World War I brought about a crisis within the British Liberal Party for it confronted Liberals with issues which they found difficult to resolve on the basis of traditional liberal principles. On numerous occasions, Liberals were placed in situations in which they were forced to choose between liberal principles and illiberal measures which were necessary for the effective prosecution of the war. The dilemma of whether or not to support British involvement in the war was a painful one which many Liberals would have preferred to avoid, and it was followed by other scarcely less painful decisions involving conscription, the extension of state controls over the economy, freedom of expression and personal liberties, the future of free trade, the right to refuse military service on the ground of conscientious objection, and the larger problem of whether to seek military victory or a negotiated peace.

The effect of the war on those Radical Liberal intellectuals who comprised an important segment of the left-wing of the Liberal Party was especially profound. Although they were not a highly organized group before 1914, there did exist a number of Radical Liberals who were bound together by their common agreement on the overriding importance of a “pacifistic” foreign policy and additional measures of social reform. This loose coalition of Radical Liberals was shattered by the war, for a large proportion of the group supported the war while others did not. Moreover, the issues generated by the war tended to drive the dissenting Radicals further to the Left, while the conservative assumptions of pro-war Radical Liberals became more prominent. By the end of the war the gulf between the two factions of Radical Liberals had become a deep chasm, and in the post-war years the division became a permanent one; many of those who had been dissenters during the war joined the Labour Party, while pro-war Radical Liberals tended either to remain in the Liberal Party or adopt an independent position.

It may be assumed that a bibliographical survey of a period of history is likely to reveal the nature, strengths and weaknesses of its historiography. This assumption depends to a large extent on the historical rather than bibliographical knowledge which the bibliographer brings to his work. So I would begin by pointing out two things which mere bibliography does not reveal about Victorian historiography. One is the influence upon it of works dealing with earlier, pre-Victorian periods. In any list of the ten most important works for the Victorian historian, one must include Namier's Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III and E. P. Thompson's Making of the English Working Class. Whatever one may think of these works, they are methodologically or ideologically seminal. A second thing not easily revealed by bibliography is the relative styles and types of work done in the United States as distinct from the United Kingdom. The British are more likely to write essays and biographies, and they have a near monopoly of social history; Americans, as everybody knows, are dreadfully monographic; as everybody may not know, they seem to have taken the lead in the field of intellectual history, perhaps because one may more readily depend on printed sources.

I should next like to venture some remarks about the relative importance of particular genres in Victorian historiography. The most obvious is that editions of printed sources are of rather less importance for so modern a period of history. Percentage figures are deceptive, however, because Parliamentary Papers and the periodical press are too numerous to be cited individually, and autobiographies and other contemporary works could only be cited sparingly. Thus, while the preparation of printed sources is only a small part of the work done in Victorian history, the actual amount of available printed sources is in fact overwhelming. To this must be added the increasing availability of such sources in microform or photoreproduction, which may well transform historical research. Another observation relevant to genres of historical writing is the much larger prominence of biography in the Victorian field. The taste for biography is itself a Victorian phenomenon, and in certain fields—I have elsewhere discussed its role in religious history— this genre may be unduly prominent, often resulting in a narrowly personalistic approach. Nonetheless, the monograph still dominates the field.

The principal historians of the Cromwellian period, from S. R. Gardiner to Christopher Hill, have asserted that Oliver Cromwell was a master of statesmanship whose foreign policy was guided by clear, though perhaps archaic, objectives; that his diplomacy was always aggressive, and largely successful; and that with him England entered into her rightful place in the community of nations. These axioms have been repeated in every textbook. The phenomenon is not unknown in recent history where, until A.J.P. Taylor suggested differently, few English writers dared to question the culpability of Adolf Hitler in bringing on the 1939-1945 war. Though Mr. Taylor's views excited critical comment, they have not been without supporters, and are being addressed by historians of the Twentieth century. This essay re-examines the diplomacy of the Cromwellian period, specifically in the years 1654 through 1657. It suggests that a revision of long-established views is in order.

Milestones of English foreign affairs during the Protectorate exhibit an apparent uniformity of policy. From the Treaty of Westminster of April 1654 to the Battle of the Dunes, June 14, 1658, the trend was towards a firm association with France, with the ultimate objective to destroy Spanish power in Europe and the Western Hemisphere. Such a generalization must be treated with caution, however, for it can be demonstrated that the course of English policy between the conclusion of the First Dutch War and the death of Oliver Cromwell was guided less by a desire for an alliance with France than by a series of miscalculations, the cumulative effect of which left the Protector little choice but to join with France, and thereby to assist in the establishment of the hegemony of Louis XIV.

