Surveying the state of historical knowledge in his day, Francis Bacon noted with concern that, in contrast to ecclesiastical history and political history, both of which were already “extant,” the history of learning and the arts was “wanting.” Without it, he said, the history of the world is like the statue of Polyphemus without the eye: “that feature being left out which most marks the spirit and life of the person.” Whereupon he proceeded to give the history of learning and the arts a place of its own in the scheme of historical knowledge, and for the first time in English writing. All of which is surely well known; but its significance in relation both to the historical thought of the later Renaissance and to that of Bacon himself has not received quite the attention it deserves. This is not, of course, surprising. Serious as he believed the lack of such a history to be, Bacon himself continued to follow the common Renaissance prejudice in favor of political history — his “Civil History, properly so-called, whereof the dignity and authority are preeminent among human writings.” And in his own relatively brief forays into the formal writing of history he reverted to a more or less sophisticated brand of “politic” history. What has tended to be overlooked is the close relationship his theory of a history of learning and the arts bears to his entire project for the reorientation of learning and, in particular, to the historical critique he in fact made of traditional scholarship. His theoretical category remained, it is true, just a bit too narrow to accommodate the breadth of his own historical reflection. History, to him, still meant a formal literary genre. Taken together, however, his theory and practice should reveal something of importance about his historical perspective, to say nothing of that of his age.

Proceedings of parliament, said Sir Edward Coke in 1624, are of four sorts: by bill, judicature, petition of grace and petition of right. The purpose of this paper is to explore certain aspects of procedure by petition in the reigns of James I and Charles I and to consider the Petition of Right of 1628 in relation to other petitions which preceded it.

The substance of the Petition of Right is well known. It stated that contrary to the laws of the realm, men had been required under duress to grant loans and pay other charges to the crown which had not been voted by parliament. They had been imprisoned without cause shown, tried by martial law in time of peace, and forced to receive into their homes soldiers and mariners billeted upon them. The Petition asked that these practices, which contravened the rights and liberties of the kingdom, should cease.

The form of the Petition, together with its answer, is less well understood than its substance and is often considered unique. It has sometimes been regarded as a declaratory act, sometimes compared to a private bill, or to the petition, also called a petition of right, by which an individual initiated action against the crown. To discover what the Petition meant to men of the seventeenth century, it may be useful first to look at the events that surrounded Charles' several answers to it, and then to examine the petition as a normal form of procedure, of which the Petition of Right was a dramatic example.

The resurgence of oligarchies in England's provincial towns during the fifteenth century and their firm control over almost all aspects of civic life during the sixteenth century has received considerable attention and is apparently beyond dispute. The characteristic feature of this oligarchical control was the domination of the important civic offices by urban dynasties whose members practiced the most influential and lucrative trades, were the most affluent citizens, and were linked by close family ties. Comparatively few studies have been made of officeholders of the seventeenth century, especially for the period after 1660, yet the evidence so far accumulated suggests that officeholding remained the exclusive privilege of a closed social elite. Nevertheless, Norwich may provide an instructive exception. An examination of the pool of men eligible for political office in Norwich, the largest provincial capital, indicates that the door to political office was open to men of diverse social backgrounds and occupations to a greater extent than during the sixteenth century and apparently much more so than in the other large provincial capitals.

Oligarchy may be defined as the possession and exercise of power by a few individuals either directly, as a consequence of holding the important political offices, or indirectly, as a consequence of controlling recruitment of officeholders and influencing their decisions. In the former case, which was the general pattern establishsed in those fifteenth and sixteenth-century towns which remained free from the intervention of territorial magnates, oligarchy implies further that the magistrates have either the exclusive privilege of appointing their own replacements or the ability to manipulate the mechanism of political recruitment involving a wider electorate through control of the processes of nomination and election of officeholders.

None of the early Fabians remains more obscure today than William Clarke (1852-1901 ). Although his contribution to the Fabian Essays ranks as perhaps the most interesting and perceptive essay in that volume, histories of the Fabian Society pass over Clarke with a line or two of praise. Nevertheless, Clarke's socialism deserves more attention. It is interesting in itself as an early English analysis of monopoly capitalism and as another example of the relationship between the growth of radical politics and the Victorian loss of faith. At the same time, of course, Clarke's intellectual history also contributes to an increased understanding of the early evolution of the Fabian society.

At the time Clarke wrote “The Industrial Basis of Socialism” for the Fabian Essays he had been a socialist for only a few years. And in spite of this promising beginning as a socialist theorist, he abandoned socialism in the late 1890's, reverting to a more youthful political individualism. Why Clarke remained a socialist for only a decade is, then, the central question raised by his career. Not surprisingly, the answer is complex, dependent in part on accidental personal factors. Clarke approached socialism from two different directions. Politically, it was a logical extension of his radicalism, a necessary corrective to the limitations placed on political democracy by uncontrolled private wealth. At the same time, Clarke came to see socialism as a kind of religious activity, the means to realize a spiritual ideal. In both cases socialism held out a promise of the imminent realization of these concerns.

The full story of the 1918 election can never be told, although its importance as a watershed is, and was at the time, undoubted. Private papers have disappeared and fire destroyed records of the Local Government Board and Home Office. An especially interesting kind of record, the expenditure of candidates, was not even collected, and no questions were raised about this until it was too late.

Churchill was among those who understood that “an election is to be fought, the result of which will profoundly affect political relationships and political issues for several years to come ….” Recent scholarship has concentrated on the divisions within the Liberal Party prior to the election, the special questions of Ireland and of National Democratic Party candidates, and “the stages” by which the drama unfolded in the autumn of 1918. But there has been no explanation of the timing: why did Lloyd George wait so long, and, having waited so long, why did he hurry into a December election, knowing the problems of voter registration and the signs of apathy and even hostility to an election? Moreover, all the discussion of why “coupons” were awarded as they were has obscured the difficulty of planning a coalition program, which was the precondition of any allocation of “coupons.”

The constraints upon Lloyd George went back to 1916. From the moment he succeeded Asquith he was “a Prime Minister without a party.” His claim to have 136 Liberal supporters in the Commons was never substantiated by a name list or verified in the division lobbies.