There is nothing particularly subtle about a coat of arms with a crest depicting “a demi-Moor proper bound in a cord.” Nearly anyone can deduce from it that the bearer of these arms was probably a figure in the black-slave trade. Deductions along those lines would be right on the mark in the case of this particular heraldic device, for it was granted in 1565 by Queen Elizabeth I to John Hawkins on the recommendation of Sir William Cecil and the Earl of Leicester. The arms commemorate the origin of the English slave trade during the first decade of Elizabeth's reign. Under closer scrutiny, they reveal a wealth of further information about late Tudor history, telling us something about the nature and direction of economic enterprise in the 1560s, the interests of some of the key personalities of the period, and the ways in which diverse elements of society and the state combined their resources for mercantile purposes. Altogether, the crest of John Hawkins constitutes a remarkable lens through which can be seen in microcosm the variety, aggressiveness, and daring which have come to characterize Elizabethan England.

During the past quarter century, a number of distinguished scholars have analyzed Elizabethan overseas enterprise, of which the Hawkins slaving voyages were an important part. Lawrence Stone was the first to ask fundamental questions about the late Tudor economy in a provocative essay published in 1949. The same year saw the appearance of James Williamson's revised biography of John Hawkins, replete with substantial new material drawn from Spanish sources.

That the state might owe its poor and unemployed a helping hand to emigrate to wherever there were jobs found common enough expression in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the 1820s and 1830s there were the conflicting schemes of Wilmot-Horton and E. G. Wakefield. Carlyle advocated in 1843 a state emigration service to provide a bridge to the colonies, and Irish troubles periodically provided a source of speculation about the usefulness of state emigration as a solution to agricultural distress. For Tories it could be a conservative measure to diminish at a stroke economic distress and the social disruption it bred, while some Liberals viewed it as a necessary rationalization of the labor market and supported it in the same spirit, and with the same arguments, as the Cheap Trains Act. Organized labor itself had had recourse on occasion to the emigration of members both as a restrictive guild practice and a militant trade dispute tactic.

The extent to which trade unions continued to favor emigration benefits after mid-century has been a subject of some dispute. There is also the question of trade union attitudes toward schemes of state emigration — distrusted by many in the early Victorian period as transportation of the poor. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate a strong continued interest in an emigration solution by many trade unions well into the 1880s, and that after mid-century much of organized labor turned from emphasis on emigration benefits provided by the union to acceptance of and agitation for a state program of emigration assistance funded by the national exchequer.

During the years from 1697 through 1699, King William III of England was engaged in a struggle with a radical Whig press and a Tory coalition in the House of Commons over the size of England's standing army in peacetime. Both sides regarded the contest as one of particular importance; for the King there was no issue during his entire reign which involved him more deeply in English domestic politics. The parliamentary debates on the matter were notably stormy. For what was at stake, just ten years after the Glorious Revolution, was the relative power of King and Parliament. For the first time Article VI of the Bill of Rights, that is, that Parliament must consent to an army in peacetime, was applied and tested. The army question has intrinsic importance but can also be seen as part of a broader struggle between King and Parliament for power. Among such questions as Irish land grants, “placemen,” foreign advisers, and the Land Bank, the standing army was the most complex and emotion-filled issue between the House of Commons and William. Although some of the political implications of the standing army controversy have been suggested, historians have not investigated the part played by William. The King's role is worth isolating for it casts fresh light on William's talents in dealing with domestic politics, illustrates the relationship between a King who, at the end of the seventeenth century, still retained power and a House of Commons which increasingly claimed power, and shows that, however disparate the strength of the two sides in the standing army controversy, a genuine contest took place.

Everyone is familiar with the story of how William the Conqueror brought feudalism to England. Despite some recent voices to the contrary, medievalists are for the most part inclined to agree that the Norman Conquest introduced the fief into a previously non-feudal land. Moreover, since feudalism did not arise in England gradually and of its own accord but instead was imposed from above by an all-powerful conqueror, it is usually described as more symmetrical — more “perfect” — than the feudalism of the Continent. One historian, reflecting the views of many others, asserted recently that in the years after 1066 “England became the most perfectly feudal kingdom in the West.”

