On the death of Tiberius, Gaius Caesar, the son of the popular Germanicus, and often known in history by his nickname of Caligula, was acclaimed by the Senate as ruler of the Roman Empire, amid scenes of universal rejoicing, on 18 March in the year 37. On 24 January in the year 41 he lay dead, a tyrant murdered by Cassius Chaerea and his confederates, while the consuls convened a meeting of the Senate, not in the Curia Julia, for the name had now such hateful associations, but on the Capitol, to discuss the restoration of the Republic. In the space of a little less than four years the young man—he was under twenty-five when he became Emperor—had so alienated men's minds from the system of Augustus that Senators were ready to consider the abolition of the Principate and the condemnation of the memory of the Caesars. Ignominy and ridicule have fastened upon his name ever since: the common view held was (put briefly) that Gaius was mad and bad, and went from bad to worse. The nineteenth century witnessed the activity of scholars who questioned the traditional account of all the Julio-Claudian emperors, by using the new knowledge offered by inscriptions or by analysing and criticising closely the account in the literary authorities.

The ordinance 1353, later confirmed in Parliament, introduced an entirely new conception of the office of the Mayor of the Staple. The compulsory marts in which the chief export wares had to be sold were then fixed in English ports, at each of which a Mayor of the Staple was appointed. Until then the Staples had only been fixed in English ports for two very brief periods, from the Kenilworth Ordinance of May 1326 to August 1328, and from September 1332 to February 1334, subject to interruptions owing to the needs of Royal finance: otherwise, from 1313 to 1326 and from 1340 to 1353, the Staple had been fixed in a Netherlands town.

There have been in England since 1600 three great monetary controversies. The first—and because of the place which it made for itself in literature, the most famous—was that between John Locke (1632–1704) and William Lowndes (1652–1724); the second arose over the Report of the Bullion Committee of 1810—for or against its adoption; the third was in the early eighteen-forties between the Currency and the Banking Schools. Locke, the Bullion Committee and the Currency School won. Lowndes’ proposal was rejected: the resumption of cash payments was decided upon in 1819: Peel's Bank Act of 1844 was a triumph for the Currency School. In each case the cause of “sound” money prevailed.

Baron Aehrenthal told the British Ambassador at Vienna in 1908 that British policy was “idealistic and humanitarian” while “his was frankly realistic.” In practice British “idealism” hasnowhere been more strongly dashed with “realism” than in Turkey. The dogma of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire became established as a principle of British policy during the late thirties. This result was mainly due to Palmerston and to the revelation of the dependence of Turkey on Russia implied in the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi. The presence of Russian warships on the waters, and Russian troops on the shores, of the Bosphorus taught a lesson to Englishmen. The defence of Constantinople became a sort of dogma, which ultimately extended to almost all parties in the state. Cobden and Bright resisted the infection but they were in a small minority. The Crimean War was a result of this dogma, and it is to be noted that even Aberdeen—who so greatly regretted the bloodshed—thought it right for England to defend Constantinople. Even so late as 1878 Disraeli was able to rally the majority in Parliament and in the country in defence of the same cause and city. And the reason for this defence was British interests.