In the third of our series of articles on faction, Kevin Sharpe shows how, in the early 17th century, the monopoly of patronage by a court favourite distorted the pattern of politics in council, court and parliament.
Gillian Williams on the promise of watercolourist and engraver, Wenceslaus Hollar, when he petitioned Charles II to allow him to accompany the British Ambassador on an expedition to Morocco, that he 'would examine all and take designs, and give his Majesty much better satisfaction'.
Whenever the nation went to the polls in eighteenth-century England, the small hamlet of Garrat staged its own mock election. But, as John Brewer shows here, this was not only the occasion for a riotous burlesque - it provided the vehicle for some radical political ideas.
Was power really devolved to Scotland in 1660, asks John Patrick, when the restoration of Charles II led to the recreation of separate Scottish institutions?
In the Georgian age the insane came to be seen not as a threat to society but as its victims. Roy Porter shows however that, in treating the mad with greater compassion, contemporary practice was often to deny the voice of the spiritual.
C.V. Wedgwood challenges the accepted view of Charles I's fated minister, Thomas Wentworth.
Michael Jaffe traces the relationship between king and master.
