The theme of violence in Chartism has always attracted historians. To a large extent, although less so recently, they have accepted the Chartists' division of themselves into advocates of “moral” and “physical” force. Historical writers have found a ready supply of stirring quotes in Chartist speeches to illustrate the passions of a people aroused. And they have dwelt on the actual and potential demonstrations of violence with a lingering fascination. Yet, in all this discussion there has been little systematic examination of the phenomenon of violence in Chartism or any attempt to assess its relative degree of intensity. True enough, recent study by George Rudé on protest and crime in the first half of the nineteenth century has been illuminating, and Dorothy Thompson provided some stimulating analysis in the introduction to The Early Chartists. But no full scale study of the role of violence yet exists.

A helpful move in that direction was made recently in an article by Thomas Milton Kemnitz on the variety of Chartist strategies. Alongside the traditionally recognized policies of moral and physical force, Kemnitz argues that there was a third strategy of intimidation through “the language of menace.” Its chief practitioner, he suggests, was Feargus O'Connor, who modelled his Chartist agitation on experience with Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform. Although Kemnitz presents no explicit evidence that O'Connor consciously adopted a course which stood midway between moral and physical force, it is certainly demonstrable that the effects of O'Connor's actions were psychologically rather than physically coercive. Kemnitz assists us when he suggests that we think of Chartist pressure in terms of gradations of coercion rather than just two alternatives.

Historical orthodoxy has long recognized the fervent belief of the Scottish Covenanters that their successful revolution against Charles I “stood or fell” with that of their brethren in England. Although by the end of 1641 the Godly Party in the northern kingdom had temporarily destroyed the foundations of Stuart government, many of the King's Scottish opponents no more trusted Charles to accept a permanent curtailment of his power than did their English counterparts. Should the King triumph over his enemies in London, it was assumed that backed by the power of a still episcopal England he would quickly attack the revived presbyterian establishment in Scotland. Concurrently, the political revolution—completed in the Scottish Parliament in 1641—would also be reversed, for the connection betweeen the leading Covenanting politicians, led by the Marquis of Argyll, and the reformed Kirk was very close. It should be remembered that while the clerical estate was abolished in the Scottish Parliament, laymen could sit in the General Assembly and participate in the most important decisions of the Church. Indeed, the aristocratic element in the Glasgow Assembly was large and the meeting's attack on episcopacy and the five articles of Perth may in fact have reflected lay opinion more than clerical. Caroline bishops, favored in Scotland as well as in England for high political positions, were unpopular with the Covenanting nobility for whom presbyterian church government not only restored God's True Kirk but also eliminated dangerous secular rivals. To undermine presbyterianism would, therefore, remove much of the strength from the political hand which Argyll had so shrewdly played since allying with the Covenanters in the Glasgow Assembly.

Eighteenth-century British chemistry presents the historian with an interesting paradox. As theorists, the British hardly distinguished themselves. Joseph Black, the foremost professor of chemistry during the second half of the century and a man of great intellectual ability, began his career with a brilliant paper on pneumatic chemistry and then promptly abandoned the world of published research. Skillful investigators such as Stephen Hales and Joseph Priestley made many important discoveries, but the theories they offered as interpretations of their observations created as many difficulties as they resolved. Although British chemists hypothesized with gusto, the aethers and phlogistons they invoked to explain chemical phenomena lacked intellectual as well as physical gravity and historians of chemistry have not yet succeeded in clarifying the relationship between this welter of ideas and Lavoisier's successful recasting of chemical theory during the final decades of the century. Despite the inadequacy of its theoretical concepts, however, philosophical chemistry flourished in Great Britain during the eighteenth century. Although the absence of a unifying theory led to a rather undisciplined pattern of growth, the number of chemists actively studying philosophical problems certainly increased. Why did so many natural philosophers become interested in such a theoretically impoverished subject, and why, after two generations of intense investigation and reflection, were they unable to formulate an adequate general theory?

They were unlikely choices for revolutionaries and hardly the haughty autocrats the phrase “Little Tin Gods” conjures up. Yet many East African district officers felt it their duty to change the lives of the Africans they ruled, and against great odds they did. Sent out by their superiors in London and Nairobi as policemen and tax collectors, they saw themselves as secular missionaries for a superior culture. Working in the decade before the catastrophic first world war, they were the last generation of Europeans who easily believed their own superiority. Under pressure to produce revenue many district commissioners fostered economic development as a first step in reforming African society. They wished to develop an exchange economy based upon the fruits of a settled and productive peasantry working on its own land. They believed the Africans would adopt the basic values of hard work and even self-reliance, making an Edwardian revolution. If their assumptions about social change, economics, or even civilization itself seem unsophisticated, it is because they were amateurs. They had few resources beyond their own confidence and sense of mission. They began a revolution, but it was not the one they intended for they failed to retrieve colonial Kenya from the clutches of a handful of white settlers. Their vision of peaceful prosperity for the Africans was ultimately denied, and the hopes they raised became murderous frustrations. They offered Kenya an alternative course which imperialism could not accept.

Kenya's first district officers came from diverse backgrounds, but most shared the middle class values they proposed for the Africans.

The appeal for treason lodged against Sir Thomas Mortimer in the parliament of 1397 as well as the entire background to the event has been the subject of considerable confusion. Much of this confusion has been the result of poor communication within the historical community. The information has been available, but it has appeared in diverse places. Thus, the two most recent biographers of Richard II, Anthony Steel and Harold Hutchison, have each been puzzled by the appeal of Mortimer: “The reasons for his inclusion are not clear…”; “…a mysterious addition for which no satisfactory explanation has ever been offered.” Sir Charles Oman, however, offered an explanation over sixty years ago: “As a small supplementary addition to the appeals of the previous autumn, two noted supporters of Gloucester in 1387 were dealt with—Lord Cobham, and Sir Thomas Mortimer, who had murdered the constable of Chester at Radcot Bridge.” Oman was not quite accurate when he grouped Mortimer with Cobham. Although Sir Thomas was not included in the original bill of appeal, he was cited in the summary of the appeal and the subsequent processes of the autumn session of Richard II's last parliament; lord Cobham did not become involved until the parliament reassembled in the next year. Oman's explanation of the matter, however, is not vitiated by this error. It, therefore, deserves further investigation as a solution to the mystery of Mortimer's appeal.