King Henry I “created men,” the novi homines of the chronicles. He also sustained, supported, and rewarded the “old men,” those men, or their descendants, who had held substantial estates in Normandy or in England prior to 1100. The “old men” who remained prominent in the reign of Henry I, however, were those willing to accept his authority, to lay down anarchical broadswords and seek peace through their loyalty to a nascent idea of the Crown, an Anglo-Norman regnum personified in the King. Loyalty was the stern arbiter, and Henry's feudal justice could be deaf to the entreaties of both family members and friends. While military organization was essential to peace and lawful order in Anglo-Norman society, the Conquest was past and soldierly virtue alone was not sufficient; Henry's kingly task was to mold the energies of his barons into administrative and judicial talents, and to cast those talents into a coherent framework of government. The paternal inheritance, as he viewed it, was an Anglo-Norman polity, its ruling class a nobility with cross-channel relationships in estates and blood ties. Whether or not the link with Normandy was deleterious, it was real to the King and his contemporaries, at the heart of the problems of the reign.

Henry drew upon his nobility for the work of governing, but “new men” also rose to prominence. The degree of attention given to the “new men” has created a congregate conception for assessments of the reign.

“A landmark in the historical landscape” — The Economist; “A major contribution … an impressive achievement, which must in future put all historians in his debt” — The Listener; “A remarkable achievement … an outstanding study of a very real and great value” — History; “A mammoth and marvellous book” — American Historical Review; “Immense value” — English Historical Review; “A model” — Journal of Economic History; “A major historical contribution … a magisterial and seminal work” — Journal of Modern History; “A brilliant and original contribution” — New York Review of Books; “Social history at its absolute best” — Past and Present.

Such was the chorus of critical encomium that greeted the publication of Lawrence Stone's Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641. Despite the chorus Stone could hardly have helped being disappointed at the actual reviews. One or two were almost as fatuous as they were brief. Others, sensible within their limits, were still too short. This seems to have been the fault of editors, so intimidated by the pejorative sense of the term “discrimination” that they refuse to discriminate between a work worth more than twenty pages and one worth less than twenty words, performing their editorial duties in the matter of book reviews with a sort of timorous and lunatic egalitarianism. Moreover, in considering Stone's work, many of the reviewers hastily plunged into what has come to be called “the gentry controversy” or “the storm over the gentry,” and some became almost totally immersed in it.

George Yule's “Independents and Revolutionaries” suggests that in many respects he and I are not so far apart. We agree that a “rigid two-party view” of Interregnum politics is a mistake, that not all members of the Rump were political Independents, that “Independent” was not commonly used as a political term after 1648, and that the clue to the events of 1648-49, the climax of the Puritan Revolution, lies in the existence of a group of genuine radicals who can and ought to be identified. He also seems to agree in one place that the criticisms of his statistical methods in The Independents in the English Civil War which I advanced in “The Independents Reconsidered” are justified, though in another he argues that the table in The Independents enables the reader to surmount these difficulties. This being so, if a technical dispute over methodology was all that remained between us, his latest article might well be left unchallenged. It contains, however, a number of assumptions about seventeenth-century religion and politics which are either unfounded or need serious qualification, and on which a few further comments are necessary.

First, as to method. It is true that the table referred to enables the reader to obtain Yule's estimates of the total numbers in various groups, such as (a) “Fled to Army, 1647,” (b) purged, 1648, and (c) Rumper, and of how these break down by social position and religious affiliation. But nowhere is there any entry for all of Yule's allegedly Independent M.P.s and of the breakdown for these, nor is there any way of obtaining it from the table.

Who indeed can say, in answer to Sir Thomas Browne's searching question, “whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable men forgot”? Even though the making of books promises to leave no person “forgot,” the question still abides. More than that, it accents a paradox: under the spell of behavioral science the historian wrestles with vast impersonal forces and reduces personalities to a footnote, yet biography flourishes as never before. Whether the harvest reflects academic search for topics, popular interest, or plain conviction that first and last history is about people, their thoughts, their deeds, and their influence, or, for that matter, all three, some aspiring Ph.D. may decide. Here it is enough to consider another facet of Sir Thomas's inquiry. Puzzling in itself, that question becomes even more troubling when the historian is confronted with a man whose legacy does not put him in the calendar of great men, yet whose career warrants far more attention than that given to paltry politicians, incompetent generals, and notorious whores, and indeed may take precedence over that of more highly rated contemporaries in probing the intellectual milieu. James Anderson is such a man.

