An association between the prince of Wales and various opposition leaders is a recurrent feature of eighteenth-century politics. A politically active prince found little difficulty in securing a following among the politicians of the day; the glittering prospects of the ‘reversionary’ interest1 were an obvious lure, and an obvious basis for such a connexion. But this is not a complete explanation. The prince had also a considerable degree of patronage at his disposal, and could add a more immediate and concrete reality to promises for the future. A study of this patronage, its extent and its disposal, and more particularly the way in which it was exercised by Frederick, ‘Poor Fred’, throws much light on the connexion between the prince and his political friends, and contributes to an understanding of the place of Leicester House in the politics of the early eighteenth century.

The possibility of Viscount Grey's return to active political life after his resignation from the Foreign Office in 1916 is one which historians have treated with understandable scepticism. Grey's well-documented distaste for political intrigue, his love of things pastoral and aesthetic, his failing health in general and eyesight in particular and hispatent joy at being released from office in 1916 lend force to the thoughtthat he was never likely to be brought back to the world of politics. ‘[H]e was always too blind and often too ill to lead a party, or to aspire to office,’ his friend and biographer G. M. Trevelyan wrote a few years after Grey's death; and more recendy Professor Robbins, whilst he concedes that there was a political dimension within Grey's make-up which Trevelyan was wont to ignore, likewise examines the period after 1916 rather dismissively. One consequence of this view of Grey's political biography has been the neglect of what has been seen to be an attempt on the part of some Liberals to remove Asquith from the leadership of the Liberal party in 1921 and to substitute Grey. The assumption has been that because Grey personally was likely to have been a poor conspirator, conspiracies involving him must have been unpromising or trivial. It is, on the contrary, the point of this article to suggest that the Grey conspiracy of 1921 should be seen as a significant development in the three-party situation which characterized post-war politics; and to argue that the conspiracy had little to do with Grey and a great deal to do with other politicians, of diverse background, party affiliation, position and ambition, who were looking for a new way to obtain some purchase on the politics of the centre.

Ever since Lucien Febvre, in his classic essay on the origins of the French Reformation, characterized the sixteenth century as ‘ a long period of magnificent religious anarchy’, the nature of this ‘anarchy’ has remained somewhat puzzling. The question posed by Febvre - if Calvinist churches were only organized in the late 1550s, who were the protestants before this date?-retains all its interest while inevitably raising other problems. Can one make sense of this anarchy? When, if at any time in the sixteenth century, did it come to an end? Professor Mandrou has recently situated the period of anarchy between the first French manifestations of the Lutheran revolt in the early 1520s and the affair of the placards in 1534, with Calvinism bringing order to the general confusion between 1536 and 1540. But it is now established that Antoine Marcourt's placards, though important in the popular and official reactions they provoked, did not reveal protestant organization or doctrinal unity. Nor was Calvinism in a position to impose such uniformity until a much later date if at all. The rigours of Calvinist theology may have represented the logical culmination for the spiritual odyssey of a Farel or a de Bèze, but this was not necessarily so for the lower clergymen, artisans and even peasants who were attracted by one aspect or another of reformed ideas. Febvre pointed out the confusion of contemporaries, most of whom had no idea precisely what the different varieties of protestantism were: a confusion perhaps best shown in Florimond de Raemond's characterization of Lefèvre d'Étaples, Farel and Roussel as ‘Lutheran Zwinglians’. If the evangelical humanist intellectuals of the Meaux group caused such incomprehension, then how much more bewildering must have been the unsystematic beliefs and sceptical criticisms of the menu peuple, especially before the literate among them had the opportunity to read the French edition of Calvin's Institutes in 1542.

I should first thank Professor Woolrych for his attention to my book, and also for his generous conduct in anticipating debate over his views. In particular I am grateful for his correction of a historical point on which my book proves in error: the readmission of conformist members in the first weeks of the Rump Parliament did not much extend to secluded members, and thus the backsliding of the revolutionaries after Pride's Purge and the king's trial may have been less troubling to Milton than I supposed. On this point I had mistaken Underdown and Worden's description of the revolutionaries' compromise, and had partially misunderstood their conclusion that ‘the damage to the revolutionary cause…had already been done by the end of February’. Here Woolrych now shows me wrong. But although this changes the balance it does not change the substance of my argument about Milton's stern note in the History. For as Woolrych renews the issue of the dating of the Digression from Milton's History, he again misreads that text and its context in the larger work. He believes it an expression of despair, and thinks such despair on Milton's part could only be occasioned by the national apostasy at the Restoration. But Milton, both in the contemporary Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) as well as in later tracts, proves much less sanguine about English hopes than even the passages Woolrych cites will support. The Presbyterians, whom the Tenure attacks in the same terms as the Digression, were not the only problem faced by the ‘uprighter sort’ of magistrates and those ‘people, though in number less by many, in whom faction least hath prevaild above the Law of nature and right reason’.

