Historians have never been properly grateful for that perpetually inquisitive student in medieval dialogues whose chief claim to fame is that he elicited bursts of wisdom from the ever-patient master. To him we owe this rather curious definition of the English royal forest as formulated by the master in Richard fitz Nigel's Dialogue of the Exchequer written about 1178:

Fortunately, the master had already discussed the essential point that the forest was an area of special jurisdiction subject to a special law:

Although modern scholarship suggests that the arbitrary nature of forest law in the thirteenth century was exaggerated, there can be no question that it had a bad reputation among contemporaries, who raised the cry that it placed the protection of wild beasts above that of men.

During the last half of the twelfth century the kings of England ruled a vast constellation of lands stretching from Ireland to the Mediterranean, known traditionally, if not quite accurately, as the “Angevin Empire.” While the empire lasted, its rulers were the richest and strongest in Christendom. When King John lost Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Touraine, he also lost much of his income and influence, and the kings of France became the great royal figures of the thirteenth century. It is the purpose of this paper to explore the origins of the Angevin empire, and in particular the union of its two chief components — the Anglo-Norman state and the county of Anjou. Did the empire come about by accident or by political design? And if by design, who was its architect? Was it Henry I, who arranged the crucial marriage between his daughter Maud and Geoffrey, heir to Anjou? Was it Geoffrey, or Maud? Or was it their son, Henry Plantagenet — the ultimate beneficiary of the marriage?

At first glance, the empire would seem to have been conceived in the calculating mind of Henry I, who could hardly have failed to grasp the implications of a marriage joining the Anglo-Norman heiress to the Angevin heir. Indeed, many treatments of the subject, both old and recent, have suggested that the Angevin empire arose from King Henry I's “immensely grandiose designs” to absorb Anjou. But did Henry I have any such desire, or any such intention? The question can only be answered after a careful analysis of Henry I's diplomacy, both in its general contours and in its relation to Anjou.

There is nothing particularly subtle about a coat of arms with a crest depicting “a demi-Moor proper bound in a cord.” Nearly anyone can deduce from it that the bearer of these arms was probably a figure in the black-slave trade. Deductions along those lines would be right on the mark in the case of this particular heraldic device, for it was granted in 1565 by Queen Elizabeth I to John Hawkins on the recommendation of Sir William Cecil and the Earl of Leicester. The arms commemorate the origin of the English slave trade during the first decade of Elizabeth's reign. Under closer scrutiny, they reveal a wealth of further information about late Tudor history, telling us something about the nature and direction of economic enterprise in the 1560s, the interests of some of the key personalities of the period, and the ways in which diverse elements of society and the state combined their resources for mercantile purposes. Altogether, the crest of John Hawkins constitutes a remarkable lens through which can be seen in microcosm the variety, aggressiveness, and daring which have come to characterize Elizabethan England.

During the past quarter century, a number of distinguished scholars have analyzed Elizabethan overseas enterprise, of which the Hawkins slaving voyages were an important part. Lawrence Stone was the first to ask fundamental questions about the late Tudor economy in a provocative essay published in 1949. The same year saw the appearance of James Williamson's revised biography of John Hawkins, replete with substantial new material drawn from Spanish sources.

During the years 1548 to 1549 England experienced the most serious rebellions since the end of the fifteenth century. Although the worst disturbances occurred in the West of England and Norfolk, few areas of the country were wholly unaffected. In London the Mayor and Aldermen made elaborate military and security preparations to prevent revolt from within the City and to ward off possible attacks from the outside. City authorities succeeded in maintaining order, but in the political crisis that followed, London threw its support to members of the Privy Council who were disillusioned with the leadership of the Duke of Somerset and contributed, perhaps decisively, to the overthrow of the Protectorate.

This paper examines events in London during these troubled years and attempts to assess its influence on national politics. Evidence of discontent in the City is studied to determine whether rebellious parties actually threatened law and order or whether City authorities merely took preventive measures in response to events elsewhere in the country. In addition the City's intensive preparations for defense are considered in detail. As the chronicler, Charles Wriothesley, recorded, beginning on July 3, 1549, “my Lord Mayor began to watch at night, riding about the City to peruse the constables with their watches, and to see that they keep the hours appointed at the last Court of Aldermen holden at the Guildhall, for the preservation and safeguard of the City because of the rebellions in divers places of this realm.”

“Oh, Mr. Pym, this breaks the heart,” lamented Sir Richard Grosvenor in the House of Commons in 1629; “if God be God, let us follow him, and if Baal be God, let us follow him, and no longer halt between two opinions.” The Baalites, it was clear to the Commons, were the Arminians, who threatened “the very ruin and desolation if not dissolution of Religion in this land.” Such was the threat of Arminianism that when the Commons presented its Protestations on March 2, the first article read,

This was no ordinary condemnation of schism or theological haggling. The members of the Commons shared a strong suspicion of Arminianism as a political as well as religious heresy. They had a clear idea of what English Arminianism was and who was an Arminian. Before 1624, no Englishman had even been accused of Arminianism, either in Parliament or in contemporary literature devoted to religious controversies. How did the definition of English Arminianism develop between 1624 and 1629? How did Arminianism, originally a moderate Dutch Calvinism, come to be considered along with Popery as a treasonable theology?

