Preface

By Lawrence Goldman

• Gardeners: profession and national pastime
• Recorders and preservers of nature
• Engineers for daily living
• Empire and Commonwealth
• Medieval churchmen: patronage and pastoral care
• Groups in British history: new men, angry men
• Our next online update

>New online contents, May 2009

Welcome to the fourteenth online update of the Oxford DNB, in which, as every May and October, we extend the dictionary’s coverage of men and women ‘from the earliest times’ to the twentieth century.

The May 2009 update adds biographies of 87 individuals active between the eleventh and late twentieth century. In addition to new biographies the update includes a further 20 ‘reference group’ essays—our expanding selection of well-known groups, clubs, and networks in the British past, available (for people with subscriber access) in the themes area of the online edition. These 20 new articles bring the total number of published groups to 250, meaning that we are now approximately two-thirds of the way through the project.

Central to May’s update is a set of 30 biographies of men and women who shaped the history of British gardening. Many of the new subjects made their name cultivating popular varieties of garden plants, but there are also plant hunters, broadcasters and writers, and those responsible for some of the Britain’s best-known gardens. These 30 lives conclude our project, which began last May, to extend the dictionary’s coverage of garden history. A selection of the new biographies published in 2008–9, along with some gardening lives already included in the dictionary, is now available in an interactive map.

Another focus of May’s update is a set of Victorian and early twentieth-century engineers who pioneered new standards in domestic and public hygiene. These individuals led the way at a time when Britain was widely acknowledged as an exemplar for public health, public cleanliness, and ‘salvage’—an earlier term for recycling. Our interest in the history of empire and Commonwealth also continues with new biographies of men and women who shaped the history of southern Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific, and the Far East, while the continued project charting the pre-Reformation episcopate adds biographies of bishops from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries.

As ever, full details of the May 2009 update are available from the online contents page, and a free selection of extracts and highlights is available here. You may also like to know that, following an agreement in April 2009 between OUP and library authorities in Scotland and Wales, the online edition of the Oxford DNB is now freely available to many more Scottish and Welsh readers. As a result, more than 90 per cent of the United Kingdom now has access to the complete dictionary through a local public library, and if you were previously unable to gain access to the dictionary you may well be able to do so now. As before, most libraries offer ‘remote access’, which allows library members to log in to the Oxford DNB simply by entering the membership number on their library card in the box provided on the dictionary’s homepage. Remote access allows you to consult the Oxford DNB at any time and on any computer (at home or work, for example); there’s no need to visit the library as long as you have a membership number handy. Full details of participating public libraries, including those that joined the scheme in April 2009, are available here.

May’s update also includes more than 1000 reciprocal links between Oxford DNB biographies and entries in Oxford University’s new online resource, Electronic Enlightenment. Electronic Enlightenment offers the searchable correspondence of eighteenth-century thinkers and writers, and the publishers and booksellers who promoted their ideas. Links are available in the left-hand margin of relevant Oxford DNB entries (for example, Voltaire and Adam Smith) and are an excellent way for eighteenth-century scholars to further their research. The Oxford DNB now provides over 50,000 links to trusted external resources, including the National Portrait Gallery, National Register of Archives, American National Biography, the Royal Historical Society bibliography and, now, Electronic Enlightenment.

Gardeners: profession and national pastime

Our latest selection of gardening lives highlights the importance of those who held the position of head gardener for the formation and dissemination of horticultural knowledge and fashions. Many of the leading figures in this category were Scots, including Charles M’Intosh (1794–1864) from Perthshire, who came from a long line of gardeners. M’Intosh was employed by landowners in Scotland and England before entering the service of British and foreign royalty, and drew on his experience in his gardening manuals, which benefited both professional and amateur gardeners. William McNab (1780–1848) and James McNab (1810–1878), father and son, made important contributions to scientific horticulture as curators, successively, of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. The varied apprenticeship of James Barnes (d. 1877) underlay his phenomenal skill as a cultivator at Bicton, Devon, where a legal dispute with his employer (who falsely accused him of neglecting the garden), led to an important assertion of the status of the gardening profession. Like Barnes, whose hallmark was the cultivation of speciality fruits, including pineapples and cucumbers, Robert Hogg (1818–1897), a nurseryman from Duns in Berwickshire, became the leading authority on fruit growing and a key promoter of practical gardening among members of the Royal Horticultural Society—one of several figures in this update to have played a prominent role in the development of the RHS. In the year that the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, marks its 250th anniversary we also include William Jackson Bean (1863–1947), who rose through the hierarchy at the garden—from student gardener in the melon yard to curator of Kew’s arboretum—and spent his evenings compiling the standard work on trees and shrubs in the British Isles. Another life in horticulture was that of Fred Streeter (1877/9–1975), who began as a twelve-year-old washing flower pots, and became one of the earliest garden broadcasters, dealing on radio and television with questions from recreational gardeners and never recommending anything he had not tried himself.