The perspective of time has allowed most British historians to declare the English phase of the British Revolution of 1688-1689 “glorious” whereas the Scottish developments largely have been ignored as inconsequential. Although Scotland was included in Macaulay's History of England, for the past century it has been mentioned only briefly in historical treatments of the Revolution. Yet the Scottish Convention Parliament of 1689 not only followed and fulfilled the English Parliament's revolutionary initiative, but in an independent process paved the way for a more fundamental, uncompromising, and far-reaching constitutional settlement.

Lacking foresight to know that their best efforts would be amalgamated in the Union of 1707, Scottish politicians in 1689 forged ahead with a radical revolution that terminated Stuart absolutism and provided a fleeting chance for national independence under a constitutional monarchy. The event which opened the way for a revolutionary constitutional settlement was the forfeiture of the throne by James II & VII and the subsequent conditional offering of the same to William and Mary by the Scottish Estates in the spring of 1689.

In January 1689 following the final flight of James VII from Britain and the simultaneous collapse of his Scottish administration, the leaders of the Scottish aristocracy assembled at Whitehall and temporarily placed the government of their realm in the hands of Prince William of Orange pending a Convention Parliament.

The middle classes, seduced by the gospels of growth and of laissezfaire, abandoned the older areas of London to the artisans and laborers, to the thousands of migrants from rural England, Scotland, and Ireland, and to Jewish immigrants from Russia. By 1880 the middle classes in the suburbs were isolated from the working classes and ignorant of their poverty. Then “The Bitter Cry of Outcast London” by Andrew Mearns, the Pall Mall Gazette edited by W. T. Stead, and the writings of others exposing the squalor of the laboring classes led to a rediscovery of poverty. Many observers thought that charity would solve the problem, ome went slumming or joined the settlement movement begun at Toynbee Hall. Others, like Octavia Hill, were determined to improve the lives of the poor through the proper management and gradual upgrading of their living quarters. The philanthropic and semi-philanthropic dwellings companies such as the Peabody Trust, Guinness Trust, Improved Industrial Dwellings. East End Dwellings, and Four Percent Industrial Dwellings constructed new housing suitable for the working classes. All these efforts were limited because of the attitudes of the affluent classes toward the poor. Many believed that improvidence, intemperance, and licentiousness caused poverty and failed to realize that crowded living conditions and underemployment encouraged these vices. Beatrice Webb, who recognized this problem, wrote in her diary: “The Drink demon…undermines the constitution of a family.…There are times when one loses all faith in laisser faire [and] would suppress this poison at all hazards, before it eats the life of the nation.”

Nothing was more abrasive to the popularity of the British monarchy than the civil list during the reign of Queen Victoria. The repeated requests to parliament for annuities and dowries for her children brought accusations against the sovereign of evading the responsibility to take care of her own family. The chief critics were the Radical M.P.s, a sort of left wing in the Liberal party. A few were theoretical republicans but tempered their views by an acknowledgement that the constitutional monarchy was in reality a veiled republic capable of yielding the most advanced political and social reforms. Their twin interests would seem to have been 1) to complete the Gladstonian principle of fiscal economy by its extension to the royal family and 2) to make court life a model of simplicity in harmony with the nineteenth-century goal of human dignity.

What brought the matter to a climax was the prospective requests in the eighteen-eighties for the children of the Prince of Wales. As the Radical M.P.s saw the issue, parliament was about to be asked to take care of the Queen's grandchildren numbering more than a score. What seemed imperative was the appointment of a select committee to determine both the extent of the legal obligation of parliament and the ability of Queen Victoria to find the money from her available funds. Sir Charles Dilke, Chelsea, whose outbursts against civil list expenditures had aroused the anger of the Queen in 1871-72, had been suggesting such a body. But he agreed that the children of the Prince of Wales (whom he met frequently at social events) merited grants as they were in the line of succession but not those of the Queen's younger sons and daughters. Dilke was more specific on May 27, 1883 (or as Lee states May 7), when he dined at Marlborough House. The Prince of Wales raised anew the needs of his children. Dilke assured him of support and favored a lump sum to be distributed by the Prince of Wales rather than piecemeal legislation as had been the case with the Queen's own children.