England

Among the traditional heroes of Trades Unionism, writes Stephen Usherwood, are the six Dorset labourers who were sentenced to transportation for ‘administering illegal oaths’.

For forty years, writes D.M. Hopkinson, the eccentric Vicar of a remote parish in Cornwall led a richly combative life both in High Church politics and in literature.

During the eighteenth century, writes Bill Hooper, ‘barbaric anarchy’ reigned at Eton.

The Italian patriot’s visit to England was extraordinarily successful. But Queen Victoria deplored the scenes it provoked; and Karl Marx described them as “a miserable spectacle of imbecility”.

By challenging and destroying the system of General Warrants, John Wilkes struck an important blow for civil liberty in England, writes George Rudé.

M.F. Bond recounts the historical and legislative passage of an Act of Parliament.

E.H. Dance

Cross-Channel relations were cordial during the reign of the Emperor Napoleon III, writes Joanna Richardson.

Charles Chevenix Trench describes how a political crisis of the first magnitude arose when George III succumbed to a psychotic disorder that baffled his physicians.

Dorothy Margaret Stuart describes how the earliest English printed book was issued from William Caxton’s press at Westminster in 1477, under the patronage of the ruling House of York.