The notice of his death on October 15, 1808, means little except to the initiate: “At Westham, Essex, James Anderson, LL.D of Mounie in the county of Aberdeen. He was the author of several works on Agriculture, Political Economy, and other subjects of general interest.” So concise a notice scarcely did justice to its subject, and before long magazines repaired the defect, one adding a “faithful portrait of the learned and ingenious Dr. Anderson.”

Siam's struggle for survival against imperialism reached its nadir in the crisis of 1893. The beginning of its emergence from danger is generally marked by the Anglo-French guarantee of the integrity of the Menam basin in 1896. A number of questions remain unanswered regarding these critical three years. What was the Siamese role in the precipitation of the crisis and the formulation of the Menam guarantee? Was there a meaningful change in Great Power policy which relieved Siam from its extreme danger and brought it apparent safety? British policy lay very much at the crux of Siam's survival. This study concentrates on the impact of British diplomacy and, particularly, on the conduct of the two principal British Foreign Secretaries, Lord Salisbury and Lord Rosebery, during the crisis and the creation of the Menam guarantee. British endeavors to limit French expansion at Siam's expense significantly reveal the likenesses and differences between the diplomacy of imperialism of Lord Salisbury's Conservative Governments and the policies of the Liberal regimes of W. E. Gladstone and Rosebery.

Lord Salisbury fretted that the diplomatic need for secrecy regarding his maneuvers to achieve the Menam guarantee deprived him of acclaim for a strategic victory over France. “In Siam,” from 1893 to 1895, he wrote privately, “we found France in full process of absorbing the country.” France had taken much territory by a successful war in 1893, and “Rosebery had been unable to prevent her.” Because Britain had “no treaty rights whatever to interfere in behalf of Siam,” it would have been impossible to have “induced the English nation to go to war” over Siamese affairs.

It has been noticed by various observers that in the election campaign of 1918, which focused on the issue of “reparations” versus “indemnities,” the debate was dominated not by discussions of the practical issues of international relations, national interests, or economic possibilities, but rather by abstract moral arguments about “justice” — a “just peace” and a “just punishment” for Germany. It has not been noticed, however, that these arguments about justice were very largely carried over into international politics from the sphere of domestic criminal law, to such an extent that positions expressed vis-à-vis the Prison Acts of 1908 foreshadowed the positions expressed in foreign affairs in 1918.

When, only three days after the Armistice, a parliamentary election was announced for December 14, there was little expectation that the terms of the treaty would be part of the electoral battle. It quickly became apparent, however, that despite the pre-Armistice agreement limiting German responsibility to reparations for damage done to Belgium and to the civilian population of Allied countries, there was a widespread public desire to force Germany to pay an indemnity for the entire cost of the war. Although Labour and the Asquithian Liberals refused to abandon their commitment to “reparations but no indemnity,” the Coalition leadership succumbed, though hesitantly, to popular pressure. Despite the private convictions of both David Lloyd George and Bonar Law that an indemnity would be unwise and harmful, the Coalition committed itself, before the campaign closed, to demanding the “entire cost of the War.”

A confident and victorious David Lloyd George entered Central Hall, Westminster, on the morning of November 16, 1918. Five days earlier the Germans had agreed to an Armistice, and the “Welsh Wizard” was acclaimed by his countrymen as the architect of victory. His political coalition, formed in the dark days of December 1916, had successfully prosecuted the war; now he called together political elements of that coalition to continue in peace. There were Conservatives, Liberals, a few Labour men, and others who agreed that a peacetime coalition was best for Britain and that Lloyd George should continue as its leader. These men gathered to hear the Prime Minister announce an election for the second week of December. It was his intention, he told them, to present a unified front to the nation. He wanted the best men of each party on his side.

But the Prime Minister erred, for he found a party of veterans in the election.