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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.

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The research is a study of the context of the life and work of John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, 1551-1555. It charts the nature of his relationships with friends, patrons, mentors, colleagues, and lay and clerical supporters and opponents in England and on the Continent, through the study of ecclesiastical, political, business and economic, intellectual, official and judicial, kinship and social networks in which he was involved. Its purpose is to reveal the complex mix of societal and confessional pressures influencing Hooper's approach and constraining his freedom of manoeuvre, and to a large extent determining how successful he was at achieving change. The study reveals key determinants of the nature and direction of the Reformation in England. It shows that the pressure to change doctrinal allegiances and to accommodate reformed church practices challenged not only personal confessional loyalties but also the very framework of society; that is, familial and social ties, economic, business and judicial groupings, educational affiliations, and ruling oligarchies. Within these societal networks there existed the momentum for, and resistance to, religious change. Confessional allegiances were just part of a complex mix of political and social pressures that included the exercise of patronage and protection, the use of conflict and compromise, the practise of different obligations, allegiances and loyalties, the employment of status and kinship, and the accommodation of various alliances and means of association. All of these influenced Hooper's approach and scope for action. As such, the research provides insight into why and how, in the development of the newly-reformed church in England, thoroughgoing religious change was resisted and contained.

F.W. Harvey’s poetry was more popular during the First World War than many – if not most – of those whom we celebrate as ‘the war poets’ today. He is unique among the poets of that war for his insight into the life of the British POW in Germany, and for the influence of his work in the first of the British trench journals, the 5th Gloucester Gazette. Yet, he has received little national attention since his death in 1957, and scholarly work on his life is lacking, largely owing to a deficit of publicly-available primary sources and original material regarding his life and works. This has resulted in a failure to place him properly within the literary canon of the First World War. The recent discovery of Harvey’s papers allows us to examine his life and his contemporary cultural impact, and more fully to evaluate the value of his work and what it tells us about the First World War experience. Using Harvey’s papers, this biographical study will reconstruct the historical details of his life as they relate to the First World War. Concurrently, it will develop our understanding of his war-related work. This will demonstrate Harvey’s influence during the war, first as a trench poet, then as the poetic voice of the British POW. It will also examine how Harvey’s work continued to be affected by the war in the years after the armistice. The result will be a greater appreciation of the life and importance of a First World War poet whose voice was in danger of being lost to time.

Performance measures have been used throughout the business sector as a means to assess productivity, allocate resources, and increase profitability. More recently, they have been utilized to answer increasing calls for accountability in public education. Legislation has been passed in both the United Kingdom and the United States that implements performance measures as a means to measure student achievement and assess school performance. This study, conducted both in the United States and the United Kingdom, examined the perceptions of 15 primary and 15 elementary school leaders with regard to the transnational issue of school performance measures. Q methodology was used to examine the opinions and perceptions of these leaders for the purpose of providing insight for stakeholders and identifying future areas of research. The data from the participants revealed patterns of opinion within the head teacher group, the principal group, and the participants as a whole. Common opinions included the balanced use of performance measures, the political nature of school performance measures, the appropriate use of standardized test scores, and the consideration of economic and social factors. This study also demonstrated the use of Q methodology in qualitative educational research by both obtaining and analyzing rich and insightful participant data.