In twelfth and thirteenth-century England complaints that justice was being sold were common, culminating with King John's tacit admission in Magna Carta. Coupled with these complaints were charges of corruption against royal judges, or against royal aulici, curiales, or familiares, since until the middle of Richard I's reign no professional judiciary existed. Even in King John's time, familiares regis still served as judges. Yet a core of royal servants specializing in justice, “professionals” in a certain sense, had been created. Historians since Maitland have generally held a high opinion of these judges. According to Maitland, under Henry II and Richard I, “English law was administered by the ablest, the best educated men in the realm.…” F.M. Powicke wrote that the judiciary of Henry III was “probably the most stable and helpful, as it was the most intelligent, element in the State at this time.” How are we to reconcile historians' high opinion of the royal justices with their contemporaries' low opinion? Were the chroniclers simply drawing stock figures in their depictions of corrupt judges, or was their picture drawn from life?

Royal officials, including judges, proved popular targets for the pens of twelfth century moralists and satirists, some of whom wrote out of personal bitterness, having failed in the contest for royal patronage and high office.2 Capable of condemning curiales in classical Latin style was John of Salisbury. He knew many of Henry II's courtiers, and he came to despise them, especially those in clerical orders.

One of the most dramatic events of the entire Civil War occurred on May 5, 1646, when the English King unceremoniously appeared in the camp of the Covenanting army. Although not unexpected, despite Scottish protestations to the contrary, this bold move could conceivably have transformed the war's character. That it had so little impact on the final outcome resulted not from the high hopes of the participants, Scots, Royalists, and French, but from inadequate planning and the failure to realistically anticipate consequences. Before very long the recognition that Charles' flight to the Scots was a massive blunder for all those involved became embarrassingly evident. The King was to be held virtual prisoner by the Covenanters, yet the Scots would gain little from their prize possession. How it came about that these two parties participated in such an act of desperation is the subject of this essay.

The Covenanters' willingness in 1646 to resort to extreme measures resulted from the recognition that their position in England had seriously deteriorated. They had originally intervened in the Civil War on the side of Parliament because they feared that a triumph for Royalism would provide the King with another chance to impose a settlement on Scotland. It was hoped in Edinburgh that the favorable resolution of the conflict, which their highly regarded army was sure to bring, would allow the Scots to shape the terms of the peace, and ultimately to play a permanent role in English affairs. Of great importance to the Kirk was the establishment in England of a Presbyterian church similar to their own model. Here too, Scottish ministers, with their greater experience, would exert an ongoing influence in England.

The name John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, evokes the image of the ambitious and selfish politician who was responsible for the death of Lady Jane Grey. The son of an executed traitor, and a traitor and apostate Protestant himself, Northumberland has been defamed by chroniclers and historians since his death in 1553. His reputation rests upon alleged character defects and a political career that putatively divided, weakened, and dishonored the country. Attributions of crime and misdeeds, regardless whether proved, have made him one of the most notorious villains of the early modern period.

Notwithstanding the inevitable disagreement over the particulars of Northumberland's life and work, the consensus is that he was the worst of a group of grasping, unprincipled new men who gained favor with Henry VIII and acquired status and wealth through the plunder of the church. Northumberland served the king as a soldier, courtier, and diplomat, and appealed to Henry's baser instincts, seeking only to advance himself socially and financially. It was only after the accession of Edward VI in 1547, so the traditional interpretation would have us believe, that circumstances permitted Northumberland to betray his true character and motives, and the full extent of his perversity. First, he allegedly supported a coup d'état that overthrew the will of the deceased king and installed the Duke of Somerset as Protector. Later, he intrigued to destroy the Protector's brother, Thomas, Lord Seymour, and then to depose Somerset. Following the overthrow of the Protector in 1549, Northumberland, aided by a small faction, instituted a regime of social repression, entered into a dishonorable alliance with France, and instigated the trial and execution of Somerset on entirely spurious charges. Throughout the reign of Edward VI, he encouraged the more radical Protestant reformers although he is said to have lacked sincere religious convictions.