Next to these practical tips were the often more theoretically grounded prescriptions of the garden designers. Edward Kemp (1817–1891) acquired experience of large-scale projects as an apprentice at Chatsworth and made his name as a designer and a champion of public parks, most notably at Birkenhead, though he also offered popular advice on how to lay out small gardens. Donald Beaton (1802–1863), whose apprenticeship was served in Scotland, was a leading advocate of bedding plant gardening and was interested in the theory of complementary colours. Francis Inigo Thomas (1865–1950) reacted against ahistorical schemes with their imported specimen plants, and dedicated his career to reviving native styles and plantings from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Edwardian country gardens.

Among the foremost amateur gardeners of her age was Louisa Lawrence (1803/4–1855), who cultivated exotic plants at Ealing Park, Middlesex, and became a prolific prizewinner at the shows of what was then the Horticultural Society of London, of which she was one of the earliest women fellows. A century later the Perthshire garden of Dorothy Renton (1898–1966), now owned by the National Trust for Scotland, was noted for its cultivation of new introductions, while the Kent cottage garden of Edward Solomon Hyams (1910–1975) led to an interest in ecology and soil fertility. Hyams is also remembered as a writer and his monumental history The English Garden (1964) is described by his Oxford DNB biographer as ‘the most eloquent testimony to the post-war revival of English gardens’. After a successful career in business Sir Thomas Hanbury (1832–1907) created a garden at La Mortola on the Mediterranean coast of northern Italy. With an unrivalled collection of plants it is now recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site. Hanbury is also noteworthy for presenting the RHS with a 60 acre plot at Wisley, Surrey (now one of its principal public gardens), that allowed the society to move from its cramped, polluted site in Chiswick. Louisa Lawrence’s son Sir Trevor Lawrence (whose biography also appears in this update) oversaw the move to Wisley as president of the RHS, and is credited with reviving the society’s fortunes in the early twentieth century.

Other well-known gardens to feature in May’s update—both in Cornwall—are those at Heligan, overseen by two dynasties of Cornish landowners and politicians, the Tremayne family (per. 1741–1901), and the estate of Caerhayes Castle, where John Charles Williams (1861–1939) utilized Cornwall’s favourable climate for horticulture, especially for the cultivation of rhododendrons. Perhaps the most controversial legacy of the amateur landowner–gardeners is that of Christopher John Leyland (1849–1926). In his lifetime Leyland was best known for promoting the construction of turbine-powered vessels in the Tyneside shipbuilding industry. But posthumously he is associated with Cupressocyparius leylandii, the accidental product of cross-pollination between two cypress trees, whose fast-growing properties admirably suited Leyland’s Northumberland estate—but are of more dubious benefit in suburban gardens where they have been inappropriately planted.

Numerous British gardens have been enriched by the products of overseas plant-hunting expeditions. The travels of the Cornish brothers William (d. 1863) and Thomas Lobb (d. 1894), sons of a gamekeeper, led to important discoveries in South and North America and south-East Asia (including the monkey puzzle tree and the ceanothus), enriching their employer, if not themselves. Charles Maries (1851–1902) was sent to China and Japan in the 1870s with instructions to collect plants that might thrive in British gardens, while between the two world wars Frank Ludlow (1885–1972) undertook collecting expeditions in Bhutan, Tibet, and Kashmir. New introductions were made available to gardeners through nurserymen like Charles Lawson (1795–1873), who built up a successful business specializing in grasses and pines and became lord provost of Edinburgh before suffering a spectacular financial collapse.