It is well to be wary, however, of too much perfection in an institution such as feudalism. It is always possible that in identifying an institution at a particular point in time and space as “perfect” or “nearly perfect” one is being misled by the surface appearances which usually accompany decay. As institutions become less and less relevant to their societies, they are apt, for a while at least, to assume the appearance of increasing orderliness, increasing selfconscious coherence, increasing formalism. These tendencies have been noted by a number of sociologists and have by no means escaped the attention of Professor Parkinson. To determine whether they apply to the so-called model feudalism of Norman England is both hazardous and difficult, but the effort must be made. So much has been written on the question of whether any real traces of feudalism can be detected in England before the Conquest that it may prove refreshing to scrutinize critically the “ideal” feudal state of post-Conquest times, particularly if it can be shown that Anglo-Norman feudalism was not so perfect after all.

Now that the great bulk of papers relating to John Locke in the Lovelace Collection has begun to yield up its treasure, the life and character of John Locke, as well as the life and character of his work, can be seen more fully than ever before. John Locke has firmly entered into political history, as Peter Laslett's researches have demonstrated; and Locke himself has become firmly embedded in the amorphous discipline called the history of ideas, since the history of his own ideas can now readily be examined. The wealth of material relevant to Locke's work has by no means provided his ideas with greater logical consistency, for the lack of which Locke has always had his critics. In some ways, the philosophical coherence of his work presents even greater problems than it used to, since the papers leave even more ravelled ends than the published books did. But the papers have provided something which may prove even more useful in understanding Locke's thought than a logical key to his thought: that is, the spectacle of a man thinking, and thinking hard, over four decades. Locke himself comes to appear a particular illustration of his own preoccupation with process and with the philosophical ideas arising from the concept of process: the long processes of his thinking, along so many major lines, may also be seen more clearly now in their complementary relation to one another.

This paper, the heart excised from a longer study, deals with one line of Locke's thought, a line which has recently attracted serious scholarly attention, his views on language.

There was little reason to have expected Britain's international policies to be of major concern to most voters in casting their ballots in the 1964 General Election. Party disagreement over entering the European Economic Community was at least temporarily in abeyance after de Gaulle's veto. No great imperial question remained to divide Conservatives from the Labour or Liberal Parties. Membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was firmly bipartisan (or tripartisan). Moreover, British power was now so limited, in relation to the rest of the world, as to provide little basis for Englishmen to think that their nation could make important international decisions. At the same time, there were domestic economic problems about which, it was widely thought, a British government could and should do something. In short, every likelihood existed for electoral attention to be fixed almost entirely on domestic affairs. This would hardly have been unusual. Democratic elections ordinarily seem so conducted. Even if it were clearly desirable to have sharp partisan disagreement over a substantive international question, it is doubtful whether genuine alternatives often exist except perhaps for the super-powers.

It is surprising, then, to find that a question of international policy was contested in the British General Election of 1964. The question was whether Britain should continue trying to have an independent nuclear deterrent. Labour (and the Liberals) proposed that the effort be abandoned. The governing Conservative Party was committed to its continuation. These divergent party policies did not, it is true, make the deterrent issue overwhelmingly important in the electoral decision.

“The biscuit is certainly exceedingly dry; but at any rate there are no weevils in it,” Lytton Strachey wrote, praising slightly one “scientific” historian that he might more thoroughly attack another. Strachey's amusing, contorted, perceptive, and sometimes ignorant burlesques of Victorian behaviour have lost favor; but they remain, more brightly outlined and self-mocking versions of common prejudices. Certainly the belief that the “scientific” historians produced dry biscuit is still commonly held even among those who one would suppose had read them; and the belief is probably held more clearly and widely about William Stubbs than about either Mandell Creighton or S. R. Gardiner, because as an historian his name is more eminent, more people have heard of him, or more people who have heard of him know that he is a “scientific” historian from the authoritative, the “dry” period. He was born in 1825 and died in 1901.

