-isolationist United States by using perceived failures of welfare states overseas as domestic propaganda. The examples of Labour Britain after 1945 and Labour New Zealand both provided important case studies for American liberals and conservatives, but in the Cold War it was the American right who would benefit most from an ideologically driven repackaging of overseas social policy for an American audience.

Between 1867 and the end of the nineteenth century the Irish question was one of the major issues in British politics. Between 1880 and 1893 in particular it achieved the status of the predominating issue, the great and abiding preoccupation of politicians. There would appear to be little difficulty for the historian in explaining why this was so. There were obviously abundant reasons in the Irish situation itself why politicians should have devoted so much of their time and effort to dealing with it—the urgent nature of Ireland's social problems, especially in relation to land-holding; the growth of Irish agrarian agitation so much better organized and supported than had hitherto been the case that it had to be met by a large and extremely time-consuming amount of coercion or land reform or a combination of both; the growing hold in Ireland of nationalism and of the demand for home rule; the new strength and cohesion of the Irish parliamentary party and its impact on British politics, both within the House of Commons and through the mobilisation of the votes of Irishmen in the non-Irish constituencies. Ireland clearly needed, and had the means of exacting, a very considerable amount of attention to its problems. The nature of the preoccupation with Ireland seems equally clear. The issues of land and local government reform, home rule, and coercion predominate in the thought and action of politicians with regard to the Irish question.

This article examines the influence of a distinct Irish Protestant faction on parliamentarian policy-making in the mid-1640s – the Irish Independents. These men were not merely clients of parliament’s lord lieutenant, Viscount Lisle, but formed a group with consistent personnel and policies, which can be traced back to the ‘Boyle group’ in the Irish council of the 1620s and 1630s. In the 1640s they came into an alliance with the English Independents, based on common hostility to the Presbyterian party, the Scots, and the supporters of Ormond and Inchiquin in Ireland. This coalition was, however, inherently unstable. Faced with equivocation at Westminster, where Ireland had always been low on the list of priorities, from December 1646 the Irish Independents were forced to take charge of parliament’s Irish policy, and many of the initiatives previously attributed to Lisle in 1646–7 can more properly be laid at their door. In conclusion, it is suggested that the Irish Independents represent a radical strain in Irish Protestantism, which supported Ireland’s closer integration into an ‘English Empire’, and which would see its fulfilment in the unionist agenda developed in the 1650s.

Vincenzo Gioberti's Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (1843) has been acknowledged as a major influence on moderate liberal thinking in the Risorgimento. Yet historians and political theorists have tended to dismiss the text as ponderous, unreadable or worse. The concern of this paper is to present what was once seen as a canonical text in terms that might make its initial appeal intelligible. Gioberti's text is set in the context of theological reappraisals within the Catholic tradition sparked by the rise of the national idea. The Primato managed to bring together currents of thought which are often regarded as antithetical. Catholic universalism was used to buttress and legitimize a specific view of the Italian nation. Gioberti's synthesis was to have a lasting impact on Italian liberalism, fostering a regard for established traditions rather than abstract rights. It also served to isolate revolutionaries and reactionaries in a dramatic and decisive decade for political debate in Italy.

In the 1621 parliament members of the House of Commons clashed with the king over the issue of clergy as JPs: there were suggestions that no clergyman should sit as a JP, or that only bishops and deans should be appointed. Why were there complaints at that time, and were they justified? Was the nomination of clergy as justices an element in ‘the rise of clericalism’? This analysis of clergy JPs between 1590 and 1640 shows that they had been increasing slowly in number from 1590, and more rapidly towards 1617 under Lord Chancellor Ellesmere. But the major expansion in their ranks came under his successors Francis Bacon 1617 to 1621, and especially Bishop John Williams 1621 to 1625. However, there was no systematic central policy behind appointments, and local interests and the normal processes of patronage were important. Perhaps precedence among the justices and the exercise of secular authority by clerical JPs were sometimes troublesome issues. But, despite continuing complaints from MPs, the proportion of clergy to lay JPs was always small – at its highest in 1626, with 7·6 per cent. Thereafter Lord Keeper Thomas Coventry allowed the clerical presence to decline, both absolutely and proportionately. If there was a ‘rise of the clergy’ after 1625, clergy JPs were not part of it.