Specialist plantsmen are represented by Samuel Arnott (1852–1930), a retired Dumfries baker whose snowdrop hybrid came to be grown around the world, and by Peter Barr (1826–1909), the Govan-born nurseryman who rescued daffodils from the obscurity into which they had fallen in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, so earning him the title of ’daffodil king‘. Daffodil cultivation was also the life’s work of Guy Livingstone Wilson (1885–1962), who forsook a position in the family’s Ulster textile business to pursue his enthusiasm. Roses meanwhile were the passion of Henry Honywood D’Ombrain (1818–1905), a leading clergyman–gardener who became the first secretary of the National Rose Society. May’s update also adds Henry Eckford (1823–1905), whose formative gardening experience had been gained on some of Scotland’s best-known estates, and who developed new varieties of sweet pea with such success that the flower came to be widely grown in British gardens. Eckford’s work brought him fame in North America and recognition by the RHS, and led to his being dubbed the ’father of the sweet pea’.

Recorders and preservers of nature

The plant-breeding work of horticulturists informed the studies of Charles Darwin, whose anniversary we celebrate this year; men like Donald Beaton, the bedding plant specialist, were also correspondents of Darwin. Two other categories of activity that underpinned the work of naturalists, botanical art and taxidermy, are also represented in this update. Sarah Anne Drake (1803–1857) was notable for her scientific accuracy as well as her artistic ability, and spent fifteen years resident in the household of the botanist John Lindley, though her achievements received little acknowledgement in her lifetime. A correspondent of the mycologist Miles Berkeley, Anna Maria Hussey (1805–1853), the wife of a clergyman, produced a much admired volume of illustrations of British fungi, intended in part for mothers wishing to teach their children about nature. Augusta Joanna Elizabeth Innes Withers (d. 1876) undertook commissions for the Horticultural Society of London and then received royal patronage, but died in poverty and obscurity. It is only recently that the Cornish amateur naturalist Emily Stackhouse (1811–1870) has been identified as the main source of illustrations for the best-selling volume Flowers of the Field. Our fourth botanical artist is Lilian Snelling (1879–1972), principal lithographer to Curtis’s Botanical Magazine for over thirty years, who received the Victoria medal of honour, the Royal Horticultural Society’s highest award, in 1952.

From recording to preserving specimens. Edward Gerrard (1810–1910), employed in the zoological department of the British Museum for fifty years, set up a flourishing taxidermy and osteology business, supplied with specimens by London Zoo. Another London firm, established by a second taxidermist, (James) Rowland Ward (1847–1912), claimed to have originated the idea of setting up animals in natural groups, and made a name for its dramatic displays at exhibitions and at its Piccadilly showrooms. Provincial firms, such as that founded by Peter Spicer (1839–1935) at Leamington, specialized in hunting trophies, while the specimens of birds from the wetlands of Norfolk preserved by Thomas Edward Gunn (1844–1932) reflect the overlapping interests of wildfowlers and naturalists. The work of these preservers, once a common feature of domestic interiors, is today on display in museums across the country. A final taxidermist now added to dictionary made his name by displaying his work to the public during his lifetime. This was Walter Potter (1835–1918), of Bramber, Sussex, who was responsible for perhaps the best-known and certainly the most curious collections of Victorian taxidermy, comprising elaborate and sentimental anthropomorphic tableaux.

Engineers for daily living

May’s update also includes of set of new subjects, principally engineers, whose work sought to establish a sanitary infrastructure for a growing population. Given their predominant focus on water purity, waste management, domestic hygiene, salvage, and heating, they may rightly be considered pioneers of some basic necessities of civilized life that we now take for granted and use daily. The industrialist and engineer Robert Thom (1774–1847), for example, constructed a gravitational scheme to supply Greenock with pure, filtered water, which became one of the technical wonders of the west of Scotland. Working contemporaneously with Thom, James Simpson (1799–1860) developed the modern form of sand filter beds to purify London’s water. These methods sustained the urbanization of Britain, were exported to the colonies, and remain the basis of municipal water supplies dependent on surface water. Water supply also made possible the introduction of the water closet, the major innovation in domestic sanitation, developed through the ingenuity of such sanitary engineers as John Shanks (1825–1895) and (Josiah) George Jennings (1810–1882), who also built the first public conveniences in London, and the pottery manufacturer Thomas William Twyford (1849–1921).