To many seventeenth century observers, the political role of towns in the English Civil War was clear enough. Clarendon, for example, referred to the “great towns and corporations, where besides the natural malignity, the factious lecturers and emissaries from the Parliament had poisoned the affections.” Thomas Hobbes was even more specific: “The City of London and other great towns of trade, having in admiration the prosperity of the Low Countries after they had revolted from their monarch the king of Spain were inclined to think that the like change of government here would to them produce the like prosperity.” In similar fashion, the anonymous author of the 1648 tract Persecutio Undecima saw the commercial interests of the urban areas, especially London, as one of the significant factors in the calling of the Long Parliament and the subsequent outbreak of war.

Reform of the law and the courts, especially the Court of Chancery, has been one of the most active areas of interest among historians concerned with the Interregnum period of English history. However, the authors on law reform have relied primarily upon the plethora of pamphlet literature and other printed materials which have led them to conclude that the legal profession obstructed reform of the law to protect its vested interests in offices and fees. Bulstrode Whitelocke, one of the lords commissioners of the great seal (the Chancery judges of the Interregnum) from 1649 to 1655, has long served historians as an example of the legal profession's refusal to assist or to cooperate in any meaningful reformation of the law or equity. Recently, Donald Veall, David Underdown, and Blair Worden have again laid the failure of reform at the door of the lawyers and judges who sat in the Rump, on commissions of law reform, and in the Protectorate parliaments. They have also assigned to Whitelocke a major responsibility for the defeat of law reform in the Rump, both before and after the Hale Commission's comprehensive plan of reform in January 1653, and in the first Protectorate Parliament in 1654. They believe, despite Whitelock's fervor for professional standards and his mild reforming tendencies, that he represented the major hurdle for any successful reform in law or equity.

In his lively reassessment of extra-parliamentary politics early in the reign of George III, John Brewer advances a conclusion of potentially great significance. Where Sir Lewis Namier and Ian Christie see in Wilkism little more than a political May dance without important effect, Brewer finds a “focussed radicalism” embodying fundamental change in the nature of traditional English politics. Where George Rudé carefully delimits the geographical, social, and political range of Wilkite influence, Brewer argues that “focussed radicalism” was a truly national phenomenon personified in Wilkes and parent to the popular sensibility that underlay later anti-aristocratic and reform politics.

Brewer appears fully as unconventional in his attitude toward what constitutes proper evidence as in the conclusion he builds upon that evidence. Namier and Christie rest their cases on the seemingly solid foundation of election analysis. But Brewer rejects this evidence as inherently unsatisfactory. The “formal, institutional yardstick” of polls, we are told, cannot help measure the influence or extent of radical political opinion. Instead, he concentrates on non-electoral evidence, relying, above all, on the fragile and fleeting indications of support for Wilkes that are to be found in provincial newspapers, petitions, and public gatherings during the years 1768-1771.

British historians have long recognized the activities of Robert Harley in the field of political propaganda. J.M. Price, for example, writes that, “as lord treasurer and as a politician /Harley was/ not unmindful of the power of the press.” P. M. Handover concurs: “The minister who most skillfully exploited printed propaganda was Robert Harley.” J.O. Richards adds that “no politician had a larger coterie of writers than Harley.” W.T. Morgan and Laurence Hanson are still more emphatic: the former suggests that Harley had a “clearer conception than any other statesman of the period of the important part of the press might be made to play in politics;” the latter, that Harley “was one of the first politicians to realize how vital was a good press to the prestige of government.” Yet, despite this general agreement, there remains a dearth of concrete facts about Harley's use of political propaganda.

