Key to an understanding of the broad political developments in Ireland and Scotland in the 1650s is an appreciation of the relationship between the English governments of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate and the Irish and Scottish landed elites. Political power and landholding went hand in hand, and in the absence of large standing armies and a centralised administration, governments relied upon the support of regional power-brokers to maintain law and order in the localities. This thesis is a non-anglocentric study of the developing relationship between the republican regime and the Irish and Scottish landed elites during the Interregnum. As such it complements current research on the elite in the early modern period, and because of its integrationist approach to the three kingdoms, represents a useful addition to recent works on the New British and Irish histories in the seventeenth century. Scottish and Irish proprietors represented the standard bearers for the Stuart cause following the execution of Charles I. The thesis examines the process by which the policies the English parliament adopted to destroy the influence of the Scottish and Irish landed elites in the wake of its conquest of the two kingdoms came to be buried during the 1650s by other measures introduced simultaneously to promote peace and stability and efforts to increase the revenue and reduce the cost of government. Patronage and kinship networks also served to save many Irish and Scots from ruin and encouraged compromise. Grounded on the close study of surviving Irish and Scots estate archives as well as official sources the thesis adopts an approach in which the power and influence landowners retained during the English occupation is fully recognised and reveals a continuous process of accommodation between proprietors and the government, beginning as soon as the English army entered the countries.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 2001. / Title from web page (viewed on Mar. 4, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis examines the relationship between the commemorative strategies of English noblemen in the period 1485-1572 and their identity both as individuals and as a social group. In particular, it will look at the Howard dukes of Norfolk in the context of their peers. The five chapters each address a different aspect of noble identity. The first two chapters deal with the importance of kinship and of status. The importance of kinship is evident across commemorative strategies from burial locations to the heraldry displayed at funerals to the references to ancestry in elegies. Having achieved a particular status, noblemen were defensive of their rank and the dues accorded to it. Funerals were designed to reflect social status and the choice of burial location could also indicate a concern with status. However, there was not always a correlation between the scale of commemoration and status. The third chapter examines the role that service to the Crown played in noble identity. Late medieval ideals of military service and a chivalric culture survived well in to the sixteenth century and traditional commemorative forms remained popular, even amongst noblemen newly ennobled from the ranks of the Tudor administration. Chapter four addresses the importance of local power to the nobility of the period. Burial and commemoration acted as a visible reminder of the social order and were of benefit in maintaining local stability. Noblemen could also use their death as a means of demonstrating good lordship through charity and hospitality. The final chapter examines the importance of religion to a nobleman's identity during a century of turbulent religious change. Studying commemorative strategies allows us to trace noble responses to religious change, the constraints on their public show of belief, and the ways in which they could express individuality.

That kings throughout the entire Middle Ages used the marriages of themselves and their children to further their political agendas has never been in question. What this thesis examines is the significance these marriage alliances truly had to domestic and foreign politics in England from the accession of Henry II in 1154 until the death of his grandson Henry III in 1272. Chronicle and record sources shed valuable light upon the various aspects of royal marriage at this time: firstly, they show that the marriages of the royal family at this time were geographically diverse, ranging from Scotland and England to as far abroad as the Empire, Spain, and Sicily, Most of these marriages were based around one primary principle, that being control over Angevin land-holdings on the continent. Further examination of the ages at which children were married demonstrates a practicality to the policy, in that often at least the bride was young, certainly young enough to bear children and assimilate into whatever land she may travel to. Sons were also married to secure their future, either as heir to the throne or the husband of a wealthy heiress. Henry II and his sons were almost always closely involved in the negotiations for the marriages, and were often the initiators of marriage alliances, showing a strong interest in the promotion of marriage as a political tool. Dowries were often the centre of alliances, demonstrating how much the bride, or the alliance, was worth, in land, money, or a combination of the two. One of the most important aspects for consideration though, was the outcome of the alliances. Though a number were never confirmed, and most royal children had at least one broken proposal or betrothal before their marriage, many of the marriages made were indeed successful in terms of gaining from the alliance what had originally been desired.