Discharge of water-borne waste into public sewers raised new challenges for civil engineers like John Roe (1795–1874), who was at the forefront of a vigorous debate about sewer design, favouring an ovoid pipe for the rapid removal of waste from urban centres. The Manchester philanthropist and promoter of town planning Thomas Coglan Horsfall (1841–1932) was among those who campaigned for smoke abatement to reduce air pollution in Britain’s cities. Large schemes for the ventilation and heating of public buildings—hospitals, prisons, churches, museums, and town halls—were pioneered by engineers such as George Haden (1788–1856) and Wilson Weatherly Phipson (1838–1891). A prominent sanitary engineer, William Eassie (1832–1888), was active in the Cremation Society of England, supervising the construction of the crematorium at Woking where the first legal cremation in Britain took place in March 1885. And a municipal sanitary inspector and civil engineer, Jesse Cooper Dawes (1878–1955), became the leading authority on the growing problem of domestic waste, overseeing salvage recovery of valuable reusable materials, and criticizing indiscriminate burning and dumping. In 1940 he claimed that Britain had derived more salvage from domestic waste than all continental countries combined. Dawes may have a claim to be the pioneer of our modern practice of recycling.

Four Scottish engineers illustrate the worldwide impact of British engineering advances. The mechanical engineer Walter Montgomerie Neilson (1819–1889) harboured a passion to build railway locomotives in Scotland, and established a firm in Glasgow, where he successfully developed designs and identified overseas export markets. The Clydeside marine engineers Alexander Carnegie Kirk (1830–1892) and James Weir (1842/3–1920) made important innovations in the design of steamship engines that enabled those vessels to surpass sailing ships, and helped to secure Glasgow’s position as a world centre of shipbuilding. The Aberdeenshire-born civil engineer (Richard) Henry Brunton (1841–1901), who oversaw the construction of thirty lighthouses along Japan’s rugged coast, was among the 2500 westerners hired by the Japanese government after the Meiji restoration of 1868, and his memoirs are an important record of the experience of those foreign employees.

Empire and Commonwealth

May’s update further extends our coverage of lives shaped by the British empire through the inclusion of another fifteen entries whose geographical and occupational sweep reflects the breadth and diversity of the imperial experience itself. The earliest born of our new subjects, the Wesleyan missionary John Thomas (1797–1881), first went to Tonga in 1826, and is acknowledged as a key figure in the dissemination of Christianity on the islands, helped greatly by his alliance with the powerful king of Vava’u (and eventually of the whole Tongan archipelago), Taufa’ahau. Thomas’s career was not without controversy, but with hindsight his impact on these small Pacific islands pales in comparison with that made by Sir Albert Ellis (1869–1951), whose discovery of phosphate on Nauru and Ocean Island (Banaba) set in train the environmental devastation of those islands, whose inhabitants are still struggling to cope with the consequences. Like Thomas a sincere evangelical Christian, Ellis believed that the development of the phosphate industry was in the islanders’ own interests.

A rather more romantic view of the Pacific was purveyed by Ellis’s contemporary, Beatrice Grimshaw (1870–1953), whose novels and short stories typically featured ‘independent young women, corruptible men, and frequently sinister natives’; she was for a time a highly successful writer, and contributed significantly to the popular British view of the ‘south seas’ and their local cultures. Another female author, Emily Innes (1843–1927), has provided historians with a rich source of material on the impact of colonialism in Malaysia, though her highly caustic account of both Malay society and British officialdom—written as a corrective to Isabella Bird’s more appreciative view—made little impact at the time. The same cannot be said for a third woman whose life is included in this update, Helen Joseph (1905–1992). Born into relative comfort in Sussex, and first travelling to South Africa to convalesce after a riding accident, she became increasingly involved in the anti-apartheid struggle in that country, enduring repeated banning orders, house arrests, and harassment by the South African police, and was eventually recognized as ‘the mother of the struggle’. At her funeral Nelson Mandela described her as being both ‘a South African revolutionary’ and ‘a lady of the British empire’; this was, he said, ‘a contradiction in the eyes of many but to Helen her own reality’.

