Sometime in the period 1300-48, English population reached its high point in the Middle Ages. All agree that it rose rapidly in the thirteenth century and dropped catastrophically in 1348-77. Its course in the first half of the century, however, is the subject of two sharply divergent opinions. One is that population increased gradually to about 3,700,000 at the outbreak of the plague, a point at which “the agricultural people were being crowded.” The other opinion is less exact: population reached its height about 1315, when the great famine and pestilence of 1315-17 reduced the population markedly and started a decline, restrained perhaps by a mild recovery in the two decades before 1348. According to this second theory population was much denser than the 3,700,000: even in the late thirteenth century, England had a “starving and over-populated countryside,” with “the poor sokemen of Lincolnshire — [struggling] to support five people on five acres of land,” and “a society in which every appreciable failure of harvests could result in large increases in deaths in a society balanced on the margin of subsistence.”

This study will discuss first the pattern of English society as it appears in Domesday Book and the descriptions of manors called extents, which must be understood in order to estimate population properly. Next, it will consider some interesting evidence concerning social class differential mortality. Third, it will try to estimate the mortality of the 1315-17 famine and pestilence. Fourth, it will take up the trend of population change from 1300 to 1348. Fifth, it will consider the reliability of the poll tax data. Lastly, it will discuss the problem of household size and its relationship to the total population of England in the period.

Thomas Bilson, in the eyes of his contemporaries, soared like a Jewel or a Hooker above his fellow writers; unlike Jewel or Hooker his fame has not endured. He seems at first sight to be another writer with a tiny talent, overpraised in his lifetime. If this were all that there was to Bilson, then better to leave him to “such as delight in things obsolete and antique” (as an unsentimental critic said of a later, more prolix, writer).

Yet there are curiosities about the rise and fall of Thomas Bilson. He was born in 1547, became Bishop of Winchester in 1597, and died in 1616. He is a shadowy figure, whose fame rests principally on two works: The True Difference Betweene Christian Subjection and Unchristian Rebellion (1585); The Perpetual Government of Christes Church (1593). If one were to plot a graph of his public reputation, it would show a steady rise after his death, reaching a peak as late as the 1640s, and then followed by a precipitous decline. Now this is not what common sense would have led us to expect. If he had been merely an overvalued mediocrity, one would have expected a redress of the critical balance to follow close on his death. Neither the length of time taken up by the rise nor the abruptness of the fall could have been anticipated. It is true that Bilson lacked the stamina for enduring greatness, but he was not exactly shortwinded either.

Since the days of Samuel Rawson Gardiner and Charles Harding Firth, no one has studied English Puritanism more thoroughly than William Haller of Columbia University. Yet Haller came to his study of the Puritans not by way of history and politics but by way of poetry. The occasion of his turning to read several thousands of Puritan sermons and tracts was John Milton. His early guides and inspirers were Professor William Peterfield Trent and Sir Herbert Grierson. His attention was also directed to this material by Sir Charles Firth. Puritan theology he learned, in the then approved Columbia University method, “by doing it.” So the man, the approach, and the method were all sufficiently unorthodox to produce a fresh study of the long-neglected sources of Puritanism.

Haller began his career as an original interpreter of Puritanism when he became a member of the editorial board for the then projected Columbia Edition of the Works of John Milton. He soon came into print with an article, “Before Areopagitica,” on the immediate contemporary background of Milton's plea for unlicensed printing. Next came his edition of the Areopagitica and other tracts for the Columbia Milton, followed by a three-volume opus, Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution, 1638-1647. Then The Rise of Puritanism appeared. Despite the turmoil of World War II, a second collection of documents, The Leveller Tracts, 1647-1653, edited by Haller and Godfrey Davies, was published. After forty-one years on the faculty of Barnard College and the graduate school of Columbia University, Haller retired in 1950 and became a fellow, later honorary fellow, of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

On June 4, 1610, in an unusual joint session of Parliament, Henry, eldest son of James I, was created Prince of Wales. The King and lords, magnificent in medieval splendor, gathered in the ancient room of old Westminster Palace, known as the White Hall. The Lords' chamber, used at other times, would not suffice; for on this occasion, the commons, instead of standing crowded behind the bar, as they did at the opening and closing of Parliament, sat in seats especially provided, their Speaker and clerk with them. Observers noted that burgesses, fine in gold lace and velvet, were no less splendid than the lords. Special guests, noblemen's little sons, ambassadors who had jockeyed for the most honorable places, the Princess Elizabeth, and Charles, Duke of York, also gathered to honor the occasion — one of the great moments in James's reign. For all the King's shortcomings, already apparent, he brought one gift to the English people, which a far greater monarch, Elizabeth, had never bestowed: a safe succession, the Prince who would secure their realm from civil strife.

