"English historians have in the main been "progressive"—whig, liberal, radical, socialist. The occasional conservative among them—an Oman or a Mariott—was clearly so devoid of a mind that he contributed nothing to the tradition, and the violence provoked by Namier owed much to the astonishment felt in conventional circles at the uncalled-for appearance of a historian with tory predilections who clearly outranked the liberals intellectually."