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 The Schism Act was repealed in 1719, but freedom for Quakers and other dissenters to teach had already been achieved largely through the courts.     

THE MISSISSAUGA TRAIN DERAILMENT AND EVACUATION, 10–16 NOVEMBER 1979

The evacuation of a quarter of a million residents of the city of Mississauga, Ontario, in the aftermath of the derailment of a freight train carrying hazardous materials on 10 November 1979, was, at that time, the largest peacetime evacuation ever conducted in North America. It took place with little panic or injury, no deaths, and no apparent resistance to evacuation advice. Not surprisingly, then, the success of the Mississauga evacuation has attracted the interest, and raised the hopes, of emergency planners, governments, and industry officials in North America and many other countries. These groups want to understand the reasons for the success of the evacuation, and, if possible, to transfer the effective elements of the Mississauga emergency plans and response procedures to their own jurisdictions. Their concerns reflect the wider search for a model of public decision-making under threat which would identify and link cirtical factors, decisions, and behaviour, and which would provide a framework for emergency planning and research.     

Constitutionalists,Despots, Whigs,and Revisionists: Tudor Parliamentary History in the 20th Century

The 20th century was the great age of Tudor parliamentary history. This essay examines the contributions and profound changes to the field made by the leading historians of the era, especially Sir John Neale and Sir Geoffrey Elton. Taking as its starting point the whiggish ideas of Stubbs's Constitutional History of England, it traces the impact of A.F. Pollard, G.M. Trevelyan, and Sir Lewis Namier on the field. At its core, though, lie the often acrimonious differences of opinion between Neale and his pupil, Elton. For Neale the Elizabethan parliaments were characterised by an increasingly puritanical Commons eager to wrest control of debates on religion and the succession away from the queen. In so doing this created a constitutional clash that would eventually lead to civil war in the mid 17th century. This ‘orthodoxy’ was savagely critiqued by a revisionist ‘school’ led by Elton that dismantled the interpretation of Neale and replaced it with an institution that was not dominated by political conflict but by largely consensual politics. It was also a position that gave equal weight to the Lords and to the importance of the business of parliament – legislation. The revisionists were masters of critique and highly effective at demolishing Neale, but did little to replace his theories or to explain religio‐political conflict – in doing so it could be argued that they killed the subject. The essay ends by suggesting some new approaches to Tudor parliaments that could help revitalise the subject.