Between June 1940 and September 1942 the French colony of Madagascar was a part of the Vichy French empire and a life-line for supplies to French Indo-China. Governor Paul Annet's island administration assumed a critical importance to Britain and South Africa after the fall of Singapore in February 1942. Conscious of the precedent of Vichy's two-fold capitulation to Japanese demands upon Indo-China in August 1940 and July 1941, both the British and the American governments feared that Annet might follow suit, conceding to Japan the use of Madagascar's principal ports and air bases. This threat led to the invasion of Madagascar by British empire forces. The attack began in May 1942 and was completed by October. Much to General Charles de Gaulle's lasting annoyance, the Free French movement played no part in these operations, although the British installed a Free French administration at Tananarive in December. This article examines the Madagascar invasion in the light of this exclusion of the Free French. It measures the strategic importance of the island against the political damage caused to Anglo-Free French relations by the British rebuttal of de Gaulle. It is argued that the British government utilized the Madagascar takeover as a means to keep the French national committee in check, disregarding Free French proposals as a result. Albeit temporary, this generated political confusion within Madagascar itself.

This article gives chronology, nuance, and context to an analysis of how early socialist attitudes to religion changed. It asks why socialists argued with increasing fervour between the early 1830s and 1848 that social reform had to be rooted in spiritual as well as moral values. Two of the largest groups, the Icarians and the Fourierists, moved from a rational deism to Christianity. Both were driven by the need to defend themselves from accusations of immorality levelled against Fourier and the Saint-Simonians because of their rejection of monogamous marriage. The Fourierists, strongly influenced by their dominant female members, transformed Fourier's diety into a Christian God. Cabet, under pressure of ‘moral outrage’ from his critics, did likewise and found that this corresponded to the experiences of the Icarians in their artisan organizations. The religion of the early socialists was a democratic and a pragmatic morality, derived from artisan corporations, and seen as a vital base for fraternal association which was their solution to the ills of society.

At the beginning of De jure naturae et gentium (1672), Samuel von Pufendorf proposed a radical dichotomy between nature and morality. He was followed down this arid path by his great admirer John Locke. This article begins by exploring their descriptions of this dichotomy, examining the ways in which human animals were supposed to haul themselves out of the push and pull of the mechanistic world in order to become free moral agents. The article then argues that bubbling up from within this principal account of morality is an alternative account according to which virtue seems to infuse nature, thereby blurring the lines between obligation and motivation, and refiguring the character of moral and political agency. In uncovering this refiguration, I highlight the importance of Aristotelianism and Stoicism for Pufendorf and Locke, suggest continuities rather than breaks between the natural lawyers of the seventeenth century and the theorists of moral sentiment of the next, and gesture towards a hitherto underappreciated discourse in early modern thought: the normativity of nature.

This article reconsiders the significance of an episode of monstrous birth in Fisherton Anger, Wiltshire, in 1664. Tracing the influence of natural philosophical, spiritual, and providential impulses in extant accounts of the Fisherton birth, it suggests that in order wholly to comprehend this material it is necessary to move beyond debates about the ‘rise of science’. It therefore explores the contemporary claims made about the Fisherton monster against the backdrop of the aftermath of the Civil Wars and Interregnum, suggesting that the rampant politicization of monstrosity after the outbreak of war in 1642 provides the key to understanding the emphasis on different kinds of natural, spiritual, and moral truth in accounts of physiological abnormality after 1660. A case-study of early Restoration efforts to negotiate the instability of past events, this article further argues that the impulse to forget which underpinned the Indemnity and Oblivion Act (1660) found different expression elsewhere in the form of censorship and beyond the political sphere in the field of natural philosophy. Considered in light of this early Restoration culture of amnesia, the Fisherton monster embodies a series of attempts to forget the passions of a turbulent political past.

Luther's early statements, such as that belief is a ‘free work’ and must not be coerced, gained crucial relevance in the juridical debates about the meaning of the Augsburg Peace of Religion in the empire. Christoph Besold was among those transforming the reformers' message into a legal claim of subjects against their governments, based on an alleged natural right to believe what one wants. He thus transferred Luther's claim based on the reformer's trust in the work of the divine word into a juridical claim for subjects against their civil and ecclesiastical magistrates. Besold's argument is thus an example of the important changes in political and religious thought developing within the genre of the German politica during the first half of the seventeenth century.

J. W. Croker's papers are a valuable and rare source concerning British government patronage of the first half of the nineteenth century. They show us a system that was burdensome for the participants, made more acceptable since it was an extension of gentlemanly civility. The papers also show that patronage, like government generally, was able somewhat to reform itself. True, in his particular sphere as patron – as first secretary to the Admiralty (1809–30) – Croker favoured his relatives, but appointed only those he thought fit, and supervised and controlled their work in a way not feasible outside a family. Nepotism could mean efficiency. It created a Croker family circle within the Admiralty that lasted until the 1860s. Croker continued to have influence as a patron until he died in 1857. He was aided by his network of friendships, but also there was the obligation felt by those in power – of whatever party – to Croker's long years of Admiralty service. Political links had their importance, but is is argued that the three factors of family, friendship, and service were predominant. His career as patron illustrates a vital stage between ‘old corruption’ and competitive entry to the civil service.