As well as people of British birth or descent whose lives were intertwined with the history of the British empire, this update includes those who, in different ways, sought to cope with the impact and legacies of the empire at the receiving end. Sir Ugo Mifsud (1889–1942), twice prime minister of Malta, was a moderate nationalist who found himself increasingly at odds with British rule, and is remembered in Malta above all for his passionate and eloquent denunciation of British deportations during the Second World War. Sir Milton Margai (1895–1964), first prime minister of Sierra Leone, was an unashamed Anglophile (with an English wife) who was nevertheless forced to resort to extraordinary measures to contain the pressures fuelled by the ethnic and political tensions that were a legacy of British rule in his country. Herbert Chitepo (1923–1975), a leading figure in the resistance to white rule in Rhodesia, was perhaps the best prime minister that country never had; his murder in Zambia in 1975, which paved the way for the leadership of Robert Mugabe, remains one of the unsolved mysteries of the liberation struggle. This update also includes the lives of two very different political leaders from the Caribbean: Maurice Bishop (1944–1983), the radical head of the New Jewel Movement, which seized power in Grenada in 1979, and Dame Eugenia Charles (1919–2005), prime minister of Dominica, known as ‘the iron lady of the Caribbean’, who was at the forefront of those urging the United States to intervene in Grenada after Bishop’s assassination by his political rivals in 1983.

Finally—since the impact of British rule extended much deeper than the politics of a particular country—this update includes two people who mediated the modernization of indigenous culture, in both cases in India. Dadasaheb Phalke (1870–1944), recognized as the father of the Indian film industry, produced the first films based on Hindu religious figures having watched a film version of the life of Christ. Phalke’s contemporary, Dhanpat Rai (1880–1936), better known as Munshi Premchand, introduced the social concerns of contemporary writers in English into the Urdu and Hindi canons. He fought, ultimately unsuccessfully, against the increasing cultural divergence between the two language traditions, which reflected the increasing political antagonism between Muslims and Hindus under British rule. These cultural as well as political concerns will be explored in further new entries in subsequent updates.

Medieval churchmen: patronage and pastoral care

In May we also continue our project to provide a complete listing of the pre-Reformation episcopate, and here we add eleven new lives in ten articles. A common theme in this update is the interconnection between religious and political life, and especially the importance of royal patronage for the furthering of clerical careers. That of Richard Hill (d. 1496), for example, changed dramatically after the battle of Bosworth (1485) and the accession of Henry VII, who transformed him from an obscure if comfortable cleric to an ecclesiastical high flier: Henry’s liking for Hill led to his becoming first dean of the Chapel Royal and then bishop of London. It was the search for peace, rather than the outcome of war, that shaped the career of Henry of Sandford (d. 1236), bishop of Rochester. Clearly a man of ability, Bishop Henry was entrusted with important tasks both by Henry III and the pope, including peace talks with the French during the 1230s. So too John Harewell (d. 1386), bishop of Bath and Wells, who in 1370 travelled to France in a party led by John of Gaunt to seek a diplomatic settlement. Harewell was also notable for the generosity of his bequests, including a year’s wages in cash to his servants and funds to build the south-west (or Harewell) tower at Wells cathedral, together with two bells, Great and Little Harewell. John Hals (c.1407–1490) was both a victim and ultimately a beneficiary of royal patronage, having his elevation to Exeter blocked by Richard, duke of York, but later securing the see of Coventry and Lichfield when his patron, Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s consort, moved into the ascendant. Hals proved to be an outstanding diocesan, a characteristic of several other newcomers, among them John of Climping (d. 1262), bishop of Chichester—described in his lifetime as ‘a man of wonderful simplicity and innocence’—who was responsible for the canonization of his predecessor and thus for making his cathedral a centre of pilgrimage. Perhaps the most striking instance of royal patronage is the elevation of Robert Wyville (d. 1375). On the recommendation of Edward II’s consort, Isabella, Wyville became bishop of Salisbury despite the dismay of contemporary chroniclers and the pope’s acknowledgment that, had he realized that Wyville was so illiterate and unpersonable, he would never have elevated him to such heights. In fact the bishop’s critics were proved wrong: Wyville’s detailed register supplies historians with valuable evidence on his forty-five year episcopate and the running of his diocese, showing him to have been conscientious in its administration and diligent in attending parliament and convocation.

