ABSTRACT
History, or at least English history, was part of my education from a very early age. Constitutional history especially was implanted in me before I was ten years old. The instruction that I had in this subject was unadulterated indoctrination with as little attempt at impartiality as under any totalitarian régime. Everything was treated from a Whig point of view, and I was told, only half in joke, that history means ‘hiss-Tory’. There was a simple rule for deciding who was right; in a quarrel between Church and King one sided with the King, except in the case of the seven bishops prosecuted by James II; when the King had a dispute with anybody other than the Church one took the side against the King.