At the turn of the seventeeth century, Jacobus Arminius, Divinity Reader at the University of Leyden, had proposed a theological compromise between Supralapsarian and Infralapsarian Protestantism.

The career of Ernest Belfort Bax provides a special perspective on the early development of British Socialism when, as someone observed, “generals without soldiers” were using Marxist ideas to scout a new path into the future. For Bax, as the only philosophical thinker among the early British Marxists, set out to develop the broader meaning of the new theory for his countrymen. This article will examine Bax's interpretation of Marxism with particular attention to his view of history, his approach to ethics, and his metaphysical position. It will also consider Bax's role in the movement and his relations with the three central figures in the early development of British Marxism — Henry Mayers Hyndman, William Morris and Friedrich Engels. Finally the article will attempt to explain the reasons for Bax's departure from a strict Marxism and suggest its implications for the development of Marxism and for late Victorian society

Bax, like so many of those figures who assumed the leading roles in the early development of European Socialism, grew up in a prosperous middle class family. His social background combined the economic affluence and evangelical piety which gave such a distinctive stamp to mid-Victorian life. For the young Bax, as for numerous other spirited sons of the English bourgeoisie, family wealth provided access to a wider world of culture and ideas. He soon discarded the simple piety and religious dogmatism of his upbringing. Indeed, he developed a deep hatred of middle class beliefs and conventions.

On January 6, 1649 the House of Commons set its seal of approval on the agency by which Charles I would be tried and sentenced to death. By an Act “for erecting of a High Court of Justice for the Trying and Judging of Charles Stuart, King of England,” he was charged with “a wicked design totally to subvert the ancient and fundamental laws and liberties of this nation, and, in their place, to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government.” The Commons maintained that they had shown tolerance toward such “high and treasonable offenses.” But the King's persistence in perverse activities — his raising of “new commotions, rebellions and invasions” — had forced them to take the present course. They were determined that no future ruler should “presume traitorously or maliciously to imagine or contrive the enslaving or destroying of the English nation, and to expect impunity for so doing.” The measure designated one hundred and thirty-five persons to try and adjudge the royal defendant.

Thus came into being the most extraordinary judicial body to be met with in English history. Certainly, no court has ever been so vigorously disclaimed as to jurisdiction, or so bitterly vilified as to personnel. To the Cavaliers, who had fought for Charles at Marston Moor and Naseby, as well as to the Presbyterians, who had trooped under the banners of Parliament to reshape, but not destroy, the monarchy, the court and its works were anathema.

In 1909, two years after his retirement as British Consul-General in Egypt, Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer — knighted in 1883, he was created Baron Cromer in 1892, viscount in 1899 and earl in 1901 — was invited to be the President of the Classical Association. It was a duty which he took very seriously and he prepared his Presidential address on “Ancient and Modern Imperialism” with immense care. In the course of this preparation he consulted many of the most distinguished scholars of the times, among them Gilbert Murray, then Professor of Greek at Oxford, J. B. Bury, then Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, F. J. Haverfield, the Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford, Sir William Ramsay, the Regius Professor of Humanity at Aberdeen University, Edwyn R. Bevan, a Hellenistic scholar much interested in Indian questions, Gertrude Bell, an archaeologist and expert on the Near East and Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, one of the most famous journalists of his day and an authority on Russia. After he delivered the address in January 1910 Cromer entered into further correspondence with the Conservative leader, A. J. Balfour; John Buchan who, although he is probably best remembered today as a writer of adventure stories, had been Alfred Milner's private secretary in South Africa, 1901-03 and was subsequently to be Governor General of Canada, James Bryce, the author of the classic The Holy Roman Empire, a former cabinet minister and at this time British Ambassador in Washington; and Sir William Ridgeway, the President of the Royal Anthropological Institution.

The influential Wellek and Warren, in their Theory of Literature, view biography as the servant of a scholarly master. They concede that certain biographies have their own “intrinsic interest,” but the main bias of their work is towards the perception of biography as a quarry from which facts are to be mined and then put to other uses.

There seems to be little doubt that for the majority of biographies Wellek and Warren are correct, and their conclusions readily find support among the most serious surveys of the biographical tradition. Yet a disinterested bystander would surely observe with great curiosity how frequently in our age older and apparently outmoded factual mines are replaced by new ones. Moreover, he would surely be puzzled as he scrutinized the biographical scene more carefully and discovered in the background a number of works written between 1640 and 1851, which retain a perennial fascination and freshness and show no signs of becoming outmoded, despite numerous objections that they are unreliable and generally untrue. These works, which shall be called primary organic biographies, are defined below and include Walton's Lives, Burnet's Life of Hale and his Life of Rochester, Johnson's Life of Savage and his “Life of Thomson,” Goldsmith's Life of Nash, Boswell's Life of Johnson, and Carlyle's Life of Sterling.

Universally regarded as works of art but castigated in varying degrees for the alleged unreliability of their facts and thus for their departure from the straight and narrow path of truth, the primary organic biographies are part of a tradition that critics have consistently failed to understand.