That was how the morning passed.

In the evening came the party. The young actress appeared and was introduced to Countess Judith.

But before this introduction took place, there was a turn of events which threatened to jeopardize, not the gathering itself, but certainly its prevailing mood.

The invitations had been for nine o’clock. The old count was awaiting the first guests, especially Judith’s, when Egon appeared in the grand festive hall with two friends, Counts Pejevic and Coronini. Like Egon they were adjutants to the archduke. Egon went up to his uncle, visibly perturbed. The latter greeted the gentlemen with his characteristic courtesy, but quickly realized from their demeanor that something must have happened.

“What is it, Egon?”

“Gablenz …” He stopped short.

“Out with it. I can guess.”

“Shot himself. We just received the telegram. I didn't want you to be surprised, with your guests around you.”

The two young counts confirmed this news.

This brief conversation took place in a small niche formed by laurels and palms.

The old count made no reply, only steadying himself on a marble table which stood next to some chairs and then gestured the gentlemen to be seated. After that he took a seat himself, twirling his white beard, staring ahead, silent. It was clear that he was absorbed in his own thoughts and had momentarily forgotten his visitors.

“You were fond of him.” It was Egon, beginning to feel embarrassed by this situation, who finally spoke.

Writing, through his secretary, from the comfort of his country retreat at Woodstock, Charles I gave instruction to the earl of Danby on 3 September 1635 about a remarkable rock in rural Oxfordshire.

Here was the king extending protection to a feature of the landscape, and privilege to a subject who wished to develop it into a major visitor attraction. Enstone, Oxfordshire, was less than eight miles from Woodstock, well within the orbit of royal recreations, and King Charles himself had ‘viewed the place’, and thought it fit to be ‘preserved’. Though the Enstone rock was a ‘natural curiosity’, a ‘rarity of nature’, it was not remarkable enough to be enjoyed without improvement. Thomas Bushell had begun that improvement by ‘discovering’ the rock and drawing it to royal attention, and now he had licence for its improvement with ‘groves, walks, fishponds, gardens, and waterworks’.

Introduction

Existing studies of U.S.–Spanish relations in the years of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1936) have been unduly influenced by two later events: the Cold War and the Spanish Civil War. The prevailing narrative is that the eyes of administration officials in Washington were tainted by an excessive zeal, leading them to see Communist agents where there were only leftist reformists. In turn, these suspicions paved the way for the policy of neutrality, parallel to European non-intervention, which the United States practised after 1936. This interpretation is, to a degree, a somewhat ahistorical outlook, because both American and Spanish decision-makers were totally ignorant of events that lay only in the future. In fact, it is impossible to separate the Spanish policy of the Great Powers from the situation then existing in Europe. As Scott Ramsay has recently stated with respect to the United Kingdom:

By considering Foreign Office perceptions of political developments in Spain between 1931 and 1936, British responses to the outbreak of the civil war came into focus not as an ideologically-driven attempt to facilitate the overthrow of the Republic, but as responses to what the British government perceived as a major threat to its foreign policy objectives.

There is ample evidence to say something of the same kind about the United States. The uncertainties that arose in official U.S. circles when the new regime was proclaimed in April 1931 soon vanished.

As described in volume 3, pp. lxxxvii–lxxxix, from its beginnings in 1922, the BBC created a new national experience of the major occasions of special worship, in two senses. First, people throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland could now listen to or, later, watch, and, if they wished, participate in the same services – both the outside broadcasts of cathedral and church services, and the studio services and religious talks organized by the BBC's Religious Broadcasting Department. Second, the BBC broadcasts were ecumenical in character, and contributed to the wider ecumenism among British churches. While relative size, effective leadership in British religion, and the nature of the national and royal services meant that the Church of England had a special prominence, the Religious Broadcasting Department, itself established on representative principles, sought a balanced representation of the main churches in the selection of the services and clergy for its broadcasts.1 From 1935 to 1943, the studio services were usually conducted jointly by leading members of the Church of England, the free church councils and the Church of Scotland. The Roman catholic church, which until 1964 prohibited joint prayers with protestants, was represented by a separate talk or service. For some occasions, regional services were broadcast on channels which served Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, led by ministers of their main churches. The broadcast services and talks had very large audiences, especially for royal events and for national days of prayer during and at the end of the Second World War. As is noted in commentaries in volume 3, some services were relayed to audiences in the empire and commonwealth, and in other nations.

This article examines the development and use of urban soldiers in warfare in medieval England with a focus on military efficacy and strategic value. Urban soldiers most often served as supplements to royal forces, but they also gave the king an option in raising troops that circumvented the normal reliance on either fickle noble retainers or expensive stipendiary soldiers, especially as towns more often than not supported the king during warfare. What is demonstrated is that while urban soldiers were used frequently during this period, the period after the Norman Conquest saw an atrophying of the mechanisms designed to harness the military power of towns. This does not truly begin to change on a practical level until the end of the twelfth century. By the end of the thirteenth century English kings were turning to urban soldiers more and more as part of a general move towards an increasingly professionalized army and by the dawn of the fourteenth century urban soldiers were playing larger and larger roles in battle. As will be demonstrated, by the end of the period under examination urban soldiers will increasingly play larger and larger roles in military forces until the distinction itself becomes somewhat anachronistic.

This article examines the use of urban soldiers in medieval English warfare, and builds on contributions on the role of London in medieval warfare, most notably Daniel Gerrard's “‘A Large Population, Famous for their Military Qualities’: Londoners at War, c. 1000–1200” and John McEwan's “London's Militia in the Thirteenth Century.”