Ecclesiastical benefactions by English barons have provided topics for a number of scholars, but the professional civil servants, proto-bureaucrats, who first appeared in the twelfth century, are another group whose gifts to the Church deserve more study. In England, such men appear as early as Henry I's time, but they become more numerous in the reign of his grandson, Henry II. At first, such royal servants were men of all work, doing whatever the king assigned to them at the curia regis, in the counties, and abroad. By the last years of Henry II and in the reigns of his sons, however, some specialization was taking place, and this becomes easier to see in Henry III's early years.

It is next to impossible to probe these royal administrators' minds. They left few letters, no personal recollections, and they earned only a few anecdotes—mainly hostile—in the chronicles. For a number of years, I have been studying a group of fifty-two of these men, whose careers span the last third of the twelfth and the first third of the thirteenth centuries, chosen first chiefly because of their connection with the work of royal justice. They form a representative sample, ranging in rank from the justiciar to knights of the counties, from archbishops to men in minor orders, including roughly equal numbers of clergy and laity. They range from close associates of the king to largely local officials (see Appendix I).

Aphra Behn (1640–89) stands simultaneously at the center and on the edge of Restoration literature. As one of its most prolific writers, her success as a playwright was rivaled only by Dryden; however, as a woman, she defied and challenged contemporary ideas about sex, gender, and authorship. Behn was remarkably aware of the ambiguity of her position; a widow, a writer, and a professional, she inhabited and personified the grey areas of seventeenth-century gender roles. For these reasons, her work provides an interesting window through which to view the relationship between gender and literature in the late seventeenth century.

The subject of several book-length studies and many more articles, Behn has experienced a renaissance in the academic community during the last ten to fifteen years and has been installed in the seventeenth-century literary canon. Two related aspects of her career however have been overlooked. The first is her interest in natural philosophy, including her criticism of philosophers for not sharing their knowledge. The second aspect is her work as a translator, especially as a translator of scientific texts. Perhaps the enduring perception of translation as an essentially derivative activity has led scholars to dismiss Behn's translations as uninteresting or unoriginal. In so far as natural philosophy was a “masculine” discipline, however, Behn's translations demonstrated her ability to participate in and translate between elite natural philosophy, often written in Latin (the most “masculine” language), and a general or female audience.

During his own lifetime John Bright (1811-1889) assumed an iconic status in the history both of Quakerism and of middle-class radical politics as “the Tribune of the people.” Yet he remains an anomalous figure, difficult to place in the frameworks that presently organize the historiography of modern Quakerism, and of reform politics in the nineteenth century. In large part this reflects a failure among his biographers and social historians of this period to analyze in any depth the relation between his politics and his spiritual life. His religious values have been variously denied or given a nodding acknowledgment as fundamental to his radicalism. And where the religious basis of John Bright’s radicalism is accepted, there are varying and contrasting accounts of that relationship.

In December 1905 R.B. Haldane, later Viscount Haldane of Cloan, became Secretary of State for War. Among his fellow politicians Haldane, at this time, was looked on as an intriguer who combined habitual meddling in high places with a curious and remarkable interest in German philosophy. The Prime Minister of the day, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who had good reason to dislike Haldane, nicknamed him “Schopenhauer.” Both men knew that the War Office had ruined the reputations of several of Haldane's predecessors. “We shall now see,” remarked Campbell-Bannerman, in a phrase that later became famous, “how Schopenhauer gets on in the Kailyard.” Despite this unpromising start Haldane's military reforms were so successful that they established his reputation in history as one of the great servants of the state in the pre-1914 era. His work and accomplishments in the field of military aviation, however, have been criticized very severely. In fact, the matter is so complicated that one aviation authority has written of the record in this area that “Haldane's actions behind the scenes may never be known with certainty.”

Even some of his closest subordinates in the field of military aeronautics were very critical of Haldane's attitude and outlook. In February 1911 a major step was taken when, by an Army Order, a unit known as the Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers was created. This Battalion was entrusted with the duty of training a “body of expert airmen.” The Battalion's first commander was Major Sir Alexander Bannerman, an officer who knew little about airplanes, but was instead a balloon expert with experience in the South African and Russo-Japanese wars.

The body of recent historical explorations of Englishness and Britishness can seem practically interminable. To some, this work is more a cause than a product of the dynamic underlying recent constitutional changes in the United Kingdom. Linda Colley, in particular, is singled out for vituperation by right-wing commentators for an alleged attempt to depict the United Kingdom as “an artificial creation, built from opposition to Frenchmen and Catholics and lacking any form of coherent cultural core,” thus preparing the ground for its wilful destruction by the Blair government. Yet others have suggested that Colley overstated the hegemony of the idea of Britishness among the nations of the United Kingdom. It is contended that British identity penetrated in England to a unique degree, a process which has produced long-term imbalance and instability in the United Kingdom. Tom Nairn thus blamed English arrogance for this instability. For other commentators the historical absence of a tangible demand for English self-government is to be problematized and regarded as an indication of “backwardness.” As Bernard Crick wrote: “England is the problem. Because English nationalism is suppressed and not explicit, it is soured, not wholly in control of its own reactions and is difficult to deal with by the other nations.”

In an attempt to understand the public and private roles of medieval women in the English countryside, historians have devoted growing attention to widows as villein tenants and transmitters of land in manorial communities. Villein women are often recorded in manorial sources as co-tenants and recipients of property rights on their husbands' deaths. Although in Common Law the widow's share ranged from one-third to one-half of a free husband's lands, the villein widow often received a right to life usage of the whole of the conjugal estate upon her husband's death as her “free bench.” The extensive property-holding rights of these villein widows have made them rich subjects for study of their legal, social, and economic status and activities.

