This thesis studies the formation of the earldom of Lancaster from disparate elements of confiscated honours, in particular the earldom of Leicester, seized by the Crown in 1265, and the earldom of Derby which passed to the Crown through the disinheritance of Robert de Ferrers in 1266. There are three main sections, A study of both earls, their history and the methods by which the Crown took their earldoms in order to re-grant them, in the form of an appanage, to Edmund of Lancaster (1267-96), Henry III's second son. It also analyses the attempts of their families to regain their patrimony. The honours of Tutbury and Leicester were extensive, thus the thesis concentrates on the lands of these honours which fall within the midland counties. The effects of the civil war upon the tenantry, and the holdings of both honours are studied to ascertain whether change or continuity is the overriding factor. The bond between lord and tenant is also examined. The second section deals with the last days of Thomas of Lancaster (1296-1322) and the Crown's confiscation of his lands; the earldom was faced with total abeyance. The third section studies the revival in the fortunes of the earldom under the management of Henry of Lancaster (1326-45). Through astute political manoeuvre and a defiant use of the power afforded him by his retinue, he regained the great majority of the lands over which Edmund of Lancaster had held sway. A further central theme examines the position of the widows involved in the confiscations: Eleanor de Ferrers, Eleanor de Montfort and Alice of Lancaster, Their difficulty in obtaining seizin of their dowers led to a corresponding lack of personal and financial security.

This study of Nottinghamshire parliamentary enclosure is concerned chiefly with the practiced administration of enclosure and its social consequences rather than with post-enclosure agrarian improvements. The considerable diversity to be found within the parliamentary process has been stressed, especially with regard to the regulation of the physical enclosure of land. All the acts and awards for Nottinghamshire rural parishes have been examined, and the majority of the awards analysed to illustrate the varied distribution of land. The chronology and density of parliamentary enclosure in this county have also been determined, but doubts are cast upon the feasibility of relating the dates of acts to contemporary economic developments. A survey of opposition to local enclosure has been undertaken, and attention has been given to the possibility of enclosure-related employment and the probable condition of the landless labourer or small owner. In addition, the accounts of overseers' of the poor have been examined in an attempt to clarify the relationship between enclosure and increased expenditure upon the poor. Results from this investigation are inconclusive, but receipts from standard poor-rate levies have revealed both the increased value of property at enclosure and the fact that such enhanced valuation could be effective at an early stage of the process. Finaliy, the costs of a sample of Nottinghamshire enclosures have been estimated, and although local evidence would appear to suggest that basic fencing materials were cheaper than has sometimes been supposed, it is concluded that general enclosure expenses have probably been underestimated. Attention has also been drawn to the large allotments which were awarded in many parishes as compensation for tithe. This diminution of the amount of land available for general allocation is regarded as a further expense of enclosure for those proprietors whose acreage was thereby reduced.

One of the few quantifiable measures available for any study of society in the medieval period, other than economic and fiscal data, is the evidence of shared beliefs and values as expressed through the cult of saints. The chronology and geography of this phenomenon, of which one aspect is the dedication of churches, forms a vital, but often mishandled class of evidence for tackling a range of fiscal and historical issues relative to patterns of settlement, community, lordship and patronage, trans-national as well as insular. This thesis concentrates on a single region, the pre-Reformation diocese of Worcester, which is generally agreed to have been coterminous with the early Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the Hwicce, because it is both rich in medieval documentary evidence, and provides a sufficiently large corpus of evidence to provide reasonable amounts of data for statistical interrogation and/or intuitive judgement. This study therefore exploited medieval documentary evidence, chiefly wills, of which more than 600 were examined, but also including episcopal, legal and other records in transcript and in printed editions, in addition to evidence already published in the Victoria County Histories. The results were collated in a dataset of evidence for the dedications of churches and other foci of religious observance. Since churches operated as integral parts of the medieval systems of community, economy, and administration, the study attempts systematically to identify the superior settlements of the region in successive medieval periods, and to suggest a reconstruction of early landed units of lordship and administration within which the region's chronological and spatial patterns of dedication may be further examined. A variety of published sources was used for this part of the investigation. The results of the database collation, set against the evidence for superior settlements and landed units, form the basis for a discussion of chronological and spatial patterns of cult observance. In conclusion, the study identifies areas for further study, and suggests ways in which such an approach may be applied in other regions so as to provide a tool for historians tackling a range of issues. The dataset and spatial evidence form an appendix. The dataset is available on disk for other researchers to interrogate.

