Two years ago, at an NACBS council meeting at the now defunct Shamrock Hotel in Houston, one of our officers—not me, I hasten to say—suggested that NACBS Presidents really ought to begin earning their keep by delivering presidential addresses. I objected that NACBS Presidents receive no keep, but I was ruled out of order. I therefore stand before you this evening as the first person ever to deliver an NACBS presidential address. This, I can assure you, is a daunting challenge. One provision of the council resolution was that the address should be published as a scholarly essay in Albion, and with Albion's international reputation, this means that what I say here tonight will be read very critically—perhaps even scoffed at—by historians of medieval Britain throughout the world. I dare not be frivolous. On the other hand, we have all just enjoyed a splendid banquet. We have indulged in good wine. Some might now be in the mood for an hour's technical discussion of Anglo-Norman prosopography, but in actuality, I suspect that very, very few of you are in such a mood.

So the great challenge of the presidential address is to be amusing and significant at one and the same time—and I'm not at all certain that I am capable of squaring that circle. I was puzzling over the problem almost exactly one year ago, at our NACBS Annual Meeting last October, at the elegant and, indeed, unsinkable Brown Palace Hotel in Denver.

In the preceding article, Dr. William Tighe has drawn attention once again to a central mystery surrounding those ill-understood weeks between the death of Edward VI and Queen Mary's triumphal entry into London which I initially commented upon in this journal in 1974. The problem involves the rapidity with which Northumberland's army collapsed. The traditional interpretation has long been that the duke's forces consisted only of unreliable mercenaries and that he lacked support from the ruling elements which could have given him the means to carry out his coup. In my article I suggested that this was not the case. Gentlemen had been willing to risk their lives in his cause, and although it was impossible to know the relative strengths of the two sides with precision, I found no evidence that contemporaries found them to be unequal. Nor did I find support for Professor Jordan's contention that Northumberland was a reluctant conspirator who really wanted to surrender power and retire to his estates. Examination of accounts in the files of the great wardrobe also led me to conclude that so far as the gentlemen pensioners were concerned, military men had supported the coup while politicians had taken the side of legitimacy. Admittedly the definitions were not precise, but in the absence of other records, it seemed to enhance understanding of the deliberations taken in those fatal days.

Since the publication of my article, other scholars have also pointed to the vigor and quality of Northumberland's leadership. Dale Hoak has recently extended the “rehabilitation” of the Duke of Northumberland begun by Barrett Beer. Hoak showed that Northumberland was far from reluctant to use force and political guile to achieve his purposes. He took control of the royal household in order to control access to the king. He also created a special household bodyguard, known as the gendarmes, to secure his coup and overawe potential troublemakers. To complete the picture of a man determined to hold on to power, Hoak showed how Northumberland had managed to manipulate the young king by planting suggestions which the boy then incorporated into his desires. Thus the alteration of the succession should be seen as Northumberland's own scheme to retain power, and not the dying king's. Although the gendarmes had proved too costly to maintain and had to be disbanded, Northumberland's plan was clear: maintain control of power by using the king's household in both its military and political aspects.

The women's suffrage movement in Great Britain has suffered from the misconception that it was through the urgings, exertions, and sacrifices of women exclusively prior to 1918 that the vote was finally achieved. Such writers as the Pankhursts and Millicent Garrett Fawcett, who were also participants in the struggle, have set the tone of historical interpretation by describing their success in such titular terms as My Own Story,…The Story of How We Won the Vote, and Women's Victory…, a lead dutifully followed by others who have written since the passage of the Reform Bill. Almost without exception these accounts, which include Roger Fulford's Votes For Women, stress the more exciting prewar aspects of the story, thereby conveying the mistaken impression that the conferral of the suffrage was the natural consequence of feminist agitation. Those more enlightened authors who recognize the adverse effect which the militant suffragists had on their own cause and the absence of any kind of solicitation during the war have subscribed to the equally misleading explanation that it was women's participation in the war which won the vote. Such is the perspective gained from reading Monstrous Regiment by David Mitchell. A close examination of the politics of the reform question, an approach heretofore eschewed by nearly every writer of the period, reveals that the extension of the suffrage to women did not “just happen” as a result of the manifold conversions in political and public spheres, for whatever reason. Indeed the question of giving women the vote would never have arisen during the war had Parliament not been confronted with the urgency of granting the vote to soldiers and sailors on active duty.

British historians agree that from 1756 to 1761 William Pitt was the driving force behind England's victories in the Seven Years' War. Historians are divided, however, in their assessment of Pitt's relations with his generals. Basil Williams concisely stated one position when he linked success with Pitt's “wise choice of commanders on land and sea.” Julian S. Corbett best represents the opposite opinion. “It is commonplace,” he observed, “to credit him [Pitt] with a remarkable talent for choosing commanders. Yet surely no great War Minister ever appointed so many bad ones.”

