I propose in the present article to mention the additions which have been made during recent years to our knowledge of the medieval, Turkish and modern periods of Greek history, especially by the Greeks themselves. In the fifth edition of Paparregopoulos' standard History of the Greek Nation, edited and continued by Professor P. Karolides, we have an account of the whole history of the Greeks from prehistoric times down to the annexation of Thessaly and Arta in 1881. The editor, who sat in the Turkish parliament and is particularly strong in all that regards the Moslem world, has, by large additions to the text and by footnotes, brought the classic masterpiece of his author up to date, while for the first time this work is illustrated and indexed. In the general field of medieval Greek history the Annual of the Society of Byzantine Studies, which first appeared in 1924, has published a number of articles by Greek specialists, while the Byzantinisch-Neugriechische Jahrbücher of Professor Nikos A. Bees, started at Berlin in 1920, has been published since 1926 in Athens, where a similar periodical, Helleniká, edited by Professors Amantos and Kougeas, is announced. The local medieval and modern history of Epeiros is being collected in the Epeirote Chronicles, of which two volumes and a biographical supplement have appeared; that of Thrace in the similar periodical, Thrakiká, of which one complete volume has been issued. Dr Franz Dölger has produced two instalments of the Corpus der griechischen Urkunden des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit, planned by Krumbacher, and giving German summaries of documents from 565 to 1204, and Beiträge zur Geschichte der byzantinischen Finanzverwaltung besonders des 10. und 11. Fahrhunderts. Messrs A. E. R. Boak and James E. Dunlap have contributed Two Studies in Later Roman and Byzantine Administration on “The Master of the Offices” and “The Office of the Grand Chamberlain” respectively to The University of Michigan Studies, Humanistic Series (vol. XIV, New York, 1924).

The final phase of Venizelism (1928–1933) has traditionally been considered as a period of considerable foreign policy accomplishments (e.g. friendship treaties with Italy, Yugoslavia and Turkey). Yet despite the attention which has been paid to these agreements, the period was clearly marked by the government's drive towards internal infrastructural changes via its commitment to extensive public works programmes. This effort necessitated a huge influx of capital from abroad; in fact, in the period between 1924 and 1931 more money entered the country than at any time since 1875–90. In this context, Britain's influential role was further enhanced as a result of the indispensability of the London credit market, and her financial presence in Greece was to set the tone and pace of Anglo-Greek relations. Probably no institution reflected this uneven relation more accurately than the International Financial Commission (I.F.C).

The signing of the Lateran Pacts between Mussolini and Pius XI not only changed the status of the Vatican, it also transformed its financial position overnight. After decades of financial difficulty, the Vatican acquired a substantial capital endowment, the investment of which the pope entrusted to Bernardino Nogara. But as the diary of Nogara reveals, as a result of the pope's ambitious spending plans, the lack of a proper system of financial control in the Vatican, and, above all, the impact of the Wall Street crash, within less than two years the Vatican was losing money hand over fist. This article explains how Nogara reconstructed the finances of the Vatican in the wake of this disaster, and explores the links between the Vatican's first experience of playing the international capital markets and the pope's notions of social and economic ethics.

In 1581 Antoinette de La Marck, the devout duchesse de Montmorency made a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin at Montserrat in Catalonia. The next year her husband Henri de Montmorency, the governor of Languedoc, corresponded with the viceroy of Catalonia about the problem of banditry which was rife on both sides of the frontier. In 1583, Montmorency's servant carried letters to Charles Emmanuel, duke of Savoy, hidden in the soles of his shoes. During the festivities for the wedding of Charles Emmanuel to the infanta Catalina in 1585, Giuseppe Lercaro, Montmorency's Genoese-born intendant desfinances, spent some ten days in Barcelona concealed in the lodgings of Savoy's ambassador and had several clandestine interviews with both the duke and his new father-in-law Philip II. In 1588 Philip offered 100,000 francs towards the dowry of Montmorency's daughter Charlotte, provided that she married the son of the due de Guise and thus reconciled the two families whose rivalry had dominated the French political scene since the 1540s. These incidents, unremarkable as they may individually appear, formed part of the negotiations between Henri due de Montmorency and Philip II which, in notable contrast to those of the Spanish king with the Guise family, have been little studied by historians. Consequently, Montmorency's reputation now is generally that of a politique and patriot. This paper offers a rather different appraisal of him.

Interpretations that solely emphasize either continuity or controversy are found wanting. Historians still question how the English became Protestant, what sort of Protestants they were, and why a civil war dominated by religion occurred over a hundred years after the initial Reformation crisis. They utilize many approaches: from above and below, and with fresh perspectives, from within and without. Yet the precise nature of the relationship of the Reformation, the civil war, the interregnum and the Restoration settlement remains controversial. This review of recent Reformation historiography largely validates the current consensus of a balance of continuity and change, pressure for further reform and begrudging conformity. Yet ultimately it argues that continuity must form the foundation for any interpretation of the Reformation, for controversial or dramatic alterations to the status quo only made sense to contemporaries in the context of what had come before. Challenging ideas, like challenging individuals, did not exist in a vacuum devoid of historical context. The practical limits of possibility, constrained largely by the established norms and procedures, shaped the course of English Reformation. As such, practicality seems a unifying and central theme for current and future investigations of England's long Reformation.

