The career of Thomas Dugard, the focus of this article, can be very briefly outlined. The son of a Worcestershire schoolmaster, Dugard was educated at Sidney Sussex College Cambridge, where his uncle Richard was an eminent tutor. Thomas gained his M.A. in 1633, and the same year became Master of Warwick school where he remained until he obtained the wealthy living of Barford, south Warwickshire in 1648. He kept this living until his death in 1683, by which time he had, by the skin of his teeth, been enrolled by the heralds amongst the Warwickshire gentry. Thomas Dugard was not considered worthy of an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, although his brother William, the schoolmaster and printer, and his son Samuel, a clergyman and author, are included.

One hundred years ago the most scholarly of the whig historians, Samuel Rawson Gardiner, gave the Petition of Right a leading place in his interpretation of early Stuart England, as the beginning of a constitutional revolution in which parliament took sovereignty from an autocratic Stuart monarchy. To Gardiner this was part of a movement, his portrayal of which was coloured by ideas of patriotism and moral good, and which had the sanction of historical inevitability. Clearly there were serious flaws built into Gardiner's view: teleology, narrowness of theme, implausible simplicity, belief in inevitable progress, and the selective attribution of unconscious motives to men such as Sir John Eliot. Recent historiography has demonstrated the inherent weaknesses of the traditional liberal-whig and indeed the Marxist views of this period. A most stimulating revisionist argument and a whole industry of scholarship seem likely to reduce Gardiner's work to a great narrative, graced frequently with sane judgement, but in conceptual terms virtually abolished. Nevertheless the Petition of Right remains a salient and significant feature of the early Stuart landscape. Conrad Russell has established clearly that the making of the Petition was important as the culmination of a national war crisis and as an ideological watershed. Indicative of an emerging fear of subversion – of the alteration of government and religion together – it anticipated the attitudes of those in the Long Parliament who came to oppose the Caroline regime. The Petition needs to be given due attention in seeking to understand the important relationship between the political events of the 1620s and those of the 1640s.

In the past decade scholars such as Stanford Lehmberg. G. R. Elton, and J. G. Bellamy have increased our understanding of the use of parliamentary attainder in the reign of Henry VIII. Traditionally attainder had been used to punish fugitives in flight, a form of parliamentary outlawry, or to affirm and supplement prior convictions achieved through the common law or the law of arms in order to extend the crown's rights to forfeited estates. At common law a traitor's forfeiture was limited to lands in fee simple, and by the law of arms his lands were totally immune to forfeiture. Passage of an act of attainder, however, enabled the king to seize any or all of a traitor's land, whether held in fee simple, fee tail, or to the use of the traitor. In the crucial decade of the 1530s attainder assumed a new role, condemning and ordering the execution of offenders solely by authority of parliament, without any prior judicial proceedings and despite an absence of obstacles which might have made a trial impossible. Lehmberg emphasizes the significance of this transformation in his detailed study of attainder in the reign of Henry VIII and suggests that the ‘pivotal act’ was the attainder of Elizabeth Barton and her followers in 1534. Certainly Barton's attainder was the first of many utilized by Henry's government to enforce the Reformation, and it did so without recourse to the common law. Lehmberg is mistaken, however, in his belief that this was the first attainder of the reign to attaint an individual without prior common law proceedings, for that distinction belongs to the attainder of Richard Roose in 1531.

Some time soon after the execution of Charles I, the new rulers of England began seriously to consider imposing an oath of loyalty to the new republic. On 22 February the Council of State were directed to take an ‘Engagement’ to the regime, and for the rest of 1649 there were periodic suggestions to extend this Engagement to wider sections of the political nation, and especially to office holders. Finally, on 2 January 1650, the Rump decided that all men over the age of 18 would take an Engagement, of the form I do declare and promise, that I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as it is now established, without a King or House of Lords

How and why did the civil wars begin? Were they the result of fortuitous circumstances – rebellion in Scotland and Ireland and financial crisis? Were they the product of an inexorable, inevitable slide which began at some indeterminate date in the 1620s (or indeed before)? Or does the answer lie somewhere between these two extremes?

