The purpose of this paper is two-fold; firstly, to draw attention to hitherto unknown manuscript materials of great value for the diplomatic, military, political and administrative history of Queen Anne's reign, and secondly, to demonstrate by the use of these manuscripts how the cabinet was organized at that time. The manuscripts in question are memoranda made by three successive secretaries of state. Robert Harley made notes of three hundred and seventy-two meetings of the cabinet or lords of the committee from 21 May 1704 to 8 February 1708; Charles, 3rd earl of Sunderland, of two hundred and thirty-six from 13 December 1706 to 4 June 1710; and William, 1st earl of Dartmouth, of one hundred and sixty-eight from 18 June 1710 to 17 June 1711. These memoranda cover the majority of the meetings of the highest executive bodies of the English government during the most vital years of the War of the Spanish Succession. Not only do they show the gradual formation of policy and the development of strategy, but they also throw a great deal of light on the influence both of the queen and of the leading statesmen of her time. These documents vary, of course, in quality. They consist of notes made by the secretary for his own use; sometimes they are little more than mnemonics. A memorandum of Sunderland's on the meeting of the cabinet on 26 March 1710 runs: ‘Board of Ordnance, & Com. of Ireland to attend on tuesday morning eleven a clock’, which is not very revealing. Sunderland, however, was rather a lazy man, but fortunately most of his notes are fuller than this. Harley, on the other hand, loved information for its own sake.

Cistercian writing produced in the half-century after the death of Ailred of Rievaulx seems in comparison with that of the earlier generation unattractive and undistinguished. This impression is, however, largely caused by the lack of any one figure comparable with the abbot of Rievaulx who might arrest our attention and then stimulate an appreciation of the whole scene. In addition, the brightness coming from that great light, to adopt a figure from Walter Daniel, has almost effaced the memory of those lesser lights who came after him. Yet it must be confessed at the outset that by literary standards little of their work is distinguished. None of it, however, is devoid of interest for the historian. It comes from a period whose course is difficult to trace, and besides helping us to understand better the order's intellectual and spiritual life, it shows us some of the connexions between this and Cistercian prosperity.

The opening years of the fifteenth century witnessed an outburst of lawlessness at sea of such intensity that legitimate commerce between the kingdoms of France and England, and their allies, all but ceased. Official contemporary sources seem to leave no doubt as to the causes of this outburst. The truce conservators of the two kingdoms were in full agreement in placing the blame for the outrages against merchant shipping on the activities of ‘piratae’, ‘depraedatores’ and ‘banniti’, outlaws working without the sanction and beyond the control of their governments. Modern authorities have accepted this ‘official’ explanation without question.

You must pardon me if my observations this afternoon betray, in a more marked degree than you may think appropriate in the President of your Society, the diffidence which is born of surprise. For it was a genuine surprise to me when in the course of last summer the Council of the Royal Historical Society did me the honour of nominating me their President—a nomination which you have now been good enough to confirm—in the place of a predecessor of high distinction. I was aware that before him this office had been filled by men of eminence either as historians or among those who have signally contributed to the making of history. The earliest name on the list is, I believe, that of an English classic whose venerated figure stands on a pillar ‘wrought full sternely’ among those consecrate in the House of Fame to illustrious historians, near the place of honour belonging to Gibbon himself. For, unlike to one another as he and Grote were from most points of view of philosophical thought, of political principle, and of literary taste, more than one analogy is traceable between the growths of their respective masterpieces. Each was the work of its author's mature manhood; each was carried out consecutively, with that consciousness of the goal in view which proportionates effort to progress, and within a limit of years far outside of which unity of execution is virtually impossible. Thus, though in both instances the historian's conception of his theme was not only vast and comprehensive, but confessedly grew under his hands into its ultimate shape, the complete edifice stood square to the elements, and in the mortar ‘which made the building sure’ the ingredient of civic experience had not been omitted.

My subject obviously deserves a skilled advocate to present it to the public, but as a professional historical student speaking to historical students I may be pardoned if I attempt only the plainest exposition, and ‘let me find a charter in your voice to assist my simpleness.’

