The first chapter of this thesis is a comparative study of Shropshire and Cheshire in the Early Modern era. It is intended to provide a brief topographical introduction to the area and to emphasise the contrasts between the two counties produced by differences in their political, social, economic and religious development since the Norman Conquest. There is also a lengthy discussion of the nature and extent of the opposition to the Crown during the sixteen-thirties. Most of the second chapter is devoted to a critique of the commonly-accepted view that for the purposes of analysis seventeenth-century English society can best be regarded as a rigid hierarchy of clearly-defined status-groups distinguished from one another by title. Using evidence drawn mainly from Shropshire and Cheshire sources it is argued that seventeenth-century rural society is best seen as a unity in which differences in status depend on the amount of freehold land owned. In the third chapter the parameters of the study are laid down and the categories, divisions and definitions to be employed are discussed in considerable detail. This section is followed by a description of the formation, size and composition of the warring groups in the two counties. Chapter four is concerned essentially with possible economic determinants of allegiance. In the first section a method of discovering the income of landed families usinglay-subsidies is put forward, defended and then used for purposes of analysis, In both counties the results obtained suggest that Royalists tended to be wealthier than Parliamentarians. The second section is an attempt to assess the degree of enterprise shown by landowners in the fields of industry, agriculture and commerce, but in neither county does a clear difference emerge between the two sides. There is also an appendix concerned with the nature and importance of indebtedness amongst landed families. The major part of the fifth chapter is taken up with an examination of the changing patterns of landownership' in Shropshire and Cheshire in the period 1540 to 1680. A subsidiary theme is the investigation of the connection between the buying and selling of land and changes which occurred in the political elite of-the county. The final section is a discussion of whether any of the groups which emerged in the early months of the Civil War contained an unusually high proportion of rising or declining families or disappointed office-seekers. The purpose of the sixth chapter is to investigate a number of possible social and religious determinants of allegiance - age, position in the family, education, ancestry, family connexion, Roman Catliolicism, and devotion towards the Anglican Church as it was constituted in the summer of 1642. The final chapter is used for drawing together the various conclusions reached in earlier chapters and forin other studies of allegiance in the English Civil Wars. Amongst other things it is suggested that the Parliamentary officers and administrators in both counties tended to be drawn from a lower level of landed society than the Royalists, and that, those wealthy Parliamentarians who were of ancient and distinguished stock were often Puritans or did not enjoy office or title commensurate with their landholding.

This dissertation purports to show that a certain general understanding of politics (called the "ascending" theory) manifested itself widely in England during the fifth decade of the seventeenth century. It was this understanding of politics (according to which it could be said, with the prosecutor of Charles I, that magistrates were "but the people's creatures") which justified the resistance of those who might be called "the men of 1642" to the rule of Charles I, and their use of the theory will (together with the Royalist reaction) be described at length. Subsequently, two more radical versions of the "ascending" theory were to appear, and these threatened to carry many of the men of 1642 further than they wanted to go. The first, embraced by the Levellers, pointed to a much more democratic society than the prominent resisters of 1642 had envisaged, while the second justified that very destruction of the King from the thought of which those resisters had in the first instance recoiled. It will be observed that the regicidal "ascending" theory was by no means wholly compatible with the (Puritan) Saintly ethos, although the two are the salient features of the regicidal literature. The highly original use, by Thomas Hobbes and Dudley Digges, of the "ascending" theory to defend the cause of Charles I will also be noticed.

This thesis comprises the only exhaustive examination to date of the life and career of Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery. Hailing from a family which dominated Anglo-Irish affairs throughout the 1600s, Orrery was an Irish peer of relatively modest means whose diverse career spanned not only politics and military affairs, but diplomacy, literary and scientific activities, and Jacobite conspiracies. His public career was facilitated in the 1690s by acclaim resulting from his role in the celebrated academic controversy between the Ancients and the Moderns. Court and family connections, associations acquired through scientific and literary interests, and his brother's untimely death enabled Orrery to win a Parliamentary seat and obtain an army commission, and, finally, to inherit the Orrery title and estates. Orrery's military and diplomatic activities were particularly noteworthy. Both were characterised by a sporadic, bitter rivalry with the Duke of Marlborough. Orrery's power and influence attained their greatest heights near the end of Queen Anne's reign and in the early years of the reign of George I. A client of John, 2nd Duke of Argyll for most of his life, Orrery remained closely linked to the Tory ministry of Oxford and Bolingbroke from 1710-1713 and played a crucial role in enabling that ministry to assume power. Later, due largely to personal dissatisfaction and misgivings about his future political prospects, Orrery reverted to a stance more palatable to the Hanoverian regime which was ushered in following Queen Anne's death in 1714. Orrery served briefly as Lord of the Bedchamber to George I, a position which afforded him intimate access to the sovereign and the court. Thereafter, however, Orrery's close ties to the previous administration apparently proved his undoing. By 1717 he had fallen from grace, lost all of his offices and perquisites, and defected to the parliamentary opposition. He then sought favour with the exiled Stuart Pretender, and later served as one of the principal Jacobite strategists in England during the 1720s. These activities led to charges of treason and a prolonged imprisonment in 1722-1723. Thereafter, Orrery lived out the rest of his life as a political outcast. He appears to have remained a devoted member of the opposition and a loyal Jacobite, although there is dubious evidence which suggests that he was in fact pensioned by the Hanoverians as a government informant. Orrery's rich career has been virtually ignored by scholars of the period. This thesis rectifies this neglect and in the process explores the world of early-eighteenth century diplomacy, court politics, intrigues, and intra-military rivalries.

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British colonial thinking was already well developed before the Stamp Act crisis of 1765-6 and this work traces the evolution of such thought from a period of relative neglect through a period of virtual renaissance in the 1750s to the formation of the North Ministry. Based upon both private and public opinion, the analysis concludes that the vision of Empire developed by 1770 was, in essence, the mercantile conceptualism which first encouraged the birth of Empire itself. Thus the work illustrates the strong degree of continuity in British colonial thinking, while at the same time, it provides a basis from which to interpret later British responses to the final crisis of Empire. Colonial theory did not exist in a political vacuum divorced from action, expediency or interest. The successive agencies which aided an awareness of colonial problems - the Board of Trade, the colonial expert, the Seven Years War, the Canada-Guadeloupe debate and the Stamp Act crisis are investigated in a series of interlinked chapters. The advocates of all interests constantly justified their relative positions through an appeal to history, precedent and preconception. This prevented any real progress in British attitudes towards Empire. Paradoxically, as British opinion became more concerned with the Empire its vision had little to do with colonial actualities. In short, even colonial expert opinion was illusory.

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