The political significance of Spanish reason-of-state literature has been studied almost exclusively from the perspective of imperial institutions, in particular the monarchy. This article argues that there was a distinctive political perspective in the crown of Aragon, based on its constitutional traditions, which inspired a particular kind of ‘reason of state’. Focusing on the works of a Catalan nobleman, Don Francisco Gilabert, the argument goes on to show that this constitutional thought was able to articulate a project of reform alternative to that of the minister of Philip IV, the count-duke of Olivares, and that therefore it cannot be merely analysed (as it often has been) as an anachronistic form of aristocratic self-seeking. On the contrary, by denying the king the power of absolute sovereignty, and by insisting on the idea of a mixed constitution, Gilabert's approach was able to articulate republican ideals, even though at the cost of some fundamental ambiguities concerning the idea of empire. It is suggested that the recognition of this distinctive intellectual tradition has important implications for the overall interpretation of the course of Spanish history in the seventeenth century, before and after the Catalan revolt of 1640.

This parliament saw two controversial government proposals: to ratify the Five Articles of Perth which introduced Anglican-style ceremonies into church worship, and to introduce a new tax on interest payments. A rare division list survives. It shows the split to have been partly regional: opposition was concentrated in Scotland's central belt, with government supporters in the more conservative northern and Border regions. The most important division, however, is that between ‘court’ and ‘country’. These concepts, familiar in English history, are shown to be applicable to Scotland. An earlier argument that government faction was responsible for the division is shown to be mistaken. The ideological divide, which persisted until after 1638, has implications for our understanding of the events of the 1640s both in Scotland and in England.

On what religious and political grounds did restoration nonconformists argue for ‘ease to tender consciences’, and what did they mean by conscience? These questions are central to any evaluation of nonconformist political thought in the early restoration. Such dissenting thinkers as Slingsby Bethel, John Humfrey, Philip Nye, John Owen, William Penn, and Sir Charles Wolseley authored arguments for conscience during the intense debate about the restoration church settlement that occurred between 1667 and 1672. This essay outlines four different cases for conscience to which these arguments contributed. Two of these cases reconciled claims for conscience with the ecclesiastical authority of the monarch. Two other cases for conscience challenged the traditional religious authority of the crown.

Should any or all of these arguments for conscience be considered radical arguments? The answer to this question requires a definition of the term ‘radical’ – one that is appropriate for the late Stuart period. The grounds upon which early restoration advocates of conscience accepted an indulgence under the royal prerogative in 1672 are also explained.

The essay addresses the historiography of the restoration by considering Christopher Hill's and Richard Ashcraft's views about dissenting thought. It also proposes that the 1667–72 debate about the state and religion raised so many critical issues as to constitute an early restoration crisis about conscience.

Victorian feminists faced a dilemma in their dealings with the state. This dilemma intensified in the years following the 1867 Reform Act. Radical feminist leaders (Josephine Butler, Lydia Becker, Elizabeth Wolstenholme) eagerly adopted an ‘equality before the law’ stance in order to link women's credentials for citizenship with conventional principles of liberal individualism. Yet the same leaders were recurrently angered and frightened by the sex-insensitive uses to which male politicians were prepared to put state power, even while claiming to be defending and improving a liberal social order. This article traces feminist responses to the dilemma from the high point of libertarian individualism accompanying the 1870s campaigns against the Contagious Diseases Acts to the more complicated appraisals of the potential of state agency made during following decades. The democratization of English political life, it is argued, may ultimately have persuaded feminists of the worth of the state as a sponsor of social change; but the half-democratized form of politics characteristic of the later Victorian period left key feminists with an ideologically entrenched suspicion of state intervention which even mid-eighties repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts and ‘maiden tribute’ child prostitution revelations could not efface.

Of the almost 80,000 prisoners-of-war held by Italy at the time of the Armistice with the Allies of 8 September 1943, more than half succeeded in escaping and almost 18,000 were not recaptured, largely due to the help offered spontaneously by Italian civilians. The records of the Allied Screening Commission preserved in Washington, and other official papers available in England, South Africa and Australia, complemented by oral history fieldwork among former escapers and their Italian helpers, reveal an Anglo-Italian epic of anti-heroism, whose protagonists nevertheless displayed great courage, ingenuity, perseverance and humanity.

Exploration of this neglected but critical dimension of the secret history of the years of occupation and resistance between 1943 and 1945 throws new light upon the characteristics and the long-term potential of a submerged nation of peasants, charcoal-burners and shepherds. The article is an attempt to historicise their expression of an often overlooked but universal peasant culture of survival, far deeper at the time than political commitment, but not without ultimate political importance.