This issue begins with two articles on the Reformation in Britain. The first, “(Re)defining the English Reformation,” by Peter Marshall, is a useful and insightful survey of recent historiography. He demonstrates that the narrative of the English Reformation has been challenged. The Reformation was not an event concluded in Elizabeth's reign but a long, drawn-out, and contested cultural transformation. Marshall calls for a retention of the concept of the Reformation, however plural, and suggests that a comparative framework looking at developments on the Continent would be useful. He also discusses the issue of how much historians’ own religious allegiances affect their historiographical interpretations. Historians debate whether the laity retained Catholic practices or whether they wholeheartedly followed Protestant tenets. Another point of contention is chronology. Did British people accept the “Calvinist consensus,” or did they espouse a less doctrinaire Anglican religious culture? As scholars have suggested, the “Anglican” interpretation might be an effort to focus on continuities with Catholicism and Anglicanism and to downplay the significance of the Reformation.
The second article, by Debora Shuger, “A Protesting Catholic Puritan in Elizabethan England,” is a sparkling and erudite example of one tendency within this historiography that downplays the Calvinist consensus and emphasizes what has been called “parish Anglicanism” or what later would be called “high church” Anglicanism. While much of this work has been done on rural parishes and the practices of country people, Shuger examines Sir John Harington, a courtier, country gentleman, and poet. While he has been suspected of being a Catholic, she discovers that he was not, for he was deeply suspicious of the pope. However, Harington remained nostalgic for the rituals and fellowship of Catholicism and believed they should persist in reformed England. He was impatient with doctrinal purity and predestination and instead asserted that to be a good Christian was to love God and your neighbor, live in fellowship, forgive others, behave well, follow the commandments, believe in the creed, and do good works. Shuger also claims that Harington was not an isolated character and finds similar beliefs at Cambridge University and among other elite men.
Antoinette Sutto's “Lord Baltimore, the Society of Jesus, and Caroline Absolutism in Maryland, 1630–1645” also touches on questions of religion. However, what was at stake in early colonial Maryland was not theology, she argues, but authority. The Jesuits assumed that Lord Baltimore, who was Catholic, would be somewhat more sympathetic to their claims to exemptions from taxes and other local jurisdictions. However, for Lord Baltimore, these claims were unacceptable infringements on his sovereign authority—and, by extension, on the absolute power of Charles I. For Lord Baltimore, therefore, his authority took precedence over church law, but for the Jesuits, the authority of the pope was more important than the authority of the proprietor. This is a wonderful example of Atlantic history that demonstrates that looking at an American colony illuminates not only questions of empire but questions at the heart of the British state itself.Footnote 1
In “The Provincial Press and the Imperial Traffic in Fiction, 1870s–1930s,” Christopher Hilliard delves into a fascinating archive, the business papers of the publisher Tillotson, to examine the relationship of popular culture to imperialism. Tillotson serialized fiction all over the empire, but especially in Australia and New Zealand. Tillotson would not be an imperialist by Bernard Porter's definition—that is, motivated by a commitment to imperialism itself. But it served imperialist ends by dominating popular culture, especially in Australia and New Zealand. For the greatest efficiency and profit, it only wanted to buy and sell a standard type of story that could appeal to diverse audiences across the empire. As a result, it insisted that its stories be based in England, preferably in a country house or a quaint cottage, and that the empire play only a minor role in the plot. Its preference for British authors made it difficult for local Australian and New Zealand authors to attain lucrative audiences of newspaper readers. At the same time, Tillotson followed the same principles in selling to its American market. Tillotson may have had an imperialist impact, but its motive was profit.
In “The Reproductive Behavior of the English Landed Gentry in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” an article that fruitfully combines demographic and cultural data, Mark Rothery asks why the landed gentry produced smaller families by the late nineteenth century. They were not, he argues, responding to the decline in agricultural prices and therefore their diminished fortunes. Rather, cultural changes were required. Elite men began to go to boarding schools and become more independent of the family; self control, especially sexual control, was an important part of elite masculinity. Upper-class women also attended boarding schools, even universities, and some sought professions. They also became more involved in charitable activities. The gentry were also closely linked with the professions of the military, law, and clergy, all of which saw a varying decline in family size. This article therefore illuminates the place of the gentry in the class system, demonstrating that in many ways they were becoming culturally similar to the middle class.
An article that combines military and social history is a welcome addition to our journal. In “The King's English and the Security of the Empire: Class, Social Mobility, and Democratization in the British Naval Officer Corps, 1918–1939,” Christopher M. Bell recounts how the navy faced pressure from within and without to admit and promote candidates who were not from upper-class backgrounds. Traditionally, candidates to become officers entered the cadet corps at around thirteen and a half years of age, and their families had to pay high fees for their education. During the interwar period, even some sons of naval officers were not able to enter the corps because of financial exigencies. Some opportunities were opened up for boys who attended elite public schools, but the navy steadfastly resisted allowing boys from the lower ranks to become officers. Despite pressure from Labour officials and some navy officers concerned with efficiencies, most navy leaders genuinely believed that only upper-class men had the natural habits of command that would inspire obedience among the lower-class ranks. They valued this character above the book learning they scorned, and they insisted on interviews that would weed out boys who did not speak the “King's English” and who dropped their “h’s.” They were successful in this strategy throughout the interwar period despite some concessions.
In “Revisiting the ‘Rivers of Blood’ Controversy: Letters to Enoch Powell,” Amy Whipple explores a treasure trove of evidence of racial and social tensions in the 2,000 letters written to Enoch Powell after his famous speech in 1968. The letter writers frankly espoused racism, echoing Powell's accusations against black Britons and immigrants as dirty and noisy. However, there was some tension around the meaning of Britishness: Was it the same as Englishness? The white nations of the commonwealth? Scotland and Wales? The letter writers also expressed their anxiety over the liberalization of social issues at the time, such as the abolition of the death penalty, the legalization of abortion, and the mitigation of some of the laws against homosexuality. In fact, Powell supported some of these liberal changes, and unlike many of the letter writers he advocated a retreat from empire into an emphatic Little Englandism. Nonetheless, the letters provide further evidence that Powell's speech validated the racial and sexual prejudices of many Britons. They also illuminate some of the reasons for the shift of working-class voters away from the Labour Party, for the writers seem to have felt that white political elites did not relate to their own problems.
Our next issue will feature articles on medieval ravishment, early modern loyalty, piracy, child welfare, and film and World War II. A future issue will contain a substantial number of articles concerning Scotland.
