Gerald Aylmer on the Political Elites of England from the 1630s to the 1660s
Gerald Aylmer on the Crisis and Regrouping of Political Elites in England between the 1630s and the 1660s Gerald Aylmer was a distinguished historian of Stuart England. He had been an undergraduate and postgraduate at Oxford, a lecturer at the University of Manchester, head of the History Department at York and, finally, Master of St Peter’s College, Oxford. His major contributions covered the bureaucracies of mid-seventeenth century England but he was also a careful contributor to specialised debates on the more technical issues of the period as well as being the author of a valuable textbook. I was fortunate enough to meet him in Balliol in the autumn of 1967 and to correspond intermittently with him until the mid-1980s. What he had to say was always well-informed and instructive. Coming across his contribution to the volume on three British Revolutions published in 1980 reminded me of these virtues. He was concerned with changes in the composition of political elites in England b