It has long been recognised that one of the most valuable documents about pluralism is the lengthy return of pluralists made in 1366 in accordance with a constitution of pope Urban V. In this return detailed information was sent in to archbishop Simon Langham by the various diocesans, containing the names of pluralists residing at the time in their dioceses, the value of their emoluments, their benefices and academic titles. It has an obvious value as a clergy-list, containing the names not only of several distinguished clerks who held office in the government service, but also of humbler men, as well as of that interesting class of university graduates to whom the acquisition of ecclesiastical benefices became a financial necessity.

Despite the great attention which the puritan movement has received, many historians have been reluctant to afford religion a major role as an immediate precipitant of the English civil war. There has been a tendency to settle the matter by quoting Oliver Cromwell's statement: ‘Religion was not the thing at first contested for …’, although he put forth this interpretation more than a decade after the event. Recently attention has been focused upon the early 1640s as a period in which puritans became highly militant; at the same time, the key to this aggressiveness has been provided by a series of studies of the hitherto neglected apocalyptic ideas of English protestants. Dr. Burrell has shown a close relationship between apocalyptic thought and the outbreak of the Scottish rebellion, while other scholars have indicated that such a connexion existed at the start of the English civil war. This article will attempt to chart the development of puritan militance by examining the apocalyptic interpretations put forward by prominent English reformers during the crucial period which began with the opening of the Long Parliament on 3 November 1640 and ended with the first great battle of the civil war at Edgehill on 23 October 1642. The importance of religion in the outbreak of that conflict should thereby be demonstrated.

In the summer of 1337, representatives of the English King Edward III and the German Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria concluded negotiations leading to the formation of an Anglo-imperial alliance. Edward, who was in the midst of preparations to pursue by force his dynastic claim to the French crown, received from Ludwig the title of imperial vicar-general per Alemanniam et Galliam, an act which conferred upon him sovereign rights over subjects and lands west of the Rhine. In return, Edward provided the emperor with the substantial financial remuneration which he required to stabilise his own position within Germany. This Anglo-imperial treaty, the greatest achievement of Edward's early diplomatic programme, was solemnised in a ceremonial meeting between the two rulers during September of the following year. One figure who was no doubt in attendance throughout these events was William of Ockham, the Franciscan philosopher and theologian exiled from his native England as the result of a dispute with Pope John XXIL. Ludwig, while never an entirely reliable protector, had sheltered Ockham and numerous other intellectuals who had run afoul of the papal court at Avignon.

On 23 January 295 a young recruit named Maximilian, a Christian by religion and twenty-one years old, appeared in court before Dion, proconsul of Africa, in the town of Theveste in Numidia. He was accused of refusing a summons to serve in the Roman army. Maximilian was accompanied to court by his father, Fabius Victor, described in the record as a temonarius, i.e. ‘an agent who collected the temo, or tax levied for the outfitting of military recruits’; the latter was obliged to present his son for army service if he could not find another suitable recruit. Maximilian, although pressed by the proconsul to submit himself to the formalities leading to induction into the army, stubbornly resisted and was finally sentenced to death. His execution followed immediately.

Among the papers of Patrick Young preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford is a copy of a translation into Greek of a licence granted by Elizabeth I in 1597 for the collection of alms towards the ransom of the sons of the murdered metropolitan of Thessaloniki.

The document is remarkable for several reasons: it is an early example of English sympathy for Greeks suffering under Turkish oppression: it includes the only account, so far as one can tell, of the execution of the metropolitan, and it is also of interest as an example of an Elizabethan licence to collect alms for charitable purposes.