It was altogether fitting, the Earl of Salisbury had explained to the commons, that the Prince should be created in Parliament. So the most fortunate of medieval princes had been proclaimed. Others came to an evil end. Alas for these joyous predictions. Salisbury's own death in April 1612 saved him from the bitter knowledge that Henry would die a few months later in November, to be succeeded as heir by his younger brother, Charles.

During the years from 1697 through 1699, King William III of England was engaged in a struggle with a radical Whig press and a Tory coalition in the House of Commons over the size of England's standing army in peacetime. Both sides regarded the contest as one of particular importance; for the King there was no issue during his entire reign which involved him more deeply in English domestic politics. The parliamentary debates on the matter were notably stormy. For what was at stake, just ten years after the Glorious Revolution, was the relative power of King and Parliament. For the first time Article VI of the Bill of Rights, that is, that Parliament must consent to an army in peacetime, was applied and tested. The army question has intrinsic importance but can also be seen as part of a broader struggle between King and Parliament for power. Among such questions as Irish land grants, “placemen,” foreign advisers, and the Land Bank, the standing army was the most complex and emotion-filled issue between the House of Commons and William. Although some of the political implications of the standing army controversy have been suggested, historians have not investigated the part played by William. The King's role is worth isolating for it casts fresh light on William's talents in dealing with domestic politics, illustrates the relationship between a King who, at the end of the seventeenth century, still retained power and a House of Commons which increasingly claimed power, and shows that, however disparate the strength of the two sides in the standing army controversy, a genuine contest took place.

It has never been established how far, in the early Victorian House of Commons, voting on issues followed party lines. It might in general seem plausible to assume — what political oratory generally contrives to suggest — that there are ideological disagreements between parties and that it makes a difference which of two major opposing parties is in control of the Government. This is, indeed, the line taken by some students of politics. A number of historians and political observers have, however, inclined to the contrary opinion and have, for various reasons, tended to play down the role of issues in party disputes. Much of what has been written on political history and, in particular, on the history of Parliament has had a distinct anti-ideological flavor.

One line of argument is that issues on which disagreement exists are not always party questions. Robert Trelford McKenzie begins his study of British parties by pointing out that Parliament just before 1830 was “divided on a great issue of principle, namely Catholic emancipation,” and just after 1830, on another, parliamentary reform. He continues: “But on neither issue was there a clear division along strict party lines.” The distinguished administration of Sir Robert Peel in the 1840s was based, according to Norman Gash, on a party “deeply divided both on policy and personalities.” The other side of the House at that time is usually thought to have been even more disunited. It has even been suggested that, in the confused politics of the mid-nineteenth century, the words conservative and radical each meant so many different things that they cannot be defined in terms of programs and objectives and that these polarities may more usefully be considered in terms of tempers and approaches.

Since World War II much emphasis has been placed on the key role which education must play in East African affairs to promote the economic and cultural growth of the new African states. The problems of the intensification and the spread of education in East Africa deserve particular attention because they are different in nature from those of well-established countries and have been complicated by peculiarities in the history of the region.

Between 1900 and 1920 the groundwork for native education was laid by missionary schools. Though limited in their objectives, they achieved tangible results. In spreading the knowledge of reading and writing among a substantial number of natives, they facilitated native contact with western civilization. After 1919 British officials in East Africa, humanitarians, and leaders in missionary movements became concerned with the spread of native education and demanded a change in the existing system. At the same time there emerged new native political movements, the leaders of which took a determined stand on matters of native education. They criticized the existing facilities and demanded the right of the African to be educated. To analyze the complexity of the problems of East African native education, particularly in the period from 1920 to 1950, is the purpose of this paper. It is necessary, however, first to look at the broader picture of the situation in East Africa in the immediately preceding decades and then to examine the achievements and limitations of East African education in the period from 1900 to 1914.

There was little reason to have expected Britain's international policies to be of major concern to most voters in casting their ballots in the 1964 General Election. Party disagreement over entering the European Economic Community was at least temporarily in abeyance after de Gaulle's veto. No great imperial question remained to divide Conservatives from the Labour or Liberal Parties. Membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was firmly bipartisan (or tripartisan). Moreover, British power was now so limited, in relation to the rest of the world, as to provide little basis for Englishmen to think that their nation could make important international decisions. At the same time, there were domestic economic problems about which, it was widely thought, a British government could and should do something. In short, every likelihood existed for electoral attention to be fixed almost entirely on domestic affairs. This would hardly have been unusual. Democratic elections ordinarily seem so conducted. Even if it were clearly desirable to have sharp partisan disagreement over a substantive international question, it is doubtful whether genuine alternatives often exist except perhaps for the super-powers.

It is surprising, then, to find that a question of international policy was contested in the British General Election of 1964. The question was whether Britain should continue trying to have an independent nuclear deterrent. Labour (and the Liberals) proposed that the effort be abandoned. The governing Conservative Party was committed to its continuation. These divergent party policies did not, it is true, make the deterrent issue overwhelmingly important in the electoral decision.