In a whimsical scene of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, the pope and the Cardinal of Lorraine enter the banquet hall only to have an invisible Faustus snatch away their dinners and, in a truly spectacular exit, scatter the banquet hall with fireworks.1 The Cardinal of Lorraine has been surrounded by fireworks for four hundred years. This is an effort to give him some peace at last.

The concern here is a symposium of quite another sort, the Colloquy of Poissy. Poissy, the last great Colloquy of the Reformation, was an attempt at religious reconciliation of Calvinist and Catholic within the framework of the Gallican Church.

The field of Anglo-Irish administrative history, comprehensively surveyed by Dr R. B. McDowell, has been subjected to little detailed analysis. This article attempts to fill the gap in one important respect. It sets out to examine the role of the Irish Board of Works during the famine years. In 1846–7, at a time of grave national crisis, the Board of Works tackled the near-impossible task of providing public works for the relief of almost every family in Ireland. Despite the Treasury's efforts to control abuses, the Board of Works proved unequal to the task, and had to be replaced as the main tool of government policy.

In spite of occasional protests Lord Beaverbrook's narrative of British domestic politics during the first world war seems to retain the authority of a primary source. This is particularly true of the passages in Politicians and the war, 1914–1916 which cover the events in which he, then Sir Max Aitken, claimed to have taken an influential part. Mr A. J. P. Taylor in his appraisal of Beaverbrook's second volume covering the fall of Asquith in 1916 declares: ‘ It provides essential testimony for events during a great political crisis — perhaps the most detailed account of such a crisis ever written from the inside... The narrative is carried along by rare zest and wit, yet with the detached impartiality of the true scholar. ‘ Beaverbrook's apparent advantages might well seem conclusive. He was a contemporary agent as well as observer, summed up in his jaunty ‘ I was there!’. He was supposed to have enjoyed the complete confidence of Bonar Law, to have run a newspaper and to have kept a diary. An M.P. and virtual parliamentary private secretary to Bonar Law, whose rise to the Commons party leadership he appeared to have engineered, Aitken could be presumed to be politically on the ‘inside’. A tycoon of Canadian business ‘mergers’ and a self-made millionaire at a young age, he was esteemed by Law to be one of the cleverest men he knew.

The dense marginal annotation made by freethinker, John Toland (1670–1722) and republican author and parliamentarian, Sir Robert Molesworth (1656–1725) on a copy of Martin Martin's Western Islands (1716) is an exceptional source for exposing the relationship between elite sociability and intellectual conversation. As an example of collaborative serial reading the case-study is unique, and allows a number of historical enquiries. Contextualizing Toland's and Molesworth's collaborative reading of the Royal Society sponsored work with the political and anticlerical projects both men pursued, the article argues that the surviving annotations are emblematic of the erudite, but still politically engaged, republic of letters of the period. Establishing the polemical engagement with clerical discourses about superstition, credulity, and ‘natural’ knowledge, by examining the literary, intellectual, and personal rhetoric at work in the marginalia, the article explores a case-study of cultural and intellectual debate at work in the early English Enlightenment.

The ripening of the Anglo-American friendship in the first half of the nineteenth century was truly an evolutionary process, but most observers agree that in the diplomatic sphere the significant aspects of that early rapprochement took place about the time of the Webster–Ashburton agreement. One previously unknown factor involved in this development centred on British and American cooperation in the Belgian indemnification dispute in the late thirties and forties. This struggle by several major powers aimed at receiving indemnities from the newly created state for property damages incurred during the Belgian revolution of 1830 in Antwerp.

Thomas Cranmer's register is important in shedding valuable shafts of light on the nature of the episcopal office in Tudor England. Despite the government's break with Rome in the 1530s, much of the archbishop's routine administration continued unaltered. Nonetheless, there were profound changes in Cranmer's role. Royal commissions, proclamations, injunctions, letters missive and acts of parliament all served to modify Cranmer's position as principal minister of the king's spiritual estate. When the crown issued a commission to the archbishop for the exercise of his jurisdiction, the prelate's position as a royal official was clear for all to see. It is sure, however, that the impact of Christian humanism and reformed theology also did much to shape Cranmer's work. The enforcement of the English Litany and, most notably, of the 42 Articles reveal the changing nature of the episcopal office at this time. In contrast to received orthodoxy, it is now clear that the bishops mounted a widespread campaign at the end of Edward VI's brief reign to secure use of this reformed formulary. There can be little doubt that Thomas Cranmer's years at Canterbury were of great significance in reshaping the role of the episcopate in early modern England.