Groups in British history

The twenty reference group essays added in May 2009 continue our project to provide a history of significant networks, clubs, and associations in which men and women came together to shape Britain’s past. Chronologically our new groups extend from the ‘new men’ of Henry I’s reign—an influential twelfth-century grouping of officeholders enriched by royal service—to the ‘angry young men’ of the 1950s, whose novels and plays scandalized and inspired in equal measure.

In addition to the angry young men, our coverage of literary groups extends over nearly four centuries, from the 1950s back to the patrons, players, and writers who made up Jacobean England’s two great theatrical companies, the Lord Admiral’s Men and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, also known as the Shakespeare Company. Both companies were formed in 1594 to provide Elizabeth I with entertainments during the Christmas festivities. Both also broke with existing hierarchical models to work as a team, sharing members’ assets, incomes, and costs. This was a structure the Shakespeare Company maintained, and that cultivated a remarkable esprit de corps among the players and authors, who in addition to Shakespeare (a founding member) included the leading actors Richard Burbage and Will Kemp. Relations were not always harmonious, however: in 1599 an Admiral’s man was murdered in a dispute between company authors and a year earlier the dramatist Ben Jonson had killed another member of the Admiral’s company in a duel. Jonson himself went on to become the focus of a coterie of literary apprentices and affiliates, known as the sons, or tribe, of Ben, whose connections are also traced in this update. It was theatrical appreciation, rather than creation, that was said to unite members of another of our new groups, the early nineteenth-century Greek Play bishops, so-called because of observers’ belief that their elevation to the episcopate derived less from theological or pastoral proficiency than a knowledge of classical literature. Hence the Greek Play bishops became symbolic of what critics regarded as the inadequacy of late Hanoverian church leadership. Like the Greek Play bishops, the angry young men (or AYM) were defined from the outside by onlookers who championed or bemoaned them as the face of post-war Britain, be this good or bad. Befitting a movement characterized by cynicism and a loathing of complacency, the writers identified as ‘angries’ rejected any notion of group identity. John Osborne, for example, dismissed talk of a literary network as ‘cheap, journalistic fiction’ and, indeed, the few meetings that took place between supposed members were characterized as much by abuse as appreciation.

Where the AYM saw much to ridicule in post-war Britain, others regarded this as a time for optimism born of scientific innovations, of which the development of penicillin to treat bacterial infection was pre-eminent. Another of May’s group essays charts the story of the discoverers and developers of the drug from the initial breakthroughs of Alexander Fleming and his staff at St Mary’s Hospital, London, to the development of usable quantities of penicillin by an Oxford team led by Ernst Chain and Howard Florey, and the subsequent mass production of the drug during the Second World War. The penicillin story is one that provokes strong opinions, and the essay also describes the difficult relationship between the London and Oxford scientists, and the post-war development of the ‘Fleming myth’ that championed the image of the lone, pioneering scientist. In addition to penicillin, post-war optimism was evident in the designs of an innovative school of architects who, as members of what was then the world’s largest architects’ office, that of London county council, sought to rebuild and remodel London from the mid-1940s. Many Londoners today live with decisions taken by the LCC architects, for good or ill, depending on taste: from Scandinavian-style or Le Corbusier-inspired blocks of flats to modernist comprehensive schools, the Royal Festival Hall, or the brutalist South Bank Centre. The history of the modern architectural profession can be traced back to the 1830s and to the actions of another new group in this update, the founders of the Institute of British Architects (subsequently the Royal Institute of British Architects, or RIBA). Similarly an essay on the creators of the Geological Society of London (1807) charts the role of its founding membership—of geologists, mineralogists, and chemists—in developing a nationwide organization capable of withstanding a challenge from the mighty Royal Society.

One of the striking characteristics of the new Geological Society was the diversity of religious affiliation among its early membership, with Quakers, Unitarians, Independents, and Anglicans finding common cause in scientific investigation. But elsewhere in this update religious faith, and especially faith under threat from innovation, served as a motive for further forms of association. As the most serious rebellion in Tudor England, affecting the whole of northern England, the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536–7) was a violent but ultimately unsuccessful uprising against Henrician religious and economic policy. It was drawn predominantly from members of the lower clergy and commoners, but also attracted conservative members of the northern nobility who wished to remove the king’s minister Thomas Cromwell. Opposition to royal policy likewise led to the Pentland rising (1666) in which presbyterians in southern and western Scotland rallied to preserve the national covenant, signed by Charles II at his coronation in Scotland in 1651, but renounced in favour of episcopalianism after the restoration. After the suppression of the rising by crown forces, its participants, most notably the field preachers, emerged as covenanting folk heroes whose legacy shaped Scottish presbyterian identity into the nineteenth century.