An earlier dissertation illustrated the causes, methods and parochialism of the nineteenth and twentieth century development of two Croydon suburbs.1 The first of four sections of the present thesis seeks and finds analogies in the development of another, and more central, part of the town. It also shows that the urban growth of Croydon v/as influenced by its being a long-established market town. Yet, ironically, whilst so much new building was proceeding, the market area itself was deteriorating and acquiring an increasingly evil reputation. The second part of the dissertation shows how and why this was happening and examines the attempts to find a remedy. Ultimate success, through municipal compulsory purchase, was only possible because greatly increased resources of finance and expertise had become available with the town's rapid growth. The third part of the dissertation, therefore, sets out to discover more about this growth; to find out who the new Croydonians were, and from whence they had come. It shows that in the mid-nineteenth century Croydon was still in the line of population movement towards London, despite considerable working-class immobility and an out-flow from London, small numerically but influential financially and politically, of upper- and middle-class people. These last were the forerunners of the thousands of daily commuters of the mid 1930's. It seemed appropriate, therefore, to conclude the dissertation with a study of an inter-War housing estate. This brought to light abundant evidence of incompetent methods of land division and sale, the fallibility of planning legislation, builders' under- 1. R C W Cox, SOME ASPECTS OF THE URBAN DEVELOPMENT OF CROYDON, 1870-1940 (unpublished MA thesis, University of Leicester, 1966) capitalisation and lack of expertise, the apparent insecurity of their employees, the strong element of chance in the way the estate developed, and the short distance that incoming residents had moved. It would seem that the characteristics of Croydon's development changed far less in a century than did almost any other facet of the town's life.

Amorphous thin films of Si1-yNiy:H have been prepared over a wide range of compositions by radio-frequency sputtering in an argon/hydrogen plasma and their properties studied by various techniques. Transmission electron microscope investigations confirmed that the films were amorphous and the composition of the films was determined by EDAX. The principal object of the study is to investigate the nature of the semiconductor-metal transition in the a-Si1-yNiy:H system. The system has been shown to exhibit a semiconductor-to-metal transition as a function of concentration at approximately y = 0.26 at which value the optical gap shrinks to zero and beyond which the reflectivity falls with increasing photon energy in the region 0.5 - 2 eV, i.e becomes Drude-like. D.C. electrical conductivity measurements as a function of temperature show an increase in conductivity and a decrease in activation energy with increasing nickel content which is close to zero for y 0.26. The optical joint density of states (OJDOS) is finite at all energies for y ~ 0.26, confirming the existence of overlap between the conduction and valence bands. Pressure-induced transitions from semiconductor-to-metallic behaviour of the a-Si1-yNiy:H films have been investigated by measurements of the optical absorption edge as a function of pressure in a diamond anvil cell and by measurements of the electrical conductivity in a Bridgman opposed-anvil apparatus, both at room temperature. The optical gap decreases with increasing pressure, becoming zero at pressures that are lower the higher the nickel content. The electrical conductivity increases with applied pressure for all samples studied, reaching a saturation value close to the Mott's minimum metallic conductivity; this also occurs at lower values of the pressure for films with higher nickel content. Information on the structure and the local bonding configurations for the a-Si1-yNiy:H films was obtained from EXAFS and IR measurements. The results indicate that there is a significant change in the local environment of the Ni atoms as their concentration is changed but the system appears to favour chemical ordering.

