Thomas Starkey's (c. 1495–1538) Dialogue between Reginald Pole and Thomas Lupset is one of the most significant works of political thought written in English between Fortescue and Hooker, for several reasons. It gives insight into its author's intellectual background – Oxford, Paris, Avignon, Padua, Venice – which he shared with many of the other ideologues of the Henrician state. More than that, the Dialogue represents one of the first attempts to blend continental humanism of a Venetian variety, and perhaps Florentine as well, with native English traditions in the creation of a theoretical justification for what Starkey called a ‘mixed state’. In this and in the practical reform proposals which issued from it, Starkey went beyond Thomas More, however superior Utopia may be as a work of literature, or how much more directly it seems to speak to us. The work is also worthy of attention for Starkey's own standing, even if hisinfluence with Thomas Cromwell was shortlived. G. R. Elton has begun this sort of study by using Starkey'sreforms to explore the intellectual underpinnings of the Cromwellian reform. Aside from this effort, interpretation has not been very successful. The Dialogue is undoubtedly a daunting work, not because of the inherent difficulty of its arguments, but rather the extreme eclecticism of the author and his attempt to fulfil two apparently discrepant purposes. It is precisely on this last point that modern criticism has fallen down most seriously. I would like to suggest that placing the work in its proper context in Starkey's life allows not only the recovery of those two conflicting intentions, but also a sketch of the motives underlying them. This will involve an examination of the only surviving manuscript of the Dialogue.

If a revolution has taken place recently in the history of political thought, the name of Quentin Skinner must figure prominently in the vanguard. His work has been concerned with redefining the boundaries between philosophy and history; to put the matter briefly he makes a plea for ‘less philosophy and more history’. With regard to Thomas Hobbes his work involves two distinct – but related – projects: to revise our view of Hobbes's impact and influence on his age; and to clarify the interpretation of Hobbes's written work. Characteristically, the first project is presented as a guide to the second. History becomes the handmaiden of philosophy.

The Church of England has received little attention either as an issue or as a force in mid-eighteenth-century politics. The contrast with the immediate post-revolutionary decades, when the Church and churchmen were at the centre of political debate, is striking. This development has been explained in terms of the achievement of political stability, one manifestation of which was the transition from the whig–tory dichotomy of the reign of Anne into a court–country one by 1725, with the issues dividing the two parties losing both ideological and political significance. Among the debates which were ‘overtaken by events’ was religion which ‘ceased to be a central issue of political debate’. Indeed, Geoffrey Holmes has argued that the decline of religious controversy began with the Sacheverell trial, claiming that most of the eighteenth century was characterized by ‘spiritual inertia’ and ‘religious tranquillity, within the framework of an Erastian polity’. Such views accord well with the secularist interpretation of the enlightenment, epitomized by Peter Gay's portrayal of it as ‘a volatile mixture of classicism, impiety, and science’, and they have been little challenged by ecclesiastical historians. Norman Sykes may have vindicated the pastoral and administrative standards of the Georgian Church, but the overwhelming impression remains one of Stability and intellectual torpor.

Among historians it is a commonplace to observe that outcomes are bound up in origins and that we can find the explanation of perplexing or startling events by looking at how those events began. Nothing appears more obvious, but in some historical problems nothing is more easily overlooked. The history of the Roman Catholic relief proposals and enactments and the violent opposition to them in the British Isles in 1778–80 affords an example. It still presents difficulties to historians despite much research and writing on the subject. Accounts of Roman Catholic relief and the reaction to it, which was sustained over several years and was ferocious in climax, still leave an unsatisfactory impression as to how such opposition could have taken place. Confusion and doubt will go a long way towards disappearance, however, once we look more closely at the origins of the relief plan, origins which historians have largely overlooked.

In the last two decades, British urban history has flourished. The Tudor and Stuart periods have attracted particular attention, so that we are well informed on the party factions and politics of this time. There are excellent general accounts by Drs Clark, Slack and others; and notable local studies like Dr Evans' account of Norwich. However, it is interesting that early eighteenth-century towns are by no means as well covered, especially in the area of politics. We have studies of Norwich and the West Midlands, but these mostly concern the period after 1760. On the first half of the century, most of the available published material comes from incidental references in books on broader party politics and organization; for instance in works by Drs Holmes, Brewer and Colley.

Though Mr Gladstone was speaking of the opposition to home rule in the country, rather than in the parliamentary Liberal party alone in the statement quoted above, this has become the rather standard interpretation of the great separation in the Liberal party in 1886. As one modern historian of the Liberal disruption puts it, ‘a striking characteristic of modern British history has been the class alignment of political parties… The Liberal Unionist party (those who seceded on the home rule question) was a half-way house, which entertained for a time much of the wealth and territorial influence which had been Liberal and was to be Conservative.’ One of the most influential historians of late-nineteenth-century Britain puts the issue in broader terms. The origins of Conservative dominance as well as the leakage of the landed and business classes to the Conservative party, Sir Robert Ensor argues, are to be found in the undermining of English and Irish agriculture by the invasion of North American wheat. This produced, in turn, agrarian revolution in Ireland, the rise of violent nationalism in Ireland, the growth of social and political conflict, and, ultimately, the rejection of Irish political demands by the English. Yet another attributes the fall of Gladstone's third ministry to a general revolt against the Liberal party by railway directors and other businessmen who had been alerted to the dangers to property which the government's railway policies implied. This theme has been taken up and many have come to argue that class voting emerged in 1886 when the upper – and middle-class Liberals, taking home rule as an excuse, departed to the Conservatives in a reaction against growing social radicalism.

‘Watersheds’ and ‘turning points’ are two standard literary devices for addressing the question of direction in history. Once that direction is determined, one is able to survey the roads not taken, sorting out the possible and the probable from the unavoidable. This paper forswears the vocabulary of turning points, but it owes something to the idea such language expresses. Put cryptically, our discussions of the origins of the Second World War could afford to pay closer attention to Franco-Italian relations in the 1930s. Next to the Manchurian, Rhenish, Spanish, Austrian, Czech and Polish crises of that decade, the crisis within the ephemeral alliance between Paris and Rome has been given short shrift. Even within the context of the Ethiopian crisis there is a tendency to measure the implications against Anglo-French, Anglo-Italian and Italo-German relations. The net effect is to downplay the importance of relations between France and Italy. And from that, to choose but one example, comes an exaggerated sense of the ease with which the French fell into line with British policy in the Mediterranean, and with which the Italians subsequently received German overtures respecting Austria and Central Europe.