It is well known that the Tudor monarchs exerted highly effective control over the financial resources of the English Church, particularly in the years after the Henrician Reformation. So marked a feature of the sixteenth century were the demands which the Crown, followed by the rest of the leading laity, made upon the Church in order to gain easy profit, that the period has on occasions been characterized as the ‘ age of plunder ’ The dissolution of the monasteries, and its economic and social consequences, have long been the subject of scholarly attention and debate. The fortunes of the secular church, in contrast, have roused relatively little interest, except as a background to the Laudian revival. This is, of course, in part because the crisis which the parochial clergy, cathedral chapters and bishops, experienced, was less dramatic than that of the monks and chantry priests, and, perhaps partly because demands upon the secular church were often for taxation rather than for outright gifts of lands. None of the Tudors showed the slightest inclination to disturb the fundamental tithe relationship within the parishes, and there were very few, even among the most ardent advocates of reform, who spoke openly for the old Lollard concept of making tithe dependent upon the quality of the incumbent.

Although ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ are among the most historic words in the language of English politics, their origins have never been subjected to modern scholarly study. Modern historians of the Exclusion Crisis are attracted by other aspects of the period; we find in the words little of die immediate relevance or historical continuity which Macaulay saw when he wrote glowingly of ‘two nicknames which, diough originally given in insult, were soon assumed with pride, which are still in daily use, which have spread as widely as the English race, and which will last as long as the English literature’.

After a period of comparative neglect, historians are re-examining the English Revolution of 1688 with revived interest and revised interpretation. In the past few decades numerous works have carefully re-investigated and often reinterpreted the roles played by such disparate groups as the Whigs, die nobility, the common people, and die urban mob, as well as by such leading individuals as die Earl of Sunderland, James II, and William of Orange. They have broadened our perspective of the Revolution by placing it in die wider context of European affairs and have persuasively demonstrated that die replacement of James II by William and Mary was justified most frequently and effectively not by John Locke's Two Treatises of Government, which was indeed composed prior to 1688, but by mat old relic from James I's reign, divine right of kings.

Two major themes have been orchestrated in the course of recent research into the period 1688 to 1714. In the sphere of politics, die extent and intensity of party conflict, especially in Anne's reign, has been laid bare in the work of G. Holmes and W. A. Speck, among others; whilst J. H. Plumb, in The Growth of Political Stability has sketched the motive forces behind the spreading and then the quieting, of that conflict.1 In the second recently developed area, that of public financ , P. G. M. Dickson's The Financial Revolution in Englandhas provided us with the insights and precision necessary to qualify and confirm previous assertions about the substantial contribution made by the developing ‘funding system’ to the success of England, under William and then Marlborough, in holding off Louis XIV, and, consequently, in establishing the Hanoverian dynasty on the throne.2

The existence of royal ‘influence’ was central to the political system of eighteenth-century England. However, the influence of the Crown occupies a curiously tangential place in the political thought of the period. Always difficult to ignore, influence gained recognition chiefly from those groups intent on destroying it – the Old-Whig enemies of corruption, the Country opposition to Walpole and the radical reformers late in the century. But the constant ambiguity as to the exact nature of the balance of the constitution may be explained primarily by the presence of opposed views about influence. While the numerous enemies of influence seem to have had their way in the law-books and other standard accounts of die constitution, an interpretation of British government, leaning more to realism than to legalism, sometimes surfaced in those ministerialists who defended places for M.P.s as the essential lubricant to die machinery. A realistic assessment of influence not only departed from die model of three equal and independent estates, it was also to provide a basis for understanding political parties within the framework of the balanced constitution.

For well over a century the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, the so-called New Poor Law, has been die centre of controversy. Just as contemporaries were drawn into bitter conflict over die measure, modern scholars have continued to debate die degree of ‘cruelty’ engendered in this novel poor relief scheme. The records of die individual poor law unions, however, reveal so many variations in administrative practices as to render invalid nearly all generalizations regarding me operation of die Act. The most obvious difficulty arises over the disparity between Poor Law Commission policy, ostensibly founded upon the recommendations of the famous Royal Commission report of 1834,3 and its actual implementation by the commissioners at Somerset House and their assistants in the field. It is by now a commonplace of poor law history that the commissioners, despite opposition from their secretary, Edwin Chadwick, pursued different policies in various parts of England.4 As we shall see, moreover, the commissioners often held certain provisions of their directives in abeyance, leaving their implementation to the discretion of provincial administrators.

It is well known that Gladstone's progress to the leadership of the Liberal party between 1859 and 1868 included the building of an alliance with Nonconformity which lasted, wim some interruptions, to the end of his life. This coalition was remarkable in view of the previous diversity of viewpoint between its participants. In the 1830s Nonconformists had already adopted a policy of disestablishment when Gladstone was airing a diametrically opposite opinion in The State in its relations with the Church; and Gladstone's High Churchmanship was disliked by the evangelical Nonconformists, one of whom wrote a pamphlet entitled The Ritualistic Movement in the Church of England, a reason for disestablishment. In view of these differences, how did there develop a firm and continually reviving political alliance, as intimate as that between Gladstone and Irish Home Rulers in the 1880s?

The anti-socialist legislation enacted in great haste in 1878, following attempts on the life of Kaiser Wilhelm I, lapsed in the autumn of 1890. To an innocent observer, the Wiihelmine State thus appeared to be divesting itself of one of the most hated and socially divisive acts of political legislation. One of Kaiser Wilhelm II's first grand ideas, his suddenly-awakened passion for becoming an ‘Arbeiterkaiser’, which produced in its wake a spate of minor social reforms - factory inspection, regulation of child and female labour and guaranteed Sunday rest – suggested moreover that the much-heralded new course might envisage a share in a joint future for the luckless and despised Social-Democrats.

Over seventy years ago J. A. Hobson put forward the theory that the Anglo-Boer War had been created by the Rand mining magnates and their financial allies, in their search for increased profits. Subsequently this interpretation was extended to the immediate post-war period of British Crown Colony administration, for it was argued that the politics of the post-war period were equally dominated by the Rand mining magnates. More recently, increasing doubt has been cast on this interpretation, for it has been found, inter alia, that the idea of the mining industry engaged in politics as a coherent and monolithic group did not accord with the great variety of behaviour to be found in practice amongst the mining magnates. In the 1960s, however, an attempt was made to overcome this weakness and to return to a strictly economic interpretation of the period, by grafting on to Hobson's basic interpretation the concept of financially-based rivalry between conflicting groups of mining magnates as the key to Transvaal political divisions.

The death of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo galvanized the Habsburg monarchy into its most fateful decision: the initiation of local war against Serbia. His demise, among other things, ensured Berlin's fidelity to its alliance commitment, convinced (mistakenly) the decision-makers in Vienna that monarchical solidarity would keep Russia in check, and allowed the Hungarians to breathe more easily. But the heir apparent's death may also have had an importance generally overlooked in analyzing the crisis of July 1914.1 Put simply, his disappearance suddenly altered the decision-making processes of the Habsburg monarchy. The elaborate consultative procedures involving the archduke, his military chancellery, and advisers were abruptly terminated. No longer did the joint ministers, the national ministers, the military hierarchy or the emperor's court officials have to consider the archduke and his strong, often peaceful, views on foreign policy. Even Franz Joseph was now spared the irritation of having to explain a decision to his insistent nephew. Sarajevo thus not only supplied the occasion for Vienna's decision for war, it helped, by drastically revising the political process, to accelerate that decision.