ANY attempt to apply the same approach in the case of Cavaliers as I did with Puritans last year may seem doomed to inevitable failure. It will be considered futile to search for particular varieties of human temperament which inclined individuals towards adopting particular ideas and beliefs of a broadly conservative persuasion. Left-wing intellectuals, historians included, have sometimes been reluctant to admit that instinctive, emotional conservatism can be held to constitute a system of ideas at all, as opposed to a welter of prejudices and vested interests. Correspondingly, for many people of conservative views, acceptance of the world of order, hierarchy and inequality broadly as they find it—not necessarily as the best of all possible worlds but as the least bad of all realisable ones—is so obviously sensible as to need no intellectual defence or justification. None the less, not all the royalists of 1641–2 and after were unthinking conservatives, with the smallest of small ‘c’s, or at any rate not in the same sense. Not all professed the same religious tenets; not all adhered to the same constitutional principles; not all came to be royalists in the same way and at the same time. So some modest analysis of the Cavalier party in terms of what may be called ideological temperament is, I hope, worth undertaking. Not that the royalist cause has lacked its apologists, from the greatest of seventeenth-century historians to our own day. Few, however, have paused to consider the kind of people who became Cavaliers and their probable motivation.

This address asks how much has education contributed to social mobility in post-war Britain and considers other factors that may have contributed as much or more: labour-market opportunities, trends in income inequality, gender differences and ‘compositional effects’ deriving from the shape of the occupational hierarchy. Even where these other factors proved much more powerful – especially labour-market opportunities and compositional effects – democratic discourse both among politicians and among the electorate remained fixated on educational opportunities and outcomes, especially after the decline of the Croslandite critique of ‘meritocracy’. That fixation has if anything been reinforced by the apparent end to a ‘golden age’ of absolute upward mobility for large sections of the population, not necessarily because education is an effective antidote but because the alternative political solutions are so unpalatable both to politicians and to voters.

Focusing on London, the paper discusses the interaction between theoretical, descriptive and quasi-historical writing about cities, a growing capacity to visualise city landscape and activities, and forms of graphic representation that drew on those ideas. Reading this interplay as a political space, the paper explores the structure, content and purposes of the ‘London Collection’ of national laws, pseudo-laws and city customs put together in London at about the time of Magna Carta. Though no more than a preliminary investigation, the exercise reveals the extent to which London interests, especially with regard to the politics of international trade, the ‘law of London’, earlier episodes of communal activism and a sense of London's historic destiny within that of the nation pervade the collection as a whole. This casts some doubt on the supposed antiquity of some of the London laws in the collection, which may well have been adjusted for the occasion.

The life of Robert I, king of Scots, written by John Barbour archdeacon of Aberdeen is the fullest of any medieval king in the west, a chronicle of chivalry in vernacular octosyllabic couplets, on which much of our understanding of the events and ethos of the Scottish war depends. In this paper I discuss some aspects of the king's reign which Barbour ignored: pro-Balliol sentiment which lingered in Scotland and at the French and papal courts; and also aspects of the war where Barbour's narrative is incomplete or misleading, but which illustrate the growth of King Robert's military effort from that of a very uncertain factional rising to one which matched the rhetorical claims (in die Declaration of Arbroath) of a people at war. I shall be treading ground already mapped in Professor Barrow's masterly study, seeking only to point out features to which Barbour has, by omission or commission, drawn my attention.

This paper is concerned with an obscure and long defunct branch of the administration, which was instituted in 1833 and reached its climax by the middle 'fifties. The branch, which had not even a distinctive name, consisted at most of between twenty and thirty executive members, almost all half-pay naval officers, who were at first directly controlled by the colonial office, and, after 1840, subject immediately to the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission. Though the corps of emigration officers, or agents, as they were indifferently called, was established in the 1830's, it by no means belonged to a new race of administrators. It did not originate in political agitation, or Benthamic or parliamentary inquiry. Its purpose and function were scarcely defined; certainly it was innocent of doctrinaire intention. No celebrated public servant, except, indirectly, James Stephen, was concerned with its workings; no considerable attention was ever drawn upon its officers. Indeed, by and large, the British public was unaffected by, and probably ignorant of, its existence.

