King Stephen's reign has long been recognized as a crucial period for monasticism in England. Many authors have written about alleged anarchical conditions during those nineteen years, and scholars have done a great deal of work on twelfth century English monasticism; nevertheless, comparatively little attention has been paid to the impact of this supposed anarchy on the monastic establishment. This impact is the concern of this essay. Due to the limitation of space, I will confine myself to the material damages suffered by monastic houses during Stephen's reign and will offer an extended summary of my findings.

The traditional picture of anarchy in England during Stephen's reign is that the civil wars wreaked havoc with nearly all aspects of life and inflicted massive and long lasting material damages. Medieval writers—most memorably the Peterborough chronicler— emotionally depicted scenes of terror and devastation, and the majority of later scholars—most notably H. W. C. Davis—upheld the basic validity of this picture. During the past century, however, historians have somewhat modified the traditional view. Whereas most medieval writers described an England embroiled in internal warfare for nearly all of Stephen's nineteen year reign, modern scholars have realized that the area of active fighting was more limited and that actual warfare lasted less than half of the reign. Also, modern scholars have shown that many of the occurrences in Stephen's reign were not characterized by aimless chaos and confusion, but rather by purposeful actions directed towards specific ends.

The industrial revolution greatly expanded opportunities to become wealthy, but not all opportunities were “legitimate.” Most writers emphasize that the context, or social structure, in which laws are framed make aspects of commercial behavior “illegal” or “criminal.” The context is an imposed evaluation of modes of behavior and action based on conflict resolution. This generalization has merit and, irrespective of ideological nuance, neatly packages the process through which social interest is said to attain legislative legitimacy. Such achieved legitimacy is, however, sometimes challenged, notwithstanding the participation of the challengers themselves in the process of formulation. The letter as well as the spirit of laws may be ignored, and illegal activities may flourish. These white-collar crimes—offenses against property committed by persons of “respectability and high social status”—tend to be ascribed to individual greed and opportunities created by weaknesses in the enforcement of the laws. Businessmen are damned by implication, and the solution usually recommended is more consultation, more laws, and better enforcement. Recent studies of the increasing incidence of such crimes in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries have adopted this interpretation to criticize the new entrepreneurial culture. Complaints have been directed particularly at a “chaotic” banking system that abetted supposedly widespread speculation and fraud during and following the Napoleonic wars. Proofs of misconduct rest on contemporary calls to curb the extravagances of entrepreneurs and private bankers, on references to repeated financial crises, on a few famous cases of fraud and robbery, and on a more general indictment culled from literature's many mustache-twirling villains.

As historians have long recognized, the “perfidious Machiavel” of the stage was by no means the only image of Machiavelli in the minds of English intellectuals before 1640. Besides frequent denunciations of the Florentine as a devious, amoral politician and an atheist (most of them sincerel a few pro forma), one encounters in English works of theology, moral and political philosophy, and history two other approaches to Machiavelli the political scientist. Some writers, with or without acknowledging their source, mined II Principe and the Discorsi for detailed information. Slowly, tentatively, and sometimes surreptitiously, others worked toward a partial appropriation of Machiavelli's political analysis. The scholarly consensus, however, is that before Machiavelli's new paradigm could be fully accepted in England, a major shift in the political situation had to occur. Only with the coming of the Civil War would writers like James Harrington unreservedly endorse Machiavelli's rejection of the medieval world view in favor of classical political wisdom, which they held to be directly applicable to modern English circumstances.

This article reexamines the parliamentary impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham, the royal favorite of King Charles I, by placing this event in the broader contexts of political culture and social change in early Stuart England. Buckingham's enemies based the impeachment on “common fame,” claiming that his faults were a matter of public knowledge. Charles, however, believed that the charges were based on seditious rumors. The impeachment undercut an important element of elite rhetoric that associated rumor with the rebellious multitude, revealing ideological divisions over the nature of grievances and the legitimacy of popular speech. The article contextualizes the impeachment within 1620s underground literature that purported to present the views of the common people, arguing that there was a wider tendency to ventriloquize public opinion. When Buckingham's allies produced their own tracts featuring the persona of the “honest ploughman,” appeals to the authority of public opinion were clearly gaining in strength. By explaining this development in political culture with reference to the growth of a more politically reliable “middling sort,” the article contributes to debates about the relationship between social change and political conflict in early Stuart England.

