This article suggests an alternative explanation for the failure of the so-called Spanish match in 1623. The Spanish monarchy was not unanimously against the marriage of the Infanta María to Prince Charles, and the marquis (later duke) of Buckingham was not the brilliant negotiator who was able to expose elaborate attempts by the Spanish to hide their alleged mendacity. Analysis of archival materials from England, Spain, and Germany indicates that Charles decided to abandon the match when he realized that it would not guarantee the restoration of his dispossessed brother-in-law, Elector Palatine Friedrich V, who had done everything in his power to prevent the marriage. When Charles signed the treaty anyway, the Spanish then began to make preparations for the wedding, preferring to postpone serious discussion of a solution to the Palatine crisis indefinitely. For Charles, however, the two issues were inseparable. For him the match was as important for securing the restitution of the Palatinate as for designating his future royal spouse. When he left Spain, he had already devised and initiated a plan to dissolve the match. In many ways both sides were equally guilty of delay, dissimulation, and deception.

Parliament's Protestation of May 1641 pledged subscribers to defend the protestant doctrine of the Church of England against all popery and popish innovations, while upholding the honour of the king, the privileges of parliament, and the liberties of the subject. The following twelve months saw contentious debate about the ambiguity of these phrases and the conflicting obligations they entailed. Leaders of the political nation subscribed the Protestation voluntarily in the summer of 1641, emulated in some places by ordinary parishioners. In the more polarized political circumstances of early 1642, parliament ordered the Protestation to be taken nationwide by all men aged eighteen and above. Women, too, occasionally subscribed. This article traces the tendering and reception of the Protestation on both occasions, and examines some of its local consequences. The circulation of the Protestation significantly widened the arena for political and religious involvement in the opening stages of the English revolution.

The lurid story of the fall of Anne Boleyn, her trial and condemnation on charges of multiple (and in one case incestuous) adultery has been used to support many different interpretations of the political and religious history of the reign of Henry VIII. This article argues that the fate of the queen and those accused with her was not the result of wider factional battles or a cynical sacrifice, either to appease a jaded king or to enable a shift in religious or diplomatic policy. Nor was it a case of justice catching up with a libidinous woman who was guilty as charged. In fact Anne's fall was far swifter and more dramatic than previous accounts have suggested, the result essentially of just two days of hectic activity at court and their aftermath. Anne fell, it is argued here, not as a result of what she did, but of what she said during the May Day weekend of 1536, in a series of incautious conversations with the men who were to be tried and executed with her.

This article attempts to establish a connection between the practical legitimation of war and the theories of international law, examining Sweden's efforts to justify her intervention in the Thirty Years War in 1630. Swedish argumentative strategy is analysed in the light of two major traditions of thinking about war: theological and humanist ‘just war’ traditions. The article argues that Swedish leaders did not appeal to the more belligerent humanist arguments which would have enabled them to describe their campaign as a just war either on the grounds of pre-emptive defence or humanitarian intervention. Instead, they tried to interpret it as being within the limits set by the more restrictive theological tradition. This strategy eventually forced them to relinquish attempts to present their intervention as a genuine war and to develop an argument of ‘police-action’, even though it resulted in a loss of credibility. The case study suggests that in the early seventeenth century the prevailing normative language of just war was that of the theologians.

Hugo Grotius has always been viewed as a theorist of either international or natural law. However, these designations obscure the civic focus of his work, from his early republican treatises through to De iure belli ac pacis. From sixteenth-century humanist and legal-humanist Aristotelianism, Grotius constructed a framework of natural right which enabled him on the one hand to locate the origins of the civil community in natural man's juridical capabilities, but on the other to give this ‘city’ a large measure of juridical autonomy in respect of the moral norms of natural law. In this he diverged significantly from the contemporary scholastic handling of natural law. Grotius further developed his understanding of the civil community and its right through elaborating a theory of the unity of the city, based originally on the Aristotelian notion of reciprocity but ultimately using a range of neo-Stoic sources to conceive of the civil community as a unitary reality.

