From prison Sir Thomas Wyatt wrote a poem to Sir Francis Bryan, warning him to keep the secrets they shared. This article seeks to discover what the secrets were, and from whom they must be kept. The secrets concerned their lives as courtiers and ambassadors at times of great suspicion and insecurity at home and abroad, c. 1536–41. As diplomats, Wyatt and Bryan were charged to mediate between Henry VIII, Francis I, and Emperor Charles V, but they also had more sinister undercover missions. They were sent to spy upon, and even to assassinate the papal legate, Cardinal Pole. Poetry reveals much about these men which other sources cannot.

The ‘puritan diary’ has received attention from historians and literary critics with little exchange between the approaches. Placing the diary in the context of experimental Calvinist personal discipline reveals that the form emerged independently of the literature of practical divinity. Considering the practice as a ‘technology of the self’ draws attention to the meanings of writing in a protestant context and encourages us to consider the cultural resources available to early modern protestants. Close reading of these texts suggests a greater degree of complexity than is often admitted and allows for a tension between different views of the salvific process. This tension between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ forms is helpful in understanding the religiosity of early modern protestants.

Recent works by Kevin Sharpe and Julian Davies have revised thinking about the religious policies of the Caroline church. Davies's distinction between ‘Laudianism’ and ‘Carolinism’ sums up one of the major conclusions he shares with Sharpe; that Charles I was the initiator of many of the religious policies previously attributed to William Laud. The following article tests this conclusion by viewing the religious policies emanating from England through the eyes of James Ussher, the Irish archbishop of Armagh. It finds that, from the Irish perspective at least, it was impossible for a contemporary to make the same distinction between ‘Laudianism’ and ‘Carolinism’, about policies that were deeply unpopular across the Irish Sea. What follows is an examination of Ussher's reception of a range of policies he considered detrimental to Calvinist unity in the face of catholic threat, including a detailed examination of his attempts to save the Calvinist Irish Articles. Through consideration of his own patronage concerns and directions in publishing it is demonstrated here that, through the 1630s, the Irish protestant primate continued to believe (rightly or wrongly) that behind the religious tensions of Britain lay the dual spectre of ‘Arminianism’ and popery.

The paper considers reactions to William III's Declaration of reasons, the manifesto issued by the prince of Orange on the eve of his invasion of England in 1688. It questions recent historiography, which has argued for the importance of this document in William's success by claiming that it achieved a virtual hegemony of English political discourse in the period of the Glorious Revolution. The paper first shows that James II's supporters mounted an effective challenge to the Orange Declaration by reversing its claim that liberties were in danger under the existing regime. It then suggests that William lost control of his manifesto over the winter of 1688–9 by making moves to secure power and authority which were unadvertised in the document. Once this had happened, various groups opposed to Orange ambition were able to adopt the rhetoric of the Declaration and quote it back at the prince in attempts to block his advance. The paper concludes with the irony that the ubiquity of the Declaration in 1688 may have been a result of its failure as publicity for the Orange cause; and by suggesting that scholars should look in places other than the manifesto for an effective Williamite propaganda.

Before 1689 parliament met relatively infrequently and unpredictably, passing limited amounts of legislation. After that date parliament met annually and enacted a significantly enhanced volume of legislation. By relating attempts to legislate to patterns of acts this transformation is explored at a very general level. Some explanations are advanced, largely by examining institutional arrangements and the subject matter of legislation. Finally, some general observations on the significance of this ‘revolution in parliament’ are advanced.

The hesitation with which the national assembly approached the issue of guilds has long puzzled historians. After apparently abolishing them on the night of 4 August 1789, the national assembly delayed any action on guilds for eighteen months. This study examines the reasons for the tentativeness of the national assembly and the factors that ultimately led it to take action in 1791. A fear of aggravating violence in the countryside led the national assembly initially to delay action against guilds. By the time the assembly was ready to act, however, it found itself stymied by one of its own committees, which refused to bring the matter forward. The equivocation of the assembly led to unrest in towns and villages, and that unrest, along with the need of the assembly to realize the new principles it had advanced, led to a pre-emptive manoeuvre by the assembly against the obstructionist committee that resolved the anomaly of guilds in the new polity created by the national assembly.

In the debate between the charity organisation society and the new forms of personal service societies that grew up during the Edwardian period, disagreement centred on the nature of the boundary to be drawn between state and voluntary action. The paper reviews the theory and practice of the COS and suggests that while the new societies had much in common with the COS regarding their methods, the nature of their ‘partnership’ with the state was significantly different. While the COS operated a division of labour based on client groups, the new societies preferred a task-based division. The paper argues that while the new societies were determinedly more civic-minded and pragmatic regarding their attitudes towards state welfare provision, they offered no coherent rationale for voluntary effort to replace the theory developed by the COS.

The leading Fabians held different versions of permeation: Shaw saw permeation in terms of weaning the Radicals away from the Liberal party, so he favoured an independent party; Webb defined permeation in terms of the giving of expert advice to a political elite without any need for a new party. These varieties of permeation can be traced in the individual and collective actions of the Fabians, and, in particular, in their attitude to the formation of the Independent Labour party (I.L.P.). The Fabians did not simply promote the I.L.P. nor did they simply oppose the I.L.P.

South Africa was part of the sterling area (an international currency and payments system centred on Britain) from 1933 until the area itself collapsed in the early 1970s. This was despite the fact that throughout this period, and especially after 1948, Afrikaner nationalists were actively undermining other elements of the British connection. The South African government was compelled to enter and remain in the area above all because of its dependence on Britain both as a customer for South African agricultural goods (the production and export of which were disproportionately significant in South African politics) and as a source of capital funds and goods (particularly for the highly capital-intensive gold-mining industry which dominated the South African economy as a whole). The British government promoted South Africa's membership of the area not just for reasons of economics (the flow of South African gold to London facilitated the maintenance of sterling as an international currency; trade with South Africa could generate substantial net earnings of convertible currency which helped to sustain British trade on a largely multilateral basis) but also for reasons of strategy, geopolitics and prestige.

In January 1937 the government of the USSR conducted its first population census in eleven years. This article, which is based on the archives of the census organizations and on reports from some local offices for the registration of births, marriages and deaths, describes the campaign of data collection, the questions that were asked (including, for the first and last time, a question about the respondent's religion) and the response which people give to this personal contact with their rulers. The information gathered was exceptionally thorough and complete. Crucially, however, the census was entirely suppressed, and the officials responsible for organizing it promptly arrested and executed. The reasons for doing this – which largely centred on the sensitivity of evidence of high mortality during the famine of 1932–3 – are discussed, as are the potential implications of the suppression of such information. Finally, the article questions how complete any statistics about famine mortality in this period can be, and calls for a discussion of the broader questions of memory and loss which underlie the bare statistics of death.