IN his ‘English Contributions to Renaissance Colonisation’ Professor Quinn treats one only of the interactions between humanism and overseas expansion. He does not here discuss, as he has done elsewhere, the stimulus to speculation about human history and society which was given by the discovery of new worlds of custom. He concentrates rather upon the ways in which those who advocated, planted and managed colonies were inspired by or appealed to humanist learning, and in particular the example of Rome. In much the same way I am not centrally concerned in this paper to discuss the stimulus given to academic enquiry by the intensified encounter of Europe with the rest of the world during the last hundred years. My main concern is with the ways in which those who advocated, pacified and administered colonies were inspired by or appealed to the new sciences of man.

ON 11 May 1641, Maurice Wynn reported that ‘some plott or other’ had been discovered to the Commons. The vagueness of his reaction seems to have been characteristic of much assessment of the army plot ever since. There is a general sense that there is enough smoke to make it probable that there is some fire, but we are not extremely clear who plotted with whom to do what. This is, in part, because of a very justifiable caution. It is felt that Charles I's plots, like his grandmother's lovers, are capable of growing in the telling, especially when the tellers are people to whom belief in popish conspiracy comes with eagerness distressing to a modern ear. Pym and Hampden's later readiness to exploit such mare's nests as the Beale plot at crucial moments in the debate on the Grand Remonstrance adds further to the wariness with which plot stories from the Long Parliament are treated. Wariness is an entirely justified reaction with any Long Parliament plot, but wariness may stop short of incredulity. Above all, a belief that plots should not be taken on trust is no substitute for an examination of the sources.

PhilipJulius, Duke of Pomerania-Wolgast, born in the year 1584, was the only son of Ernst Ludwig, of Pomerania, and Sophia Hedwig, of Brunswick. For the purpose of finishing his education before taking up the government of his country, he was sent on a grand tour through the principal States of Europe, sixteen gentlemen and servants forming his suite.

The Tudor Parliament, I suggested to you a year ago, quite properly fulfilled a function of giving legitimate political ambition a chance to achieve its ends, more particularly because from the 1530s onwards, at any rate, experience in the Commons could put a man in the way of entering the royal Council. Of course, this would never be true of more than a few such knights and burgesses, nor was it either a sufficient or a necessary cause of their becoming councillors. Still, the link was there. I now want to turn to the Council itself and ask whether its history and membership similarly reflected a useful function in enabling ambition to be satisfied. Here we enter upon territory far less well known than the Houses of Parliament. The Tudor Council is not now quite so free from the attention of historians as it was even ten years ago; but while we may be really well informed about it here and there, and while indeed we all think that we have a fair idea of its place in constitution and society, it remains true that every time one asks oneself a question touching it one comes up against so far unillumined obscurities. The work of any governing body is always difficult to understand because only those there present actually know what goes on and because so much of what does go on never reaches the record; and the Tudor Privy Council made emphatically certain of preserving itself from scholarly prying by keeping no minutes of discussion at all.

Most discussions of political divisions in the counties controlled by parliament during the civil war have taken place within a very clear framework. Following the work of Professor Everitt on the ‘county community’, the main conflict is judged to have been between gentry who sought to defend the integrity of the local community and those who were prepared to sacrifice local autonomy to the needs of the national struggle. Within this polarity, moderate or neutralist gentry were the champions of localism while the more ‘extreme’ parliamentarians were nationally minded. Thus Mr. Pennington described how ‘Localism, compromiseand social conservatism opposed centralism, militancy and Revolutionary Puritanism’, while in The Revolt of the Provinces, Dr. Morrill coupled ‘conservatism and localism’. In one of the most recent formulations, Professor Underdown wrote of ‘the now familiar conflict between nationally minded militants and locally minded moderates [which] can be found in all the parliamentarian counties’. Only Professor Holmes has challenged this consensus.