Wilkie Collins's Victorian novel The Woman in White contains a scene in which the hero unknowingly aids the woman of the title, Anne Catherick, to escape from an asylum. When he learns that she was an escaped patient, he reflects on his action: “what had I done? Assisted the victim of the most horrible of all false imprisonments to escape; or cast loose on the wide world of London an unfortunate creature, whose actions it was my duty, and every man's duty, mercifully to control?” The question was one which, less directly, confronted Victorian society as a whole. The nineteenth century saw the rapid expansion of an asylum system designed “mercifully to control” the insane, a development of which many Englishmen felt proud. Yet this pride was often accompanied by an endemic, nagging fear that persons were being improperly confined in asylums. Occasionally, the exposure of some apparently egregious case of wrongful confinement raised these fears to epidemic proportions and produced what the Victorians called “lunacy panics.” These outbursts of public rage symptomized the tensions within a society determined to ban the mad from its midst, yet uncertain of the boundaries of madness, skeptical of the abilities of those it had chosen to draw those boundaries, and undecided as to the actual purposes of confinement. Indeed, the Victorians never clearly established what they meant by “wrongful” confinement. At times they seemed to mean the confinement of the sane; at other times they seemed to include those who were insane but not manifestly dangerous.

Political legitimacy was a shifting concept in medieval England. On the one hand were the tangible aspects of power such as control over appointments and the purse; on the other were the symbolic attributes of power. Baronial rebels were able to gain control over the material aspects of political power on more than one occasion, and they also tried to establish control over the symbolic aspects of legitimacy. Here, they usually failed, for medieval people generally failed to accept baronial use of political symbols as legitimating future developments. Monarchs, on the other hand, were more successful in exploiting the symbolic aspects of kingship to further legitimate their power.

The simultaneous success and failure of royal and baronial efforts at establishing legitimacy bear further scrutiny. After viewing the problem of the establishment of legitimacy, this essay focuses on two related episodes during the reign of Richard II: the attempted canonizations of King Edward II and Richard FitzAlan, earl of Arundel. Richard II's reign is chosen for three reasons. First, there was a clearly articulated struggle between king and barons that was fought out in both the physical and symbolic arenas. Second, the process of political canonization produced a royal and a baronial saint during the reign. Although not premeditated on either side, there was a conjunction of events and a desire by the king and the barons to manipulate the symbolic aspects of these events during the reign. The final reason for subjecting saintly symbolism in Richard's reign to examination is that the process of political canonization reached its zenith then.

The most familiar view of party, and one held almost universally for a century and a half, sees a continuity in party history from the Whigs and Tories of Charles II's reign to the Liberals and Conservatives of Victoria's. This view received its classic expression at the hands of Macaulay, and with him it was a verdict arrived at before he even began The History of England and more than thirty years before he finished with it. In an election speech at Edinburgh in 1839 he proudly traced his Whig ancestry back to the Roundheads of the time of Charles I. In the opening section of the History he was more specific and selected a certain day in October of 1641 for the birth of the modern party system. “From that day,” he wrote, “dates the corporate existence of the two parties which have ever since alternately governed the country.”

Macaulay was not the first historian to reach such a conclusion. Writing some twenty years earlier the Catholic John Lingard, in dealing with the 1678-1681 crisis over Exclusion of the Duke of York, wrote that “it was during this period that the appellations of Whig and Tory became permanently affixed to the two great political parties which for a century and a half [1680-1830] have divided the nation.” Even before the turn of the nineteenth century the same idea had been suggested by Thomas Somerville in his History of England which appeared in 1792.

From their dismissal in November 1834 to their return to power in April 1835, the Whig Party was confronted with the problem of how to function effectively in opposition and, ultimately, return to power. This problem contained a dilemma which disquieted the aristocratic leaders of Whiggery. The party could conform to a tradition that regarded association with more “radical” groups as contrary to its principles; or it could join the Radicals and Repealers in an attempt to overthrow the new Tory Government. Such was the choice that underlay the politics of the Whigs in the winter of 1834-35.

Historians have considered the “honorable” nature of the Lichfield House Compact and its strictly political consequences. One interpretation emphasizes the Whigs' dependence upon Daniel O'Connell and the Repealers during the second Melbourne administration. Another, perhaps closer to the truth, suggests that the Repealers rather than the Whigs became the captive party. The significance of the Lichfield House Compact is distorted when its political consequences, however immediate, are emphasized. It is best understood as a commentary on the immediate past. The question to be considered is how and why the Whig Party was maneuvered into its association with Radicals and Repealers. It must be examined in terms of the party's disunity and the temporary, if propitious, ineffectiveness of spokesmen of traditional Whiggery who could proffer no alternative means to return to power.

