This dissertation on the fourth duke of Bedford examines the political activities of a member of the House of Lords. It documents the activities of the members of the Pelham Administration, using Bedford's correspondence to provide an outline for the narrative. The aim is to provide a greater understanding of Bedford's political career, and also to illustrate the influence this individual had in determining ministerial policy. A discussion of Bedford's social connections leads into an overview of the events culminating in his inclusion in the Administration in 1745. Initially First Lord of the Admiralty, Bedford was promoted in 1748 to the office of Secretary of State for the Southern Department. In both offices, his concern was the promotion and protection of trade. He advocated the 'Country' Whig view that the protection of British merchants and their overseas markets by the navy was in the country‘s best interest. Bedford recognized the importance of securing and expanding American markets, and implemented measures, such as the proposed 'reduction' of Canada, to promote this aim. Bedford also lead the negotiations for the commercial treaty with Spain, signed at Madrid in 1750, that gave special trade status to Britain. Bedford sought to increase his political influence in various constituencies during the 1747 General Election. The local influence he wielded, however, did not enable him to carry through private turnpike legislation in Parliament. His legislation was defeated on 13 February 1750, at third reading, in an unusually high vote (154-208). Newcastle, whose relationship with Bedford had grown increasingly acrimonious, played a role in the defeat of this bill. The deterioration in this relationship contributed to Bedford's resignation from office on 14 June 1751.

In December 1640 the Long Parliament brought accusations against Lord Keeper Finch and six judges of the three main Westminster courts. These asserted the illegality of decisions and opinions given by these judges. This thesis examines those accusations and argues that the government of Charles I engaged in a defensible process of political management of the law and the judges to legitimate its policies particularly after the suspension of parliament in 1629. This policy emerged as a response to the government's difficulties in enforcing the payment of the Forced Loan caused by its dubious legality. The policy took advantage of important features of the contemporary relationship between the law and the government and it had five features. The most senior and able lawyers were recruited as government law officers and counsel. They amassed and used a substantial and well researched body of legal authority to support royal rights. The chief justices were appointed from amongst the government lawyers and were used as political managers of their courts. New incentives were offered as rewards for the most senior judges. Judicial views on aspects of government policy were sought in advance and the Privy Council was used to by-pass the judges if necessary. These features are examined in relation to government revenue policies including distraint of knighthood fines and the forest laws, and religious policies in relation to the application of the writ of prohibition to the economic condition of the Church and High Commission. The application of this analysis to the Ship Money Case is considered. It is concluded that the judges were manipulated rather than coerced and often successfully avoided the pressure by technical stratagems. Most importantly the government showed that it generally had the law on its side. That had serious political implications but went a long way towards exonerating the judges.

During the past two decades, extensive research efforts have focused on the conventional wisdom that the economy has a direct influence on a party's destiny. This hypothesis rests on the implicit assumption that the linkages between macroeconomic variables such as inflation and unemployment and party support are direct and unmediated. As the present study indicates, however, objective economic measures only serve as a proxy for the invisible force that drives voters' party support. Once the relevant variables, namely, the perceptual factors of the electorate, are controlled for, variables that describe the state of the objective economy fail to exert their "magic" on political behavior.