In fact the problem with Stubbs is in quite a different direction. Stubbs is more compelling than his evidence demands and more fascinating than his subject would predict. F. W. Maitland, before he was forced by profession to that sort of reading, found Stubbs's Constitutional History “in a London club, and read it because it was interesting.” Even at his weakest and dullest Stubbs is interesting; at his strongest and most flamboyant, as in his Benedict of Peterborough and Walter of Coventry introductions in the Rolls Series and in parts of his Constitutional History, he is dazzling. The problem is not overcoming Stubbs's dullness but explaining his brilliance.

From their dismissal in November 1834 to their return to power in April 1835, the Whig Party was confronted with the problem of how to function effectively in opposition and, ultimately, return to power. This problem contained a dilemma which disquieted the aristocratic leaders of Whiggery. The party could conform to a tradition that regarded association with more “radical” groups as contrary to its principles; or it could join the Radicals and Repealers in an attempt to overthrow the new Tory Government. Such was the choice that underlay the politics of the Whigs in the winter of 1834-35.

Historians have considered the “honorable” nature of the Lichfield House Compact and its strictly political consequences. One interpretation emphasizes the Whigs' dependence upon Daniel O'Connell and the Repealers during the second Melbourne administration. Another, perhaps closer to the truth, suggests that the Repealers rather than the Whigs became the captive party. The significance of the Lichfield House Compact is distorted when its political consequences, however immediate, are emphasized. It is best understood as a commentary on the immediate past. The question to be considered is how and why the Whig Party was maneuvered into its association with Radicals and Repealers. It must be examined in terms of the party's disunity and the temporary, if propitious, ineffectiveness of spokesmen of traditional Whiggery who could proffer no alternative means to return to power.

In the course of the debate over Puritan contributions to the scientific movement it sometimes has been asserted, and even more often assumed, that the English universities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were either unsympathetic towards or even hostile to the “new philosophy,” and that scientific studies had no place within their confines. Proponents of this position acknowledge one major exception to the scientific hiatus at Oxford and Cambridge, that of the Wadham group organized by John Wilkins in the 1650s which was the precursor of the Royal Society. However, the exception itself is said to result from Puritan intervention in the universities, and the dissolution of the group to follow from the demise of the Puritan regime.

It will be the purpose of this paper to examine the state of the sciences in Oxford and Cambridge prior to, during, and after the Interregnum in order to suggest that universities had shown a continuous interest in science, that Puritan intervention did not significantly alter the pattern of scientific concerns and that the existence of the Wadham group of the 1650s does little to lend support to the notion of a connection between Puritanism and the development of science.

The evidence for science in the universities before the Puritan Revolution is necessarily incomplete and scattered as is much of our knowledge of university life in that period. It might be best to begin with the work of Mark Curtis and F. R. Johnson who have already shown that the traditional framework of studies permitted the introduction of new ideas. By 1610 Oxford men had been disputing about such topics as the Copernican thesis, the infinity of the universe, the plurality of worlds, the habitability of the moon, and the earth as a magnet in formal university exercises.

Walcott's critique raises three general issues: whether Sir Lewis Namier thought that the foremost task of an historian is the destruction of legends; whether he tried to write the whole truth about the eighteenth century; and whether anyone can properly be designated a professional historian or professional political scientist. Some of Walcott's particular criticisms can be answered in the discussion of these three issues.

The first issue is whether Namier thought that the foremost task of an historian is the destruction of legends. At the beginning of his critique, Walcott doubts it, but does not deny it. Yet at the end of his critique, he summarizes “what Namier did do” as the removal of certain misconceptions about eighteenth-century politics; these misconceptions Namier called “legends,” according to Walcott. The misconceptions consist in analyzing eighteenth century politics in nineteenth-century terms, but they are not confined to nineteenth-century historians. They are held by twentieth-century historians as well, in fact, by all historians of the ante-Namier period, as Walcott calls it. Namier shows how much contempt he has for these historians and their legends in a sentence which cannot be considered innocuous. Namier says: “… I hardly remember having come across any contemporary materials, or any book reproducing such materials, which did not contribute something to my information.” Since “contemporary” means “eighteenth-century” here, Namier says by implication that no later ante-Namier historian has contributed to his information, unless he has reproduced eighteenth-century materials.

