Richard II and the church in the years of ‘tyranny’

The years 1396–1399 were critical ones in terms of European and English politics alike and, concomitantly, in the course of the Great Schism of the West. England's attitude to the Schism at this time has hitherto been considered primarily from a presupposition of Richard II's own attitude and authority and as an aspect of European politics. An examination of the direct relationship between Richard II and both the Urbanist papacy and the English Church raises some doubts about the extent of his authority in ecclesiastical affairs both before and after his emphatic reassertion of his prerogative in 1397. Particular consideration is given to his personal view of his proper interest. A discussion of the effect of royal policy on the English Church, especially in respect of the episcopate, suggests that, both in practice and in theory, his influence, whilst strong, rested on co-operation as much as coercion, and the nature of the Anglo-papal concordat of November 1398 is reconsidered in this light. It is suggested that greater stress should be laid on the spiritual considerations which weighed with all parties at the time alongside those of a more familiar secular kind.     

“Visions on the Battlefields”: Alexander A. Boddy,Early British Pentecostalism,and the First World War, 1914–1918*

This article investigates the relationship between religion and politics in the First World War by examining the work of Rev. Alexander A. Boddy, a Church of England minister and key leader in early British Pentecostalism. The article surveys a wide variety of responses to the war in Great Britain, but focuses, in particular, on how Pentecostalism shaped Boddy's distinctive understanding of events, especially his view of supernatural phenomenon, his attitude toward the nations involved, and his eschatology. The article explores how Pentecostalism, by focusing on signs and wonders in everyday life, contributed to an interpretation of state politics and world events that placed unique emphasis on determining the role of the supernatural in contemporary events that remains part of popular Pentecostalism today.     

Mera chimaera: the Reformed and conformist ecclesiology of John Prideaux (1578–1650)

Starting from a dramatic confrontation between Heylyn and Prideaux at the 1633 Oxford Act, this article analyses Prideaux’s views on the nature, authority, and polity of the Church. Unlike Heylyn, Prideaux has not been the subject of significant study and this article aims to fill that gap. It argues that by emphasising election, invisibility, and synodical authority, Prideaux’s ecclesiology offered a rejoinder to what some Laudians had begun to say about the Church. It establishes that Prideaux consistently demonstrated his loyalty to the established polity of the English Church, defending Episcopacy as iure divino and celebrating the liturgical provisions of the Prayer Book, long before they came under threat during the 1640s. The article also examines Prideaux’s Anti-Puritanism, showing him to be more open than Sanderson to the idea of a moderate Puritan. Given Prideaux’s acknowledged significance, this article significantly enriches our picture of Early Stuart Conformity.     

Qualified Toleration: Bermuda and the English Revolution

Central to both the causes and development of the English revolution was the demand for reformation of the Church of England. The question of what shape this reform should take, however, divided English men and women. Debates over the further reformation of the Church of England were also complicated by the emergence of increasingly vocal and powerfully‐placed calls for freedom of religion, ranging from a limited toleration for a certain few to a broader liberty of conscience for all. This article looks at the debate surrounding liberty of conscience during the English revolution in 1644–5, but from a fresh angle: examining the context and rationale for the parliamentary ordered religious settlement of the English Atlantic colony of Bermuda in October of 1645. Integrating the fortunes of this Atlantic colony into the history of the English revolution reconfigures our understanding and analysis of revolutionary religion and politics.     

The Autocracy of Love and the Legitimacy of Empire: Intimacy,Power and Scandal in Nineteenth‐Century Metlakahtlah

This paper examines the politics of intimacy, power, and scandal at Metlakahtlah, a Church of England mission village in northern British Columbia, Canada, from 1862 to 1885, in order to cast light on settler colonialism and its aftermath. It particularly examines Metlakahtlah's main missionary, William Duncan, his relationships with young female converts and missionary women, and, perhaps more importantly, the stories that were told about them. Stories of Duncan's relationships with young Tsimshian women that circulated throughout settler society reveal the central place of sexuality to both critiques and defences of imperialism, and cast new light on contemporary politics around the historical experience of Indigenous children in settler colonies like Australia and Canada.     

