This talk represents a crisis of principle. I have long held that a presidential address to a learned society should not belabor that society with laments or summonses, nor should it ask whither the discipline; rather, it should be a serious scholarly or interpretive effort. But it is an equally compelling principle with me that an after-dinner talk should suit the mood of relaxed good feeling that is likely to characterize the occasion. To answer both requirements is no easy task. In defining a genre new to the North American Conference on British Studies, my two predecessors have admirably fulfilled my criteria, combining the serious scholarship one would expect from their distinguished careers with the precise lightness of touch called for on such an occasion.

I will not, I fear, follow their example in either respect. The grand, refractory subject I have chosen has interested me for many years, but I have not earlier addressed it in either research or writing: it has been rather like the unheard theme that Elgar said was present in his Enigma Variations. In now making the theme explicit, as Elgar wisely never did, I shall begin by calling attention to some concerns and perceptions among the English Unitarians over a hundred years, concerns and perceptions that I think reflect a crisis of authority. I shall then suggest ways in which that same analysis might be applied to larger, more important and familiar, segments of nineteenth-century intellectual life.

Francis Bacon wrote his The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh during 1621 after his fall from power and during his initial period of disgrace. He had, of course, contemplated some such history for a long time; and his exile from the Jacobean court allowed him time to complete this project. Exactly how much “research” he did remains a matter of debate. But this history of Henry VII exists as an exceptional example of Tudor-Stuart historical writing. Given Bacon's fascination with questions of history, broached in The Advancement of Learning (1605) and expanded in De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623), one might reasonably expect to find an example of Bacon's practice of history. The History of Henry VII exists as Bacon's only finished full-scale history of an era, although other fragments survive.

A favorite scholarly pastime, at least since the late nineteenth century, has been to detect Bacon's “errors” in his history—that is, how and where he got things wrong. Sometimes, for example, he apparently duplicated the error of a source. He does not, however, stand alone among historians on this score. In any event, modern historical research affords a clearer view of the accuracy of Bacon's account. None of this detracts, however, from Bacon's considerable achievement. Part of the recognition of his accomplishment derives from understanding the different influences that impinge on Bacon's writing Henry VII. I intend, for example, to assess the indebtedness to the life of the Jacobean court as a model or influence on Bacon's portrait of King Henry's relationship with his wife Queen Elizabeth.

Between the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution, four generations of the Stansfield family lived in Halifax—an upland parish in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Although its politics were calm, the century and a half between England's two great “revolutions” was not devoid of change in other respects. Significant social, economic, and cultural developments during this period laid the foundations for the ferment of the Industrial Revolution. The history of the Stansfield family is an excellent illustration of these changes, for there was a world of difference between the great-grandfather, Josias Stansfield, who was in his prime at the Restoration, and his great-grandsons, George and David Stansfield, who were in their primes a century later.

For his part, Josias was recognizably a man of the middling sort. A yeoman engaged in farming and small-scale textile production, his economic activities and his social standing place him in the ranks of families who fell between the few gentlemen who lived in the area and the mass of simple artisans and laborers who had to struggle just to survive. Josias's great-grandsons, George and David Stansfield lived in a different world. By the mid-eighteenth century, Halifax's textile industry was increasingly dominated by large-scale production of which George's large putting-out concern and David's substantial export business were typical. George and David's social position was also quite different. No longer merely comfortable, these two second cousins were among the wealthiest residents of their respective townships, and they had assumed an appropriately significant share of the political and social leadership in the parish.

The resignation of William Pitt in 1801 remains one of the most controversial developments in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British parliamentary politics. At the time few believed that Pitt's dispute with George III over the issue of removing the political disabilities imposed on Roman Catholics in Ireland—also known as Catholic emancipation—was the real reason behind his decision, and many alternative explanations arose within parliamentary circles. Nevertheless, Pitt's closest adherents insisted that the Catholic question was solely responsible for the resignation, and this debate has been carried on by historians, with John Holland Rose and Richard Willis leading the side supporting Pitt's claim and David Barnes and Piers Mackesy the more sceptical side. Such a debate that has raged back and forth for almost two centuries might seem pedantic, but it deserves another look because historians should provide an accurate representation of events and the debate has overlooked some important aspects of the question. Moreover, the whole episode is relevant to the larger issue of the power relationship between the king and his ministers. Therefore, this article addresses four points: the degree of Pitt's commitment to Catholic emancipation; whether the resignation was constitutionally necessary; other factors that were involved in his decision to resign such as his physical and mental health and the serious divisions in the Cabinet over the war and how to handle the grain crisis; and the implications of the resignation for the relationship between the king and the executive.

One of the pervading interpretations of Anglo-American relations in the interwar period is that the advent of James Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government in June 1929 set in train the series of events that ended bitter relations between Britain and the United States, bitterness which had been caused by the naval question. There are several strands to this: first, that the American policy pursued by the Conservative second Baldwin government from November 1924 to June 1929, and especially after the failure of the Coolidge naval conference in the summer of 1927, was bankrupt; second, that MacDonald was more amenable to settling British differences with the Americans than were his Conservative predecessors and, that being so, softened the hardline towards the United States that had marked Conservative foreign and naval policy for more than two years; and, finally, that MacDonald's decision to travel to the United States on what proved to be a very successful visit in the autumn of 1929 to meet Herbert Hoover, the new president, to discuss outstanding issues personally, was a major diplomatic coup. Some of this received version is true. No one can doubt that MacDonald and his Labour ministry played a crucial role in helping to ameliorate the crisis that had been dogging good Anglo-American relations for more than two years before June 1929. The Labour Party constituted the government when the London naval conference of 1930 ended the period of Anglo-American naval rivalry. Moreover, for six months before that conference convened, Labour had conducted effective diplomacy in preparing for its deliberations.