On Tuesday September 15th, 1931, at 8.00 a.m. most of the stokers of the forenoon watch in the battleship HMS Valiant, under orders to sail from Invergordon for exercises in the North Sea, refused duty and prevented the ship from sailing. In the battleships Rodney and Nelson and the battle-cruiser Hood, all due to follow Valiant out to sea, the crews also refused to turn to. By 9.31 a.m. the admiral commanding the Atlantic Fleet had cancelled the exercises and recalled to Cromarty Firth those ships already at sea. What was to become known as the Invergordon Mutiny had begun. In reality it was a passive protest over recently announced cuts in pay. At various times in the course of the next thirty-six hours large numbers of the 12,000 men in the twelve capital ships at Invergordon joined in the action and refused orders.

Historians of Chartism face a dilemma. On the one hand, they are obliged to interpret this national political movement on the national level, to attempt to explain why millions of British working men and women were engaged in organized political activity over several decades. But, on the other hand, many of the richest sources on Chartism are found on the local level. Older histories of the movement treated Chartism from a national perspective, but failed to take note of many of its complexities. More recently, a good deal of local research has rigorously tested our assumptions about Chartism, but the task of carefully analyzing the movement on the national level still remains.

Recent research on poverty in Tudor-Stuart England has produced no surprises, no controversies. The scene has been one of quiet industriousness. Yet surely a stock-taking from time to time serves a useful purpose in any area of historical investigation. It clarifies. It offers an understanding of the current state of the question. It asks, what questions are now being posed? What interpretations are being advanced? What appears to be the most promising of the current areas of inquiry? This essay is a selective review of the fruits of recent research on the three questions which have particularly interested students of poverty in Tudor-Stuart England. Those questions are: 1) how were the poor defined?, 2) what was public policy toward them?, and 3) how did Englishmen themselves understand the problem of poverty?