By the winter of 1648–9, demands for retributive justice on Charles I and his supporters had built to a crescendo. But regicide was generally regarded as an extremely bad idea, and the king's trial was contrived as a final bid for peaceful settlement, not a prelude to king-killing. In return for a place at the heart of a new constitutional order, Charles I was required to abdicate his negative voice by pleading to charges brought on the sole authority of the House of Commons. This was a high-risk strategy inspired and justified by the weakening of opposition to the trial in the House of Lords, the city of London and at Edinburgh, and by some of the encouraging signals emanating from deep within the royalist camp itself. However, in their anxiety to avoid having their ultimate sanction forced upon them, the commissioners of the high court of justice gave the king rather more opportunities to plead to the charges against him than was consistent with the maintenance of their own authority. Rather than persuading him to give in, they encouraged him to stand firm, with fatal consequences. Far from being a providential act of vengeance, or indeed the inexorable fate of a man predestined to martyrdom, the execution of Charles I was a highly adventitious occurrence – predictable, perhaps, yet contingent on a wide range of unpredictable circumstances.

Over the course of the ‘long’ eighteenth century the nature and significance of duels fought in the London area changed dramatically. Pistols replaced swords, seconds took on a new role as mediators, and new conventions reduced the violence. Consequently, injuries and fatalities decreased significantly. The purpose of fighting duels also shifted from the defeat of one's antagonist to a demonstration of courage. Although duels continued to occur, growing opposition meant that the audience of people who supported duelling became increasingly limited and duels took place in places far from public view. At the same time, both the press and the courts provided alternative strategies for defending reputations. These changes cannot be attributed to technological developments, official attempts to prevent duelling, or the embourgeoisement of the duel. Rather, they resulted from a series of interlinked cultural changes, including an increasing intolerance of violence, new internalized understandings of elite honour, and the adoption of ‘polite’ and sentimental norms governing masculine conduct. These eighteenth-century changes shed new light on the reasons for the final end of duelling in England in 1852.

The Northern Risings of 1663 are remarkably little-known episodes, scarcely a postscript to the triumph of the Restoration. As with most rebellions that dissolve before properly beginning, their historical significance is generally dismissed. Yet twenty-six rebels were condemned to death; sixteen of them were hanged, drawn, and quartered at York on one morning, providing a spectacle on a scale unseen in the city for nearly a century. Nearly all of those executed were West Riding men involved in the rebel muster at Farnley Wood; the government was conspicuously lenient towards the rebels of the North Riding, Durham, and Westmorland. This is an investigation into the background of the risings, in particular the West Riding episode. It tackles the wider question of the Restoration's impact on local communities that had been strongly parliamentarian, and in so doing, examines how the gentry's relationship with those of lower social status was transformed by the experience of civil war and interregnum.

Georges Clemenceau has traditionally been portrayed as a narrow-minded French nationalist. In spite of this reputation, he had many personal friends in England and was widely considered during his lifetime to be France's most eminent anglophile. Although his biographers briefly mention these ties, no one has systematically explored their political and diplomatic implications. Making use of new archival and journalistic evidence, this article will examine Clemenceau's relationships with several English upper-class mavericks: the positivist Frederic Harrison, the head-strong and opinionated Maxse family, and the idiosyncratic social democratic leader Henry M. Hyndman. Their influence encouraged in him an attitude toward England which blended sincere anglophilia with a deep-rooted distrust of its governing classes. Only by exploring this paradox can we understand the roots of Clemenceau's ultimate disillusionment with England.