Art historians and cultural historians have noted what appears to be a puzzle in eighteenth-century history, a puzzle which emerges from an apparent conflict of the following trend: as English country houses became more and more classical, the gardens around them became less so. That is, as architecture progressively conformed to the principles of universal order and mathematical geometry embodied in the Palladian ideal, gardens seemed to repudiate those same principles, embracing irregularity and particularity. Another apparently contradictory trend is noteworthy: as country houses became smaller through the eighteenth century, the gardens around them became larger. By the later eighteenth century people of means seem to have preferred smallish houses in acres of parkland, rather than enormous houses in small, formal gardens.

There are two possible ways of approaching this problem. The first is simply to ignore the contradiction and accept the houses and gardens as products of separate traditions. Most art historians have done this, fitting the houses and gardens respectively into the classical and romantic traditions. The houses are said to be classical in style because they were intended to appeal to the reasoning faculties of the Enlightenment mind, while the gardens are called romantic because they were designed to appeal principally to the subjective and non-rational faculties, the senses and the emotions. The puzzle of classical houses in romantic gardens simply does not arise when an author such as Hussey, for example, examines the history of gardens, or when Summerson writes about the classical country house.

The middle years of the eighteenth century in England were on the whole a period when few women made any impact on the public scene. Writing gradually became a respectable way for a woman to earn a living, but women writers generally confined their efforts to the novel, belle lettres, or instructional works. The most important exception was Catherine Sawbridge Macaulay. She began to publish first as an historian and then turned to topical political pamphleteering.

Descended on both sides from Whiggish City businessmen, Catherine Sawbridge of Olantigh, Kent, married in 1760 George Macaulay. He was a Scots born physician who had wide connections in London, both among Scots and medical men, and among political radicals and non-conformists. Perhaps the most important intimate of the Macaulay circle was Thomas Hollis, a well-to-do republican barrister, bibliophile, and collector of objects of vertu. Other radical friends included several dissenting ministers, among them Caleb Fleming, Theophilus Lindsey, Richard Baron, and Richard Price, and several writers on historical and political subjects, including William Harris, Adam Ferguson, and James Burgh. Catherine's brother, John Sawbridge, was active in City politics, where he had connections both by inheritance and marriage. Thus the Macaulay household offered a meeting place for both theorists and active politicians.

The role of party in the first half of George III's reign has proved a topic of constant interest to historians. The subject has been examined from a variety of angles, not the least important of which is the relationship between party development and public opinion. Much of the explanation of party development has centered on the House of Commons, and a few attempts have been made to integrate the House of Lords into the story. Less effort has been made, however, to ascertain what, if any, role the upper house played in partisan attempts at influencing public opinion. This essay is an attempt to show how the opposition peers of this period took advantage of one of the privileges of their house, the right of written dissent, in a conscious effort to influence a wider audience, and to demonstrate how this contributed to the growth of party.

Twentieth-century historians of the development of British political institutions have been persuaded by the late Sir Lewis Namier that the eighteenth century cannot fruitfully be analyzed in terms of party politics. “In 1761,” Sir Lewis observed, “not one parliamentary election was determined by party, and in 1951 not one constituency returned a non-party member.” J. H. Plumb has admittedly discerned a temporary “rage of party” during the reign of Queen Anne, and Donald Ginter has noted significant anticipations of modern party rivalry during the 1780s and 1790s while the late Richard Pares found “a tendency to a two party system” present during the immediate post-Napoleonic War years. Yet the modern political party system is generally seen as a direct if unwitting consequence of the Reform Act of 1832. In J.B. Conacher's words:

Traditional religious distinctions gradually eroded in eighteenth-century England under the impact of enlightenment rationalism: reason replaced revelation as the criterion for belief, order ousted enthusiasm in worship, and interdenominationalism blurred sectarian boundaries in philanthropic endeavors. But the French Revolution, economic troubles and radical political activity after 1815, and intellectual Romanticism put an end to co-operation and encouraged the growth of denominational self-consciousness. That rise of denominationalism led to the greatest conflict between the sects and the Establishment since perhaps the mid-seventeenth century. The clash began on the local level in the 1820s when the Church attempted to use its legal powers to collect rates; the events of 1828-1829 ushered in a period of conflict on the national level, as well. The Church turned to the state for support, only to find that Whigs and Liberals, in power for most of the period before 1874, were erastians and latitudinarians. So the Church in its turn became militant; high-churchmen in particular came to distrust Parliament and to emphasize the independent sources of clerical authority in sacerdotalism and the apostolic succession.

