The stated purpose of the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge was the establishment of charity schools which were complementary to statutory parochial schools in the Highland parishes of Scotland. The parochial schools were demonstrably unsuited for these parishes due to terrain, weather, infrastructure, the nature of settlement, and their vulnerability to the Catholic mission. Historians and commentators have tended to see the society through a cultural and linguistic lens, imputing to it the weak condition in which Gaelic finds itself today. A ban on teaching Gaelic literacy, which was not lifted until the 1760s, has been considered part of an overall strategy to eliminate Gaelic in the hopes of greater civilization in the Highlands. This perspective overlooks a broader significance of the society, which, as a corporation, extended charity beyond the landed classes and nobility, to the rising professions and also common labourers and tenants, through its use of the parishes to collect donations. It was also a sustained effort at establishing a joint-stock company in the wake of the Bank of Scotland and the Company of Scotland, and instituted transparent business practices to foster a reputation for financial probity. The moral aspect of its mission required good and pious behaviour from its teachers, for them to serve as an example for the schools’ communities and to persuade, rather than coerce, children to attend. The society was also very much of its time, with a role in a completion of the Reformation which was a common theme in contemporary religious and social circles. This completion was structural, with the Church of Scotland trying to secure its presbyterian establishment throughout the country, but also moral, with the Societies for Reformation of Manners in England and Scotland, and the Society for Promotion of Christian Knowledge in England, building the legacy of the Reformation and the providential revolution through an encouragement of moral behaviour. These were private groups, however, and while the SPCK developed a channel for charitable activity for the rising professional and middle classes, the SSPCK worked to produce a national corporate effort to support reformation and education in the Highlands.

The institution of kingship was a fundamental feature of medieval Irish society; if we can better understand kingship, we can similarly gain a greater appreciation of the distinctive features of that society. This thesis investigates the practices of Irish kings and dynasties in the Central Middle Ages (roughly, the ninth to twelfth centuries) as represented by the sources. Several kingdoms and dynasties of medieval Ireland are closely studied with reference to different aspects of royal practice. There are two particular elements of this methodology. The first is to trace the practices employed by the kings of those dynasties over time; this gives us a greater sense of how kingship changed through the centuries, and enables us to move away from the static and synchronic models of kingship which have informed much previous scholarship. The second is to focus closely on these kingdoms so that we may gain a better sense of regional variation within Ireland. The investigation proceeds with the belief that Irish conditions may be better understood by reference to parallels drawn from the wider European context. This thesis demonstrates that the nature of Irish kingship and the practices of its kings are more sophisticated and varied matters than has been realised. The ‘dynamic’ model of kingship is validated, but it has become clear that we must allow for a greater degree of variation in the strategies and styles of Irish royal practice, both regionally, and as time progressed. Many features were common to the whole Irish polity; this is not surprising, for pre-Norman Ireland, as mediated to us through the sources, appears to possess a remarkably uniform culture. However, in different ways, the ruling dynasties of Mide, Ailech, Munster, Bréifne and Osraige innovated and contributed to the development of Irish royal practices, and arguably to the nature of Irish kingship itself. The thesis also re-examines the arguments which have been advanced that the nature of kingship had profoundly changed by ca 1200.

The aim of this thesis is to re-examine the history, architecture, and archaeology of Paisley Abbey. Paisley's history must be looked at anew for modern research, especially into the Vatican Archives, has clarified the sequence of events surrounding the abbey. Since the OPUS DEI was the raison d'etre of the monastic life, I have discussed the architecture of the abbey church in chapter II, while the discussion of its cloistral and out-buildings follows in Chapter III. My conjectural reconstructions of different aspects of the church, are important to its architectural history; and close observation of the triforium suggests it was the work of the master mason who designed the nave. On account of the lack of actual archaeological evidence, I have had to reconstruct Paisley's cloistral layout from observations made at other British Cluniac houses. Also, an examination of the windows at Paisley's north aisle suggest that they can only be the work of John Morrow. Church records, and the collections of David Semple, have produced new evidence into the eighteenth and nineteenth century restorations. Also, the collection of papers held at Paisley, together with those of Sir John Stirling Maxwell, explain better the problems emanating from Rowand Anderson's uncompleted restoration.