In his evocative account of walking through Restoration London, the seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys conveys a vibrant city comprised of movement, exchange, and conflict. We follow Pepys, for example, into the coffee-house on his insatiable search for news and political argument. Within urban space he is equally persistent, noting the ritual demarcation of urban boundaries at moments of tension between London and the Crown, or describing how the city's spaces were alarmingly transformed by the presence of disease. This is hardly the London imagined by scholars of the Restoration, who have characterized this historical moment of the return of Charles II and restoration of monarchical government to England as a time of concord after the violent struggles resulting in civil war at mid-century. It is telling that one of the first strategies adopted by Charles IPs government to stabilize a volatile situation in London was to assert control over print. At this moment, though, print culture served to open up urban space in new ways, becoming a mode of opportunity for individuals like Pepys. My dissertation considers precisely the interrelation between these spaces and forms of print. Like Pepys, my thesis journeys through the city, stopping at the Restoration coffee-house. These spaces of congregation, where print was displayed and purchased, appeared in significant numbers around the Royal Exchange after 1660. The coffee-house has been given mythic proportions in the twentieth century as the foundation of a modern public sphere. However, as this thesis will show, instead of producing an abstract and universal realm of public opinion, the coffee-house was an actual space formed through contestation, and through a struggle taking place between an older form of subjectivity and a newer urban culture. Another site of urban contestation shaped through print was the street processions staged by Whigs during the Exclusion Crisis, a moment of increased City and Crown tensions. Within these political struggles, the unexpected also had its part to play. The crisis brought on by bubonic plague in 1665 generated prints mediating all kinds of conflicts, but especially the social practices of flight and quarantine. The sudden destruction of the city within the walls by fire in 1666 was met by mapping and picturing the ruins that struggled to account for the void in the urban centre. My dissertation concludes with a series of unique prints which represent an ephemeral city built on the in-between space of the frozen Thames. This unexpected suspension of the everyday rhythms of London led to its festive re-imagining. In conclusion, I address the significance of the location of both print and the coffeehouse at the very centre of this urban space. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In 1956 a cadre of Marxist historians in Britain created what would come to be known as the New Left. The New Left in Britain took the form of a loose affiliation of scholars and intellectuals whose goal it was to create a space for socialist change within and between the existing structures in the British labor movement. These intellectuals greatly influenced socialist thought in the aftermath of Stalinsim and paved a way forward for future socialist activism. Existing works on the group analyze its impact and assess its successes and failures. By placing an emphasis on understanding the conditions that existed during the making of the First New Left, the following historical analysis argues that these assessments within the historiography require revision.

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This thesis attempts to give an account of how Whitehall planned Britain's withdrawal from extra-European commitments in the years 1959-1968, demonstrating that foreign policy development was essentially a cross-departmental process, involving a synthesis of views articulated by the Treasury, Board of Trade, Ministry of Defence, Colonial Office, Commonwealth Relations Office, as well as the Foreign Office. More specifically, the thesis is concerned with the direct effects of the interplay of different departmental policies on British retrenchment from Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East. Most accounts of how ministers and officials approached the subject of withdrawal from international commitments lack any substantive analysis of documentary evidence, a fact attributable to the 'thirty-year rule'. Many academic works also contain a reference to 'delusions of grandeur' as the main explanation as to why Whitehall guided a tentative course in extracting Britain from its remaining overseas obligations. By examining Whitehall's attempts to review future policy, usually on an inter-departmental basis, this thesis questions the commonly held assumption that an outdated imperial sentiment permeated the political establishment until economic reality, namely the devaluation of sterling in November 1967, forced Britain to confront the fragility of its position. Developing and expanding upon previous scholarship, this thesis makes a contribution to historical knowledge by providing the first sustained and unified study of how the highest echelons of Whitehall framed Britain's long-term strategic aims in the late 1950s and 1960s. This thesis is a contribution to administrative, diplomatic and military history, and provokes a number of questions. To what extent, for example, did economic considerations inform the decisions of leading policy-makers? Did a misjudgment over the strength of British 'power' lead to the pursuit of inappropriate foreign policy objectives? How was foreign policy affected by defence policy? What influence did the Treasury exert over high foreign policy? Did the influence of civil servants vary according to policy issues and the personalities involved? In what ways did the views of the departments responsible for economic matters differ from those in charge of defence policy on the priority attached to military expenditure? To what extent did the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence disagree on matters regarding Britain's overseas commitments and possessions? In answering such questions, this thesis casts new light on how Whitehall, between 1959 and 1968, reduced the scope of Britain's international commitments, redirecting the central thrust of British foreign policy away from extra-European commitments towards Europe.