In the aftermath of the First World War, two schools of divergent thought emerged among Whitehall's Middle East policy-makers. One, propounded by T. E. Lawrence, found support in the Foreign Office, where many favoured Arab national ideals and backed the Hashemite family for rulership positions in the region. The other, epitomized by Arnold Wilson, the civil commissioner for Iraq, was thought to reflect the India Office view that direct British rule in Iraq was essential and that Hashemite pretensions should be opposed. In this article, the author shows that the lines separating the India and Foreign Offices were not so clearly drawn. Many senior officials in the India Office were disturbed by Wilson's imperial programme for Iraq and some were prepared to support Hashemite aspirations. But Lawrence's 1920 campaign for Hashemite rule and his hyperbolic press attacks on Wilson's policies had the paradoxical effect of moving the India Office to defend Wilson and to revert to their anti-Hashemite stance. The article concludes with an analysis of the reasons behind the triumph of the Lawrentian over the Wilsonian schools at the end of 1920, when Wilson was removed from Iraq and Middle East policy-making was consolidated in the Colonial Office.

Most of the existing literature on the ‘Repeal Year’ agitation in Ireland explains the rise in popularity of the 1842–3 campaign for repeal of the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland in political and religious terms. This article argues that, in addition, the British government's economic policy of reducing tariffs in 1842 damaged Ireland's agricultural economy and increased popular support for the Repeal movement. Using both qualitative and quantitative analysis, this article shows that the tariff reductions and import relaxations of the 1842 budget had an immediate negative impact on Irish real incomes by reducing agricultural prices. A negative relationship between these prices and the Repeal rent, together with the economic rhetoric of Repeal in favour of protection, indicate a link between the economic downturn and the rise in the popularity of Repeal. This article concludes that Peel's trade policy changes of 1842 should therefore be added to the traditional religious and political explanations as a cause behind the sudden surge in popularity of the Repeal movement between 1842 and 1843.

Historical and literary studies of the history of the book and of reading habits in modern Anglo-American history tend to approach their subject either from the perspective of readers and publishers or from that of authors. The former works constitute a nascent historiography, addressing the problem of how the material book was used to create and replicate culture; the latter studies are more concerned with how literary authors used texts to influence and negotiate culture. This article critically reviews the two bodies of scholarship and identifies the importance of copyright and reprinting; it comments on the value of transnational or other broad studies as opposed to specific investigations of a particular canonical text or local publishing/reading community.

The cloth-making town of Hadleigh in Suffolk has often been cited in the annals of the English Reformation as a town that early embraced Protestantism apparently effortlessly. This view owes much to John Foxe's famous description of this ‘Universitie of the learned’, yet a closer examination of the surviving evidence from Hadleigh indicates that the Reformation was as bitterly contested here as it was in many another mid-Tudor community. And the nature of the bitter struggle between the advocates of reform and a group of conservatives in the town may have proved so fierce that the energies for further reform under Elizabeth all but dissipated.

Historians have long argued about the political career in Ireland of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford. Analysing the extent of his viceregal power in the 1630s and his relationship to political factions, this writing has focused on ‘high politics’, as captured in state papers, pamphlets, and private letters. This article focuses on less conventional sources like paintings and accounts of court ceremonies to try and clarify a vital question. In a fragmented colonial territory that the Stuarts were determined to turn into a kingdom, to what extent did Wentworth cast himself as a king? The article examines the sophisticated way that Wentworth elaborated on ritual forms already connected with the viceroyalty to associate his political persona with that of the monarch, with particular reference to his extraordinary inauguration in 1633. Wentworth's interest in painting is well known because of his celebrated patronage of Van Dyck. Less well known is the way that he extended the conventions of portrait painting into the third dimension through court ritual, particularly the practice of allusion to recognizable models, with all the implications for prestige that this entailed. Through ‘political aesthetics’ Wentworth made the allusion to kingship, to the point that enemies detected monarchical pretensions.

This article attempts to uncover the political significance of the Old Testament verse Judges 5:23, ‘the curse of Meroz’, during the English Civil War. Historians who have commented on the printed text of Meroz have done so primarily in reference to a single edition of the parliamentarian fast-day preacher Stephen Marshall's 1642 Meroz cursed sermon. Usage of the curse, however, as shown in more than seventy unique sermons, tracts, histories, libels, and songs considered here, demonstrates that the verse was far more widespread and politically significant than has been previously assumed. Analysing Meroz in its political and polemical roles, from the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion in 1641 and through the Restoration of Charles II in the 1660s, sheds new light on the ways in which providentialism functioned during the Civil Wars, and serves, more specifically, to illustrate some of the important means by which ministers and polemicists sought to mobilize citizens and construct party identities.