This book is a revision of my Oxford D.Phil. thesis presented in June 1976. I am grateful to my former supervisor, Peter Mathias, who provided constant enthusiasm and encouragement while I was working on my thesis, and who gave me the perceptive and constructive criticism I needed to transform it into a book. I would also like to thank my examiners, Angus Maclntyre and R. D. Collison Black, the readers for the Cambridge University Press and Robert M. Young for their criticisms and the suggestions they made for revision of the manuscript.

The following people read and criticised parts of my work in various stages and I am most grateful: A. W. Coats, Nathan Rosenberg, the late Ronald Meek, Michael Lebowitz, Ronald Robinson, D. N. Winch, J. R. Hays, Andrew Glyn, Everett Mendelsohn, and Michael Sonenscher. Paul Sturges gave me useful advice on manuscript collections, and A. N. Whitelegge of Goldsmiths' Library was always very helpful. I appreciate the meticulous care with which my manuscript was treated through the various stages of publication by my editor William Davies and especially by my sub-editor, Rosemary Dooley. Mark Robertson gave generous and painstaking labour to the difficult tasks of helping me to proofread and provide an index for this book.

This research was dependent on funding provided by the Canada Council and by Balliol College's Sir Lewis Namier Junior Research Fellowship. I am grateful to Christopher Hill, Thomas Hodgkin, John Prest, and the fellows and students of Balliol College who helped to make the research post I held there while writing my thesis and book such an enjoyable one.