Cistercian writing produced in the half-century after the death of Ailred of Rievaulx seems in comparison with that of the earlier generation unattractive and undistinguished. This impression is, however, largely caused by the lack of any one figure comparable with the abbot of Rievaulx who might arrest our attention and then stimulate an appreciation of the whole scene. In addition, the brightness coming from that great light, to adopt a figure from Walter Daniel, has almost effaced the memory of those lesser lights who came after him. Yet it must be confessed at the outset that by literary standards little of their work is distinguished. None of it, however, is devoid of interest for the historian. It comes from a period whose course is difficult to trace, and besides helping us to understand better the order's intellectual and spiritual life, it shows us some of the connexions between this and Cistercian prosperity.

The divergent views held by historians and sociologists as to what does and does not constitute nationalism will, I hope, provide me with some excuse for not attempting here a general definition of this phenomenon. Nor will I presume to adjudicate between the opinions of scholars like Hans Kohn who, confining their attention to Western Europe, will not hear of nationalism before the rise of modern states between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, and of historians like G. G. Coulton who, after surveying the policy of the Papacy, the life of the Universities, the internal frictions in the monasteries and the history of medieval warfare, concluded that nationalism, which had been developing in Western Europe since the eleventh century, became a basic factor in European politics by the fourteenth. My paper is concerned with the medieval history of Eastern Europe: an area which I propose to define, by combining a geographical with a cultural criterion, as the group of countries which lay within the political or cultural orbit of Byzantium. The subject is vast and complex, and I can do no more than select a few topics for discussion. These I would like to present as arguments in support of three theses.

Roger Whitley, a Flintshire royalist, outlining in 1658 the terms which Charles should offer the Presbyterians to induce them to join in a royalist rising, included a reference to the purchasers of confiscated property: ‘as for Purchases of Church, Crowne or other lands, they shall either peacibly enjoy theire possessions, or be reimbursed the charge …’. In the discussions and speculations in the two years preceding the Restoration, it was commonly assumed that the interests of the purchasers would exercise a major influence on the course of events. Some observers thought these interests presented an insuperable obstacle to a restoration; others supposed, like Roger Whidey, that in order to bring about a restoration it would be necessary to propitiate the purchasers by promising them either confirmation of their purchases or compensation. In the spring of 1660, when a restoration of the King on terms seemed the most likely outcome, James Sharp, the representative of the Scottish Presbyterians in London, thought that the indemnity and the purchases were ‘the most sticking part’ of the articles to be laid before the Convention; and the French ambassador believed that the confirmation of confiscated lands would be ‘one of the principal questions of the accommodation’. The purpose of this paper is to consider how the interests of the purchasers were dealt with in 1660.

The Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, established in 1536, liberally educated the sons of Nahua (Aztec) leaders in New Spain. Its Franciscan pedagogues, including Bernardino de Sahagún (c. 1499–1590), Andrés de Olmos (1491–1571) and Juan Bautista (c. 1555–1606/13), worked with indigenous students and alumni to collect, edit and circulate Nahuatl huehuetlahtolli, or ‘speech of the ancients’. This paper examines the largest collection of these orations printed in pre-modern Mexico, the Huehuetlahtolli [1601] edited by Juan Bautista and indigenous intellectuals from the college. It argues that the Tlatelolcans adapted Nahuatl ‘old words’ for the New World of colonial society. They ornamented the speeches with rhetorical techniques derived from Santa Cruz's Erasmian curriculum. They interpolated biblical sentences, particularly from Proverbs and Sirach, to enhance the evangelising potential of the discourses. Finally, they drew on Erasmus's theory of speech, as expressed in his pedagogical and spiritual writings, to explicate Nahuatl los difrasismos concerning eloquence and good counsel. Contextualising the Huehuetlahtolli [1601] in Santa Cruz's Erasmian schoolroom reveals the contours of its argument for vernacular evangelisation, the liberal education of indigenous youth and for the elegance of the Nahuatl tongue.