In 1648, Essex was the scene of a major military campaign of the Second Civil War. This essay seeks to explain why that campaign was fought. There are several reasons why such an investigation is worthwhile. Firstly, it challenges the fashionable historical idea that the Civil Wars were fundamentally a conflict between centre and localities. Secondly, it concentrates upon the Second Civil War as a serious proposition, not as a pathetic appendage of the earlier conflict to be dismissed with contempt but not consideration. Thirdly, it demands a look at Essex as a county caught up in the violence of civil war.

Holidays and festivals were traditional occasions when the young men of early modern London indulged in carnivals of misrule. One of the most striking examples of these were the ritualized attacks on brothels by apprentices, which customarily took place on Shrove Tuesday. These rituals, which often involved quite extensive destruction to property, seem to have occurred with persistent regularity, at least in the early Stuart period, there being twenty-four known Shrove Tuesday riots in the thirty-five years between 1606 and 1641. Such activities normally received moderate handling from the authorities, and only in exceptional circumstances did the courts choose to punish the rioters with heavy fines or a period of imprisonment. Contemporaries, it seems, were familiar with, and to a certain extent tolerant of this ‘ancient administration of justice at Shrovetide’ by the apprentices, as James Harrington called it. Such feats were even acclaimed in popular literature as being a sign of the virtue of London's young men. In this context, the response of the authorities to apprentice attacks on bawdy houses that occurred in Easter week of 1668 seems excessive. Here, fifteen of the ringleaders were tried for high treason, on a rather dubious interpretation of the law, and four were eventually hanged, drawn and quartered.

On 2 April 1871, soon after the echoes of cannon fire had died away over Neuilly and Courbevoie in the first engagement of the civil war, the executive commission of the revolutionary Paris commune drafted an angry proclamation:

The royalist conspirators have attacked! Despite the moderation of our attitude they have attacked! No longer able to count on the French army, they have attacked with the pontifical zouaves and imperial police…This morning, Charette's Chouans, Cathelineau's Vendéens, Trochu's Bretons, flanked by Valentin's gendarmes…embarked on civil war against our National Guards.

The resignation in May 1730 of Charles, second Viscount Townshend (1674–1738), as Secretary of State for the Northern Department, is an event that has attracted little attention. Aware of Sir Robert Walpole's determination to get rid of Townshend, scholars have tended to treat Walpole's success as inevitable. The major study of British political history in these years, that contained within Professor Plumb's valuable biography of Walpole, is disappointingly brief in its treatment of the crisis. This reflects the general tendency of the work to concentrate on domestic politics and to devote less attention to the interrelationship between them and foreign policy. As a result Plumb's treatment of Townshend's departure is less probing and comprehensive than most of his book. The failure of scholars to study the ministerial crisis of 1729–30is far from exceptional, for the years of Walpole's ascendancy have escaped the same degree of scrutiny by political historians that has marked the reigns of Anne and George III. A host of major figures lack scholarly biographies: George II; William Stanhope, who succeeded Townshend and was ennobled as Lord Harrington in 1730; the earl of Chesterfield, Townshend's principal supporter in the ministry in 1729–30; William Pulteney, the leader of the opposition Whigs; Lord Wilmington, the duke of Dorset and George Dodington, ministerial opponents of Walpole; and Queen Caroline.

In histories of European trade union movements, the observation that women industrial workers were rarely found among the membership has become axiomatic. In virtually every developed nation, it seems that once the industrial order was established, predominantly male trade unions were everywhere the rule, and female unions and trade unionists everywhere notable exceptions.

Few international agreements have provoked more controversy among historians than that concluded at Dover, on 22 May 1670, by representatives of the English and French Crowns. Its main provisions were for an offensive war against the Dutch republic of the United Provinces, leading to its destruction as a European power, and for the public profession by the English king, Charles II, of the Roman Catholic faith, which had been regarded by most English people for a hundred years as the bitterest enemy of their own church. The existence of this treaty was concealed not only from the other European states and the subjects of the respective monarchs, but from the greater number of their own ministers. The motives of Charles in making this amazing pact have remained a mystery. In the present century, they have been represented by Sir Keith Feiling as an attempt to unite Catholics and Protestant dissenters as a foundation for a stronger monarchy; by Cyril Hartmann, K. H. D. Haley, David Ogg and Lady Antonia Fraser as a decision to hitch England to the fortunes of Europe's strongest state, France; by Sir Arthur Bryant as a wish to ensure his country a share of the Spanish empire and his throne a dependable group of supporters in the form of the Catholics; by Maurice Lee and J. R. Jones as a grand design to make himself independent of his subjects in general and of parliament in particular; and by John Miller as a desire for vengeance upon the Dutch.

