The Companion to British History

1402 Pages·2001·13.244 MB·English

by  Charles Arnold-Baker

“CBH”

The Companion to British
History
Charles Arnold-Baker OBE
of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-law
Formerly Visiting Professor to the City University
SECOND EDITION
London and New York
First published 1996 by Longcross Press Ltd
This edition first published in paperback 2001
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library,2007.
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© 2001 Charles Arnold-Baker
The right of Charles Arnold-Baker to be identified as the Author of this
Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be printed or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-93013-4 Mastere-bookISBN
ISBN 0-415-18583-1(Print Edition)
SCHEME
In thirty years of compilation I have been increasingly conscious of my inadequacies and of the
vast size of the subject compared with the small space into which it must be compressed. I
conceive that a Companion is meant to provide any reader with historical background. In the
case of these islands this creates immense difficulties, and it seems to me that the user is
entitled to some description of them and some explanation of the way in which I have tried to
solve them. I hope, in the first place that having been a soldier, a barrister, a member of a royal
commission, a chief executive of a nationwide local government organisation and a Traffic
Commissioner, may partially compensate for a historian’s other shortcomings.
Period
Logically one might begin with the Anglo-Saxon invasions, but it seemed that these would not
be intelligible without reference to the situation, in so far as it is known, before them, so I
decided on the date hallowed by tradition, of Caesar’s first raid in 55 B.C.
At the modern end, three moments seemed particularly significant, namely the advent of the
Wilson government in 1960, accession to the European Community in 1970 and the Single
European Act in 1986. The recognisable continuity between our present and our past gave way
in 1960 to the mounting tempo of a revolutionary epoch in which 1986 stood out by reason of
its effect on our sovereignty. This seemed the moment at which to break off, but amplifications
such as Maastricht and the electronic unification of the world exchanges have driven me on
sometimes even to 2000.
Geography
It would have been easy but essentially false to concentrate on internal events and produce a
Little Englander’s book. The truth is far more complicated and intractable. There is no history
of England without Scotland, Wales and Ireland, or indeed, apart from the history of our
neighbours. But who are the neighbours? The sea, and those who go down to it in ships was
the vast if muted fact of English history: the air was the vast if noisy fact of the subsequent
World Era, and with the silence and speed of electronics we are entering a newly shrunken
globe. The ebb and flow of national energy has made and unmade neighbours not merely in
Europe but in all the continents. British history has a habit of expanding and contracting with
movements in policy, trade, martial prowess, ambition, inventiveness and self-deprecation. The
bowstaves of Agincourt came from Italy and Prussia. Snooker was invented at Ootacamund in
the hills of Southern India. Scottish architects built much of St. Petersburg. English speaking
nations hold places everywhere, and many independent states owe some of their institutions
and attitudes to British example or British occupation of their soil. The only truly international
court of justice was the Privy Council.
The choice of material was therefore infinite, and had to be controlled as far as possible by
guidelines. I have, to begin with, given the central position to the English who are much more
numerous and occupy a much greater area of the British Isles than the other three major
nations. Secondly these three have a history of their own of great interest and of intrinsic
importance to the whole. Thirdly there is a strong interpenetration between Britain and the
European coastal countries, whose relationship with Britain has been strongly influenced by her
and their internal politics. Fourthly, the British have ruled other areas, so that their history, at
least when under such rule, is an offshoot of the main stem. Fifthly there has been commercial,
economic, technical, political and cultural communication and intermigration with many other
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countries and places. This has varied from time to time but has often been, in some ways or
many, significant for the British nations. The Swiss have given us Calvinism, the Poor Law and
the Red Cross; portcullises, sugar and cotton were first imported from the Frankish Levant;
some legal surnames from Portugal; bananas and steel bands from the Caribbean; soft wheat in
bulk from North America. I have treated the five classes as a hierarchy, each accorded less
space, relatively, than the one before; but while trying to confine material in each to that which
might be relevant in some way to British history, I have attempted, as justice requires, to set it
forth not from the British but from the local point of view.
Subjects
The spirit and workings of a society are not to be found exclusively in its politics or its
economics, technology or convictions, but in the totality and interaction of its activities, and
these include many remarkable and at first sight unremarkable things. Religion and the urge to
perform public service have always played an important part; so have the arts and music. The
pride of the English gentry in civilian pursuits and sports has made the British army officer
the least political in the world. Games, beer and gambling have to find a place. But the spirit
changes constantly: in a country where an allegation of cruelty will provoke embittered defence
in divorce proceedings, one would hardly suspect the enormous gloating crowds two centuries
ago at bull-baitings and executions. In a single generation pride of empire has given way to
apology for imperialism. Many things which bulk large in one era matter little in another, and
the converse is also true. We may perceive, with a hindsight which contemporaries necessarily
lacked, significance in things which they found negligible. The conflict between space and
information can be resolved only by conscious determinations.