Gambling has received surprisingly little attention from social historians, especially considering the wide growth of interest in working-class leisure over the last decade. The leading historians in this field, including Peter Bailey, Hugh Cunningham and Stephen Jones, have been more concerned with the development of institutional forms of leisure such as the music-hall and the cinema. In the only detailed study of gambling, Ross McKibbin considered the growth of betting on horse racing and the football pools between 1880 and 1939, claiming that gambling constituted a rational pursuit within the economic and intellectual environment of working-class life. McKibbin's pioneering article established that betting was a central feature of working-class leisure, and in a case study of Salford I propose to develop this argument by looking at a wider range of forms of gambling, and by an examination of the survival of betting as an illegal activity. McKibbin dealt only briefly with the question of the policing of gambling. I propose to relate some of the findings of my research to a second concern of recent social history, the impact of policing upon popular recreation.

Early sixteenth-century Germany and Switzerland witnessed, amongst their peasants, a growing dissatisfaction with economic exploitation and the increasing power of political rulers. The Protestant Reformation at the time had a profound influence on the moulding of this dissatisfaction into a right to demand the enforcement of divine justice. The Swiss reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, provided parallels for the demands of the peasants, while the German reformers, Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, criticized the rebellious methods of the peasantry. Against this background the young Swiss reformer, Heinrich Bullinger, responded more positively towards the claims of the peasants by opposing the views of the Lutheran reformers in his play ‘Lucretia and Brutus’. In this drama, Bullinger propounds the first steps towards the development of his federal theory of politics by advancing the idea of oath-taking as the mechanism for transforming the monarchy into a Christian republic. The idea of oath-taking was destined to become a most important device in early modern politics, used to combat tyranny and to promote the idea of republicanism.

In 1996 Miles Taylor published an historiographical review of Chartism in which he argued that our understanding of the movement has stagnated since the publication of important research by Gareth Stedman Jones and Dorothy Thompson in 1983–4. Taylor suggests that the new cultural history of politics (or the ‘linguistic turn’) is to blame for this ‘impasse’, and argues that scholars should consolidate the work of Stedman Jones and Thompson. I argue that Chartist historians should continue to engage with contemporary approaches. The new political history sheds light on some persistent problems of interpretation which Taylor passes over. It also raises the possibility of extending the study of Chartism into the colonial realm, an area historians have not yet seriously broached. In conclusion, a sketch is given of the significance of Chartist political culture in one episode of protest in the Australian colony of Victoria in 1853.

In February 1610, the English chargé d'affaires reported that Henry IV of France, having decided to go to war in the Spanish Netherlands, had lately been measured for a new suit of armour, and had also displayed in his chamber a table or tableau, ‘wherein is paynted a man fleeing from Venus and the image of gaming, and following Hercules after two other images, of hope and fortune, with these verses: I go to the temple of virtue, hope and fortune precede me; farewell damned pleasure.’ This piece of visual propaganda encoded a variant of the Choice of Hercules, which appealed to the king's lifelong self-construct as heroic warrior. We trace the complex history of his heroic self-fashioning, showing how Henry IV after 1598 compensated for the absence of war through the hunt, gambling, and sexual domination. The dissonance between what Henry IV perceived himself to be and what he feared by 1610 he had become makes it easier to understand what drove him to his appointment in the rue de la Ferronerie.

