In 1462, in defense of the House of Lancaster, Sir John Fortescue wrote that Edward IV could not cure the king's evil, the disease scrofula, by touching the afflicted since to do so one must not only be a king but also a legitimate one. To touch one needed not only to be annointed with holy oil but the person must also be the legitimate heir. Lancastrians claimed that Edward IV could not touch since he was not the rightful king. Wrote Fortescue, he “wrongly claims to enjoy this wonderful privilege. Wrongly … [because] this unction is powerless because Edward had no right to receive it.” Sir John goes on to argue by analogy, and scornfully asks: “Would a woman who received ordination thereby become a priest?” Of course not. Continuing this line of argument, Fortescue adds that a usurper would not be the only one unable to cure by touch.

In the decade preceding the establishment of the Romanov dynasty in 1613, Muscovite Russia went through a catastrophic period known as the Time of Troubles which was characterized by political unrest, famine, regicide, social upheaval, and foreign intervention. In the final, darkest years of the Time of Troubles many people doubted that Muscovy, which for a time lacked a ruler or even a central government, would be able to survive as an independent state. It appeared more likely that Catholic Poland would conquer the country or that Sweden would come to dominate it. The English, who had established diplomatic and commercial relations with Muscovy in the 1550s and who watched events there with considerable interest, were horrified by reports that the Poles had captured Moscow, that the Swedes had seized much Russian territory, and that factions of the Muscovite lords were negotiating with their aggressive neighbors for a foreign tsar. This eventually led the English to contemplate acquiring North Russia and the commercially important port of Arkhangel'sk for themselves. As strange as it seems, for a brief period of time King James I actually dreamed of adding part of Muscovy to his “empire.”

When Keith Thomas wrote “The Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England,” he could not ignore the so-called Marprelate Tracts, which are famous lampoons on Queen Elizabeth's bishops. But they are a problem, because they are examples of what can only be termed Puritan humor. No one yet has described them as the work of a “funny Puritan.” Those words repel each other. So we usually say they were the work of a “Puritan sympathizer.” Funny Puritans don't exist, almost by definition. Professor Thomas searched for an acceptable expression and finally dismissed the episode—seven pamphlets which have been called “The best prose satires of Elizabeth's reign”—as “bizarre.” In his view, then, it is all simply inexplicable, and he hastens to assure readers that “not only the Church but also its Puritan opponents condemned Martin [the pseudonymous “Martin Marprelate”] for treating the matter with such levity.” Here we have the Puritans we know and love, the ones whom H. L. Mencken defined as those who live with the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.

But English Puritan literature for children reveals other anomalies in this characterization. Puritans and (after 1660) “Dissenters” wrote a great deal for children, more than any other group in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most of it is tedious if not downright grim, including some of their attempts at humor. But much of it was intended to give pleasure. The purpose of this article is to look into the strangely neglected subject of Puritan humor through the prism of their works for the entertainment of children.

Within the last generation there has been a vast outpouring of scholarship on the characteristics of British imperial policy in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The older orthodoxy that the mid-Victorian years were dominated by a commitment to laissez faire and free trade has been demolished. In the new era scholars quarrel over how “imperial” was “informal empire.” This article is not intended to add to this controversy, but rather to provide insight into the character of British policy in one area, Persia, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on American efforts to build railways and British responses to this attempted intrusion into an exclusive British-Russian sphere of influence.

For both Russia and Britain Persia had great strategic significance. Like Afghanistan, “the walls of the Indian garden,” Persia was important primarily in relation to the defense of the Indian Empire. Russian expansion to the borders of Persia, a weak state, posed the threat that the country would fall under Russian influence and what had been a buffer would become a menace.

British interest in Persia thus involved a strong strategic component which affected economic policy. Unlike Afghanistan it was seen as a promising market for British goods, particularly if transportation to the interior of Persia could be opened up on the Karun River and if British capital could be attracted to build a network of railways which could be a further basis for controlling the Persian economy and thus contributing to British influence at the Persian court. At the same time Britain was determined to thwart Russian plans for railways in the north which could be used to transport troops to the borders of Persia and eventually beyond. Each power assumed the malevolent intent of the other and each was determined to frustrate these foul plans.

The First World War ended Great Britain's nineteenth-century world economic supremacy, which had been steadily eroded in the decades before 1914. Within Britain, the war also changed the way in which individuals carried on business, the attitudes of the business community toward government, the government's own policies toward trade and traders, and public opinion on these matters, as reflected in the press. Although it is far too simplistic to claim that the war spelled the end of laissez-faire in Britain, state control of the economy did increase in a country whose economic culture was based on free trade and minimal government interference in business. Moreover, before 1914 Britain had to export to pay its way in the world, and its economy, more than that of any other great power, depended upon peace for prosperity. In this setting, Germany was the biggest European customer for British exports, as well as being the source of vital imports, such as aniline dyes, optical, and electrical goods. Thus the application of economic warfare against Germany and its allies deeply affected the British economy and businessmen who were suddenly forced by official edict to relinquish a traditional market in patriotic support of their government's blockade of the German Empire.