The lines for debate are clear, and the question is vital for a general interpretation of Pitt's career and England's role in the war. Surprisingly, modern students of the elder Pitt have uncritically followed the opinion represented by Williams, and they have disregarded Eric McDermott's call in 1955 for a fresh examination of the “Great Commoner” and civil-military relations during the war. This essay deals with the question by telling the story of three English military operations on the French coast in 1757 and 1758. They are important in themselves for what they reveal about military planning and execution. More important, the story supports Corbett's conclusion by shedding light on the relationship between Pitt in London and the commanders in the field.

Pitt came to power when the country's military fortunes were at their lowest point. General Braddock's defeat in western Pennsylvania and the loss of Minorca, the Royal Navy's best base in the Mediterranean, punctuated the pre-war hostilities with France. At home, the armed services were undermanned, and abroad the search for allies left England with Prussia to face the combined forces of France, Austria and Russia.

Except for the Visitations and occasional obedientary rolls preserved in cathedral libraries, the intimate records of English monastic life are disappointingly scarce. They are particularly scarce in East Anglia, where many documents had already been destroyed during the Peasants' Revolt, long before the usual ravages following the Dissolution. It is therefore surprising that one of the few important manuscripts which did survive has received very little attention from scholars. I refer to the priors' accounts from the Cluniac Priory of Our Lady at Thetford, Norfolk.

While very little remains to tell us about life at the priory during the middle ages, we are at least fortunate to have these extremely detailed and almost complete priors' accounts for the final forty-four years of the priory's existence. They are now bound together in a single well-preserved volume, and are deposited at the University Library, Cambridge (Add. Ms. 6969). Although this lengthy manuscript has apparently been at Cambridge for a very long time, it was unknown to the great Norfolk antiquarian, F. Blomefield, when he wrote his History of Thetford (1739). Thomas Martin was unaware of the document when he published his own History of Thetford (1779)—even though he had access to other important materials, including notes from the priory's Cartulary which had perished in the disastrous Cotton Library fire of 1731. The manuscript was also unknown to the committee which compiled the Victoria County History of Norfolk in 1906, despite the fact that L. G. Bolingbroke had seen it and printed two entries from it in “Pre-Elizabethan Plays and Players in Norfolk.”

The New Zealand Wars of the 1860s have traditionally been associated with the popularity of antagonistic racial discourses and the growing influence of scientific racism. Building upon recent research into the resonance of humanitarian racial discourses in this period, this article reconsiders the experience of Governor Thomas Gore Browne during the Taranaki War, 1860–61. The Taranaki War was a global news event that precipitated fierce debates within both New Zealand and Great Britain over the war's origins and the rights of indigenous Maori. This article reveals how both Browne and his wartime critics defined themselves as the true defenders of Maori rights. This general usage of humanitarian racial discourses was encouraged by perceptions of metropolitan surveillance, New Zealand's prominence within networks of imperial communication, and an onus to administrate Maori with justice.

The standard interpretation of 1848 in Britain is that while Continental Europe reached a turning point and failed to turn, as the famous aphorism states, Britain reached its turning point in 1832, turned, and thus avoided revolution in that year of revolutions. The British middle classes, unlike their Continental counterparts, were loyal in 1848. They enjoyed a broader franchise, some reforming legislation already passed, and commitments to various welcome changes in the future made by diverse politicians. All of this gave the British middle classes great confidence in British institutions and their own future under them, as well as the belief that their country was fortunately different from all the other nations. Without the middle classes, the Chartists could have never succeeded with any kind of insurrection. So, while the capitals of Europe echoed with sounds of musketry and cannon, Britain was at peace because her Constitution was essentially better than anything that prevailed elsewhere.

Modern historiography has done little to change this interpretation of 1848 that was first proclaimed by self-congratulatory and relieved Victorians. All the accounts stress the fortunate uniqueness of Britain and the key role of middle class loyalty. Priscilla Robertson wrote, “During the days of 1848, England stood apart, unshaken, apparently unshakable. Her reformers were already in power. …” In a recent study of the 1848 revolutions, Peter Stearns focuses on the ways the middle class abetted Continental revolutions at the same time that they were instrumental in preventing revolution in Britain. These are really restatements of Elie Halévy's classic explanation. While John Saville's treatment of 1848 differs from traditional accounts in several ways, particularly in stressing the vigor of the Chartist left's resistance after April 10, his explanation for the failure of revolution does not. He concludes that the British government could count on “whole-hearted support” much further down the social scale than could Continental governments. Moreover, despite all the newer research on political violence, crowds, and revolution, the standard interpretation of Britain's fate in 1848 remains: middle-class support for the regime was too strong while Chartist support for an insurrection was too weak.

