George Yule and the Craft Of History

x i n and disciplinary colleague. During hisfirstvisit to Britain in 1947 this remarkable 3 man impressed R. H. Tawney as 'a very attractive fellow'. Those seeking further perspectives should consult the compilation where Dr Mulligan's appreciation first appeared: A Man of Grace: Papers Given at a Symposium to Honour the Life of Professor George Yule, ed. Ian Breward (Melbourne: Theological Hall, Ormond College, 2002). The select bibliography of George's scholarly publications on pp. 169-72 below was compiled by Carol Matthews and Helen Payne. Thanks also to Andrew Lynch, Peter Yule and m y fellow contributors. Wilfrid Prest University of Adelaide George Yule and the Craft Of History I first met George Yule in 1950 when he lectured us in the Honours class on the political and religious thought of the 'English Revolution'. And it was the intellectual content of his lectures rather than theflairor style of delivery which took m e by storm. In fact it was only after several classes that I realized what that youthful, yet shambling figure in his tweeds with frayed cuffs and baggy trousers was doing for us, up there, in front of the lectern. H e wandered about thinking aloud, ruminating about the structures of thought which informed Presbyterians, Independents, radicals and sectarians, and about the intellectual origins of these modes of thought. What he said transformed m y ideas, not just about the content of history but also h o w it should be studied. In particular, our class was infected by his enthusiasm for the modes of thought behind the famous Putney debates. At that encounter, between the rank-and-file and the officers of the N e w Model Army at Putney church in 1647, the differing war aims of its participants and their incompatible ideals for the future settlement ofthe kingdom were elegantly yet passionately expressed. While the text of these debates was in print it was far too expensive for us to buy. So our knowledge of them came largely from George's lectures or from the one battered copy which the library held and which w e had tofightover for an occasional hour's read. I still have m y notes from those lectures. This was, I believe, ourfirstreal experience of 3 R. H. Tawney to Kathleen Fitzpatrick, 6 October 1947: University of Melbourne Archives, Fitzpatrick Papers, Box 2. XIV an empathetic understanding of the historical actors - an understanding which we were enjoined by R. G. Collingwood to cultivate for a truly historical knowledge of the past. In m y 'Life before George' I believed in the crudest Marxist rendering of these debates and the distinctions between the various groups vying for a political place. The Revolution was about the triumph of the Middle Class against the oppressive orders of Feudalism - represented by the absolute monarchy and the House of Lords. That Middle Class was successful in challenging its historically determined enemy and at the same time succeeded in keeping at bay the nascent Proletariat, represented by some of the more extreme sects, excluding them from holding power. M y 'more sophisticated' version ofthat story, I remember, included treating Presbyterianism and Independency as devious Middle Class ideologies which dressed in religious language their manifest political and social agendas to exclude the outdated Church of England and its defenders, those vestiges of Feudalism. At the same time I remember trying to differentiate between these two otherwise identical groups by seeing one - the Presbyterians - as representing the urban Middle Class and the Independents as its rural equivalent. One side of the Putney debates therefore, represented these class interests. O n the other side at Putney, the Proletariat challenged the power of the landed middle class and some of the aristocracy by putting up their radical demands for suffrage and other inalienable freedoms. Now, enter George Yule. What George did, to us sophisticated materialists, was to expose the preposterous shallowness of such analyses. In a few momentous lectures he was to enable us to see that these debates, while seeming to be about quite secular issues ofpolitical authority and obligation, thefranchiseand the basis of political power, were based on an entirely theological underpinning. Without an understanding of...