Among the numerous preoccupations of historians one of the most persistent concerns the political and diplomatic skill of England's Elizabeth I. From the two extremes of James Anthony Froude and Elizabeth Jenkins through the judicious work of J. E. Neale, scholars have long been frustrated by the English queen's apparent inconsistency, though dazzled by the brilliance of her reign. The result is a plethora of argument. It is the attempt here to illuminate Elizabethan foreign policy by isolating one minor aspect of it: the career of the Portuguese Pretender, Don Antonio. Hopefully the result will be a slightly clearer perception of that most illusive lady.

It can be asserted that two interests went to the very heart of foreign affairs in the reign of Elizabeth I: the encouragement of English maritime expansion and the resolve to keep the Netherlands from absolute domination by a major continental state. The maelstrom of international events in the second half of the sixteenth century placed both of these policies in stark juxtaposition to the interests of Spain, the greatest state of the age and the spear's tip of the militant Counter-Reformation.

By 1580 Anglo-Spanish relations had suffered a steady deterioration for two decades. The might of Philip II of Spain appeared boundless. Then in that year Philip's power grew perceptibly greater by the acquisition of the Portuguese throne, the significance of which did not escape the English. Had it not been for a persistent rival-Don Antonio, the Prior of Crato—King Philip might have conquered an old and respected kingdom with no more effort than it took to lace his boots.

The elaborate pageantry and festivities of grand public processions have proven to be of great interest to historians writing on late medieval and early modern Europe. The more limited ceremonies and protocol at court have attracted somewhat less attention, although on occasion they have been adopted as evidence of a monarch's personal feelings about his attendants and family members. A study of royal protocol and the social and political framework in which rulers fulfilled their roles as sovereigns is timely, for it will surely lead to a new and fuller understanding of how monarchs's public roles, such as those of the Tudors, related to their private motivations.

Greeting ceremonies, which were one aspect of the “law of hospitality,” require special attention, because they offer insights into the interactions of people of varying status who were of fundamental importance to the hierarchical communities of Europe. As Esther Goody points out, “Greeting becomes a mode of entering upon or manipulating a relationship in order to achieve a specific result.” How monarchs privately greeted their brides, the topic of this essay, not only offers insights into the complexity of the relationship of individuals who were wed by proxy before they had become acquainted, but also offers evidence of how the greeting ritual performed by monarchs differed from that enacted by their royal and noble relatives.

In matters of public controversy the eighteenth-century Englishman displayed a cast of mind that was legalistic and unpragmatic. The first question he tended to ask was not what the benefits of a policy might be but whether anyone possessed the right to implement it. Public debate was legitimist in emphasis. There were few disputes where the issue of jurisdiction was ignored; very often jurisdiction was the only issue in contention. The great example of this is to be found in the debate over American taxation. The question was not whether the taxes had been voted for some improper purpose or whether the colonies could afford to pay. The argument turned on the issue of authority: did Parliament have the right to tax the colonies for any purpose whatever regardless of their ability to pay? The same emphasis on jurisdiction is to be found in the debate over the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. This act restricted the right of members of the royal family to marry whom they pleased. Opponents of the act condemned it not in terms of policy but in terms of right and jurisdiction. It was “repugnant to the natural rights of mankind.” It was “null and invalid.” Parliament possessed no authority to legislate such a measure, and it could be submitted to “only as the effect of power.” This eighteenth-century pre-occupation with legitimacy is evident even in the writings of its most radical and eccentric thinkers. Thomas Paine's chief complaint against the ancien régime in England was not that it governed badly but that it governed without legitimate authority. Whether it governed well or ill, it remained by Paine's standards an usurpation. Paine's zeal for democratic legitimacy may have been peculiar, but his method of debate was not.

In 1935 in New York the publishing house of Harrison Smith and Robert Haas published George Dangerfield's The Strange Death of Liberal England. Now, fifty years later, the book is as vital, if not more so, as when it was first published. It was quite appropriate that the book, and its author, were celebrated last Spring at a meeting of the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies at San Luis Obispo in California, quite close to Santa Barbara where Dangerfield lives overlooking the Pacific ocean. Even nicer, perhaps, is that in this year we shall see Halley's Comet again, which Dangerfield remembers having seen as a child, and being told that it would not appear again in his lifetime. The comet appears on the first page of the book (heralding the dazzling prose to come), observed by the Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, from the deck of the Admiralty yacht Enchantress, “to blaze forth the death of a king”: Edward VII.

The Strange Death of Liberal England has had, eventually, a strong impact upon the historical profession, as well as something of an odd history. The original publishers quite soon went out of business and the book was not kept in print in America. It was published a year later in England for the first time by Constable, but in a slightly truncated form without the important epilogue on Rupert Brooke. Over the next twenty-six years it was a book known only, I believe, by a few, recommended by word of mouth and not, on the whole, given much attention by the historical profession or the reading public.

