This is the first modern account of the emergence of the northern French county of the Perche, and the rise of a relatively minor noble family from obscure origins to princely power. The Rotrou family ruled the Perche from around the year 1000 until 1226. They took part in many of the most famous military engagements of the middle ages, from the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 to the recovery of territory from the Muslims in twelfth-century Spain. Their involvement in crusading initiatives was told in the popular poetry of the day, and they came to number the kings of France, England,...

A mine of information, drawing on an impressive range of archives. It will become an important point of reference. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW This book aims to demonstrate how the crisis evident in British military aviation in the early years of the First World War was inherent in the entire development of aviation in the years preceding the conflict. After outlining the work of the early pioneers and the growth of an aviation industry as a branch of armaments, Dr Driver considers the objectives of the War Office in increasingly seeking to divert design development to their research...

Thomas Hodgskin was one of the most significant thinkers of nineteenth-century radicalism. An active writer for over fifty years and an associate of Bentham and James Mill amongst others, his life provides a paradigm for understanding the evolution of radicalism from Waterloo to the Second Reform Act. This study rescues him from his marginalisation and mis-casting as an -early English socialist-: far from being a socialist, many of his views seem to mark him out as a forerunner of New Right or neo-liberal ideology. Drawing on a range of new sources and reassessing Hodgskin's life and work, Dr...

This first full-length study of the 1739 war with Spain, the so-called War of Jenkins' Ear', looks at both the Spanish and the British side of disputes arising from illicit British trading in the Spanish ports of the Caribbean and the sometimes brutal depredations committed by the Spanish ships licensed to suppress it. It considers the domestic contexts in both countries, including the pressures which bore upon unpopular monarchs and their ministers; in particular, the author demonstrates the vigour with which opposition newspapers vaunted the heritage of British naval power: if ministers...

Against a background of crises experienced in both the First and Second World Wars, M. Doughty assesses the performance of British bureaucracy in planning for the organisation and control of merchant shipping in wartime.

Should be read by...every specialist in public administration in Ireland and England during the nineteenth century. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW **Choice' Outstanding Academic Book of 1998**In mid-nineteenth-century Ireland there existed a system of medical relief for the poor, via a country-wide system of dispensaries, superior to any public health system in England and arguably in Europe. This book examines the dispensary system and Irish health policy and administration in general, focusing upon the Medical Charities Act of 1851, which placed medical relief under the control of the Irish Poor...