In setting forth these impressions of what has been done in recent years by historians of Restoration England (a period I take to cover the years 1660-1689), it seems convenient to review activity since 1960. Robert Walcott, some ten years ago, covered the period 1939-1959 (presumably using the publication date of Grose's bibliography as his starting point). The past few years have seen the publication of two bibliographies relating to the period: the revised Davies, by Mary Keeler, covering the entire Stuart era, and my own bibliographical handbook, dealing only with the reigns of Charles II and James II. Keeler's revision includes very little published after 1961. My own compilation involved a systematic appraisal to 1969, and therefore serves as the principal basis for the following remarks. The period 1660-1689 is a relatively short one, as bibliographies go; a good many of the works touched upon here have a somewhat wider scope, but in all cases they seem to make important contributions to Restoration history.

In 1960 Cecily Wedgwood could still note that the Restoration era was a much emptier field, at least as far as political history is concerned, than the early Stuart period. But that is by no means so true today. Taking up various categories in my Restoration England, I find that in the fields of political and constitutional history just over half the entries refer to works published since 1960. Next in popularity come Science and Technology, and Intellectual History, each with about a quarter of the entries.

Queen Anne's appointment of Sidney, Earl of Godolphin, as Lord Treasurer in 1702 was a fortunate choice for England. The country faced a war with France occasioned by the empty Spanish throne and the expansionist schemes of Louis XIV. England needed a man of ability in finance, experience in government, and credit with queen and country to handle home affairs and finance the armies of the allies on the continent. The Duke of Marlborough, head of England's armies, considered his friend Godolphin the only man for the task. He even threatened not to command English armies unless Godolphin took the Treasury post. Godolphin had opposed the war with France and had resigned from a Treasury post in 1701 for this reason, but in 1702 he accepted the white staff of Lord Treasurer at the insistence of his friend Marlborough.

During the course of the War Of Spanish Succession Lord Godolphin used his exceptional talents to finance the military forces of England—land and sea—and to provide large amounts of money for the military expenses of England's allies in the conflict. He was successful while Louis XIV's efforts to accomplish the same ends by some of the same means failed.

Godolphin possessed expertise and long experience in national finance, holding responsible Treasury positions in the reigns of Charles II, James II, and William III, before becoming Queen Anne's Lord Treasurer. Recognizing the advantages that the Bank of England could provide for national finance, he had helped push the proposal for its establishment through the House of Lords in the face of strong opposition in 1694. He had also favored a Land Bank that eventually came to naught. Seeing the value of exchequer bills in expanding the nation's money system during William III's reign, he made extensive use of this novel idea in financing Queen Anne's war.

Seventeenth century England may be described by various adjectives, many of them indicating a divided society. This was a century of rebellion and reaction, of popery and puritanism, of factions and political parties, of Parliament and King, and finally, of Common Law and prerogative power. As the 1600's came to a close, the air of crisis gradually passed from the English scene to be replaced by the serenity, indeed the complacency, of the eighteenth century. But this newly stable England of squire and clergy rested on earlier achievements. Revolt succeeded and became accepted; popery was pushed, many hoped, into the farther reaches of hell; toleration was accorded trinitarian Protestants; patronage-based political parties began to dominate Parliament while Commons increasingly became the seat of power. But what happened in this period to prerogative monopoly, frequently utilized by both Tudor and Stuart monarchs to reward favorites at the expense of the economy? This neglected issue can be examined through attempts of the Royal African Company, chartered under the Restoration Stuarts, to enforce its patent.

Cicero, in his Brutus, remarked of the Gallic War that while Caesar had written it so that “others who wanted to write history should have materials from which to work ready to their hands, he perhaps put in his debt only the pedants who like to frizzle such things with curling irons, and deterred sensible men from writing at all.” But Pollio Asinius, another of Caesar's contemporaries, disagreed with this opinion; according to Suetonius (Julius 56), Pollio considered Caesar's commentaries “to have been composed with little care and little unbiased verity, for Caesar was usually too ready to believe the reported achievements of others and, whether deliberately or through lapse of memory, to relate his own deeds falsely; and he thought that he had intended to rewrite and correct them.” Both were wrong—Cicero in believing that chroniclers would be content with ornamenting Caesar's data and Pollio in assuming that the major departures from fact in Caesar's biography would be due to his own slips. A choice demonstration of both kinds of error is the legend of Caesar's relations with the Scots.

It is clear from the Gallic War that in Britain Caesar did not have time to go farther north than what is now Essex or Hertford, but by the fifth century a story was current that he had conquered the entire island. In the verse panegyric that Sidonius Apollinaris addressed to his father-in-law, the Emperor Avitus, a personification of Rome tells Jove that Julius Caesar “led his victorious standards even against the Caledonian Britons; and though he vanquished Scot, Pict, and Saxon, he still sought foes even where nature forbade him to seek farther for mankind” (11. 88-92).

Tales of the maritime exploits of Elizabethan captains and favorable accounts of their part in shaping England's history are commonplace. For example, the actions of William Wynter's squadron against a French fleet in the Firth of Forth in 1560 led J. E. Neale to remark that “The Elizabethan navy had done its task in its first enterprise with complete efficiency and no fuss.…” Few can dispute the positive evaluation Neale and other historians have made of the navy as an effective arm of defense and foreign policy. An emphasis on the military and diplomatic role, however, has obscured another important aspect of the Elizabethan navy. William Wynter and other Elizabethan seamen also served the navy, and thus the nation, in capacities which have received less attention than their maritime exploits.

In addition to active duty at sea, Wynter served as Master of Naval Ordnance. Although the activities of a bureaucrat were not as glamorous as those of a fleet commander, the valor of the Elizabethan captains would have been of little consequence if the ships in which they sailed had not been properly equipped. It was essential that some sort of administrative network be operative in order to coordinate the needs of the navy with the sources of supply. If the ships were not well equipped and in good repair, neither courage nor skill would have enabled the Elizabethan navy to complete its enterprises efficiently. One of these indispensable functions, that of providing common but essential materials and services, was performed by the Office of Naval Ordnance.

The American democratic model was utilized by Scottish reformers and conservatives who saw in American events a confirmation of their own ideas and hopes. The ideals articulated by the American Revolution and the political institutions created in the new nation were analyzed as matters that impinged on the deepest commitments of Scottish intellectuals. Conservatives perceived America as a threat to the stability and continuance of British political tradition, which they saw as dependent upon the preservation of Scotland's distinctive national past. The American experience was significant to reformers of all persuasions because it invested their discursive thought with a reality it had not known before. Yet American principles and precepts were not determinative, but rather were used to convey certain carefully selected ideas. As Adam Ferguson, one of Scotland's brightest enlightenment minds, noted, “If nations actually borrow from their neighbors, they probably borrow only what they are nearly in a condition to have invented themselves.” America was useful to Scottish political thinkers because Britain was ready to “invent” her own political forms.

The differences that divided Scotland's most articulate political writers were fundamental. The conservatives firmly believed that man's brutish nature required restraints, an established church, a balanced hierarchical social-political order, and stability. Radical Scots argued that with freedom and democratic institutions society would be humane and prosperous. Reformers spoke out against the worst social evils: they advocated Catholic emancipation, abolition of the slave trade, an end to flogging in the army and navy, prison reform and, in 1832, the extension of the franchise to the middle class.