The deaths of three Maidstone Common Councilmen in 1787 and 1788 threatened the unthinkable—the destruction of the Corporation party's long local political hegemony. Although the Corporation party still controlled a solid majority of the twelve aldermen, the anti-Corporationists had won eight of nine seats at the Common Council election two years earlier, giving the ruling group their first genuine political fright in more than twenty years. The further weakening of the party's control over the Common Council as a result of the deaths of Thomas Stevenson, Henry Pocock, and Henry Cutbush, all longstanding Corporation supporters, forced the council to hold an election to fill these three seats. After scheduling an election for August 29, 1788, the Corporation party leaders spared no pains in trying to achieve their goal of replacing their deceased supporters with the similarly disposed William Wimble, William Town, and George May. The anti-Corporation party also worked diligently for its candidates, and together the two parties recruited almost 200 nonresident freemen to vote. Dozens of freemen were brought in from London and its environs, substantial contingents arrived from Chatham and Rochester, and even more came from Aylesbury and other parts of Kent.

Thomas Poole recorded the first three votes at the hustings, voting for all three Corporation candidates. At the end of the day, Sir William Bishop cast his three votes for the Corporation candidates. Along with Poole and Bishop, 648 residents and nonresidents cast their ballots. Fifty-five percent of the nonresidents cast strictly partisan ballots for the Corporation party, 36 percent cast straight-party votes for the anti-Corporation candidates, and only 9 percent split their support between the two contending slates.

In recent years, historians have brought into sharper focus the role of rebellion in the political, social, and religious life of sixteenth-century England. Indeed, the Tudor dynasty established itself on the throne in 1485 as a result of a successful baronial rebellion, and each succeeding generation experienced a major rebellion as well as numerous lesser stirs and riots. Until the revival of interest in Tudor rebellions, the majority of historians preferred to portray the century as an era of law and order in which a strong but popular monarchy ruled over grateful and largely obedient subjects. Although contemporaries living in the sixteenth century knew of rebellion and popular disorder, often through direct personal experience, the government quite understandably opposed anything resembling impartial and disinterested study of the rebellions. Government propagandists denounced rebellion vigorously in royal proclamations and manifestos, while the clergy echoed similar themes from the pulpit. Of the two histories of rebellion published during the sixteenth century, the first, John Proctor's history of Wyatt's Rebellion, was unadulterated government propaganda, and the other, Alexander Neville's history of Kett's Rebellion, was a polemic written in Latin to guarantee a select readership. Without specialized books on rebellions, the literate public had one primary source of historical information, the general chronicles that appeared with greater frequency and variety as the century progressed.

Although best known for his Survey of London, John Stow was the most prolific chronicler of the sixteenth century. Beginning with the brief octavo A Summary of English Chronicles, which appeared in 1565, Stow published no fewer than twenty-one editions and issues of chronicles in three different formats, the octavo Summary, a sextodecimo abridgment of the Summary, and the more substantial Chronicles and Annales of England in quarto.

The diffusion of knowledge preoccupied middle-class elites in early industrial England. While factory production promised a future of material abundance, an unsettled and menacing social environment threatened this vision of endless progress. Education constituted a cornerstone of the liberal creed embraced by the industrial middle class, and diffusing knowledge offered the hope of raising up the “lower orders” to social responsibility and respectability. A properly arranged distribution of knowledge held out hope for an ordered and orderly social existence.

But the diffusion of knowledge meant more than simply uplifting the working class. Its significance extends beyond the problematic historical question of “social control.” An utterly new society was rising in the industrializing urban agglomerations of provincial England. An expanding middle class of businessmen and professionals claimed this world as its own. They pursued political power on both local and national stages and fought for reform in economic and social policy. A strongly felt sense of stewardship prompted the industrial middle class to devote great resources and energies to shaping the new urban environment.

For over two generations, scholars have studied Sir Edward Grey's response to the Sarajevo crisis, apparently considering every aspect of his dual effort to find a diplomatic solution while convincing the cabinet that England must intervene in a general war. Historians have generally agreed that Grey's last hope to prevent war evaporated by the end of July, although the cabinet did not decide to intervene until August 2. In this light, the events of August 1, 1914, are only considered to be either a prelude or a postscript to more significant events. The purpose of this essay is to suggest that Grey pursued two distinct, yet interrelated, courses of action on August 1, 1914: (1) for as long as he was unsure of cabinet support for intervention, he sought to make a diplomatic deal with the German ambassador so that a neutral England could salvage something from the crisis, but (2) once confident England would enter the conflict, he sought to prevent the war altogether by applying diplomatic pressure on France.

Historians have overlooked Grey's diplomacy on August 1 primarily because of the cloud cast over the events of the day by the so-called misunderstanding between Grey and the German ambassador, Prince Karl Max Lichnowsky. The first Grey-Lichnowsky exchange took place that morning when Sir William Tyrrell, Grey's private secretary, brought a message to the German embassy. After subsequently receiving a personal call from Grey, Lichnowsky, at 11:14 a.m., sent a wire to Berlin in which he indicated Grey had proposed that, if Germany “were not to attack France, England would remain neutral and would guarantee France's passivity.”