The life of Robert I, king of Scots, written by John Barbour archdeacon of Aberdeen is the fullest of any medieval king in the west, a chronicle of chivalry in vernacular octosyllabic couplets, on which much of our understanding of the events and ethos of the Scottish war depends. In this paper I discuss some aspects of the king's reign which Barbour ignored: pro-Balliol sentiment which lingered in Scotland and at the French and papal courts; and also aspects of the war where Barbour's narrative is incomplete or misleading, but which illustrate the growth of King Robert's military effort from that of a very uncertain factional rising to one which matched the rhetorical claims (in die Declaration of Arbroath) of a people at war. I shall be treading ground already mapped in Professor Barrow's masterly study, seeking only to point out features to which Barbour has, by omission or commission, drawn my attention.

This address asks how much has education contributed to social mobility in post-war Britain and considers other factors that may have contributed as much or more: labour-market opportunities, trends in income inequality, gender differences and ‘compositional effects’ deriving from the shape of the occupational hierarchy. Even where these other factors proved much more powerful – especially labour-market opportunities and compositional effects – democratic discourse both among politicians and among the electorate remained fixated on educational opportunities and outcomes, especially after the decline of the Croslandite critique of ‘meritocracy’. That fixation has if anything been reinforced by the apparent end to a ‘golden age’ of absolute upward mobility for large sections of the population, not necessarily because education is an effective antidote but because the alternative political solutions are so unpalatable both to politicians and to voters.

In the vibrant current debate about European empires and their ideologies, one basic dichotomy still tends to be overlooked: that between, on the one hand, the plurality of modern empires of colonisation, commerce and settlement; and, on the other, the traditional claim to single and undivided imperium so long embodied in the Roman Empire and its successor, the Holy Roman Empire, or (First) Reich. This paper examines the tensions between the two, as manifested in the theory and practice of Habsburg imperial rule. The Habsburgs, emperors of the Reich almost continuously through its last centuries, sought to build their own power-base within and beyond it. The first half of the paper examines how by the eighteenth century their ‘Monarchy’, subsisting alongside the Reich, dealt with the associated legacy of empire. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 the Habsburgs could pursue a free-standing Austrian ‘imperialism’, but it rested on an uneasy combination of old and new elements and was correspondingly vulnerable to challenge from abroad and censure at home. The second half of the article charts this aspect of Habsburg government through an age of international imperialism and its contribution to the collapse of the Dual Monarchy in 1918.

In the year 1290, when King Edward proposed to his Parliament that a fifteenth of all movables should be granted him by clergy and laity alike, and at the same time demanded a tenth of all spiritual revenue, his request was only complied with on the express condition that he would banish the Jews out of the country. The great expulsion, which followed in the autumn of the same year, has always seemed to me an event of a very curious and interesting character, and one deserving a more elaborate explanation than usually falls to its lot. It is quite clear that Parliament dearly wished to be rid of these aliens in race and religion, and, at the same time, the King could not have been altogether unwilling to fall in with the desires of his people, for, considerable as the tax might be, it was quite insufficient to compensate him for the great and permanent source of revenue upon which his forefathers had been wont to rely. The matter is popularly explained on the score of religious bigotry: the people, it is said, are ignorant fanatics, led on by a less ignorant but more fanatical clergy, and the King shares in the fanaticism of his people. This explanation is not untrue, but it is not the whole truth. I am quite sure that the deep-rooted hatred of the Jews in mediaeval England was not due to bigotry alone, any more than the feeling against them in Europe to-day is solely due to such a cause.

Indulgences have long been studied as a contributory factor to the Protestant Reformation. The present essay focuses attention upon their origins in the eleventh century, and the changes that affected both the theology and the practice of indulgences in the period before 1215. The indulgences issued by English bishops tell us much of the role played in the English Church both by Parisian theology and by post-Gregorian theories of papal monarchy. They shed light upon the `birth' of purgatory, and upon twelfth-century penitential practice. The present essay also explores the relationship, previously ignored, between the indulgences advertised by pardoners, and the relics of the saints which pardoners were accused of mishandling.

CHURCHILL’S life was politics. His career as an MP ran, virtually unbroken, from 1900 to 1964 – almost the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. But although Churchill lived for politics, he lived by writing. Much of his income was earned as a journalist and author. At one end of the spectrum were scores of newspaper columns assessing contemporary events and politicians, summarising the plots of great novels, or just musing for money – as in ‘Have You a Hobby?’ or ‘Are There Men in the Moon?’ At the other extreme are large books such as the biographies of his father (1906) and of his martial ancestor, the first duke of Marlborough (1933–8), and his History of the English-Speaking Peoples(1956–8). Somewhere in between are autobiographical vignettes such asThe Malakand Field Force(1898) andMy Early Life(1930). But it is for his two sets of war memoirs that Churchill the historian is most remembered – six separate volumes on World War I (1923–31) and its aftermath, six more on World War II and its origins (1948–54).