In the 1960s Professor Plumb discussed The growth of political stability in England 1675–1725. In the seventeenth century, he noted, party violence and political conflict were frequent events, resulting in open civil war in the 1640s and several perilous crises in later years. Stability (he argued) developed from the 1720s by means of the ubiquitous use of political patronage by the Whig government, and Sir Robert Walpole's judicious ability to avoid too many controversies that stirred political passions. The government simply offered too many tempting jobs and places for any but the staunchest tory to resist. At the same time, elections became more expensive and less frequent, so a parliamentary seat was a long-term investment for a wealthy family. Of course, this account has been challenged. The tory opposition continued to exist, and to develop creative new methods of organization and propaganda. However, Britain clearly had a much more stable and secure political system in the eighteenth century.

References to England abound in nineteenth-century French political thought and what interested French writers about England varied enormously. English education, agriculture, religion, morals, national character, social structure: all figured in their writings. Very few failed to take note of England's rapid industrial growth and commercial power. England, in the words of Eugène Buret, was ‘le pays privilégié pour les études sociales’. Few Frenchmen, however, developed an enthusiastic admiration for English philosophy in this period. Yet there was one prevailing and predominant theme in French writings about England.

When Gladstone's Liberal government passed the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act in 1883, its supporters hoped that the future conduct of politics would be purer and more equitable. Not only would the grosser forms of corruption (such as bribery or intimidation) now be punished more severely, but the advantages previously enjoyed by wealthier candidates would now be minimized because the new law imposed strict limits on campaign spending which applied equally to all candidates for a particular constituency. But these noble goals, it soon appeared, were little closer to realization because the law contained a crucial loophole by failing to constrain the expenditure of the numerous pressure groups active in British politics. Because of this loophole, electoral corruption might continue to flourish, even if the perpetrator would no longer be the candidate's agent, but rather the pressure group treasurer. This view that the intent (if not the letter) of the law was being subverted was a common theme of Edwardian political journalism. As the Westminster Gazette observed, ‘when a by-election takes place each candidate has the assistance of a cloud of outside organizations which spend on the election a large sum of money which is not included in the official election expenses… clearly the result is to drive a coach-and-six through the Corrupt Practices Act.’ On the floor of the House of Commons similar arguments were aired. One Liberal MP contended that the statute ‘had been of great service in securing more honest representation than before, but no one who had followed political events closely could fail to see that its whole purpose was avoided, and that its terms were entirely circumvented, by the action which political organizations took on behalf of a candidate, which he was wholly unable to do for himself.’ Such assertions remained unsubstantiated, however, because infringements by pressure groups were rarely subjected to legal review in the election courts, being considered too difficult to define and expensive to prove.

During the past quarter century scholars from several disciplines have established the central metaphorical function of the demise of the ancient Roman Republic for both literary and political discourse in eighteenth century Britain. But the reverse side of that inquiry – the impact of the analogy between Britain and Rome on the modern historical interpretation of the ancient republic – has received virtually no attention. This oversight has concealed a remarkable modern British historiographical phenomenon that did not end at the close of the eighteenth century. Rather, for over two hundred years modern British political ideologies and preoccupations determined not only how the collapse of the Roman republic would be interpreted but also in large measure even whether it would receive historical examination. The various shifts of historical interpretation from the age of Queen Anne through that of Chamberlain illustrate with stunning and disturbing clarity the relentless manner in which contemporary political concerns can shape, revise, and eventually overwhelm modes of historical understanding without discovery of significant new evidence or the application of new methodology. By the twentieth century methodology itself, in the form of prosopography, in part served the ends of political commentary.