As readers of the book will know, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion owes a lot to John Morrill. He asked the crucial question over the teacups; he has taught me a lot about localism and popular conservatism; and he has been an unfailingly generous source of advice and stimulating ideas. I am glad that he has considered the book so carefully and that when he is not entirely convinced by it he has expressed his reservations so temperately. It is gratifying to know that someone whose opinion I respect thinks that I have “changed the agenda of Civil War studies.” His review reinforces my hope that Revel, Riot, and Rebellion may indeed help to widen, rather than limit, the endless debate over the causes and significance of the English Revolution.

The compensation of royal officials has been the subject of increasing scrutiny in recent years as historians turn to the study of the court and royal office to discover the realities of power in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. H. R. Trevor-Roper, who sees the growth of the court as the hallmark of the Renaissance state, has declared that royal service was so lucrative that to many persons holding office spelled the difference between penury and financial success. More detailed studies do not completely bear out his contention. Although A. J. Slavin and others have shown how some highly placed officials were able to enhance their financial position dramatically, G. E. Aylmer and Lawrence Stone demonstrated that such cases of spectacular success were exceptional and that most royal servants received only modest compensation for their labors. Furthermore, Wallace MacCaffrey has pointed out that the crown had at its disposal astonishingly few offices whose salaries might justify calling the men who held them a financial elite. The weight of this evidence has not abated the controversy, however. Instead, the debate has shifted from the actual salary to the total amount the official could make his office yield in tips, fees, and other perquisites, both legal and illegal. Trevor-Roper maintains that these extra benefits made royal service very lucrative, while the others question the extent of such additional enrichment, claiming that few grew wealthy in the king's service.

It has long been a critical obligation for commentators on the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to remark on Edward Gibbon's failure to explain the reasons for that fall. Historians in particular have been bothered by this: both J. B. Black and D. M. Low have fretted over Gibbon's refusal — or inability — to deal with the ultimate meaning of the events he describes or, in the last three volumes, to “propound and answer questions explicitly.” Readers of the History, on the other hand, may feel that the historian belabors too often the “causes” of events, those “connections in a sequence.” Regularly, Gibbon reminds us that he is dealing with a process of degeneration involving successive stages of decay; and both within individual sections and at the close of units, he carefully recapitulates that the policies of Augustus or Septimius Severus, the strengthening of the Pretorian Guard, the spread of Christianity, the weakening of senatorial authority, monetary and land policies, the invasions of the Goths and Huns were all “causes” for the decline of the Roman Empire.

The contradiction between the reactions of critic and casual reader is merely apparent. His commentators grant that Gibbon assayed explanations for the events he recounted; but, they say, his purported “causes” are not primary or even secondary ones. They claim, in fact, that the explanations seldom account for the single chains of events he describes, much less for the long, intricate process that Gibbon sees as steady and unmitigated decline.

This review article has a conventional purpose, namely, to assess the contributions made by thirteen recent books, most by British historians, to the history of British foreign policy and the European states system during the revolutionary, Napoleonic, and post-Napoleonic eras. There is, however, a problem. None of the books is conventional diplomatic history. Almost half relate only indirectly to foreign policy, while for the remainder foreign policy constitutes only part of their subject matter. The review therefore consciously runs two risks: that of judging the books by inappropriate standards and that of drawing conclusions about current historiography in this field and period from an inappropriate sample. The reader will have to judge whether the results justify the procedure.

Geoffrey Best's War and Society in Revolutionary Europe illustrates the problem. Best clearly succeeds in his goal of going beyond the study of military organizations to the study of war itself as a “unique human interest and activity.” The book is far-ranging, delightfully written, based on wide reading, and packed with insights. It also contributes substantially to the history of international politics, mainly by demonstrating how powerful an impact armies and combat had. Yet from the political historian's standpoint there is ground for some frustration as well as for pleasure. Best's descriptions of how armies developed from the Old Regime into the nineteenth century and his analyses of the impact of war in 1792–1815 are excellent for France and Britain and adequate for Prussia and Spain.

The reissue after twenty years of G. H. Guttridge's study, English Whiggism and the American Revolution, is very welcome. In many of its judgments this lucid, aseptic dissection of the ideas, attitudes, and policies of the opposition groups in British politics during the period of the Revolution bids fair to stand the test of a much longer period of time than has elapsed since its first appearance in 1942. The virile political traditions (some still traceable in modern British practice) which Hanoverian England inherited from the whiggism of the seventeenth century contained not one but several potentially competing principles; and the great strength of this study lies in the author's exposition of the ways in which these divergent principles were taken up by different political groups, with the effect of determining the stand taken by each, both on the American question and on concurrent issues of domestic politics. In Locke's writings radicals found justification for the creed of personality as the basis of political rights. All groups drew from them a belief that Parliament had an essential role in maintaining “the contractual obligation of monarchy to preserve certain fundamental rights,” but more than one principle followed from this premise. In the minds of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and his friends, it was combined with pre-Lockeian concepts of fundamental law as an element in the constitution beyond the power of Parliament to alter. For the leaders and members of the Rockingham connection, Parliament's role was seen in, and secured by, its supremacy.