The period from roughly 1830 to 1870 was one of heightened religious tension. Nonconformists, having gained civil equality, now attempted to eliminate other symbols of the Anglican hegemony. Roman Catholics, sloughing off anglo-gallicanism for ultramontanism, asserted their spiritual claims and talked of converting England.

Harold Macmillan, the future Prime Minister who was Resident Minister and political adviser at Algiers during 1943, devotes a chapter in his autobiographical volume dealing with World War II to the reactivation of the French naval squadron known as “Force X.” Although brief, impressionistic and lacking balance (students would be better advised to consult Sir Llewellyn Woodward's scholarly treatment), his account makes it evident that he had serious differences with Winston Churchill. The explanation he offers is that the Prime Minister resented his warning against the use of “bullying tactics.” Churchill, in his great war history, devotes only a brief paragraph to this curious episode and omits any reference to the important part Macmillan played. But a recent investigation of unpublished correspondence in the Prime Minister's Operational Papers, and of other pertinent materials, casts considerable light on the nature of their disagreement. These sources also provide valuable insights into the Force X problem generally, notably with respect to its linkage by Macmillan with the larger and much more important issue of French political unity. Actually minor in global war perspective, the Force X problem became a symbol of British difficulties in dealing with a defeated and divided France.

Force X was the French eastern Mediterranean squadron, commanded by Vice-Admiral René Godfroy, which was blocked in the port of Alexandria by a more powerful British fleet at the time of the Franco-German armistice in June, 1940. It consisted of one battleship, four cruisers, three destroyers, a half-dozen torpedo boats, and one submarine. The Force X commander, although claiming to be an Anglophile, believed that the French government had no option at that critical juncture but to abandon its ally and to accept Hitler's cease-fire terms.

In late 1912 British domestic social politics were dominated by the noisy dispute between David Lloyd George and the British Medical Association over the details of the national health insurance act. Led by the B.M.A., doctors bitterly opposed the insurance scheme and threatened to boycott panel medical service. The profession's inept political maneuvers and the skillful gamemanship of Lloyd George have been well documented by Bentley Gilbert, as well as Alfred Cox and William Braithwaite, two participants in the controversy. Yet, the story of the medical profession's relationship with the insurance act remains unfinished. Almost nothing is known about what followed the political collapse of the B.M.A. after medical benefit became a reality in January 1913. The post-January period, however, was nearly as tumultuous as 1912, and certainly more important to the efficient working of the insurance act which was for the next thirty-five years to provide health care to Britain's laboring poor. This essay will examine the conditions and politics of medical practice during the initial year of national health insurance in Britain.

On January 1, 1967, the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions became the first organization of British academics to affiliate with the Trades Union Congress. Over the next ten years such major educational bodies as the National Union of Teachers, the National Association of Schoolmasters, and the Association of University Teachers followed its lead and sought formal alignment with the organized labor movement in Britain. Participation in the T.U.C. meant identification as a trade union. This issue lay at the very heart of a lengthy debate within the A.T.T.I. over affiliation. For affiliation required a fundamental reappraisal of the A.T.T.I.'s traditional professional identity and organizational principles, one that ultimately led its members to recognize and acknowledge both the Association's primary role as a teachers' trade union and its common interests with the labor movement. The issue generated similar debate within many British education associations and signaled the emergence of teachers as active participants in the trade union movement. But it was an issue not easily resolved given teachers' historical identity as professionals. A.T.T.I. presence in the T.U.C. helped other associations move in the same direction and eased acceptance of this new identity in many instances. The A.T.T.I. decision to affiliate thus represents an important turning point in the history of that Association and the relationship between academics and the organized labor movement in Britain.

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.