THE award of the Booker Prize for 1995 to Pat Barker's Ghost Road did more than pay tribute to the latest powerful novel in the author's ‘Regeneration Cycle’. It also emphasised once again how much the historical and cultural consciousness of twentieth-century Britain is dominated by images of war. With the obvious exception of Northern Ireland, Great Britain has been an unusually peaceful and stable country in a century marked by revolution and upheaval. Yet our national experience has been shaped, almost obsessed, by two world wars in a way true of few, if any, other countries. Memories of 1914 and 1939 tower over us like Lutyens's massive monument at Thiepval. The war leaders, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, are commonly thought of as our two greatest prime ministers in modern times (though another, more recent, prime minister, victorious in the Falklands, still has her champions). Armistice day, Remembrance Sunday and the wearing of poppies retain their potency as all-powerful national symbols of sacrifice. The British Legion remains an influential pressure group. The eightieth anniversary of the battle of the Somme in July 1996 emphasised anew the enduring impact of the tragedies of the first world war. More generally, the fiftieth anniversaries of VE Day and VJ Day the previous year were nationwide ceremonies of remembrance for the sacrifices of the second. Almost every episode in current history, especially where Europe is involved, is commonly linked with memories of earlier conflict. Even the 1996 crisis in Anglo-German relations, such as it was, arising from ‘mad cow disease’ evoked comparison with 1939.

SOME apology may seem necessary for a brief paper that covers nearly three centuries, but, unless we take long views, we are unlikely to get into focus the problem before us, namely, the extent to which the commons participated in medieval politics and the manner in which they did so. Bishop Stubbs, you will remember, found this a matter of particular difficulty. The part played by the commons in relation to taxation and legislation seemed plain enough. But political power, the ‘right of general deliberation on all national matters, is too vague in its extent’, he thought, ‘to be capable of being chronologically defined; nor was it really vindicated by the parliament until a much later period than’ the reign of Edward I, with which he was then concerned. Elsewhere, Stubbs seems to have committed himself to the view that the commons took part in politics in the fifteenth century, although the distinction he formerly drew between politics and legislation he no longer maintained. Quite clearly we cannot consistently maintain a distinction between politics and legislation or politics and finance. ‘The right of deliberation on all national matters’, in Stubbs's phrase, may express itself in the acceptance or refusal of legislative or of financial proposals. But if there are certain national matters from the discussion of which one or other of the ‘estates’ is in practice excluded, then it is reasonable to say that, to that extent, they take no part in politics. To suggest an obvious example: the assent of the lower clergy was necessary to the taxation to which they were subjected; they took no part in general legislation; and they certainly did not exercise the right of deliberation on all national matters. Their participation in politics was therefore of the slightest.

THE novel which won the 1987 Booker Prize was Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger. Its central character is an historian whom, on the opening page, we find already near to death. Even so, she is meditating about the completion of a new work: ‘A history of the world. To round things off. I may as well—no more nit-picking stuff about Napoleon, Tito, the battle of Edgehill, Hernando Cortez … The works, this time. The whole triumphant murderous unstoppable chute—from the mud to the stars, universal and particular, your story and mine.’ And she adds: ‘I'm equipped, I consider; eclecticism has always been my hallmark.’

This paper is concerned with an obscure and long defunct branch of the administration, which was instituted in 1833 and reached its climax by the middle 'fifties. The branch, which had not even a distinctive name, consisted at most of between twenty and thirty executive members, almost all half-pay naval officers, who were at first directly controlled by the colonial office, and, after 1840, subject immediately to the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission. Though the corps of emigration officers, or agents, as they were indifferently called, was established in the 1830's, it by no means belonged to a new race of administrators. It did not originate in political agitation, or Benthamic or parliamentary inquiry. Its purpose and function were scarcely defined; certainly it was innocent of doctrinaire intention. No celebrated public servant, except, indirectly, James Stephen, was concerned with its workings; no considerable attention was ever drawn upon its officers. Indeed, by and large, the British public was unaffected by, and probably ignorant of, its existence.