This article uncovers a transimperial culture of petitioning that eased the transition for subjects who moved between the French and British empires. Although the petition was hailed as the birthright of Britons, and has consistently drawn attention from historians of Britain and its empire, this did not mean that petitioning was unknown elsewhere. Indeed, Quebec, which was transferred from France to Britain at the close of the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) and experienced lengthy periods of both French and British rule, provides an ideal site through which to document written traditions of expressing grievance. This article reveals not only that French subjects were familiar with addressing the monarch well before the British conquest, but also suggests an important continuity of form that transcended differences of language, shifting regimes, and imperial rivalries. The analysis of petitions from Quebec both before and after 1759 testifies to an identifiable commensurability in the lived experiences of inhabitants across the French and British empires, just as it underscores the petition's similar function in the overseas colonies more broadly. The petition's value to both subjects and sovereigns – its role in mediating relations between them across the globe – helps to explain its continued relevance in these two monarchical empires.

The importance of presbyterianism in London politics during the 1640s has long been recognized, but only recently have its secular aspects received their proper emphasis. The burdens and uncertainties generated by prolonged warfare found expression in a rising tide of moderation and concern for property and social order. ‘City shopkeepers and merchants’ saw in a presbyterian system of church government the means of reimposing discipline upon parochial life through the offices of vestrymen and ruling elder. Of course, London presbyterianism was not merely an expression of economic and social dislocation. Indeed, this study will be very much concerned with the activities of a group of religiously committed presbyterians who were able to secure considerable political influence by exploiting the more amorphous presbyterian sentiment of many of the propertied citizens.

This article presents four manuscript essays from the mid-1750s, three of which are attributed to Edmund Burke for the first time. In doing so, the article aims to reconstruct Burke's earliest political thought during a period often described as the ‘missing years’ of his biography. These essays cover themes that would later occupy places of central importance in Burke's thinking, and so form a bridge between his early intellectual development and his subsequent political career. After presenting the grounds for ascribing these writings to Burke, the article then sketches their main lines of argument and situates them in their political context. It also briefly establishes their significance with reference to their enlightenment intellectual milieu. Covering such themes as the nature of party, the functioning of the mixed constitution, and the terms on which Ireland was subjected to the English crown, these early essays address a set of political and constitutional issues that were major areas of controversy in British politics in the second half of the eighteenth century.

The phrase in the title is Charles I's. Writing from Newcastle to Henry Jermyn, John Culpepper and John Ashburnham in September 1646, he voiced his ‘unexpressable greefe andastonishment’ at the advice on the church which he had received from them during the course of his negotiations with the parliamentary commissioners. For they had assured Charles that, if he was no doubt‘ obliged’ by his conscience ‘to doe all’ that was in his ‘power to support and maintain that function of Bishops’, then he had already discharged that obligation to the full, as ‘all the world can witness’. Conscience, in this sense, had no further claims on him, nor could it be more strictly interpreted:

if by conscience is intended to assert that Episcopacy is jure divino exclusive, wherby no Protestant (or rather Christian) Church can be acknowledged for such without a Bishop, we must therin crave leave wholly to differ. And if we be in an errour, we are in good company; ther not being (as we have cause to believe) 6 persons of the Protestant Religion of the other opinion. Thus much we can add, that at the treaty of Uxbridge none of your Divines then present (though much provoked thereunto) would maintain that (we might say uncharitable) opinion, no not privatly amongst your commissioners. Nether doeth it follow that in this, or any the most riged, sence you are obliged to perish in company with Bishops meerly out of pitty (and certainly you have nothing els left to assist them with) or that monarchy ought to fall, because Episcopacy cannot stand.

Charles I and his clerical supporters are often said to have been wary of print and public discussion, only entering the public sphere reluctantly and to comparatively little effect during the political crisis of 1642. This article challenges such views by focusing on the neglected role of official forms of print such as proclamations, declarations, and state prayers and their promulgation in the nation's churches. It traces the ways in which the king utilized the network of parish clergy to broadcast his message and mobilize support during the Scottish crisis of 1639–40 and again in the ‘paper war’ of 1642. The article argues that traditional forms of printed address retained their potency and influence despite the proliferation of polemical pamphlets and newsbooks. The significance of these mobilizations is demonstrated by the profound disquiet they caused among the king's Covenanter and parliamentarian opponents as well as the ‘good effects’ they had in generating support for the royalist cause.