Britain's most important American colonies did not rebel in 1776. Thirteen provinces did declare their independence; but no fewer than nineteen colonies in the western hemisphere remained loyal to the mother country. Massachusetts and Virginia may have led the American revolution, but they had never been the leading colonies of the British empire. From the imperial standpoint, the significance of any of the thirteen provinces which rebelled was pale in comparison with that of Jamaica or Barbados. In the century before 1763 the recalcitrance of these two colonies had been more notorious than that of any mainland province and had actually inspired many of the imperial policies cited as long-term grievances by North American patriots in 1774. Real Whig ideology, which some historians have seen as the key to understanding the American revolution, was equally understood by Caribbean elites who, like the continental, had often proved extremely sensitive on questions of constitutional principle. Attacks of ‘frenzied rhetoric’ broke out in Jamaica in 1766 and Barbados in 1776. But these had nothing whatsoever to do with the Stamp Act or events in North America.

On 31 March 1939, Britain, breaking with hitherto steadfastly pursued policy, declared her commitment to the defence of Poland in the event of a German attack. This gesture was a dramatic change in Britain's foreign policy, not merely in relation to one East European state, but more notably in relation to Europe as a whole. Not surprisingly, the declaration has been the focal point of historical attention, although the events following have received less attention. The crisis days of March 1939 saw a chain of events, not necessarily of the same origin or character but which in sum total caused disquiet in European capitals, most clearly in London. Because of this it is easy to over-look the long-term nature of some of the events which culminated in March 1939 and thus, in consequence, to overestimate the effect of the British guarantee upon Polish foreign policy.

Modern historians of the Jamaica rebellion of October 1865 have attached much causal importance to a document of 14 June the same year, known as ‘the Queen's Letter’. This was the official response to a petition in which ‘certain poor people’ of St Ann's parish in the island had naively asked their sovereign for ‘a quantity of land’ and other means of relief from distress. Drafted by Henry Taylor, clerk and senior clerk in the West India department, of the colonial office since the mid-1820s, and approved by permanent under-secretary Sir Frederic Rogers and secretary of state Edward Cardwell, it has acquired an unmitigatedly bad reputation. It is not merely that it was naturally based on the knowledge that no imperial funds or other competence existed or could exist for relieving the consequences even of admittedly bad seasons in colonies (or at home), but rather that it thrust austere advice upon the suffering petitioners. Any labouring population, it stated, whether in Jamaica or England, could provide against adversity only by ‘industry and prudence’: above all, by undertaking – what was understood to be notoriously lacking amongst creoles – regular work for wages. Even the most sympathetic critics have considered this to be ‘harsh’ and ‘callous’. One writes that it reflected the sentiments of an imperial bureaucracy whose expectations had been influenced by the remarkable changes in English society, whose attitudes were governed by evangelical propriety, and whose notions of progress were inextricably tied to productivity, trade figures, accumulating property, and the refinements which these entailed.

As a professional and bureaucratically organized institution of social control, the police in the United States originated less than 150 years ago. Traditionally, this development has been explained as an inevitable response to a dramatic rise in felonious crime. According to this type of account, a criminal reaction was a natural by-product of such factors as urbanization, immigration, and industrialization. Other investigators have disputed this interpretation, arguing that there is little evidence to support the occurrence of a crime wave. Rather, the municipal police in America originated as part of a larger class control apparatus designed to regulate working class social and political activities, including ‘subversive’ speeches, strikes, riots, and daily breaches of the ‘public order’. Those who argue that the ‘new police’ developed as a crime fighter typically neglect to discuss one of the oldest forms of professional policing in die nation, the private detective agency.

In attempting to explain the stability of eighteenth-century Britain, and in particular the maintenance of political, social and economic supremacy by the landed aristocracy, scholars have begun to pay attention to the role of ideology and opinion. They see this not merely as providing an explanation of the way things were, but justifying and reinforcing them. The dominant ideological interpretation of society had emerged from the political and constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century, and in particular from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, an interpretation which might be denominated ‘Whig’, and which faced its most serious challenge at the very end of the eighteenth century from the French revolution. Despite the more tangible threat of French arms, the ruling classes in Britain did not underestimate the danger to social order from the arguments advanced by adherents of the rights-of-man doctrine propagated by the revolutionaries. If, in reply to these views, the status quo could be shown not only to be necessary and inevitable, but also right and good, that is to say correspondent with the true nature of man, then the morality of the existing practices and institutions of civil society would be proven. The problem at its most fundamental level was ethical, and it was a problem which conservatives attempted to solve in a variety of ways.