New Perspectives on the English Reformation

The historiography of the English Reformation has been driven by several key themes for three or four decades: the chronology of religious change and the success or failure of Protestantism to establish itself, the position of Puritanism vis-à-vis Church conformity, the role of Arminianism (anti-Calvinism) in doctrinal and ecclesiological debates and its impact on ecclesiastical politics and, more latterly, the continuities of ideas and beliefs between medieval Catholicism and Reformation Protestantism. This survey article on six new books in the field of Reformation studies argues that while the current historiography is generating very exciting work on the religious mentalité of early-modern English people and the transmission of ideas across the Catholic-Protestant divide, as well as generating a thriving debate on Calvinist consensus (or not) and the rise of Arminianism (or not), there are further rich seams to mine that incorporate gender into the analysis and that add the Atlantic World perspective to that of the European context for Reformation.     

Quaker Schoolmasters, Toleration and the Law, 1689–1714

The 1689 Toleration Act allowed Protestant dissenters freedom to worship in public, but it was only a limited toleration and dissenters continued to suffer discrimination. This article examines the experience of Quakers in one important area, the Anglican monopoly in teaching. Although the prosecution of unlicensed teachers was patchy, localised, and dependent upon the hostility and zeal of particular individuals, few dissenters escaped harassment. Moreover, Friends appear to have suffered more severely because of the particular dislike that they still provoked and their unwillingness to compromise which often led to imprisonment. The growth in High Church feeling during Anne's reign led to a more rigorous enforcement of the existing statutes and the passing of the Schism Act (1714). The consequences of an Anglican educational monopoly have not been properly considered by historians largely from the assumption that the Schism Act was fatally compromised by the death of Queen Anne, and because little attention has been paid to the continued harassment of dissenters after toleration who attempted to teach. The Schism Act was repealed in 1719, but freedom for Quakers and other dissenters to teach had already been achieved largely through the courts.     

太平洋战争时期的四平集中营——伪满当局对东北境内同盟国天主教神职人员的政策

四平集中营为太平洋战争时期,伪满当局在东北设立的最主的一所关押问盟国天主教神职人员的集中营,通过研究该集中营的设立背景和关押政策,可以了解当时伪满当局及日本政府对同盟国和天主教会的态度。本文认为伪满当局在关押同盟国天主教神职人员的问题上基本遵守了国际公约,这反映出伪满当局以及日本政府对天主教会的“友好”态度和对欧洲文明的尊崇。     

Public Gifts and Political Identities: Sir Richard Acland, Common Wealth, and the Moral Politics of Land Ownership in the 1940s

Richard Acland's political career with the Common Wealth Partyhas formed an important reference point in debates on the characterof popular politics during the 1940s, as well as a larger narrativeof the influence of radicalism in British public life. WhilstAcland's subsequent career as a moral educationalist and peacecampaigner has been largely ignored, his postwar fame dependedheavily on his celebrated transfer of substantial landed estatesto the National Trust at a key point in his public life. Wesuggest that this famous ‘gift’ was the result ofcomplex calculations in which Acland sought to maximize thepolitical capital from this private asset. The authorized familyversion of this transaction was also the product of a personalstruggle within the family. It is possible to interpert Acland'scampaigns as a belated attempt by a provincial landowner toreverse the declining influence of the gentry by the promotionof a fresh moral politics which was beset by the contradictionsof Acland's leadership as well as by organizational failures     

Henry IV and Charles VI: the confirmation of the twenty-eight-year truce

The deposition of Richard II in 1399 caused serious problems for the new English king, Henry IV, in foreign affairs. Contemporaries believed that his seizure of the crown would provoke an outbreak of new hostilities with the French since the wife of the deposed monarch was none other than Isabel, a daughter of Charles VI, king of France. Indeed Charles took certain belligerent measures against henry, whom he stubbornly refused to recognize as the legitimate ruler of England, but stopped short of war because Isabel still remained in English custody. Henry IV, on the other hand, desired to improve relations with France because of his own tenuous hold on the English throne. Once Charles VI became convinced early in 1400 that Richard II had died in captivity, he abruptly changed his policy towards England and announced his intention of observing the terms set forth in the Twenty-Eight-Year Truce which he had originally concluded with his son-in-law in 1396. Later in May, Henry IV similarly proclaimed his willingness to honor that agreement. How both sides avoided an open clash and eventually confirmed the Twenty-Eight-Year Truce forms the central theme of this paper.     

