British Envoys to the Kaiserreich, 1871–1897 concentrates on Anglo-German history prior to German Weltpolitik. The first volume presents official diplomatic reports from the British embassy at Berlin (German Empire) and from the four minor - however still independent - diplomatic missions in Darmstadt (Hesse and Baden), Dresden (Saxony), Stuttgart (Württemberg), and Munich (Bavaria) during the years 1871 to 1883. The selection reveals the attitudes of British observers and their perceptions of a wide variety of political, social and cultural developments in a period of great diplomatic activity and changing Anglo-German relations. The dispatches offer new perspectives on Bismarck's imperial chancellorship, on the integration of the federal states into the new Kaiserreich, and on the varied British interests in Germany and its regional peculiarities. This title is also available as Open Access.
Sir Ivor Jennings (1903–65), Downing Professor of Law at the University of Cambridge, was one of the twentieth century's most famous and significant constitutional scholars and the author of numerous well-known texts. Beyond his prestigious roles in Britain, Jennings was also very influential internationally as an advisor on constitutional questions during the 1950s and 1960s. This volume brings together for the first time previously unpublished letters, memoranda, diaries and confidential evaluations of constitutional issues, political elites and critical events in Ceylon, Ethiopia, India, Malta, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Rhodesia, Singapore, South Africa and Sudan. Also included are candid and forthright assessments on Britain's constitutional influence abroad and Jennings' direct experience of constitution-making. This collection sheds light not only on Jennings' work and influence, but also on British ideas about democracy and on institutions across the globe during t
British Envoys to the Kaiserreich, 1871–1897 concentrates on Anglo-German history prior to German Weltpolitik. Volume II presents official diplomatic reports from the British embassy at Berlin (German Empire) and from the four independent legations in Darmstadt (Hesse and Baden), Dresden (Saxony), Stuttgart (Württemberg), and Munich (Bavaria) during the years 1884 to 1897. The selection reveals the attitudes and perceptions of British observers in a period of great diplomatic activity and complex Anglo-German relations. The dispatches offer new perspectives on the rise of German colonialism and imperialism, the early years of Wilhelm II's reign, the final years of Bismarck's chancellorship and the New Course under his successor Leo von Caprivi, as well as on the varied British interests in Germany and its regional peculiarities. They also mirror the diplomats' increasing attention to German press coverage of both domestic and foreign affairs, and especially to Anglophobic tendencies in
This edition consists of official reports sent by British envoys in Germany to the Foreign Office in London. The diversity and number of missions within the German Confederation offers the reader an o
This book provides a scholarly edition of the letters of A. S. Rowntree, prominent businessman and Quaker, to his wife, M. K. Rowntree. The letters cover the period 1910–1918, during which he was Liberal MP for York. The edition provides a unique window into the under-explored world of backbench Liberal MPs, especially those committed to the New Liberalism. It shows that the activities and opinions of MPs in this period cannot be understood without reference to the wider context of their lives, especially their religion, business interests and charitable work. The letters also provide significant new information on developments in Quaker thinking on social and political issues, the problems faced by pacifist MPs in World War One and how gender identities were constructed within political marriages in Edwardian Britain.
Since their publication in the Camden Series over 100 years ago, Sir Charles Firth's editions of the papers and New Model Army secretary William Clarke, Clarke Papers I–IV (1891–1901), have formed a fundamental source for students of the English Civil War and Interregnum, 1642–1660. This volume offers a further selection, deciphered for the first time since they were written by Frances Henderson, from the many documents which Clarke disguised in one of the rudimentary shorthand systems of his day. The new material consists mainly of the political intelligence which was being passed at every level from informed sources in London and elsewhere to English army headquarters in Scotland, where Clarke was based during the 1650s. The text is fully annotated. Appendices include a list of correspondents identified by Clarke in shorthand letters otherwise written en clair, and a survey of the use of shorthand in early seventeenth-century England.
The newsletters printed in this volume were written by Catholics who had access to the Court of Charles I and Henrietta Maria during the 1630s. The letters' principal concern was the factional strife among English Catholics, particularly over the issue of whether they should be subject to the authority of a Catholic bishop appointed by the papacy to live and rule over them in England. But these letters also contain Court news and gossip, information about foreign policy issues, and comment on the contemporary Church-of-England controversies over theology and clerical conformity. They are an important source for the study of the ideological tone of the Caroline Court, and of the ambition of certain sections of the Catholic community to secure a form of legal tolerance from the crown.
The text, published here for the first time, is a significant addition to Elizabethan travel writing and religious autobiography. It describes a journey in 1595 to Rome through the Low Countries, Germany, and Italy. The author describes life in Rome (he was based in the English College, 1595–97), including an encounter with the Inquisition, and an account of the ghetto; his work is unusual among contemporary memoirs because it includes a narration of his subsequent sojourn in Spain in 1598. The book affords a rare lay perspective on conversion to Catholicism and its value is heightened by the author's origins in Ireland and connections in England, thus illuminating a recusant community which straddled both realms. As an eye-witness, the author offers fresh and individual insights on the Elizabethan Catholic diaspora in Rome and Spain during the turbulent decade of the 1590s.
The Cartulary of Beauchief Abbey, here published for the first time with a full historical introduction and English summaries of all the Latin and French charters, is an invaluable resource for the study of relationships between a small community of regular canons with a large outreach in the English Midlands in the late Middle Ages. Over two hundred charters and a wide range of other sources show in considerable and valuable detail how the canons of Beauchief, although they belonged to a monastic order and led a life of withdrawal from the world, nonetheless engaged successfully with numerous benefactors in contributing, by active management of properties and parishes, to the promotion of religious life in town and country as well as to long-lasting developments in farming and industry. This book underlines the increasing recognition of the historical importance of regular canons in late medieval England.