Omissions
I have made, with regret, two classes of omissions. With a few exceptions such as Gibbon I
have left out all historians who are not historical sources unless, like Sir Winston Churchill, they
were mentionable for other reasons. I have also, as far as I can, omitted the technical terms of
historiography. The output of the historical faculties is now too vast for such a book as this.
Secondly, despite their historical and social importance in this aggressive group of nations, I
have omitted the histories of the hundreds of individual regiments which have fought for
them. I have also without regret omitted definitions of words and concepts unless they happen
to be arcane.
Diagrams
The diagrams are intended to clarify only difficult or less known points.
Attitudes
Though I have tried to give room for all points of view, I have my own. I see no reason to
belittle the achievements of the British nations. They have borne more responsibility for the
conduct of human affairs than any nation since the Romans. There have naturally been terrible,
disastrous, foolish or ill-natured episodes but those who have not been involved in vast
operations are, despite all the bluster and propaganda, in a weaker position to criticise than
those who have.
Similarly, in a work which necessarily depends much on secondary sources I have tended, in
a conflict where other things are equal, to prefer the account (allowing for self-interest) of the
person who has experience of the issues to that of the outside observer. A human being is
made up of intellect, muscle and bone, a system of metabolism, alimentary and sexual tastes,
prejudices, passions, physical weaknesses and inherited peculiarities. It is a mistake to assume
that world or village events are settled wholly by ratiocination or sense. The decisive event may
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be a bad night, a quarrel with the cook or, of course, the ruthless pursuit of power or
logic. The man of engaged experience is likely to present these problems more realistically
than a spectator.
In the ordinary sense history is about people, and it is a deplorable duty to record the follies
and massacres as well as the wisdom and achievement; but there is much reason to remember
and detest the murderous extremists such as Lenin and Hitler, who avoided emulating Genghis
Khan’s pillars of skulls only for reasons of expediency. An important test of the essential
decency of a society is the number of its people which it kills. By this rule of thumb the United
Kingdom emerges with much credit. Moderation, with its exasperating delays, compromises
and hypocrisies, does not lead to the slaughterhouse because, within often self-destructively
wide boundaries it recognises the value of people and the possibility that their opinions may
be right. Even the lucrative and nasty slave trade was abolished by the British, who profited
from it more than anyone else, against the opposition of Latin and African powers. Similarly
the criminal extremism of religious fanatics engendered the compromise Anglican church.
Eighteenth century predatory corruption was defeated before it got out of hand and the move-
ment against the death penalty gathered strength in Britain, while Russian communists and
German Nazis perfected industrialised killing.
One may be entitled to private judgments, but in recounting history, however much one may
be inclined to moralise, people and events ought to be publicly judged by the standards of
their time and place, not by those of another country or another age. It is misleading to apply
Lilliputian intolerance to Brobdingnagian customs, and anachronistic to appraise events of one
era by ideologies which were fashionable long before or unknown until much later. The
double burden on the historian is heavy. He must say what he believes happened but tell the
story as far as he can through the eyes of a contemporary. I cannot believe that I have
succeeded in this, but certainly I have tried, and when I have deviated out of time or
circumstance I have tried to make the fact of the deviation obvious.
It is, of course, true that people and nations generally fall below the level of their ideals, but
the underlying assumptions of national outlook and language differ more than is sometimes
supposed. Oppression of minorities may, for example, be a necessary consequence of the
institutions in one country and an abuse of those in another. Both minorities may suffer
equally, but in the one case the oppressor may be ashamed; in the other not. In the former the
minority has hope and probably a future. In general the murkier side of British history has been
the result of – often highly reprehensible – neglect and sins of omission rather than (save at
times in Ireland and China) deliberate viciousness.
All observers of public events have been troubled by the apparent need to choose between
free will and determinism, and those who accept a moral content in the make-up of human
action necessarily assume an element of choice. Common observation shows that there is
something in both points of view. We all live within frameworks to whose original shape we
contributed nothing, but which we can, later on, join in altering; and it is a curious fact that the
most perfervid of devotees of determinism, the followers of Mohammed, Calvin and Marx,
have thrown up the most energetic activists, who have revolutionised societies and conquered
continents, as if their particular brand of inevitability was impossible without their intervention.