In a jarring passage toward the conclusion of Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes endorsed the abolition of episcopacy and the establishment of an Independent religious settlement within England. Most historians have ignored this feature of Leviathan, or have dismissed it as an off-hand aside of no consequence. Others, more plausibly, have construed it as part of a royalist scheme (encouraged by Queen Henrietta Maria and her supporters) to secure a Stuart Restoration by allying with the English Independents. This article offers an alternative theory. It argues that Hobbes's attentions were probably drawn to Independency by the political machinations of a group of idiosyncratic Catholics gathered around the philosopher-priest, Thomas White (alias Blacklo). In 1649, White and his ‘Blackloist’ followers engaged in secret negotiations with Oliver Cromwell. In exchange for religious toleration for Catholics, the Blackloists promised allegiance to the Commonwealth and conformity to a Congregationalist religious settlement. This article examines Hobbes's close personal links with the leading Blackloists, documents similarities in their reactions to Independency, establishes the strong intellectual influence Leviathan had on Blackloist tracts, and demonstrates that royalists consistently linked Hobbes with the Blackloist treason. The article concludes that the Blackloist plot to betray the Stuart cause, rather than any royalist scheme to strike a deal with the Independents, provides the most compelling contextual explanation for Thomas Hobbes's endorsement of Independency.

The Wyndham Land Act was the most important land reform introduced by any British government during the period of the Act of Union (1801–1922); and this article provides a new interpretation of the origins of this revolutionary legislation. Whereas previous accounts attribute the Act to the initiative of the Irish chief secretary, George Wyndham, this article locates the legislation in the wider context of both popular and ‘high’ politics. The state of the land question in fin de siècle Ireland is examined, as is the United Irish League's extensive agitation for compulsory land purchase between 1901 and 1903. Finally, the impact of the agitation on the British government is considered, and the article demonstrates that the Wyndham Land Act was introduced as a result of the United Irish League's campaign for land reform.

This article re-examines the evidence that has been used to claim that, in the aftermath of the collapse of the British secret service's counter-revolutionary plans in France in September 1797, foreign secretary Lord Grenville supported a French royalist plot to assassinate the Directory. It concludes that, although his agent James Talbot was actively involved and probably thought he had official permission to proceed, Grenville remained ignorant of the plot until December 1798. He subsequently ordered Talbot to withdraw from the conspiracy. Emphasis is placed on communications difficulties associated with undercover secret service activities in this era and on bureaucratic failures within the foreign office, together with evidence to suggest that Talbot was temperamentally unsuited to the role of intelligence officer.

The Victoria League, founded in 1901 as a result of the South African War, was the only predominantly female imperial propaganda society in Britain during the Edwardian period. To accommodate women's activism within the ‘man's world’ of empire politics the League restricted its work to areas within woman's ‘separate sphere’ while transforming them into innovative methods of imperial propaganda. Through philanthropy to war victims, hospitality to colonial visitors, empire education, and the promotion of social reform as an imperial issue, the League aimed to encourage imperial sentiment at home and promote colonial loyalty to the ‘mother country’. The League's relationship with its colonial ‘sister societies’, the Guild of Loyal Women of South Africa and the Canadian Imperial Order, Daughters of the Empire, demonstrates both the primacy of the self-governing dominions in its vision of empire, and the importance of women's imperial networks. The Victoria League illustrates both significant involvement by elite women in imperial politics and the practical and ideological constraints placed on women's imperial activism.

This article analyses two dissenting periodicals, the Occasional Paper and the Old Whig. It argues that these periodicals provide an opportunity to reconsider the current priorities in the historiography of eighteenth-century political thought and religious history. Having considered the contexts from which the periodicals emerged and the importance of a perceived growth in catholic proselytizing in the 1730s, it analyses the importance of ‘popery’ in religious and political discourse. Taken together, popery and private judgement provided the parameters to descibe what was termed ‘consistent protestantism’ and this was used to defend a particular version of dissent. The protestant aspect to oppositional whiggery has been largely ignored, particularly by those keen to assert the centrality of ‘classical republicanism’ to opposition language in the early Hanoverian period. This article suggests an alternative account of the transmission of the commonwealth tradition and indicates further lines of inquiry into the evolution of whig ideas.

The black journalist and politician, Roscoe Simmons, was best known for his ability as an orator. Simmons's lecturing activities reveal the networks underlying a black public sphere upon which ambitious black leaders relied to publicize their political agendas. Those networks expanded in the first half of the twentieth century as blacks exploited the press, radio, and other technologies, and as blacks migrated in numbers from the Southern states. Meetings of African Americans served several functions: as opportunities to debate the race's prospects; to voice political concerns; and as sources of entertainment. Simmons incorporated all these principles in his platform performances, as he worked to secure valuable connections with organizations ranging from churches and fraternal bodies to Republican clubs and urban machines. Beginning with his family connection to Booker T. Washington, Simmons cultivated friendships with influential blacks and whites over a period of fifty years. His conservative ideology, however, did not suit all tastes.