Historians of political development in the High Middle Ages often focus on the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as the generations in which monarchy finally triumphed over aristocracy to create a monopoly on governing institutions in western Europe. However, it was precisely in this period that Simon of Montfort emerged from his modest forest lordship in France to conquer a principality stretching from the Pyrenees to the Rhône. A remarkable ascendancy in any period, it is perhaps especially so in its contrast with the accepted historiographical narrative. Nonetheless, Simon has been largely overlooked on his own terms, especially by English historiography. Despite the numerous works over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries devoted to the Albigensian Crusade, only a handful of biographies of Simon have been published, none of which are in English. Furthermore, those French works dedicated to his life have been little more than narrative retellings of the Albigensian Crusade from Simon's perspective, with an introductory chapter or two about his family background, participation in the Fourth Crusade, and life in France. French domination of the historiography has also prevented any deep exploration of Simon's English connexions, chiefly his inheritance of the earldom of Leicester in 1206. The substantial inquest regulating this inheritance awaits publication by David Crouch, but at least forty other acts from Simon's life remain unedited, despite increased interest in the Albigensian Crusade and several having been catalogued for over a century. Though one of the aims of this thesis is to correct the lack of Anglophone attention paid to this seminal figure of the early thirteenth century, a biographical study of Simon has consequences beyond the man himself. The inheritance of his claims to the Midi by the French Crown after his death means that his documents survive in a volume uncharacteristic of a baron of his station. The dedicated narrative history of his career provided by Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay's Hystoria albigensis is likewise the most intimate prose portrait of a comital figure available from the period. Thus Simon's life is perhaps the best recorded of his contemporary peers, offering a rare insight into the priorities and means of a baron's administration of his lands and leadership of a crusade. Moreover, despite the supposed triumph of monarchy during his lifetime, Simon's meteoric career took place largely outside of royal auspices and sought crowned approval for its gains only after the fact. Simon's experience was certainly exceptional, both in itself and in the volume of its narrative and documentary records, but it nevertheless provides a challenge to an uncomplicated or teleological understanding of contemporary politics as effectively national affairs directed by kings. Rather than spend his life in the train of one particular king, as did his contemporaries William the Marshal or William of Barres, Simon's career, in its various geographical manifestations, saw him in the lordship of three different Crowns: France, England, and Aragon. Though his relations with the first of these were almost entirely amicable - if not always harmonious - he was more often in open conflict with the latter two. As a crusader, Simon was also subject to a fourth lord, the pope, for the major events of his career. But even while executing papal mandates, Simon at times came into conflict with the distant will of Rome. However, none of these lords successfully prevented Simon's ascendancy. Angevin and Barcan influence in the Midi was drastically handicapped by the Albigensian Crusade, in the latter case, definitively. And while popes may have disagreed with some particulars of Simon's prosecution of the crusade, he remained their best hope for curbing the threat of heresy. One reason for Simon's success in the face of opposition was his ability to exploit the margins of monarchical authority, retreating from his obligations of fidelity to lord in favour of another, thus presenting himself as a legitimate actor while interfering with the designs of a nominal superior. Such independence, however, required alternative bases for his own power that could not be found in the largely rhetorical refuge offered by a distant overlord. In the absence of support from above, Simon worked to cultivate relationships with his social peers and the lesser French nobility. Notably, however, outside of his immediate family, adherence to his cause more often came from his socially inferior neighbours and those with common spiritual devotions than from his wider kinship network. His extended family, of roughly equivalent social standing to himself, were more interested in following the French king in his campaigns to consolidate royal power than investing deeply in Simon's crusade. However, those with similar ideological concerns or dependent on his success saw in Simon a charismatic and effective leader worthy of their allegiance. For Simon himself, the crusade was animated by the programme of reform advocated by the Cistercians and certain Parisian theologians. His context was permeated by the reformers, especially in his close connexions with the abbey of Vaux-de-Cernay. Concerns about just war, the liberation of the Holy Land, ecclesiastical liberty, sexual morality, and the purgation of heresy espoused by Cistercians and schoolmen were reflected in Simon's career. He was more than a simple cipher for ecclesiastical priorities: his campaigns and government were ambiguous in their attitude toward mercenaries and complicit in the problem of usury. Nevertheless, Simon's crusades to both Syria and the Midi demonstrated a remarkable dedication to building a Christian republic according to the vision of the reformers. But Simon was not always a crusader, and the majority of his career - though not the majority of its records - took place in his ancestral lands in France. Though his time in the shadow of Paris does not offer the same salient examples of baronial independence as his conquest of the Midi, it does provide a crucial glimpse at the ordinary exercise of aristocratic government on a more intimate scale. His forest lordship furnished lessons of administration that would prove relevant to his rule in the Midi, such as the diplomatic projection of authority, the value of seigneurial continuity, the economic benefit of thriving towns, the necessity of an intensively participating chivalric following, and the advantage of wide ecclesiastical patronage. Similarly, Simon's brief seisin and subsequent disseisin of the honor of Leicester demonstrated the fragility of his power when many of these elements were lacking. In addition to abstract lessons of governance, his northern lands also provided the financial backing necessary for at least the initial phases of his crusading career. Thus Simon's lordship in France and England, though not nearly as autonomous as in the Midi, is far from irrelevant to his later manifestations of independence: it rather informs his later government and even made it possible.

British aristocratic women exerted political influence and power during the century beginning with the accession of George III. They expressed their political power through the four roles of social patron, patronage distributor, political advisor, and political patron/electioneer. British aristocratic women were able, trained, and expected to play these roles. Politics could not have existed without these women. The source of their political influence was the close interconnection of politics and society. In this small, inter-connected society, women could and did influence politics. Political decisions, especially for the Whigs, were not made in the halls of government with which we are so familiar, but in the halls of the homes of the social/political elite. However, this close interconnection can make women's political influence difficult to assess and understand for our twentieth century experience. Sources for this thesis are readily available. Contemporary, primary sources are abundant. This was the age of letter and diary writing. There is, however, a dearth of modern works concerning the political activities of aristocratic women. Most modern works rarely mention women. Other problems with sources include the inappropriate feminization of the time period and the filtering of this period through modern, not contemporary, points of view. Separate spheres is the most common and most inappropriate feminist issue raised by historians. This doctrine is not valid for aristocratic women of this time. The material I present in this thesis is not new. The sources, both contemporary and modern, have been available to historians for some time. By changing our rigid definition of politics by enlarging it to include the broader areas of political activities such as social patron, patronage distributor, political advisor, and political/electioneer, we can see British aristocratic women in a new light, revealing political power and influence.

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