The aim of this study is to attempt to focus on the relationship between educational innovation and primary school supervision in Turkey. The main focus is on the innovative behaviours exhibited by the primary school supervisors. Thus, the experiences of primary school teachers, provincial directors of education and primary school supervisors about these behaviours are identified. The views of these groups on some on-going supervisory activities in primary education in general and its supervision in particular are also identified and compared with each other. In addition, the views of these three groups of educationalists were sought on the barriers which could prevent the process of initiation and implementation of educational innovations and their recommendations for the improvement of the degree of implementing such innovations in primary schools. Questionnaires were administered to a sample of 190 teachers, 50 supervisors and 10 directors, drawn from representative regions throughout Turkey. For the teachers and supervisors, information obtained and their personal charecteristics made it possible to examine the relationship of their responses with, for example, sex, age, teaching experiences and region. The findings of the study revealed that the vast majority of the pre-defined would-be innovative behaviours of supervisors had not been adequately exhibited both in quantity and quality, according to the responses of the vast majority of the teachers. However, a substantial proportion of the supervisors reported that they had exhibited those behaviours. The findings also suggested that the "quality control" or "assessment" aspect of the primary school supervision in Turkey was given more weight than the "support" and "advice" aspects of it. However, the results also highlighted that there was a need for shifting of the focus away from monitoring and inspection to support and advice in supervisory activities. The results also suggested that the teachers revealed views distant from the supervisors and directors with regard to the items on some on-going supervisory activities. But, they reported nearly similar views about the pre-identified seventeen barriers and eleven recommendations. The barriers were acknowledged and the recommendations were 'agreed' with.

Much of the East Anglian landscape can still be regarded by the historical geographer as an unknown palimpsest. Its medieval field pattern, for example, still awaits adequate explanation and the whole fascinating development of the roads and tracks that surround those fields has yet to be approached in any systematic way. One important aspect that has also remained a part of that palimpsest has concerned the settlement of the region, its origins and the development of the pattern as it is seen today. How much of the pattern does belong to a beginning in the Saxon Period, as historians working on that period would still have us believe? One of the tasks, therefore, of this thesis is to investigate the origins of a large number of the 'early' Anglo-Saxon settlements in one part of East Anglia, the county of Suffolk, in order to provide a more accurate picture of settlement development and the origins of those patterns that can now be recognised. The other main task is to clarify a number of rather confusing definitions of the term 'continuity', much used in recent years by historians, archaeologists and geographers when they have been working on the Roman or Saxon periods. How much do such ideas contribute to an explanation of settlement patterns, or how much are they concerned with more particular aspects such as the continuous use of a precise site or a particular style of pottery manufacture? The choice of Suffolk is to some extent arbitrary. The county does not constitute a separate region within East Anglia, although it had a certain political autonomy in the 7th and 8th Century. But, apart from the convenience afforded by the county boundary for the purposes of such research, it does have certain advantages over its neighbours on the eastern seaboard. Norfolk has the complicating factor of a far more intensive settlement by the Danes, which may have led to the obscuring of the earlier Anglo-Saxon pattern by Danish place-names. In the south, a large part of southern Essex has now become part of the metropolitan Sprawl of London, which again provides difficulties for any research method that seeks to make use of ancient features that may still be recognised in the landscape (field patterns are of particular importance here). In terms of its suitability as an area for research into the origins of settlement and of settlement pattern Suffolk represents the one area of early and intensive Anglo-Saxon settlement in Eastern England where later developments have done the least to obscure those features.