Case studies based on manorial estates, however, have often focused exclusively on the widow as a transmitter of property and have subordinated the study of widows within a framework governed by considerations of land markets and property transmission. Medieval historiography contrasts with studies of early-modern and modern populations that have put elements such as age at widowhood, number of dependents, social status, personal choice in connection with widow remarriage, and provisions for widows at the forefront of study. By connecting work on widows and the landmarket with these other concerns it is possible to study medieval peasant widows within broader comparative perspective.

I found Professors Wohl's and Schmiechen's replies informative and stimulating. Unfortunately I do not think they would upset the dreadful Laing. Before I go on to explain why, however, I should correct two misunderstandings.

Firstly: I offered “Laing's theorem” as a hypothesis, not necessarily as my view. Nowhere in my original article did I indicate my “acceptance” of it (Wohl). It is simply an idea to be tested, as a possible explanation for what I do regard as high Victorian Britain's artistic poverty, of which more in a moment. Secondly: I do not regard myself as a “basher” of Victorianism, of the kind that used to be common a few years ago. That is Professor Schmiechen's charge. As I understand and indeed remember it, the old bashers deplored Victorian taste. I on the contrary have a consuming passion for it. In particular, I have a high regard for Victorian architecture, which is one of the two areas I specifically exempted (though Professor Wohl has missed this) from my strictures against the quality of the high Victorians' cultural achievement. For what it is worth — and it is not worth much, being only my own personal opinion, but I feel I need to establish my credentials here — I would place All Saint's, Margaret Street, London, by Butterfield, high on my list of the most inspiring buildings anywhere in the world, and St. Mary's Church, Studley Royal, Yorkshire, by Burges, among the half-dozen most beautiful. There is dedication for you. This may lower one or two philo-Victorians' hackles. I hope so.

The study of the nineteenth century British Parliament cannot be limited to the institution itself, nor to the constitutional relations of its par ts. The great electoral reforms of the century increased the importance of the electorate in political decision-making. Coupled with these changes, the vast transformations of economy and society altered the very functions of Parliament. Thus nineteenth century parliamentary history requires an understanding of the whole political system, as well as the events within the House. Many of the recent works bearing on the history of Parliament reflect these facts. While good narrative history of parliamentary events continues to be needed and produced, the most innovative recent work raises different kinds of problems entirely and is not limited to affairs at Westminster. The newer types of work can be viewed as coming in two waves: first, a detailed analysis of political structure, utilizing traditional kinds of sources; and second, a proliferation of analytical approaches, using new sources and methods. Both waves are basically analytical, but they differ in questions asked and in routes to the answers.

The analysis of political structure has been inspired by the questions, if not the methods and interpretations, of Sir Lewis Namier. The best of many examples are still Norman Gash's Politics in the Age of Peel and H. J. Hanham's Elections and Party Management. The main questions asked in such works are: What was the real, as opposed to the theoretical, framework of politics? How were politics actually conducted outside the House of Commons? How did the various reform acts affect the functioning of the electoral system? These works stress, in Gash' terminology, the “medium” in which the ordinary politician operated. In each case, they seem to emphasize continuity rather than change, and the enduring power of bribery, corruption, and influence. They have added a great deal to what the narratives tell us about Victorian politics, especially in regard to the realities of constituency operations, the origins and workings of party machinery, the problems of party finance, and the cost of elections. Structural investigations of parties, like Conor Cruise O'Brien's Parnell and His Party and E. J. Feuchtwanger's Disraeli, Democracy and the Tory Party have given a new dimension to party history. Perhaps most important, the structural studies have established the crucial significance of local factors and the comparative inconsequence of national issues in most elections.

Australians recognize distance and isolation as a mold which shaped their history. Geoffrey Blainey observes this in his brilliantly provocative book, The Tyranny of Distance, and points out the consequences of Australia's geographic situation. Australia is at least 12,000 miles from England, and her continental perimeter is another 12,000 miles. Because of slow and uncertain communications between Australia and Whitehall from 1788 to 1850, the governor was really “the man on the spot”; he had often to act more independently than his instructions intended, and at times he defied both Whitehall and the colonists, sometimes at the same time. Although his link with the Colonial Office was direct, the secretaries of state to whom he was responsible changed frequently; yet much of our information comes from the dispatches between these officials.

The colony of New South Wales comprised nearly all of eastern continental Australia until 1850. It was founded as a penal colony in 1788. The commission of the first governor, Arthur Phillip, gave him almost complete autocratic powers over the colony, prompting a military attaché to observe: “I never heard of any one single person having so great power vested in him as the Governor.” This commission stood, with some slight exceptions, for more than thirty years.

Because of these extraordinary powers, the early governors were called autocrats. Although the British government decided how many convicts were to be sent and the colonial secretaries in London issued frequent instructions, the distance and slow mails — three to six-month voyages en route each way — placed the governor in complete control of the colony's expansion. Thus, the disposal of land, labor, and capital depended on each governor's individual discretion. After 1824, when George Arthur became lieutenant governor, Tasmania became independent from New South Wales. Eventually, these two autocratically ruled prison farms became prosperous self-governing colonies after 1850. Meanwhile, Western Australia and South Australia were founded sans convicts in 1829 and 1836, respectively. This paper will deal first with New South Wales, and more briefly with Tasmania, Western Australia, and South Australia.