The existence of such experiential contradictions suggests that the full rigour of any moralistic
or deterministic doctrine is simply wrong: that the stark choice is illusory and that life is, after
all, much more complicated than the purely intellectual have tried to make it.
Calamities
Alongside the insoluble questions of human choice, there have been calamities which men
have not controlled and which, strange to say, figure only a little or not at all in the general
histories. Epidemics have swept away people and social institutions many times or have
provoked the creation of organisations like the Victorian local government system. AIDS has
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changed the private behaviour of millions. More people died of the Spanish influenza of
1919–20 than were killed in the First World War, and pollution may yet destroy us all. Frosts,
too, have decided the fate of nations like Denmark. Tempests have altered coasts, drowned
ports and spread conflagrations. The great Lisbon earthquake was felt throughout the Mediter-
ranean and altered the assumptions about the meaning of life.
In a work of this kind it seems to be necessary to allow for all this: to include material, for
example, because instinct proposes a relevance which the intellect, or at least my intellect, does
not grasp. The user can smile at an entry if I put it in. He cannot give himself that pleasure if I
leave it out.
Arrangement and Space Saving
I have made use of one particular space-saving device with a compensation, namely the
inclusion where possible of particular cases under generalised headings. This makes them a
little harder to find, but gives them, in return, a natural setting which would otherwise have to
be repeated. Thus apart from major international figures like Bolivar and some like French
monarchs who had direct and important contact with British affairs, I have not given foreign
personalities special treatment but have, with the aid of cross-references, left the user to find
them under the countries where they were prominent. Many British figures will be found under
headings concerned with their families, and similarly many places will be found in areas where
they are situated or classified.
Cross-References
The text has not been overloaded with asterisks or typographical devices to indicate cross-
references, for I have preferred to rely on the user’s intelligence. References outwards from an
entry occur only where the subject is not mentioned by name or where it seems to be
unexpected, but because of the method of presentation of particulars incorporated in
generalised headings, the inward references are comparatively numerous.
Names and Titles
Names have presented special problems. People have only too often changed theirs. I have
myself. Cardinal Pacelli emerges from the conclave as Pius XII; Mr Bronstein from the Russian
revolution as Comrade Trotsky. It requires some mental agility to grasp that Henry of
Bolingbroke, the Earl of Derby, the Duke of Hereford, the Duke of Lancaster and Henry IV
were one and the same, or that Lord North was a courtesy Lord and spent his political career in
the House of Commons.
I have tried to solve these difficulties in the following way. A person, not a foreigner, will
usually be traceable through the name or title by which he is usually known: thus, Disraelinot
Beaconsfield, but Marlborough not Churchill, but the other names or titles with the dates of
assumption appear in the heading. Places are sometimes even more difficult because given
different names in different epochs or simultaneously by different nations. It is unhelpful to call
the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle the Peace of Aachen, but Ratisbon is sometimes Regensburg and
the French call the Battle of Waterloo after Mont St. Jean, where much of it was fought, while
the Germans use Belle Alliance after the farm near Bonaparte’s headquarters.
Assistance
It is always a pleasure to acknowledge help. Notably I have received it from my son Henry von
Blumenthal who inspired my occasionally flagging spirits and, despite the commitments of a
busy life, undertook a variety of arduous jobs, and from other members of my family; from
Ann Rowen MBE who typed the original million and a half words; Professor John Pick who
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supplied material on the stage and music hall; Mrs Charlotte Cubitt for supplying material on
Friedrich von Hayek; Dillwyn Miles, Herald Bard of the Welsh National Eisteddford, on the
Welsh tongue, Oliver Turnbull, an old friend on almost everything, and Christopher Pounsett
Esq on printing. Apart from reference works in six languages, I have over the years consulted
mostly English, French and German histories, biographies, economic, medical and geographical
works and books on literature and art. They are far too numerous to acknowledge here, but
perhaps I may come nearer by thanking the libraries of the universities of Vienna and Zürich;
of All Souls, Magdalen and Nuffield Colleges at Oxford; of the London School of Economics,
the Wellcome Institute, the City of Westminster and the Honourable Society of the Inner
Temple. Errors of fact, synthesis, selection or interpretation are, of course, entirely mine.
The Present Edition
The book was originally published at the end of 1996. I would like to acknowledge again the
many dozens of encouraging letters, mostly from strangers, which I have received, and which
are a real solace for the difficulties of getting the book into existence. I have, as far as I can,
followed their helpful advice in preparing this edition.
Charles Arnold-Baker
Inner Temple, August 2000
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