“The stone in the sling”: Frederick Douglass and Belfast abolitionism

Frederick Douglass’s sojourns in Belfast during 1845–1846 coincided with the “Send Back the Money” controversy in the Free Church of Scotland over the receipt of money from and fellowship with slaveholders, the South Carolina minister Thomas Smyth’s exclusion from the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1846, and the aftermath of the debate at the inaugural meeting of the Evangelical Alliance over fellowship with slaveholders. Since Douglass regarded Belfast as the central location of Presbyterian sympathy for the Free Church outside of Scotland, he believed that the town was crucial in the crusade against the Free Church. The attacks on the Free Church, however, cost the Belfast Anti-Slavery Society considerable support in the long term. Belfast also played a role in the personal development of Douglass. His dispute with his Dublin publisher, Richard Davis Webb, over the ministers’ recommendations to his Narrative constituted evidence of growing maturity. Although William Lloyd Garrison united with Douglass in Belfast to denounce the Evangelical Alliance, this essay argues that Douglass displayed evidence of independence from strict Garrisonianism.     

Henry IV and Charles VI: the confirmation of the twenty-eight-year truce

The deposition of Richard II in 1399 caused serious problems for the new English king, Henry IV, in foreign affairs. Contemporaries believed that his seizure of the crown would provoke an outbreak of new hostilities with the French since the wife of the deposed monarch was none other than Isabel, a daughter of Charles VI, king of France. Indeed Charles took certain belligerent measures against henry, whom he stubbornly refused to recognize as the legitimate ruler of England, but stopped short of war because Isabel still remained in English custody. Henry IV, on the other hand, desired to improve relations with France because of his own tenuous hold on the English throne. Once Charles VI became convinced early in 1400 that Richard II had died in captivity, he abruptly changed his policy towards England and announced his intention of observing the terms set forth in the Twenty-Eight-Year Truce which he had originally concluded with his son-in-law in 1396. Later in May, Henry IV similarly proclaimed his willingness to honor that agreement. How both sides avoided an open clash and eventually confirmed the Twenty-Eight-Year Truce forms the central theme of this paper.     

Taming the Minotaur: Bertrand de Jouvenel on Liberty and Authority

Bertrand de Jouvenel remains one of the most original and elusive thinkers of twentieth-century France. Known for the most part as a “conservative liberal,” his ideas represent a merger of political liberalism with a strong emphasis on communal and public association as means of expressing and sustaining individual freedom. Jouvenel's work is also characterized by a complex treatment of the question of political authority: he is wary of the notion of authority as a means of organizing and planning society, while at the same time he opposes its reduction to a merely technical legal instance. As this article argues, Jouvenel's complex ideas on freedom and authority remain entrenched in the tradition of French liberalism, which since the early nineteenth century advanced the conception of the dual nature of power and politics.     

English Bordeaux in conflict: the execution of Pierre Vigier de la Rouselle and its aftermath, 1312–24

As capital of English Gascony, Bordeaux was critical to the maintenance of Plantagenet authority in the duchy. Unfortunately for those kings, conditions tended to undermine the fragile power they did have over the wealthy rity. First, the independent-minded, affluent ruling class had for years established themselves in rival factions; at the same time ducal officials had to try to retain their goodwill at the same time as they sought to curb their lawlessness. Second, in the later years of Edward I's reign, the French occupied and governed Bordeaux and much of the rest of the duchy as a consequence of their victory over the English in a relatively minor war. With the resumption of Plantagenet rule over Bordeaux shortly before the accession of Edward II, ducal control was very tenuous indeed, as rival factions now fought each other ostensibly over their English or French sympathies.The problem is clearly illustrated in the case of a Francophilic citizen of Bordeaux, Pierre Vigier de la Rouselle, an ex-ducal official executed for his public criticism of the Gascon government. Following his death and the confiscation of his property, Vigier's heirs and sons appealed for redress to theParlement of Paris, the royal court of Edward II's Capetian overlord. The suit, dragging on there for at least twelve years, demonstrated how weak and inept the English authority was. As the French implicated both ducal officials and pro-English citizens of Bordeaux in the crime, the embarrassed Edward and his Gascon officials sought unsuccessfully to intimidate the appellants, fix culpability on scapegoats, and generally to deny any wrong-doing. Though sources provide no indication that the case ever concluded, it seems apparent that in the dispute over Vigier's death the importence of the English in their own ducal capital was only too clear.     

