The topic of this thesis is the confrontations between William Gladstone and the Bank of England. These confrontations have remained a mystery to authors who noted them, but have generally been ignored by others. This thesis demonstrates that Gladstone's measures taken against the Bank were reasonable, intelligent, and important for the development of nineteenth-century British government finance. To accomplish this task, this thesis refutes the opinions of three twentieth-century authors who have claimed that many of Gladstone's measures, as well as his reading, were irrational, ridiculous, and impolitic. My primary sources include the Gladstone Diaries, with special attention to a little-used source, Volume 14, the indexes to the Diaries. The day-to-day Diaries and the indexes show how much Gladstone read about financial matters, and suggest that his actions were based to a large extent upon his reading. In addition, I have used Hansard's Parliamentary Debates and nineteenth-century periodicals and books on banking and finance to understand the political and economic debates of the time.

The most well-known events and occurrences that caused the American Revolution are well-documented. No scholar debates the importance of matters such as the colonists’ frustration with taxation without representation, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and the Coercive Acts. However, very few scholars have paid attention to how the 1772 English court case that freed James Somerset from slavery impacted American Independence. This case occurred during a two-year stall in the conflict between the English government and her colonies that began in 1763. Between 1763 and 1770, there was ongoing conflict between the two parties, but the conflict temporarily subsided in 1770. Two years later, in 1772, the Somerset decision reignited tension and frustration between the mother country and her colonies. This paper does not claim that the Somerset decision was the cause of colonial separation from England. Instead it argues that the Somerset decision played a significant yet rarely discussed role in the colonists’ willingness to begin meeting with one another to discuss their common problem of shared grievance with British governance. It prompted the colonists to begin relating to one another and to the British in a way that they never had previously. This case’s impact on intercolonial relations and relations between the colonies and her mother country are discussed within this work.

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Bibliography: leaves 453-490.

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This thesis argues for the deep implication of William Wordsworth’s writings over the period 1794 to 1814 in contemporary discourses of the Gothic. My investigation pivots upon the analogy offered in the preface to The Excursion (1814) between the incomplete epic poem The Recluse and a ‘gothic Church’, and aims, through a reconstruction of its literary and historical contexts, to establish the interpretative value of this figure in reading Wordsworth. I begin with a survey of previous critical approaches to, and a new close reading of, Wordsworth’s Gothic figure for his œuvre. I then trace the history of Gothic as a term in British public discourse since the English Revolution, showing how its contested status in the Revolution controversy of the 1790s inflects such texts as the preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800), the ‘Liberty’ sonnets of Poems, in Two Volumes (1807), and the Preamble to The Prelude. I then move to a series of detailed historical readings of Wordsworth’s key Gothic texts, starting with Salisbury Plain (1794). Recovering the network of associations that made Salisbury Plain legible to Wordsworth in 1793-4 as a map of British history, I show how the poem first subverts and then restores the English Gothic narrative of ‘Celtic night’ giving way to ‘present grandeur’. I then turn to Wordsworth’s Burkean prose tract on the Napoleonic Wars in Spain, The Convention of Cintra (1809), reading it in the context of the Gothic imagery of the conflict, and then arguing on this basis that it forms a vital part of the ‘gothic Church’ of The Recluse. Building upon this reading, I then argue that The Excursion’s advocacy of Andrew Bell’s ‘Madras’ system of ‘tuition by the scholars themselves’ shows Wordsworth’s progressive Gothic politics in action. In concluding, I turn to reconsider, in the light of the preceding chapters, in what sense Wordsworth can be called a Gothic poet.

This study presents a picture of the social, political and economic life of the Gloucestershire county community on the eve of, and during the civil war, and discusses the causes and effects of the conflict in the Gloucestershire context. / Chapter One describes the county in 1640, studying its physical features, wealth and pursuits and social structure. The second chapter offers a survey of the 'county community,' the prominent county families who formed a small but most powerful and influential group in the county. / Chapter Three attempts to classify the established county gentry in terms of landed income and to consider how far it is possible to describe the class as 'rising' during the early seventeenth century. The fourth chapter covers the personal lives of the resident peers and major gentry, considering the strength and impact of kinship and marriage bonds among the leading families. / Chapter Five considers the role of the gentry is governors of the shire. The sixth chapter traces the development of opposition in the county to the policies of the Caroline government. / Chapter Seven presents a narrative of 1640-42. The next chapter suggests that, at the beginning of the civil war, the elite gentry families began losing their predominance in county affairs due to external commitments and divisions among them. / The ninth chapter describes military rule in Gloucestershire between 1642 and 1646. Finally, the last chapter assesses some of the effects of civil war.

This thesis examines the identities and functions of late Anglo-Saxon royal agents (c. 950-1066), focusing on bishops and ealdormen. To establish who royal agents were, the thesis explores the family relationships among the leading men in the ecclesiastical and secular spheres, especially those linking men administering ealdordoms to the senior clergy. It also examines the offices of royal agents in late Anglo-Saxon England and argues that the duties of ecclesiastical and secular officials were not fundamentally different. While traceable kin networks appear among senior clerics and among high secular officials, few familial links connect the senior clergy to ealdormen. Thus, this thesis divides these kin-groups into those who gained secular offices, 'lay families', and those who sought power through the ecclesiastical positions, 'church families'. The analysis of the strategies adopted by 'lay families' and 'church families' to secure and maintain political power indicates how the aristocracy served both the king and their own ambitions in the governance of late Anglo-Saxon England. Although these royal agents came from different family groups, their obligations as royal agents appear remarkably similar with the exception of their military functions. This information provides a better understanding of the pool of men from whom English kings generally chose their officials, how rulers may have kept this group from becoming too small, and what was expected of these royal agents. The lack of (recorded) nepotism across episcopal and secular lines provides a more nuanced understanding of the aristocracy in Anglo-Saxon England. Furthermore, by offering an examination of both the identities and the functions of royal agents, this thesis provides a better understanding of the late Anglo-Saxon kingdom and its administration. In addition it creates a clearer picture of the aristocracy, the king, and the Church as well as the relationships between all three.

The thesis deals with Britain's early Cold War history and the political history of the Church of England. It mainly uses primary sources, and contributes to our growing understanding of the early Cold War, especially in its cultural/religious elements. It explores how the Church of England dealt with the development of the early Cold War in Britain. It argues that in order to understand better the Church of England's role, an account of its perspective on issues of state modernisation dating back to at least the 1930s is necessary. It was then, during a decade of authoritarianism, and especially at the Oxford Conference of 1937, that the Church' standpoint towards secularisation was established, while the transnational agenda of the ecumenical movement was also adopted and internalized by Church of England. The thesis also examines the agencies which it built and worked with: in particular the British Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. As the Church is the Established Church, its relationship with specific government agencies, especially the British Foreign Office and the Ministry of Information also became increasingly important. The thesis reveals the Church of England's lack of autonomy in time of crisis and the importance of key individuals for the institutional leadership of the Church. Its ecumenical agenda had played an important role, but this was under pressure after the War, as a Europe-wide Christian community was increasingly challenged by 'Western Union' plans for a Cold War Western, Christian community and bloc. By 1948 the Church had been enrolled in the Cold War between East and West which was apparent in its alignment with British government policies and its withdrawn role in the ecumenical community. The thesis adds to our understanding of the Church of England's relationship to the state in these years, and contributes to the cultural dimension of the early Cold War in Britain.