At the Peace of Paris in 1763 Britain reaped the rewards of a successful war overseas. Great gains were made in North America, die West Indies and West Africa. Two years later Robert Clive signed the treaty of Allahabad by which the Mughal emperor transferred the diwani and widi it effective possession of die huge province of Bengal to the East India Company. No one could doubt the scale of what had been acquired in so short a time in terms of land, people or resources. How these vast gains could be turned to account, by whom and with what consequences, aroused eager anticipation, a well as serious misgivings, as die British state and many private individuals tried to exploit the opportunities opened up by British military prowess. In so doing they revealed much about the strengdis and weaknesses of British overseas expansion in the eighteenth century.

This paper explores representations of the manly body and the ways in which its relationship with masculine identity and embodied selfhood changed over time and class. It spans a period in which different types of masculinities were dominant, from the later eighteenth-century man of feeling to the later nineteenth-century muscular Christian, and proposes that an embodied approach offers a more nuanced consideration of the ways in which ideals of masculinity were culturally viewed and utilised. First, it provides a chronology of the manner in which the ideal manly body changed over the two centuries, demonstrating that abstract masculine values were always rooted in male bodies. Secondly, it proposes that although most idealised masculine identities were elite, attention to the more corporeal aspects of gender offers evidence that there were features of the manly body, for example hardness, that appealed across social ranks.1 Elite men valorised idealised working-class men's bodies and saw in them something to emulate. Moreover, working-class men used classically inspired figures to represent themselves when formulating class and gender identities.

Changes in familial relations have influenced historical scholarship. The family is now seen more in terms of relationships that have to be activated to be meaningful. This study first looks at general features of the European nineteenth-century bourgeois family and its context, in particular the dramatic fall in the marital birth rate. Sigmund Freud's family is then taken as a case study. Turning attention from the usual psychoanalytic focus, it is possible to tease out those relationships in which Freud was actually embedded, particularly with his siblings and siblings-in-law. The consequences of neglecting these features are highlighted.

One evening early in the war, the First Lord of the Admiralty and Mrs Churchill invited the Prime Minister and Mrs Chamberlain to dine. By a happy chance the conversation turned to Chamberlain's early life in the Bahamas. He told the story of the struggle to recruit the family's fortunes by growing sisal on a remote and windswept island in the Bahamas, ‘living nearly naked, struggling with labour difficulties and every other kind of obstacle, and with the town of Nassau as the only gleam of civilization’. Chamberlain described how, for all his exertions, the scheme had failed. In the Chamberlain family, it appeared, it was felt that though they loved him dearly they were sorry to have lost £50,000. ‘I was fascinated’, Churchill recorded after the war, ‘by the way Mr. Chamberlain warmed as he talked, and by the tale itself, which was one of gallant endeavour. I thought to myself, “What a pity Hitler did not know when he met this sober English politician with his umbrella at Berchtesgaden, Godesberg, and Munich that he was actually talking to a hard-bitten pioneer from the outer marches of the British Empire!” ‘

The relations between Peel and his party form a familiar theme, and even in this centenary year of his death there seems little to be gained from a restatement of the problem, or at least from a restatement in the old polemical terms. Yet in raking over the ashes of that controversy one must always be struck by the paradox inherent in Peel's position. If Peel destroyed his party, he destroyed his own handiwork. The man that twice ‘betrayed’ his followers ranks in British political history as the creator of the first modern parliamentary party. The contrast may be stated in the words of M. Halévy: ‘the statesman who ten years before had accomplished such an outstanding work of party organization by a most intelligible reaction had come to execrate the very notion of party politics’. Clearly if we accept the sharp contrast we must also accept the revulsion of feeling to which Halévy alludes. But another line of approach might be to inquire whether the Peel of the thirties was different in any essential aspect from the Peel of the forties. If the contrasting elements in Peel's career have been emphasized at the expense of the elements of continuity, the task is not so much to explain as to explode the paradox.

The fourteenth century is an important period in the history of aristocratic retinues in England not only because it was a period of some considerable activity on their part, but because it was one in which their leaders, adapting themselves to the general change in the structure of society, began to develop new forms of retinue organised on the principle of personal contract in place of the old feudal principle of tenurial loyalty.