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The purpose of this study is to examine in depth the role which propaganda played in forcing Walpole's government to start the War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739. There are a number of features which make this episode particularly interesting both as an example of the power of propaganda and as an example of the way in which a study of propaganda techniques throws new light on the political and artistic history of a particular period. Firstly it is unusual for an opposition rather than a government party to be going out of its way to create popular demand for a war. Secondly it is unusual to find so many writers, artists and musicians of the highest quality being recruited to assist in a propaganda campaign of any kind. Pope, Swift, Johnson, Gay, Chesterfield, Arne, Handel and Hogarth were among the list of contributors which included many other highly competent if less well known talents. Thirdly, while not unique, this campaign is nevertheless rare in providing an example of the use of a very wide range of media to achieve its ends: drama, ballad-opera, journalism, poetry, prose, satire, history, biography, painting, engraving, ceramics, sculpture and even architecture. Fourthly it provides a very interesting range of psychological techniques with heavy use of irony, a penchant for exotic metaphor and considerable reliance on the crude tools of tribal motivation. Finally the campaign provides an example of the way in which public hysteria can be created and developed by a group of leaders whose real short term objectives bear no relationship to the topic of the hysteria, who are substantially removed from its immediate consequences and totally regardless as to its long term effects. The study is beset by two problems. It has perforce to straddle a number of different disciplines in that it must dovetail a historical causality with the content of literature, drama, music and the visual arts. There is not and can never be any direct proof that the propaganda actually caused the event, only an accumulation of numerous pieces of evidence which support a high degree of probability. Equally there is unlikely ever to be any conclusive proof that the huge outpouring of patriotic propaganda in the 1719 - 1739 period was all part of a concerted deliberate plan, only that there was a whole range of personal contacts suggesting a pattern of mutual influences and common objectives, a mixture of political jealousy, ideology and commercial pressures which combined to sustain a united effort towards a single end. However, detailed study should produce sensible pointers to the motivation, structure, organisation and technical proficiency of the campaign. Overall the campaign must be seen as a classic example of the way in which the power of propaganda, particularly nationalistic propaganda, is divorced from the responsibility for its consequences. The emotive connotations of the contrast between the patriotic opposition's aggressive posture against Spain and Walpole's apparent appeasement run very deep. The nurturing of corporate vanity in nations is one of the most common real causes of wars throughout history.

In recent decades, regional pressures for stronger autonomy have encouraged a number of central and federal governments around the world to devolve powers and resources downwards to the regional level. The contemporary revival of regionalist movements and the simultaneous tendency towards greater government decentralisation have received considerable academic attention. Most of these contributions present detailed accounts of the processes of regional mobilisation and devolution in a specific region or set of regions. Although these analytical stories tell us a lot about the distinctive aspects of a particular case, they do not, in general, present a coherent theoretical account that would allow us to study the origins of these two interrelated but distinctive trends in a structured way. This thesis aims to make a contribution towards such an account. Building on the literature on political legitimacy and social movements, this study develops a tripartite typology of regionalisms which allows us to analyse and compare the origins of regional autonomy movements across different contexts. In addition, it seeks to show that an actor1based rational choice approach to the process of regionalist accommodation and non1accommodation can help us gain a better understanding of the mechanisms through which such demands influence the shape of the government system. The usefulness of the resulting theoretical framework is demonstrated by applying it to the contemporary history of regionalism and devolution in mainland Britain.

This research seeks to understand the process of technological development in the UK and the specific role of a ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’ in that process. The concept of a ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’ will be developed throughout the thesis through a study into the computer industry in the UK in the post-war period. Specifically, the thesis discusses the threat of America, or how actors in the network of innovation within the British computer industry perceived it as a threat and the effect that this perception had on actors operating in the networks of construction in the British computer industry. However, the reaction to this threat was not a simple one. Rather this story is marked by sectional interests and technopolitical machination attempting to capture this rhetoric of ‘threat’ and ‘falling behind’. In this thesis the concept of ‘threat’ and ‘falling behind’, or more simply the ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’, will be explored in detail and the effect this had on the development of the British computer industry. What form did the process of capture and modification by sectional interests within government and industry take and what impact did this have on the British computer industry? In answering these questions, the thesis will first develop a concept of a British culture of computing which acts as the surface of emergence for various ideologies of innovation within the social networks that made up the computer industry in the UK. In developing this understanding of a culture of computing, the fundamental distinction between the US and UK culture of computing will be explored. This in turn allows us to develop a concept of how Americanisation emerged as rhetorical construct. With the influence of a ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’, the culture of computing in the UK began to change and the process through which government and industry interacted in the development of computing technologies also began to change. In this second half of the thesis a more nuanced and complete view of the nature of innovation in computing in the UK in the sixties will be developed. This will be achieved through an understanding of the networks of interaction between government and industry and how these networks were reconfigured through a ‘rhetoric of Americanisation’. As a result of this, the thesis will arrive at a more complete view of change and development within the British computer industry and how interaction with government influences that change.