The 128 letters of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, to his son Sir Robert Cecil in Cambridge University Library, Manuscript Ee.3.56, are the largest collection of papers showing the close direction and counsel he gave his son in seeking and obtaining the office of Principal Secretary, 1593–1598. The materials concentrate on the task of receiving and crafting a wide and large array of papers on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I and her Privy Council; finance, administration, foreign policy, and religion figure prominently, as does the shift from continental war to Ireland. These letters also reveal the intimate relationship between the father and son; Burghley's care for his family, his thoughts of death, and a unique record of illness and old age are framed by his political and spiritual anxieties for the future of the Queen and her realms.
This collection represents the surviving output of the clerks of the men and women of the most powerful magnate dynasty in England, Wales and Ireland in the thirteenth century. Its greatness was short-lived, but as a result of the Marshals' spread of interests and marriage alliances the charters and letters edited here embrace a remarkable diversity of lordships and societies. That fact and the central place the two Earls William Marshal held at the court of the young Henry III between 1216 and 1231, playing a decisive role in the establishment of Magna Carta, give this collection a unique interest for medieval historians of Britain and France, more so perhaps than for any other contemporary magnate family.
This volume in the Royal Historical Society's Camden Fifth Series is a comprehensive edition of the only surviving northern medieval letter collection. Of particular value to social and legal historians, Joan Kirby's text contains a wealth of material unavailable to the editor of the previous edition of 1836. The collection offers a vivid day-to-day portrayal of a northern knightly family during a period of decline in the military function of knighthood. Parochial, proud, violent and litigious, as Percy tenants and feed officials their fortunes fluctuated with those of their patrons; loyalty to the Lancastrian cause in 1461, for example, cost both families loss of life, liberty and office. Two protracted lawsuits drew them deep into the complexities of the legal process and the political patronage on which they depended. The resulting correspondence with their lawyers constitutes a unique primary source for all scholars of medieval England.
First published in 2000, this book is a modern and accessible edition of a manuscript journal kept by Thomas Juxon, a Puritan Londoner, who produced and traded in sugar. Juxon's journal focuses on public affairs and political and military developments during years of intense political manoeuvring, from the latter stages of the civil war and post-war attempts to reach a settlement with the king, to the crisis of the summer of 1647 and the army's occupation of London. It sheds light on the emergence and course of party and factional politics both within Parliament and in the City of London, and reveals the thoughts and convictions of an informed Londoner who was a committed participant in these events. Keith Lindley and David Scott's substantial introduction provides a full account of Juxon's life, describes the format of the journal, and discusses its historical value, while the text is supported by full scholarly apparatus.
This book is a collection of the diary letters of Austen Chamberlain from 1916 to 1937. These letters provide a valuable insight into the political life of one of the leading Conservative politicians of the inter-war period, and constitute a detailed record of Conservative and national politics at this time. They provide particularly valuable personal accounts of key events such as the negotiations of the Irish Treaty in 1921, the troubles leading to the Carlton Club revolt of October 1922, the Locarno agreements of 1925, the leadership crisis of 1930–1, and the backbench campaign against the German threat in the 1930s. Chamberlain felt free to express his most candid feelings and emotions in the privacy of these diary letters and, as a result, they throw much valuable light upon arguably one of the most misjudged politicians of the age, and one who has certainly been overshadowed by his more famous father and half-brother.
Henry Herbert Molyneux, fourth Earl of Carnarvon (1831–90), figured prominently in Conservative high politics during four decades of the second half of the nineteenth century, serving under three Prime Ministers in all the Conservative governments between 1858 and 1886. He was also a member of the Cabinet in three of them, appointed as Colonial Secretary twice, and Viceroy of Ireland during the Home Rule crisis of 1885–6. This book is based on the so-far comparatively neglected diaries which he kept meticulously throughout his life. Few such political diaries of Cabinet ministers on this scale and significance have survived. They show him to be a shrewd observer of events, and the records of his conversations with the leaders of the Conservative Party as well as with political opponents are of the greatest interest. This study has also drawn on many archive collections containing Carnarvon's correspondence and memoranda.
The Camden volumes, published by the Royal Historical Society, offer collections of skilfully edited primary source material for historians. The Camden Miscellany collections contain a variety of shorter documents and papers. This volume comprises seventeenth-century documents on parliamentary and financial matters. These include the parliamentary papers of Nicholas Ferrar (1624), the letters of Sir Cheney Culpeper (1641–57) and the assessment lists for the Cromwellian decimation tax of 1655.
In writing and then rewriting autobiographical remembrances recalling three decades of marriage and ensuing years of widowhood, Elizabeth Freke strikingly redefines the relationships among self, family, and patriarchy characteristic of early modern women's autobiography. Suffering and sacrifice dominate an extensive ledger of disappointment and bitterness that reveals over time the complex emotions of a Norfolk gentry woman seeking significance and even vindication in her hardships and frustrations. The infirm woman who eventually found herself utterly alone remained to the end a contentious, melodramatic, yet formidable figure - a strong-willed, even sympathetic person intent upon asserting herself against what she perceived as familial neglect and legal abuse. By making available both versions of the remembrances in their entirety, this new, multiple-text edition clarifies the refashioning inherent in each stage of writing and rewriting, recovering with unusual immediacy Freke's lat
