Recently the revolution of 1688 has again become a fashionable topic. Renewed research and reinterpretation have provided valuable new insights into the role of William of Orange as well as the larger European setting of the event. The danger exists, however, that the pendulum of historical interpretation will swing too far in discounting the significance of the domestic scene. While much of the glory and simplicity of the traditional Whig approach have evaporated under close scrutiny, the fact still remains that the movement against James n was basically English in origin. In this connexion the need clearly emerges for reexamination and further investigation into the part played by those prominent in promoting the conspiracy. The point is nicely illustrated by the case of Henry Compton, bishop of London, whose importance to the revolutionary cause in the last few months before Torbay has never been fully appreciated.

As is well known, the Balfour Education Act of 1902 was the subject of bitter and prolonged controversy between Anglicans and Nonconformists. Ever since 1870 the Church schools had been struggling in unequal competition against the rate-aided School Board system, and many of them by the turn of the century were ‘dragging along a miserable existence’ with inadequate buildings and inadequate staff. Yet, believing their schools to be vital for their Church's survival, Anglicans hung on grimly, hoping that the Unionist government of Lord Salisbury would at last provide its long-promised succour. Fundamentally Anglicans were concerned not just for denominational teaching, but for the presentation of such teaching in a suitable atmosphere. ‘The necessity of a religious temper in teaching religion’ meant the subjection of teachers to religious tests and the retention of denominational control of the schools.

The struggle of the Confessing Church', wrote Otto Dibelius, ‘was a struggle of theologians, backed by a very small group of courageous laymen’. The importance of Karl Barth among these theologians was soon recognised. Even today in England and Germany many write almost as if Barth had been the sole theological resource of Hitler's protestant opponents: ‘It was he who nerved the Confessing Church in Germany to resist the attempts of the Nazis to corrupt the Christian witness, and who was driven into exile for doing so’. This is an exaggeration. My purpose here is to draw attention to the Catholic or high church movement in this same struggle. The theological ideas of this movement can be shown to have influenced, directly or indirectly, a considerable number of the protestants who opposed Hitler.