The reign of Charles II was described by Wodrow as “one of the blackest periods,” and by the late Hume Brown as “the most pitiful chapter” of Scottish history, The former attributed Charles's tyranny to the influence of popery; Hume Brown thought it stemmed from his desire to maintain his prerogative and to fill his purse. Doubtless the latter was more nearly correct. Nevertheless, a re-examination of the events of 1660-61 in the light of certain new materials suggests that the restoration of Scottish episcopacy was accomplished only after much hesitation by the King and his principal advisers, who were far less sanguine of success than the firebrands in Edinburgh. The interdependence of Scottish and English developments was also probably more important than has hitherto been supposed. In this paper the Erastian character of the restoration in Scotland has rendered necessary the inclusion of certain political questions, but its main purpose is to elucidate the ecclesiastical settlement.

The extravagant rejoicings at the restoration of monarchy afford ample proof of Scotland's relief at the prospect of the dissolution of the union with England. The nation eagerly looked forward to the withdrawal of the English forces, the end of the cess, and the re-establishment of the old government by King, Council, and Parliament. The King's return seemed so desirable that no one thought to impose any conditions as the price of his restoration, and no Declaration of Breda was issued for Scotland.

Popular enthusiasm temporarily concealed the deep divisions between the Protesters (or Remonstrants) and the Resolutioners, the two principal parties in both church and state.

This article revisits the idea of “cotton imperialism” in Britain, showing that metropolitan support for cotton projects in the British Empire was uneven. Using the records of the British Cotton Growing Association's (BCGA) fund-raising campaign of 1902–1914, the article shows that “empire cotton” did not receive widespread support in Britain. In Lancashire, some cotton capitalists financed the movement for empire cotton, but many others refused to participate. Investors were uninterested in the BCGA's business model despite their interest in other cotton projects. To make matters worse, the BCGA became a tool for politicians on both sides of the Tariff Reform controversy. Textile workers were the only major segment of the British population to accept the BCGA's claims about the value of empire-grown cotton for Britain. Their support for imperial development was, however, limited and pragmatic. The BCGA's struggle to raise money for empire cotton shows the importance of grounding the rhetoric of empire in empirical findings: in the face of the Lancashire lobby's vocal campaign for empire cotton, Britons in general were reluctant to pay for it themselves.

There is no question that the plantation of Ulster during the reign of James I had a profound effect on the course of British history. However, the nature of that plantation has been either misrepresented or misunderstood. In order to overcome this problem, we must address two provocative questions: (1) Were the Scots-Irish, the largest group of settlers, predominantly Celtic or non-Celtic ethnically and culturally? and (2) If they were mainly Celtic, why were they better able than non-Celts to establish viable settlements in Ulster, a predominantly Celtic area? A reexamination of the origins of the pre-1625 Scottish settlers and their methods of settlement indeed casts the problem of the Ulster Plantation in a new light.

For the last two decades, historians have begun to question the portrayal of the Scots-Irish, or Ulster Scots, as frugal, hardworking, anglicized Presbyterian Lowlanders who brought the light of civilization to a benighted Celtic backwater. For example, Nicholas Canny correctly dismisses the “myth” of Ulster's material transformation by pointing out that the province, unlike Leinster and Munster, was settled by British planters from less economically advanced areas of the archipelago. But, again, he does not adequately examine the cultural and ethnic background of the dominant Scots-Irish. Traditionally, they have been classed as “Lowland,” non-Celts rather than as “Highland,” Celtic Scots. These designations are misleading because they oversimplify Scotland's historical and cultural divisions that had been in place as early as the Norman invasion.

This article compares the circulation and reception of useful knowledge—from medical and craft recipes to prognostications and agricultural treatises—in late medieval English manuscripts and early printed practical books. It first surveys the contents and composition of eighty-eight fifteenth-century vernacular practical manuscripts identified in significant collections in the United States and United Kingdom. Close analysis of four of these late medieval practical miscellanies reveals that their compilers saw these manuscripts as repositories for the collection of an established body of useful knowledge. The article then traces the transmission of these medieval practical texts in early printed books. As the pressures of a commercial book market gradually transformed how these practical texts were presented, readers became conditioned to discover “new” knowledge in the pages of printed books. The introduction to England of the “book of secrets” in 1558 encouraged readers to hunt for “secrets” in unpublished medieval manuscripts, ensuring that these century-old sources would remain important sites for useful knowledge well into the early modern era.

