This thesis seeks to explore the various worlds of early modern spirituality through the lens of one important and influential figure, Arthur Hildersham. Using diocesan, parish, and national records, and a close study of Hildersham’s printed works, it traces the story of one strand of England’s parallel Reformations. Hildersham’s long association with the parish of Ashby-de-la-Zouch provides the opportunity to examine the progress of the puritan Reformation in a particular locality over an extended period. His role as a godly pastor, and the message he delivered to his people, are considered. The thesis attempts to show that the effect of puritanism within a parish community was not necessarily divisive or unpopular, particularly when it was promulgated for many years and supported by a godly patron. Hildersham’s participation in networks of godly sociability and movements for further reformation illustrate how powerful and wide-reaching such associations could be. As an archetype of ‘Jacobethan’ nonseparating nonconformity, Hildersham’s career supplies a focus for looking at shifting configurations of conformity and orthodoxy. His ambivalent relationship with the ecclesiastical establishment, it is argued, demonstrates that even the most principled nonconformists had more agency than is sometimes allowed. How Hildersham was able to maintain a position of influence despite his frequent suspensions is examined. Recent studies of puritan culture have challenged a familiar radical/moderate paradigm, and this thesis supports the argument that the boundaries between mainstream puritans like Hildersham and those on the radical fringes were, in practice, blurred. However, it rejects the conclusion that all puritanism was intrinsically radical and that its adherents were incipient heretics. Hildersham’s legacy allows us to explore how a later age fashioned and used the memory of the past. It is hoped that this study will contribute to our understanding of the multi-layered experience of post-Reformation English religion.

By 1360 the Perpendicular style was established as the successor to Decorated architecture. During the subsequent one hundred and eighty years, until the Reformation, major building work was carried out at four great churches in the south west of England. The complete reconstructions of St Mary Redcliffe, Sherborne Abbey and Bath Abbey, and considerable work to the precinct at Wells Cathedral during this period, form the basis for this thesis. Through a study of each of these major centres, the issues of workshop identity and stylistic trendsetters are considered. It is shown how the interpretation of documentary evidence has impeded an understanding of these buildings, which can be revealed by an analysis of the fabric. Based primarily on a methodology of buildings archaeology and assessment of moulding profiles, traditional assumptions concerning the chronology and patronage are challenged. The new chronology for works at Sherborne Abbey, and the redating of the commencement of Bath Abbey further our understanding of the nature of masons' workshops, patronage and stylistic development within a regional context. Introspection in masons' workshops during the 15th century, and retrospection in later design in the region, demonstrates a reliance on the innovations of the 14th century, and the significance of the parish church tradition in the region, respectively. The thesis concludes with a discussion on the influence of major church workshops on domestic architecture, and the impact of the dissemination of the lodges in the early 16th century.

This thesis is set in the inter-war years, when Britain retained her control over the Arab world by various devices - mandate, protectorate, colony. At the geographical, strategic and religious heart of the Middle East lay Saudi Arabia, an independent state. Despite her sensitive location, the acknowledgment of Saudi Arabia's independence suggests a different type of relationship with Britain.This thesis seeks to examine that relationship by pursuing certain paths of enquiry, based on how Britain responded in an, imperial age to an independent Arab state situated in the middle of an area of near exclusive British control. Britain had to adjust to the contrast between the personal stature of King Ibn Saud and his remote and barren Kingdom. She bad to ascertain whether; as was popularly believed, he was basically well-disposed towards Britain. She had to consider whether to support his regime when, for dynastic and religious reasons, it sought territorial expansion in the mandatss and the Gulf sheikhdoms. In addition, Britain had to consider whether her interests were best served by encouraging the opening-up of Saudi Arabia to the outside world, or by retaining her own pre-eminent influence by excluding external penetration wherever possible.These issues are tackled by concentrating on four central featuresof British policy. Consideration is given, firstly,.to the political machinery and diplomatic channels engineered to facilitate relations with the Saudi state. Secondly, territorial disputes constituted the greatest area of concern for British policy, affecting Britain's strategic objectives in the Middle East. Territorial disputes in all four corners of the Saudi Kingdom are analysed. Thirdly, Britain's responses to various sources of external interest in Saudi Arabia are considered; Italian imperialism; American economic speculation; German intrigue; possible Saudi membership of the League of Nations; and Saudi Arabia's connections with Palestine and pan-Arabism. Finally there is the matter of oil, and whether it played a central or peripheral role in British policy towards Saudi Arabia between 1925-1939.