The disillusionment of Robert Dell: the intellectual journey of a Catholic socialist

ABSTRACT

This article considers attempts in the late nineteenth century to bring about a confluence of Catholicism and Socialism in Britain by examining the writing and correspondence of one man, the art critic and Fabian socialist Robert Dell. Beginning with Dell’s involvement as a young man in London-based radical politics, the article examines his efforts to bring his socialist politics and Catholic faith together. Dell attempted this through stressing a narrative of Catholic collectivism, under the aegis of a benevolent Church, contrasted with a post-Reformation Protestant individualism leading to the inequities of capitalism. The appeal of Catholicism in a Victorian Britain undergoing a collective crisis of faith is addressed. The second part of the article documents the failure of these attempts and Dell’s disillusionment with the Catholic hierarchy that by 1908 had led to a complete break on Dell’s part with the Catholic establishment. The catalyst for this break was the brutal treatment of Catholic Modernists such as George Tyrrell, Maude Petre and St George Mivart by the Vatican and the English Catholic leadership. Dell’s final rejection of organised Catholicism is charted through pamphlets, newspaper articles and personal correspondence. Ultimately, the article considers how Dell’s early political and theological career reflects on the relative positions of Catholicism and socialism at the turn of the twentieth century, and more broadly the dynamics of personal belief and political allegiances.     

Poetry as Thought and Action: Mazzini's Reflections on Byron

Summary

This article opens with a brief introduction to Giuseppe Mazzini, with particular reference to his commitment to republicanism, an ideal that would be fulfilled in Italy only after considerable time and with great difficulty. It then focuses on Mazzini's critical reception of Byron. Although Giuseppe Mazzini and Percy Bysshe Shelley would have allowed a more obvious comparison, it was Byron who really attracted Mazzini's attention and criticism. Mazzini uses Byron, on the one hand, as a means to demonstrate that Italians could discuss European poetry without putting at risk their national identity, or, as the classicists maintained, that fragile and fragmented profile of a nation that contemporary Italy offered to the minds and hearts of thousands of young people. On the other hand, however, Mazzini questions Byron's authority by subverting and converting his value, in a very personal way: he gradually substitutes Byron's with a different authority and credits him with new values. Mazzini could not accept Byron as the emblem of elitism and isolation: Byron's solipsism needed to be purified, and his renowned cynical attitude tempered; eventually Byron's myth needed to be connected to the destiny of peoples and nations.     

Pope,Province, and Power

The Nidaros province, founded in 1152–1153 with Nidaros/Trondheim in Norway as its metropolitan see, was a wide-spanning unit encompassing the episcopal sees in Norway, Iceland, Greenland, The Faeroes, Orkney, and The Isle of Man. This article discusses a period in the history of the province which has attracted little scholarly attention to date. The point of departure is the archbishop’s apparent disappearance from the Icelandic scene in the 1240s, and the author addresses the question of ecclesiastical integration by examining the Nidaros metropolitan’s authority in the mid-13th century. The subject is approached from three perspectives: the archbishop’s relationship with the pope; the struggle for power between the archbishop and the Norwegian king; and the archbishop’s executive authority within his province, exemplified by the Icelandic Church. The article reveals that in the mid-13th century the archbishop was facing several challenges to his authority. The analysis also provides compelling insights into the dynamics at work within the wider context of the high medieval Church.     

The nobility of English Gascony: the case of Jourdain de l'Isle

Among the greatest obstacles to effective English authority in Gascony was a criminal element within the nobility. Lawless, acquisitive, and defiant of all authority, such individuals were especially troublesome for Edward II whose control over Gascony would have been tenuous in any event. Among the most notorious in this period was Jourdain de l'Isle, younger son of a powerful Gascon nobleman. Holding extensive territories through both inheritance and marriage, Jourdain was a violent and aggressive man who attacked indiscriminately merchants, clergy, and even his fellow noblemen. Ignoring the efforts of the ducal government to control him, Jourdain appealed to the Capetian Parlement of Paris; but the French like the English had little use for him. His only supporter was his kinsman, Pope John XXII, who sought to assist Jourdain against both ducal and Capetian authorities, after the Gascon's crimes had brought him the enmity of both. While the pope's efforts had no result, neither the English nor the French succeeded in punishing Jourdain until in 1323 he defiantly came to Paris, where he was tried and executed for his sundry crimes. Jourdain's sorry career illustrates the problems that such men created for English rule in Gascony and makes clear that in at least this situation Plantagenet and Capetian authorities were in total agreement.     

Richard of Cornwall's candidature for the German throne and the christmas 1256 parliament at Westminster

Some months after the death of the German king William of Holland in 1256, Richard of Cornwall, with obvious help from King Henry III (but not initially with the support of the pope), decided to enter the contest for the German throne. His methods, including the use of his funds on a large scale, are well known, but Richard and Henry also contrived to deceive the English magnates about their plans. They told the barons at a meeting at the end of the year 1256 that Richard had already been elected king (which was manifestly untrue) and that only their consent was missing. This was a device to foil the expected resistance by the magnates, who were already opposing Henry's increasingly costly Sicilian adventure.