The debate over the popularity or otherwise of state social reform has been inhibited by the lack of contemporary sources. This article seeks to advance our understanding of working-class experience of the 1908 pensions scheme by utilizing the material in Post Office archives and the local press. It argues that the scheme was implemented in ways calculated to reassure the beneficiaries, that it promoted the independence of the elderly, that it reached more people than is usually thought, and that it helped to modify popular attitudes towards the state.

This article seeks to locate William Shakespeare in the traditions of nineteenth-century popular politics in Britain. The bards of radicalism are usually seen as the romantic poets, particularly Byron and Shelley. Nevertheless, Shakespeare's national standing, the lack of hard details about his life, and the subversive messages many radicals believed to have discovered in his plays allowed reformers to project him as a ‘son of the soil’, and to contest appropriations of him by the aristocratic patrons of events like the Shakespeare Tercentenary of 1864. Through the agitation surrounding this celebration, a link into a radical bardolatry is established that indicates the centrality of memories of Shakespeare's England to the popular platform. The article concludes with a consideration of the light shed by ‘Shakespearean radicalism’ on current debates about continuity between Chartism and liberalism in popular politics, and the role of memory and memorialization in the political culture of nineteenth-century plebeian reform movements.

This article traces the history of women's participation in consumer politics and the gendering of the consumer in twentieth-century Britain. It does so by focusing on two important moments in the official discussion of the consumer interest: the Consumers' Council of the First World War and the Molony Committee on Consumer Protection, 1959–1962. It argues that notions of consumer-citizenship have been varied and forever in flux and that the involvement of women in consumer issues within the state apparatus has always been at once both disputed and encouraged. Within this complex history, however, a number of discernible trends are apparent. In the first half of the twentieth century, consumer issues were articulated by women's organizations on the political left and the consumer was considered largely a working-class housewife within official consumer politics. By mid-century, an increasingly dominant view of the consumer was that of the middle-class housewife, and a host of socially conservative women's groups came to speak for the consumer. By the 1950s, while the definition of the consumer remained contested, it had increasingly become a gender-neutral category, as business groups defined consumer interests in government committees and an emerging affluent consumer movement inscribed consumerism with the values of a male professional class.

The idea that war was a football match writ large was commonly expressed in Britain during the First World War. This article looks at the attitudes and actions of the English Rugby Football Union and its supporters before, during, and after the First World War to examine how such beliefs were utilized by sports organizations and the impact they had on the military and on society as a whole. Rugby union football was viewed both by its supporters and general observers alike as the most enthusiastic and committed sporting supporter of the war effort; the article explores rugby's overtly ideological stance as a means of shedding light on broader discussions about the cultural impact of the war, such as in the works of Paul Fussell and Jay Winter, and about the continued survival of traditional and Edwardian ideas of patriotism among the English middle classes in the immediate post-war period.

In the period between 1935 and 1939, the international communist movement urged communist parties to strike a more nationalistic note in their propaganda. In Scotland this was met by what may seem as a surprising reluctance to move away from strict communist adherence to internationalism, and towards a more nationalistic approach to Scottish politics. This article aims at understanding how the interplay between the international and national political contexts resulted in this reluctance. It considers, in particular, the extent to which the national identity of Scottish communists influenced their approach to the national question. It places the ideas of Scottish communists in the context of Marxist-Leninist doctrine, and considers how these were adapted into the national political context. As a further aid in determining which factors were at work when Scottish communists tackled the national question, the attitude of Scottish communists is compared with that of their fellow communists in Iceland. By broadening the perspective in this way, it is argued, we can make sense of the paradox that it was indeed international communism that eventually turned Scottish communists into nationalists.