<p>In this essay I investigate how the Roman colonization (around 50 BC to 400 AD) affected the Celtic religion. I inquire which operators that were behind these changes and under what circumstances they happened. I take a closer look on three places in Gaul and one place and one area in Britain. In my study of these places I see that it was the elite of the Celtic societies who together and under pressure from Rome made these changes. The religion and gods did not change; instead the ritual ceremonies changed to fit into something that Rome thought was right. The places I study also show that there were differences in the religious places depending whether they were located in a city or in the country.</p>

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The thesis has a number of general aims, which range around conceptualising the Loyal Orange Institution [LOI] and laying it open for a fruitful theoretical approach. There is first in Section One, a demarcation of the object of study, drawing a rigorous line between the LOI and a much more indefinite body of militant Protestant and anti-Catholic sentiment. Following on from this, the causal regress is shifted beyond a commonsense attribution of `sectarianism', and the conspiratorial or functionalist emphases which tend to dominate the existing literature. Generally more appropriate, in analysing Orangeism's progress in 19th century Scotland, is a conception of ideology which is structural and objective. Yet care is also taken here not to erase all instances of social control in the Movement's history. These, it is suggested, can be viewed as arising from basic inequalities of power in capitalism, in turn the result of economic inequalities and control of the state apparatus. A further difficulty with the more `sophisticated' Marxist approach is also raised. For, if this is a better fit with Orangeism's political and ideological content; in its embracing of endemic fractionalisation of the proletariat, it does seem to abandon a characteristic Marxist class analysis in favour of a neo-Weberian one. It is agreed that this indicated the need for a new Marxist approach to sectionalism. The construction of such an approach, however, requires concrete historical work rather than more speculative theorising. Accordingly it is the former which is the concern of this thesis, though it does raise a number of themes which are important for further theoretical consumption. Section Two, for example, suggests the necessity of rethinking the relation between sectarianism and sectionalism in the workplace. Related to this must also be a reconsideration of the `labour aristocracy' concept, and the explanatory value of `marginal privilege' in connection with Orangeism. The Section further emphasises the need for a phenomenological dimension in any new theory of working class sectionalism, a sensitivity to self-perceptions being particularly crucial in understanding the sources of motivation for Orangeism and the internal divisions which characterised it. An important substantive problem also structures this, and Section Three dealing with Orange political practice - namely how to account for the LOI's absolute strength, yet relative weakness in Scotland. The predicates for the former, it is argued, are found in a sympathetic ideological climate, and in the impact of successive home Rule and Disestablishment crises. Above all, though, it is suggested that the real backbone of LOI support in 19th century Scotland was formed by Ulster Protestant migrants. In Orange relations with the churches and political parties, however, this `Ulster factor' could prove a double-edged sword. For while the migrants themselves were largely integrated into Scottish society, Orangeism itself was widely perceived as an extension of Irish `party' quarrels. Coupled with a reputation for violence and drunkenness, this factor interacted in turn with broader cultural and political, as well as economic, features of 19th century Scotland. Notably these included schisms in the Scottish churches, the precarious position of the Conservative party here, and the focus of political decision-making outside the country. These points indicate, finally, the importance of an awareness of the specificity of social formations in any new approach to sectionalism.

The broad aim of this study is to examine the way in which people build worlds which are liveable and which make sense; to explore the means by which a social, intellectual order particular to time and place is embedded within the material universe. The phenomenon of monumentality is considered in the context of changing narratives of place and biographies of person and landscape, which are implicated in the making of the self and society and the perception of being in place. Three groups of megalithic mortuary monuments of quite different formal characteristics, constructed and used predominantly during the fourth and third millennia BC, are analyzed in detail within their landscape setting: a series of Clyde tombs on the Isle of Arran in southwest Scotland; a group of cairns in the Black Isle of peninsula in the northeast of the country, which belong primarily to the Orkney-Cromarty tradition; and a passage tomb complex situated in east-central Ireland, among the Loughcrew hills. Individual studies are presented for each of these distinct and diverse landscapes, which consider the ways in which natural and built form interact through the medium of the human body, how megalithic architecture operated as part of local strategies for creating a workable scheme to 'place' humanity in relation to a wider cosmos, and how the interrelation of physical, social and intellectual landscapes may have engendered particular understandings of the world. An attempt is made to write regionalized, localized neolithics which challenge some of the traditional frameworks of the discipline - in particular those concerned with morphological, chronological and economic classification - and modes of representation which, removing subject and monument from a specific material context, establish a spurious objectivity. (DXN 006, 349).

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