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.

“The country towns are grown poor,” declared Hugh Boscawen, member for Tregony, to his colleagues in the House of Commons in November 1670, “the inlands grow generally poor. The trading people abroad deal only with London.” Sir Robert Howard agreed: “It was ever said by the wisest men he could meet with that the greatness of London … would be the ruin of the country.” But in 1670 the complaint was hardly new. For well over a century English men and monarchs alike had watched with an anxiety increasingly acute as London, already a giant among English towns, continued to add to her size and population. Many in the country had feared, as did Boscawen and Howard, the effects of such growth upon the rest of England, while those close by tended to be aware of the special economic, political, and social problems which the unhealthy and crowded conditions in the overgrown old city presented.

On March 12, 1564, Queen Elizabeth had issued a proclamation stating “Rules to prevent crowding, in plague ridden Westminster, close by London.” And on July 7, 1580, she proclaimed from Nonsuch Palace that

Ladies who kept private schools attended by young ladies are familiar figures in Regency and Victorian novels: ridiculous ladies, such as Miss Pinkerton, who kept a rather elegant establishment in Vanity Fair, sensible ladies like Mrs. Goddard, whose more modest school was attended by Jane Austen's Emma; scheming ladies such as Mrs. Kirkpatrick, who set her cap for Molly Gibson's father in Mrs. Gaskell's Wives and Daughters. Memorable mostly for their personal quirks, their qualities of character, these ladies all fit comfortably in the framework of the domestic drama.

The full story of the 1918 election can never be told, although its importance as a watershed is, and was at the time, undoubted. Private papers have disappeared and fire destroyed records of the Local Government Board and Home Office. An especially interesting kind of record, the expenditure of candidates, was not even collected, and no questions were raised about this until it was too late.

Churchill was among those who understood that “an election is to be fought, the result of which will profoundly affect political relationships and political issues for several years to come ….” Recent scholarship has concentrated on the divisions within the Liberal Party prior to the election, the special questions of Ireland and of National Democratic Party candidates, and “the stages” by which the drama unfolded in the autumn of 1918. But there has been no explanation of the timing: why did Lloyd George wait so long, and, having waited so long, why did he hurry into a December election, knowing the problems of voter registration and the signs of apathy and even hostility to an election? Moreover, all the discussion of why “coupons” were awarded as they were has obscured the difficulty of planning a coalition program, which was the precondition of any allocation of “coupons.”

The constraints upon Lloyd George went back to 1916. From the moment he succeeded Asquith he was “a Prime Minister without a party.” His claim to have 136 Liberal supporters in the Commons was never substantiated by a name list or verified in the division lobbies.

The compensation of royal officials has been the subject of increasing scrutiny in recent years as historians turn to the study of the court and royal office to discover the realities of power in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. H. R. Trevor-Roper, who sees the growth of the court as the hallmark of the Renaissance state, has declared that royal service was so lucrative that to many persons holding office spelled the difference between penury and financial success. More detailed studies do not completely bear out his contention. Although A. J. Slavin and others have shown how some highly placed officials were able to enhance their financial position dramatically, G. E. Aylmer and Lawrence Stone demonstrated that such cases of spectacular success were exceptional and that most royal servants received only modest compensation for their labors. Furthermore, Wallace MacCaffrey has pointed out that the crown had at its disposal astonishingly few offices whose salaries might justify calling the men who held them a financial elite. The weight of this evidence has not abated the controversy, however. Instead, the debate has shifted from the actual salary to the total amount the official could make his office yield in tips, fees, and other perquisites, both legal and illegal. Trevor-Roper maintains that these extra benefits made royal service very lucrative, while the others question the extent of such additional enrichment, claiming that few grew wealthy in the king's service.