In 1914 Professor Pollard read a paper before the Royal Historical Society on “The Authenticity of the Lords' Journals in the Sixteenth Century,”1 in the course of which, by revealing how inadequate a presentation of the manuscript originals was contained in the printed journals, he showed that the original journals might be a valuable field for historical gleanings. In addition to Professor Pollard, Professor. Maitland and Mr. L. O. Pike also examined the manuscript of an Elizabethan Lords' journal;2 but in 1916 two American scholars, Professors Notestein and Usher, turned to the Commons' journals of the early seventeenth century, and in advocating a critical survey of the manuscript originals, challenged the conventional view of their authenticity which an uncritical edition of them has easily created.3 The fact is, of course, that even an accurate edition of a document—and a fortiori an inaccurate one—may destroy valuable historical evidence if it convey no clear idea of the appearance of the original manuscript. It is one thing to visualise a large folio sheet of print: a materially

In the year 1290, when King Edward proposed to his Parliament that a fifteenth of all movables should be granted him by clergy and laity alike, and at the same time demanded a tenth of all spiritual revenue, his request was only complied with on the express condition that he would banish the Jews out of the country. The great expulsion, which followed in the autumn of the same year, has always seemed to me an event of a very curious and interesting character, and one deserving a more elaborate explanation than usually falls to its lot. It is quite clear that Parliament dearly wished to be rid of these aliens in race and religion, and, at the same time, the King could not have been altogether unwilling to fall in with the desires of his people, for, considerable as the tax might be, it was quite insufficient to compensate him for the great and permanent source of revenue upon which his forefathers had been wont to rely. The matter is popularly explained on the score of religious bigotry: the people, it is said, are ignorant fanatics, led on by a less ignorant but more fanatical clergy, and the King shares in the fanaticism of his people. This explanation is not untrue, but it is not the whole truth. I am quite sure that the deep-rooted hatred of the Jews in mediaeval England was not due to bigotry alone, any more than the feeling against them in Europe to-day is solely due to such a cause.

CHURCHILL’S life was politics. His career as an MP ran, virtually unbroken, from 1900 to 1964 – almost the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. But although Churchill lived for politics, he lived by writing. Much of his income was earned as a journalist and author. At one end of the spectrum were scores of newspaper columns assessing contemporary events and politicians, summarising the plots of great novels, or just musing for money – as in ‘Have You a Hobby?’ or ‘Are There Men in the Moon?’ At the other extreme are large books such as the biographies of his father (1906) and of his martial ancestor, the first duke of Marlborough (1933–8), and his History of the English-Speaking Peoples(1956–8). Somewhere in between are autobiographical vignettes such asThe Malakand Field Force(1898) andMy Early Life(1930). But it is for his two sets of war memoirs that Churchill the historian is most remembered – six separate volumes on World War I (1923–31) and its aftermath, six more on World War II and its origins (1948–54).

SOME apology may seem necessary for a brief paper that covers nearly three centuries, but, unless we take long views, we are unlikely to get into focus the problem before us, namely, the extent to which the commons participated in medieval politics and the manner in which they did so. Bishop Stubbs, you will remember, found this a matter of particular difficulty. The part played by the commons in relation to taxation and legislation seemed plain enough. But political power, the ‘right of general deliberation on all national matters, is too vague in its extent’, he thought, ‘to be capable of being chronologically defined; nor was it really vindicated by the parliament until a much later period than’ the reign of Edward I, with which he was then concerned. Elsewhere, Stubbs seems to have committed himself to the view that the commons took part in politics in the fifteenth century, although the distinction he formerly drew between politics and legislation he no longer maintained. Quite clearly we cannot consistently maintain a distinction between politics and legislation or politics and finance. ‘The right of deliberation on all national matters’, in Stubbs's phrase, may express itself in the acceptance or refusal of legislative or of financial proposals. But if there are certain national matters from the discussion of which one or other of the ‘estates’ is in practice excluded, then it is reasonable to say that, to that extent, they take no part in politics. To suggest an obvious example: the assent of the lower clergy was necessary to the taxation to which they were subjected; they took no part in general legislation; and they certainly did not exercise the right of deliberation on all national matters. Their participation in politics was therefore of the slightest.

At the Peace of Paris in 1763 Britain reaped the rewards of a successful war overseas. Great gains were made in North America, die West Indies and West Africa. Two years later Robert Clive signed the treaty of Allahabad by which the Mughal emperor transferred the diwani and widi it effective possession of die huge province of Bengal to the East India Company. No one could doubt the scale of what had been acquired in so short a time in terms of land, people or resources. How these vast gains could be turned to account, by whom and with what consequences, aroused eager anticipation, a well as serious misgivings, as die British state and many private individuals tried to exploit the opportunities opened up by British military prowess. In so doing they revealed much about the strengdis and weaknesses of British overseas expansion in the eighteenth century.