The growth of the study of medieval society is a process which falls well within living memory. Precisely how old it might be considered to be is a matter of definition. Taking social history to be the empirical reconstruction of past social and political systems, structures and their properties, then social history was a phenomenon of the inter-war period in Britain. If one looks for a significant date to mark its full emergence (so far as we are considering later medieval society) then there is no date more significant than 1929, when Frank Merry Stenton delivered the Ford Lectures, which set in train the publication of The First Century of English Feudalism; a seminal event in the writing of social and medieval history in this country.

The first impulse to make a special study of the Treaty of Seville came from my interest in the career of that eminent diplomatist, Benjamin Keene, on whom I discoursed at some length last February. But at that time my attention was concentrated upon Keene's second mission to Spain from 1749 to 1757, and I only gave a very superficial glance at his earlier mission from 1727 to 1739. In reference to this I stated that he played an active part in bringing about the Treaty of Seville, that he was deposed at the last minute from being the sole English signatory of the treaty by the return of William Stanhope, and that he felt some chagrin because all the credit and reward for making that treaty went to his senior colleague, whereas he himself received no recognition of his services. There was no doubt about his discontent, because I found frank expression of it in his letters, but I was curious to ascertain how far this discontent was justified. The study of this minor problem led me on to consider the importance of the treaty in the history of Europe. I came to the conclusion that it was a notable landmark in the rather tangled diplomacy of the second and third decades of the eighteenth century. The tangle arose from the temporary dislocation of interstate relations in Europe from normal into abnormal grooves, and a prominent cause of that dislocation was that national interests were largely superseded or overshadowed by dynastic claims and uncertainties.

The type of economic organization known as the manor existed in the north of Gaul, including the regions which were later to be known as the Low Countries,1 in the Merovingian period and even in Roman times, but it is not till the eighth century that evidence regarding it becomes relatively abundant. The little that can be said of its structure and diffusion before the Carolingian period can only be of an introductory character. We have no evidence as to the relative proportions of large, middle-sized, and small estates, but there can be no doubt from texts of the seventh and early eighth centuries that large, indeed very large, estates existed at this period.

Examining the political thought of the Irish Revolution poses two distinct problems. First, we need to establish how we should date the Revolution for the purposes of intellectual history. There is no doubting that the 1916 Easter Rising was an event in British and Irish politics, but it was also an event in the world of ideas. Any serious consideration of this episode and its aftermath therefore needs to trace its origins to patterns of thought as well as shifts in affairs, and the two processes do not necessarily coincide. The second requirement for understanding the role of political thought in the Revolution is to reconstruct carefully the actual doctrines articulated and deployed. Irish historians have been reluctant to engage in this process of interpretation. Yet a more searching account of political ideas in the period has the potential to change our approach to the Revolution as a whole.

This essay examines the issue of armed resistance in France 1941–4 through the lens of collective reprisals inflicted on local communities as a result of armed resistance. It uses three examples from different parts of France: the north, the west and the Massif Central. It examines not only the incidents themselves and the reprisals but the way in which the local communities reacted to and commemorated the events in the years after the war. The essay concludes that local communities were at best ambivalent towards and at worst hostile to acts of armed resistance committed in their midst

The literature relating to Winston Churchill is by now so extensive, and our evidence about him so abundant, that the approaching completion of the official life by Martin Gilbert may seem to herald the end of historical inquiry into Churchill for at least a generation. This may be so; but it is more likely that he will continue to be the focus of animated discussion. Churchill, like Roosevelt or Trotsky, has inspired a perennial curiosity which springs as much from complexity of character as from fame. A. J. P. Taylor has justly applied to him Dryden's couplet: ‘A man so various that he seemed to be, not one, but all mankind's epitome.’ Admittedly, there are individuals so prejudiced for or against Churchill as to lack interest in assessing him. But for anyone who overcomes this barrier, Churchill holds the fascination of a rare species of animal which no one can easily place in the scheme of creation. A part of this curiosity stems from the fact that Churchill as a policy-maker was both peculiarly inspired and peculiarly disaster-prone. Military historians, evaluating his strategic conduct of the Second World War, are pursuing a controversy which began at Gallipoli in 1915. Political historians, too, are intrigued by the fact that Churchill's judgment was so prescient on some issues, and so mistaken on others. Like Churchill's contemporaries, they tend to detect in him strands of genius interwoven with strands of folly.

