Almost from the first, the reign of Henry VIII witnessed high views of kingship. Some instances in the first decade of his rule have attracted much attention, but one critical episode has been overlooked. In the course of the occupation of Tournai between 1513 and 1519, Henry developed and successfully tested a complete theory of imperial kingship, partly cast in a new language of sovereignty. Drawing in part on the French models liberally strewn about the English cultural landscape, Henry asserted all the prerogatives of a rex imperator not only against the Tournaisiens but more significantly against Leo X. This new model kingship and its implications for royal relations with the church alarmed some of Henry's agents, especially Ralph Sampson. Sampson contented himself with expostulating about the threat to his conscience to his chief, Thomas Wolsey, but others showed more alarm. One of Sampson's friends, Thomas More, a similarly junior but rising functionary, offered two meditations on the potential dangers of Henry's kingship, going much beyond the abstract admonitions against tyranny of his Latin epigrams.

Ireland's position as a kingdom in early modern Europe was, in some respects, unique, and this eccentricity sheds light upon the complexity of governing a multiple kingdom during the seventeenth century. The framework for looking at the way Ireland operated as a kingdom is provided, first by an article by Conrad Russell on ‘The British problem and the English civil war’ and secondly by an article by H. G. Koenigsberger entitled ‘Monarchies and parliaments in early modern Europe – dominium regale or dominium politicum et regale’. Russell listed six problems that faced multiple kingdoms: resentment at the king's absence, disposal of offices, sharing of war costs, trade and colonies, foreign intervention and religion. Koenigsberger used Sir John Fortescue's two phrases of the 1470s to distinguish between constitutional, or limited monarchies, and more authoritarian ones during the early modern period. Both these contributions are valuable in looking at the way the monarchy operated in Ireland because the application of the constitution there was deeply influenced by Ireland's position as part of a multiple kingdom and because Englishmen, looking at Ireland, wanted her to be like England, but, at the same time, did not wish her to exercise the type of independence that they claimed for England.

The Popish Plot is the proper starting point for a reassessment of society and culture in late seventeenth-century England. The origins of the plot have become increasingly obscure, primarily because historians have made the erosion of Calvinist religious values and belief a defining characteristic of social and political change after the Restoration. John Kenyon has argued that the plot was an instance of mass hysteria, with its roots in the overcrowded, rumour-infested environment of London. Having identified post-Restoration nonconformity with cranks mentally ‘unhinged’ by the civil wars and the Great Fire, Kenyon interprets the plot as an obvious fabrication foisted on a paranoid and credulous nation by adventurers and religious extremists. Christopher Hill, in rare agreement with Kenyon, sees the decline of the religious approach to politics until ‘by the time of the Popish Plot it had degenerated into a stunt manipulated by cynical politicians’.

A national militia has been the cry of every patriot since the Revolution, and this measure, both in Parliament and in the field, was supported by the country gentlemen or Tories, who insensibly transferred their loyalty to the House of Hanover. In the language of Mr. Burke, they have changed the idol, but they have preserved the idolatry.

‘Western history since 1800,’ Charles Tilly has written, ‘is violent history.’ And so it is, though the German southwest – by which I understand Nassau, Hesse-Darmstadt, the Rhenish (Bavarian) Palatinate, Baden, Wüirttemberg, as these polities emerged after 1815 – constitutes an anomaly so striking as to tax historical imagination. I realize that I risk resurrecting a caricature of ‘the German’ – the obsequious and officious Spiesser, the kowtowing burgherpedant – or at least of appearing to lend credence to that image by suggesting that German social strife was contention with civility.

On 18 October 1826 the final English state lottery was drawn at Coopers' Hall. It was the one hundred and seventieth of the state lotteries to be held since their parliamentary inauguration in 1694. Although the economic importance of the lotteries to the eighteenth-century exchequer has been widely recognized, their demise has received scant historical attention. This is despite stark contrast between the promotion of the lottery by government or government contractors, and the strident protests against the lottery's allegedly corrupt and ruinous influence. Why exactly was the lottery abandoned as an instrument of public revenue? Was it in response to moral argument or as a matter of fiscal policy? At issue is not only the effectiveness of organized opposition in transforming participation and policy-making, but also the relationship between Treasury strategies, systems of management and the response of the market.

In 1833 slavery was abolished in the British West Indian colonies. A labour system that had been in operation for two hundred years, ended. A campaign based on the concept of freedom came to fruition. The idea of freedom was central to enlightenment thought. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, freedom of movement, a free press, free trade and free labour were all part of enlightenment ideology. The institution of slavery, which limited all freedoms, came under pressure in an enlightened environment. Unlike the ancients who believed there could not be a civilized society without slaves, enlightenment philosophers developed the view that slavery was antithetical to civilization.

Reflecting on the development of industrial capitalism in Europe, Antonio Gramsci wrote:

It is worth drawing attention to the way in which industrialists…have been concerned with the sexual affairs of their employees and with their family arrangements in general. One should not be misled…by the ‘puritanical’ appearance assumed by this concern. The truth is that the new type of man demanded by the rationalization of production and work cannot be developed until the sexual instinct has been suitably regulated and until it too has been rationalized.

When emissaries of the German underground opposition against Hitler's dictatorship sought contacts and co-operation with the British government in 1938, prime minister Neville Chamberlain said they reminded him of the Jacobites in King William's reign; but until May 1940, the British government was not averse to co-operating with Germans conspiring to overthrow their own government.