The friction between civil and military authorities was never greater than during the Great War of 1914-1918. The unprecedented casualties suffered by the British Army and involvement of every element of British life in the conflagration gave added intensity to this conflict. The ability of British democracy to wage total war was put to a severe test. Where did the responsibility of the civilians end in formulating strategy? Where did the authority of the soldiers begin? This strategic debate largely centered on the size of Britain's commitment to the ghastly slaughter in the trenches of the Western Front.

Before 1914 British war planners had thought of a short war with at most only limited involvement in Europe. After Britain's plunge into war, the civil and military authorities decided to employ the small professional British Army on the continent to save France from being overrun, a decision made easier by the widespread belief that the war would be over within a few months. By this continental commitment Britain became involved in a long and bloody war of attrition in France and Flanders.

As 1914 ended in stalemate in the West with few of the original members of the British Expeditionary Force still on their feet the debate over the employment of future British armies began in earnest. The government's chief military adviser was Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War. Although the public viewed Kitchener as Britain's greatest soldier, his appointment was almost certainly a mistake.

Dorsetshire's elite, the leaders of its “county community,” continued to exercise their customary influence in the county's elections from 1604-1640. However, there was a notable change from the Elizabethan age. During the great Queen's reign, no one family was able to establish a preponderant voice in the county's elections. A “sustained monopoly” was, it seems, impossible and the best any influential squire could hope for was to be twice returned for the county. Indeed, it is probable that only Sir Ralph Horsey of Clifton Maubank, chosen in 1586 and 1597, and Andrew Rogers of Brianston, elected in 1586 and 1588, achieved that degree of eminence. Even the great Sir Walter Raleigh, after establishing himself at Sherborne, only managed to serve for Dorsetshire once, in 1597.

That changed after 1604. Dorsetshire elected eleven men to its eighteen knightships of the shire from 1604-1640, and one man, Sir John Strangways of Chirk Castle and Melbury Sampford, established what can be described as a “sustained monopoly.” He served for the county in 1614, 1621, 1624, and 1628; his repeated victories were recognition of his wealth and estate, his close connections with John Digby, Earl of Bristol (1622) and with other county families of note. Strangways had married into the Trenchard family of Warmwell and Wolveton, near Dorchester; one of his daughters married, first, into the influential Rogers family of Brianston and later, in 1624, took as her second husband the stepson of the Earl of Bristol, Sir Lewis Dyve. Strangways was, no doubt, an active supporter of his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Trenchard, in Dorset's 1621 election and, in a bitterly fought contest in 1626, it was Strangway's power and influence that accounted for the return of Sir George Morton. Altogether, Sir John's influence can be credited with five, and more probably six (or one-third), of Dorsetshire's knightships through 1640. Given his ability to win a place for Morton in the face of fierce opposition in 1626, it is possible that his influence was even more widespread in the county's elections.

Sir Geoffrey Elton has breathed new life into the putrefying corpse of Elizabethan parliamentary history. In conjunction with others, notably Michael Graves, Norman Jones, and David Dean, he has succeeded in demolishing the standard interpretation of high politics, spirited opposition, and principled conflict perfected by Sir John Neale. Elton's analysis of the early Elizabethan Parliaments provides, for the first time, the detailed revisionist argument, one capable in many respects, moreover, of logical extension over the remainder of the reign and buttressed by a series of general overviews. For all the necessary emphasis on cooperation, bill procedure, and “business as usual,” Elton is well aware that politics intruded on legislative affairs, and at no time was this more obvious than during the troubled 1566 session. Neale had devoted forty-seven printed pages to his interpretation of constitutional crisis during these three months. Elton provides a far briefer, more taut, coverage but nonetheless the session figures very prominently in his portrayal of “great affairs.” It is not the intention of this article to dispute Elton's general interpretation of a political crisis orchestrated in good measure by privy councillors intent on exerting pressure on the queen to settle the succession issue. That portrayal is sensible and, in its broad outlines, generally supported by the known evidence. Nevertheless, in his desire to purge Neale's interpretations from the corpus of Elizabethan parliamentary history, Sir Geoffrey has, in a number of instances, permitted his arguments and beliefs to outrun his evidence. These occasions are important for the understanding of events and themes within Parliament.

Eric Hobsbawm recently observed that “a good deal of economics has the function not so much of telling government or business what they ought to do, as of telling them what they are doing (or not doing) is right.” Economic history, happily or unhappily, does not suffer from the same weakness. Its problem is rather the reverse: a good deal of economic history has the didactic function of telling us what should have been done, as though that were always possible. So it is with the critics of the Lloyd George coalition's postwar economic policies; they work from a retrospectively-divined ideal back to an explanation for the coalition's melancholic failure to grasp and pursue that ideal. This has made for portrayals of the untried paths as relatively unobstructed, clearly marked and negotiable, while the route actually taken is seen as a gamut, bordered by briars and surfaced with quagmires, through which the nation emerged badly scathed and shaken. To veer off the course of this prickly metaphor, the critics of the coalition's refusal to deflate or its negligence – one might almost say abandon – toward inflation and permissiveness make two types of arguments.

Most conspicuous by their unmitigated scorn are the socialists who see in the wartime state the first buds of what a socialist Britain could flower into.