The late Tudor and early Stuart period is widely considered to be a significant period of transition in English urban society. Numerous towns have been studied in the context of the social and economic difficulties they experienced. Historians have also investigated the formal social organisation structuring human relationships in urban centres. Towns have been largely described as either stable or unstable communities. The study of urban social organisation is important for understanding urban consciousness on the basis of townspeople's everyday experiences. Recent local studies generally fail to recognise those significant social relationships which crisscrossed the boundaries of formal and informal institutions, of social and occupational groups and of town and countryside. Analysis of these aspects are particularly important in the context of middle-sized county towns, since recent detailed studies have tended to focus mainly on the largest urban centres, notably London. This thesis attempts to analyse how a heterogeneous population's social relationships were organised in a complex urban community. The first four chapters examine a range of urban experiences in the context of the regional economy, the urban fringe, household society and poverty. Chapters five and six investigate social relationships in formal institutional settings and townspeople's reactions to these institutional structures. The final chapter demonstrates the patterns of everyday interactions in different types of urban space (as defined in the text). Stressing the significance of informal social links in the urban community, the thesis concludes that urban space gave important structure to a range of social networks, shaping and modifying townspeople's urban consciousness. This study not only highlights the limitation of compartmentalised analysis of individual urban institutions and social groups in an urban context, but also suggests new analytical dimensions in assessing the change and continuity of pre-modern towns without alluding to the concept of stability.

This thesis examines the dynamics of the interrelation and interaction of the labour unrest, 1910-14, with the organised labour movement in Britain, and the material and ideological factors influencing class and historical consciousness among British workers of the period. The contribution and special problems of Marxist methodology in labour history are considered (Chapter l), and the concepts of spontaneity and consciousness as evaluated by Lenin in What is to be done. analysed and applied against the British experience. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between economic pressure on the working-class of the period and the resulting ideological and organisational forms. The process of rejection of revolutionary Marxism is considered (in Chapters 3 and 7) in relation to the growth and survivals of opportunism and revisionism, and to the adoption of pluralistic, gradualist, and reformist modes. The transformation of the dominant ideology in crisis, its response to working-class demands, and the militarisation of its modes and policies is analysed in Chapter 4. The morphology of Syndicalism is described in Chapter 5, with special reference to the reactions of Beatrice Webb and her critique of the doctrine, to her categories of bureaucrat and anarchist, and to her counter-proposal to capture the commanding heights of the administration to bureaucratise and radicalise the proletariat. Tom Mann's embodiment of a Marxist-based militancy is examined in Chapter 8, and the advantages and limitations of "aggressive tailism", considered in this context, as is his rejection of workers' state and party. The processes whereby a sudden expansion in working-class political consciousness, organisation, and efficacy was institutionalised and interpreted within the structure of the National Amalgamated Union of Labour in such terms as to frustrate the emergence of a broad-based revolutionary populism or Socialism, instead blending the union's policy into traditional political culture and the modes of dominance of an alien class, are distinguished in Chapter 6. The specificity, as well as the complexity, of such a dynamic movement, created fresh methodological problems - especially those arising from the interaction of methodology, ideology, and material conditions - which are recalled in the Conclusion. It is argued that the rejection of revolutionary socialism left the proletariat without the theoretical means and the consciousness required to depasser its role as a subject or residual class in liberal-democracy. The development of pluralist arguments and policies, as well as changes in the economic and social infrastructure sharpened the theoretical prevision of British Marxists especially under the influence of Lenin, while their political influence was increasingly restricted. The political impact of spontaneity, and the role of spontaneous movements in conferring legitimacy on socialist doctrines and leaders decreased rapidly after the pre-war unrest. The impacted revolutionism of 1910-14 remained in an occluded form within the pure consciousness of the proletariat in its historic role of revolutionary-class, but without the spontaneity, even, with which this consciousness might be raised to the level of political efficacy under favourable conditions.

It is the purpose of this work to discuss the rise and fall of trade unionism among agricultural labourers in the four Midland counties of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire, at the end of the nineteenth century, and to trace the influence it had upon the daily life of the workers - as well as to give some idea of what that daily life involved. Rather surprisingly, perhaps, although the four counties form something of a geographical entity, the union experience of each was different from its fellows. In the course of the thesis an attempt has been made to show how this diversification worked out in practice, and to suggest some reasons for its existence.