Statistical methods have provided insight into the post-1860 fertility decline, but the deeper explanations lie in the choices of individuals, shaped by the cultures of local communities. This thesis combines the use of statistical and qualitative information, each form of enquiry guiding the other. It gains analytical strength by comparing three differing towns, Bradford, Leeds and Middlesbrough. Relationships between culture, employment, and fertility are examined by studying differences in local cultures and local labour markets, including female and child employment. The main argument of the thesis is for the impact of rising expectations about how a working-class family should live, underestimated by existing accounts. Working-class parents pursued higher living standards, not to emulate the better-off but, for example, to give their children better lives than they had experienced. To make these goals achievable, they chose to have fewer children, allowing more resources and attention for each family member. Such an explanation places a new stress on the nature of rising working-class consumption. In all three towns, evidence is put forward for a strong growth in expectations about standards. This is demonstrated in relation to diet, housing, clothing, and leisure: the impacts of compulsory education and changing views of family life are also shown. The thesis shows that mothers and fathers came to see family limitation as a necessary part of pursuing these standards. Differences between the towns mainly reflect the varying frequency of female full-time work. Expectations of rising living standards placed the greatest pressures on working mothers, who had to pursue them by both wage labour and domestic labour. This made them the most susceptible to the appeal of family limitation. The study also shows, however, that fathers too had incentives to family limitation, which previous studies have underestimated. For sources, qualitative evidence comes from cheap local newspapers with a substantial working-class readership. These new sources make evidence available which has never previously been used in research into the fertility decline. This is also true of the Bradford and Middlesbrough oral history collections used here. Materials in the Burnett Archive of Working-Class Autobiographies at Brunel University are also utilised. Use is made, too, of advice literature directed at the working class of the three towns, and reports of social conditions by, for example, doctors and social reformers. These materials are combined with quantitative evidence from the registration of births, Census Reports, Parliamentary Papers, and the Census Enumerators’ Books. This thesis is significant because it is one of a surprisingly small number of studies which investigate the cultural causes of the fertility decline, a need identified by leading researchers. By placing attention, as it should, on the behaviour of the majority rather than better-researched elites, the thesis brings new sources such as cheap newspapers into the study of the fertility decline. Above all, its description of rising expectations about consumption and their impact sheds new light on the causes of the fertility decline, drawing attention to the adoption by working-class people of more demanding goals for the quality of family life, which they met with a shift to smaller families.

This thesis is an investigation of sociological, documentary and literary texts whose central concerns are the social conditions in London during the period 1880-1899. London is chosen as a focus because during this time it was perceived as being in a state of crisis which produced an unprecedented amount of writing in response. The investigation has two complementary objectives: (i) to analyse, through the changing presentation of London in literary texts, the response of novelists working within the realistic tradition to the challenge of divesting language and form of inherited social meanings; (ii) to ascertain how conditions in London were articulated in a wide range of non-fictional writings, and to assess the role played by discourses inherited from Christian perspectives of society in absorbing, hindering, expressing or developing radical thought. The first part of the thesis will establish what the dominant images of London were. It will concentrate on the inner city texts of the 1880s and the suburban texts of the 1890s. What these images reveal about changing moral and political responses to social issues are assessed. The second part will be concerned with a London of spiritual and moral significance. Certain doctrinal, sociological and fictional works which attempted to make Christian terminology appropriate to the contemporary city will be considered. The impact of Socialism on religious and fictional discourses is evaluated. The thesis will conclude with a discussion of London as a political construct and assess how far such a perception sets up a break with tradition. Fictional texts assume a peculiar importance here since they are strongly differentiated from each other and from their literary tradition. In fictional texts in particular, images of London highlight the particular difficulty of redeploying a tradition of realism to accommodate radical ideas and the consequent formal challenges. The presentation of London in a diverse body of literature can therefore be seen to offer a variety of perspectives on the process of change in both language and form.

This thesis explores the relationship between age, class and gender among female munitions workers at the government explosives factory at Gretna in south-west Scotland during World War I. The Ministry of Munitions not only organised the construction of a factory nine miles in length, but also built two new townships to house a migrant workforce, which was drawn from all parts of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Teenage girls comprised a considerable proportion of this workforce. Significantly, welfare provision at Gretna, both inside and outside the factory, was far more extensive than at many other munitions establishments. This thesis focuses on the relationship between welfare supervisors, women police, social reformers and the female workers. While some middle and upper-class women attempted to claim new areas of social space during World War I, by embracing industrial welfare work or police work, their authority was often defined by their relationship with young, working-class females. Class was important in this relationship. However, welfare workers, for example, not only claimed authority because of their superior social standing, but also because they were often significantly older than much of the female workforce. The thesis concludes that the youthfulness of Gretna munitions workers was a significant component of their wartime identities and experience.