The epidemics of the fourteenth century have been the subject of much discussion by eminent scholars, whose investigations have been supplemented by detailed studies of various localities. No considered attempt, however, has been made to trace the course of the disease within Wales, which, by reason of its isolated position and mountainous character, is frequently regarded as having largely escaped the visitation. The study of the effects of such an agent upon a society predominantly pastoral offers a subject of special interest.

A general study of the effects of the Viking Wars on Anglo-Saxon society is much to be desired. These wars lasted from the last years of the Mercian hegemony to the last months of the life of William the Conqueror. It has been abundantly shown that the English did not catch institutions from the Vikings like a sort of social measles, but common-sense alone suggests that a three hundred years war with little more than one generation's respite must have had consequences. Such a study is far too large for a single paper. What I have sought to do, therefore, is take a single campaign, that culminating in the famous battle of Maldon, which occurred at a moment of intense crisis and to try to set this campaign in a context of the relevant political and military problems of the day, and most of what I have to say relates to the much-dismissed, little studied, but well-evidenced, reign of Æthelred II.

It is often said that if Oliver Cromwell had lived longer the Puritan Revolution could have survived. The monarchical component of protectoral rule, and the protector's endeavours to broaden the base of his regime, are taken to have signalled a return towards normality and thus towards stability. That mood has been contrasted with the self-destruction of the revolution in the two years after Cromwell's death, a period of twilit anarchy which only the restoration of the Stuarts could end. That interpretation has its points but is misleadingly one-sided. The protectorate had frailties which it never overcame. It failed to live down its origins in the military coups of 1653. Those episodes affronted principles of civilian rule and parliamentary supremacy which commanded widespread support but which have been obscured by the ‘revisionist’ trend of parliamentary history. Though he aimed at ‘healing and settling’, the protector healed little and settled nothing. His attempts to woo mainstream opinion were unsuccessful. In so far as he won its compliance or tolerance, the achievement was conditional upon his readiness to submit to the principles of rule which his seizure of power had broken. It was a condition he could not or would not meet. By the end of his life, military obstruction to civilian and parliamentary rule had reduced his regime to paralysis, and had deepened the divisions between civilian and military aspirations that would soon bring down his successor and would destroy each of the fleeting regimes that followed.

There has long been some measure of agreement that European people in the middle ages adhered to a form of Christianity which was ‘folklorised’, ‘enchanted’, or ‘magical’. Interwoven with the traditional creeds and the orthodox liturgy were numerous beliefs and practices which were intended to ensure spiritual and bodily welfare, and guard against misfortune. To the endless frustration of theologians, ‘religion’ and ‘superstition’ stubbornly refused to remain clearly separate, despite the intellectual effort expended in forcing them into different compartments. ‘Superstitious’ rites or beliefs repeatedly intersected with the official Catholic cult. It was believed that if a talisman were placed under an altar-cloth during mass, it would acquire spiritual potency. Orthodox prayers were constantly adapted to serve the needs of popular magic. Clergy, let alone layfolk, found the line between acceptable and superstitious practice difficult to draw. For a graphic illustration of this problem, one need only look at the following recipe for curing a hailstorm caused by sorcery:

But against hailstones and storms, besides those things said earlier about raising the sign of the cross, this remedy may be used: three little hailstones are thrown into the fire with the invocation of the most Holy Trinity; the Lord's Prayer with the Angelic Salutation is added twice or three times, and the Gospel of St John, ‘In the beginning was the word’, while the sign of the cross is made against the storm from all quarters, before and behind, and from every part of the earth. And then, when at the end one repeats three times, ‘the Word was made flesh’, and says three times after that, ‘by these Gospels uttered, may that tempest flee’, then suddenly, so long as the storm was caused to happen by sorcery, it will cease.