Four early eighteenth-century groups highlight the religious and political factionalism that characterized an age of limited toleration (as displayed by the dissenting ministers who took part in the 1719 Salters’ Hall debate) and of emerging party politics. Initially the tory October Club (act. 1711–1714) came together to press Robert Harley to investigate the mismanagement of the preceding whig administration. However, the club—which took its name from the October beer members drank at a Westminster tavern—soon broke free of Harley’s parliamentary control and fell victim to party divisions that saw the tories defeated in 1714 and thereafter excluded from office. Two further essays, on the Pulteney ‘patriots’ and Robert Walpole’s Norfolk congresses, reveal the extent to which factionalism also shaped whig politics during the reigns of George I and George II. To the followers of William Pulteney, Walpole’s political dominance (based in their opinion on corruption) seemed to threaten the nation’s health and moral character, with the patriots quickly becoming a cross-party grouping of disaffected whigs and ostracized tories who shared a common enemy. In the face of these protests Walpole assembled his political friends at sumptuous country house gatherings. These were dubbed his ‘Norfolk congresses’ following a 1728 satire on one such party at Walpole’s new seat, Houghton, which now became the focal point for the ‘Robinocracy’ so detested by Pulteney’s patriots.

A final theme to emerge across groups in this update is royal service. Of these perhaps the best known instance is the Sealed Knot, a coterie of six royalist partisans who worked on behalf of the exiled Charles II during the English Commonwealth. The group’s name, which can be traced to a funeral sermon of the 1630s, was adopted to symbolize a tightly knit circle through which a form of domestic royalist politics would be resumed. But if closely bound, the Sealed Knot was also realistic and, eschewing futile adventures, dedicated itself to making the best use of ‘rational’ opportunities for restoration. This pragmatism severely hindered the Knot’s effectiveness to carry out the king’s bidding or to foment change, though since the 1960s it has gained a more romantic image thanks to the use of its name by a society that re-enacts battles of the civil war. Earlier examples of royal service and allegiance are found among Henry I’s ‘new men’, a Victorian term based on twelfth-century observations by Orderic Vitalis, who, identifying the rise of a new grouping of civilian officials during the reign, spoke of ‘great men’ being ‘pulled down– from positions of eminence’ to be replaced by new men ‘of base stock who had served him well’. A slightly later act of allegiance, this time to Richard I, and to the Christian faith, took the form of the third crusade, a three-year campaign (1190–92), originating in England, Normandy, and Aquitaine, to recover Palestine from Saladin, ruler of Syria and Egypt. Military service also brought together members of Marlborough’s staff, the officers and civilians who played an important supporting role to John Churchill, first duke of Marlborough, in his capacity (1702–11) as commander of British and allied forces during the War of the Spanish Succession. And service of a not always noble form characterizes the activities of one final group added in this update. These were the sea dogs, a heterogeneous network of sixteenth-century English privateers who sought to exploit worsening Anglo-Spanish relations from the 1560s. Their apotheosis came in 1588 when, led by Francis Drake, John Hawkins, and Martin Frobisher, they frustrated the Spanish invasion attempt and so ensured the security of Queen Elizabeth and protestantism against papacy. The story of the sea dogs, and their depiction as a patriotic and noble assembly, has gained much from nineteenth- and twentieth-century retellings in books and on film. Yet, as our article notes, such romantic and stirring depictions obscure the many occasions when the sea dogs’ privateering in the name of queen and country became piracy for personal gain.

As ever, readers with access to the complete Oxford DNB (and this includes almost every member of a British public library) can browse among the 250 groups now available in the themes area of the online edition. A selection of existing group essays is also freely available, along with some highlights from the new groups in the May 2009 update.

Our next online update

Our next online update will be published in October 2009 and will continue to extend the Oxford DNB’s coverage of men and women in all periods to the late twentieth century. October’s update includes a special focus on people who have shaped Scottish history, and Scots overseas, as well as Britons active in Latin America.

Lawrence Goldman, editor

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