Two of the most common manifestations of social tension in Tudor England were the enclosure riot and the seditious rumor. Both are essentially pre-political forms of social protest, but the first must be viewed as more primitive than the second. Enclosure riots, at least prior to the riots and rebellions of 1548-49, were not particularly directed against the governing elite, but rather were aimed at innovations which threatened the traditional agrarian routine within the manorial or village economy. Thus, enclosure riots, which were procured as frequently by gentry as by peasants and often were calculatingly combined with litigation, did not especially menace the social order. On the other hand, seditious rumors — particularly those that were threatening and anonymous — raised the possibility of social polarization and violent protest on a larger scale than that of the enclosure riot. Before the rebellions and riots of 1548-49, enclosure riots were almost invariably confined within a single village community or between two neighboring communities, but during those troubled years the wide-spread circulation of rumors threatening the gentry resulted in the destruction over a widely-scattered area of enclosing hedges which had stood unchallenged for generations.

The rumor as a vehicle of social protest could either express the collective fear that some supposedly hostile group such as the rural aristocracy had put together a conspiracy to harm the peasantry, or could, conversely, convey the desire of peasants and artisans for social levelling or even social inversion.

There is a paradox in the legislative success of British antislavery that invites further inquiry. While one can hardly diminish the role of evangelical Christianity in the abolition of the slave trade and, decades later, of slavery in the empire, each bill was passed by an aristocratic government predominantly Whig in composition. The first measure, the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, was passed by the Ministry of All the Talents, a coalition of Foxite Whigs and Grenvillites, in a parliament that remained almost exclusively a body of the landed interest. While the first reformed parliament of 1833 may not have been quite so preponderantly landed in its composition, it abolished slavery in the empire under the leadership of Lord Grey's government, the most aristocratic of the century. Like the Talents Ministry, the government of Lord Grey was a coalition, at least in its inception. But its moving spirits were Whigs. Yet, with some few exceptions, the role of the Whigs in British antislavery has not received the attention it deserves. In particular, one must inquire how and why a group of worldly aristocrats, especially the older generation of Fox, Grey, and Holland, should have associated themselves with an evangelical crusade. Whig aristocrats, after all, subscribed to an ethic that Evangelicals disdained, particularly in its emphasis on worldly honor; and evangelical humility, in turn, often appeared to at least some Whigs as righteous humbug.

This article examines images of Jesus broadcast on the BBC from the 1930s through the 1950s. During these years, the BBC sought to use its cultural influence to replace popular religiosity with what the clerics who staffed its Religious Broadcasting Department (RBD) regarded as a more masculine, modern, and vigorous national religious faith. To achieve this aim, the RBD marshaled the might of British New Testament scholarship and its image of a warrior-like, apocalyptic historical Jesus. Yet the RBD's hopes of bridging the gap between popular religiosity and its own vision of Christianity went unrealized. Programs on Jesus that reached a genuinely national audience—The Man Born to be King, Dorothy L. Sayers's wartime radio drama, and Jesus of Nazareth, a popular television series from the 1950s—instead featured Anglicized and ahistorical images deeply embedded within British popular culture. The story of Jesus on the BBC highlights both this popular culture's strength and Christian Britain's fragmentation.

Archbishop James Ussher's manuscript notebooks allow us to observe the making of a Calvinist absolutist and to orientate the archbishop's beliefs about royal power within European Reformed thought as a whole. By 1643, Ussher was preaching a polished and complete theory of absolute royal power, and it is possible to track the development of this political theory forward from his undergraduate days in the 1590s. Throughout his life Ussher engaged anxiously with Reformed theologians abroad, who generally favored limited rather than absolute monarchy. Nevertheless, Ussher shared with these Reformed colleagues both an antipathy to aspects of Aristotelian politics and a commitment to the divine institution of royal power. Finally, despite Ussher's hostility to Laudian innovations in the Irish Church, his heartfelt political beliefs made him a firm supporter of Stuart absolutism throughout the Three Kingdoms.