In January 1556 Charles V renounced his rights to the Iberian kingdoms and passed them on to his son, Philip, who at once assumed the title of King of Spain. To his surprise and consternation, the English council refused to endorse it and pertly reminded him that the Kingdom of Spain did not exist. While the title had long been used, and almost every language had an equivalent for Spain and Spanish, the truth was that legally there was no such entity. Philip II's will reflected this judicial reality. He was, ‘by the grace of God, king of Castile, Leon, Aragon, the Two Sicilies, Jerusalem, Portugal, Navarre, Granada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Mallorca, Seville, Sardinia, Cordoba, Corsica, Murcia, Jaen, Algarve, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, the Eastern and Western Indies, the islands and terra firma of the Ocean Sea; archduke of Austria; duke of Burgundy, Bravant and Milan; count of Habsburg, Flanders, Tirol, Barcelona; Lord of Biscay, Molina etc.’. This lengthy litany partly explains why he and all his contemporaries habitually resorted to the title King of Spain as convenient short-hand. As we will see, however, there was more to it than simple utility. The terms were used because they were broadly understood and accepted. But it will be apparent at once that the concept of a specific Spanish identity in the sixteenth century is likely to be particularly problematic since Spain did not exist.

It is perhaps more usual for the giver of the Prothero lecture to choose a subject which has been a part of his intellectual baggage for a long time. In contrast, what I am about to offer falls more honesdy into the category of work in progress. I am presendy at a very preliminary stage in a project that may both take me a long time and lead me up many alleyways. I am concerned to understand how the Catholic Reform of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was funded. In the term ‘Cadiolic Reform’ are included charitable and educative initiatives, the funding of missions, the conversion of die heathen, the expansion of religious orders, die provision of books and images (biblia pauperurm) to improve and elevate the minds of the simple into mysteries they could not otherwise conceptualise, and die erection and furnishing of new churches. I would argue that taken as a package this funding process, about which I will be presently more specific, represents one of the largest private money-raising processes ever undertaken. It has, perhaps, a particular interest today when attempts are being made to reinvigorate die spirit of private philanthropy and to dismande or cause to wither away public commitment to assistance or subsidy.

Those present in the council chamber around teatime on Friday, 4 April 1628 would have witnessed one of the more hopeful scenes in die politics of die late 1620s. Sir John Coke, Secretary of State, arrived hotfoot from die House of Commons to announce diat it had voted to grant die crown five subsidies. The king, who had been waiting for die news, expressed ‘joy and contentment, saying he was more happy than any of die kings his predecessors …’;

It is a singular paradox that one of the world's leading maritime powers should have virtually ignored the history of its merchant service. Yet such has been the case in England— inevitably, perhaps, in view of the spectacular course of naval and imperial achievement—and this notwithstanding the labours of a host of publicists to demonstrate the importance of the country's shipping as ‘a principal means to advance [its] honour, strength, safety and profit].

The office of the justice of the peace developed during the fourteenth century from that of the keeper of the peace who held inquests and received presentments, and the process has been traced in great detail by Professor Putnam. In 1925, Professor Cam assigned some records of a keeper's inquests to 1277 and so carried the beginnings of the earlier office well back into the thirteenth century. Custodes pacis of a still earlier period Professor Cam dismissed as ‘extraordinary’ keepers, ‘whose existence is explained by the special conditions arising out of the struggle between the king and the baronial party’. But these earlier keepers are not confined to the period of civil war; a survey of them is necessary to the history of the justice of the peace, and it is this which the present paper attempts to provide. Lambard's description of these early keepers is useful as a starting-point:

The Sheriffs I call ordinary Conservators of the Peace, because their authority was then ordinary, always one, and the same well enough knowen: But the extraordinary Conservator, as he was endowed with an higher power, so was he not ordinarily appointed, but in times of great trouble only, much like as the Lieutenants of shires are now in our days. And he had charge to defend the coasts and country, both from foreign and inward enemies, and might command the sheriff and all the shire to aid and assist him.

The earliest keepers supplemented the sheriffs in the policing of the countryside, especially in times of crisis and during the threat of invasion; and these ‘great troubles’ were frequent enough to make the keeper an increasingly permanent official.