THE award of the Booker Prize for 1995 to Pat Barker's Ghost Road did more than pay tribute to the latest powerful novel in the author's ‘Regeneration Cycle’. It also emphasised once again how much the historical and cultural consciousness of twentieth-century Britain is dominated by images of war. With the obvious exception of Northern Ireland, Great Britain has been an unusually peaceful and stable country in a century marked by revolution and upheaval. Yet our national experience has been shaped, almost obsessed, by two world wars in a way true of few, if any, other countries. Memories of 1914 and 1939 tower over us like Lutyens's massive monument at Thiepval. The war leaders, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, are commonly thought of as our two greatest prime ministers in modern times (though another, more recent, prime minister, victorious in the Falklands, still has her champions). Armistice day, Remembrance Sunday and the wearing of poppies retain their potency as all-powerful national symbols of sacrifice. The British Legion remains an influential pressure group. The eightieth anniversary of the battle of the Somme in July 1996 emphasised anew the enduring impact of the tragedies of the first world war. More generally, the fiftieth anniversaries of VE Day and VJ Day the previous year were nationwide ceremonies of remembrance for the sacrifices of the second. Almost every episode in current history, especially where Europe is involved, is commonly linked with memories of earlier conflict. Even the 1996 crisis in Anglo-German relations, such as it was, arising from ‘mad cow disease’ evoked comparison with 1939.

THE novel which won the 1987 Booker Prize was Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger. Its central character is an historian whom, on the opening page, we find already near to death. Even so, she is meditating about the completion of a new work: ‘A history of the world. To round things off. I may as well—no more nit-picking stuff about Napoleon, Tito, the battle of Edgehill, Hernando Cortez … The works, this time. The whole triumphant murderous unstoppable chute—from the mud to the stars, universal and particular, your story and mine.’ And she adds: ‘I'm equipped, I consider; eclecticism has always been my hallmark.’

In the vibrant current debate about European empires and their ideologies, one basic dichotomy still tends to be overlooked: that between, on the one hand, the plurality of modern empires of colonisation, commerce and settlement; and, on the other, the traditional claim to single and undivided imperium so long embodied in the Roman Empire and its successor, the Holy Roman Empire, or (First) Reich. This paper examines the tensions between the two, as manifested in the theory and practice of Habsburg imperial rule. The Habsburgs, emperors of the Reich almost continuously through its last centuries, sought to build their own power-base within and beyond it. The first half of the paper examines how by the eighteenth century their ‘Monarchy’, subsisting alongside the Reich, dealt with the associated legacy of empire. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 the Habsburgs could pursue a free-standing Austrian ‘imperialism’, but it rested on an uneasy combination of old and new elements and was correspondingly vulnerable to challenge from abroad and censure at home. The second half of the article charts this aspect of Habsburg government through an age of international imperialism and its contribution to the collapse of the Dual Monarchy in 1918.

In the past decade, scholars of the here-and-now have (re)discovered the concept of enclosure, applying it with considerable zeal and in a bewildering variety of situations: from the securitisation of the Internet, and patenting genes, to attempts to privatise urban ‘public’ spaces, the English ‘enclosure story’ is presented as a given, a narrative that is set in stone. One critical aspect of this account is that enclosure was exported to Britain's overseas colonies in a one-way process. This paper shows, however, that from the early sixteenth century – and insistently so from the late eighteenth century – arguments for the enclosure of English commons and wastes were framed using techniques and discourses deployed overseas: the languages and practices of colonialism. Commons and wastes, so the paper argues, were not just increasingly seen as empty spaces, but the peoples that inhabited them were written as if they were uncivilised and unable to manage the land. Further, arguments for the enclosure of wastes were made as an alternative to Britain's overseas imperialism. The paper traces a variety of debates and proposals that collectively constitute a coherent body of ‘internal colonial’ thought.

This paper explores representations of the manly body and the ways in which its relationship with masculine identity and embodied selfhood changed over time and class. It spans a period in which different types of masculinities were dominant, from the later eighteenth-century man of feeling to the later nineteenth-century muscular Christian, and proposes that an embodied approach offers a more nuanced consideration of the ways in which ideals of masculinity were culturally viewed and utilised. First, it provides a chronology of the manner in which the ideal manly body changed over the two centuries, demonstrating that abstract masculine values were always rooted in male bodies. Secondly, it proposes that although most idealised masculine identities were elite, attention to the more corporeal aspects of gender offers evidence that there were features of the manly body, for example hardness, that appealed across social ranks.1 Elite men valorised idealised working-class men's bodies and saw in them something to emulate. Moreover, working-class men used classically inspired figures to represent themselves when formulating class and gender identities.