The book is the first full analysis of the gentry in the early modern period since G.E.Mingay The Gentry: the Rise and Fall of a Ruling Class (1976). It offers a synthesis of the recent specialist work on this key social and political group, but will also provide a distinctive approach to its subjects through the use of the texts and artefacts by which the gentry sought to fashion themselves.

The 1635 ship money writ elicited a “common feeling of dissatisfaction” throughout England. It was the general belief that the tax contravened “fundamental law,” and that in its imposition Charles “had deliberately treated the nation as a stranger to his counsels, and that if his claim to levy money by his own authority were once admitted, the door would be open to other demands of which it was impossible to foresee the limits.” Contrast this account by S.R. Gardiner with a more recent analysis of the response to ship money provided by J.S. Morrill, a scholar who has acknowledged a substantial intellectual debt to Alan Everitt, the progenitor and leading exponent of the concept of the “county community” in seventeenth-century England. “The King's right to levy the rate was rarely questioned in the provinces. Ship money was hated for its costliness and its disruptive effects on the social and political calm of the communities … Above all,” the levy was detested because “it exemplified the government's insensitivity toward localist sentiment and belief.”In these divergent accounts, a fundamental difference emerges between the traditional school of English historians and the county community school of local historians. For Gardiner, seventeenth-century Englishmen were fully aware of and vitally concerned about the actions of their national rulers, actions they evaluated against the touchstone of constitutional principle. Everitt and Morrill insist, by contrast, that even the gentry were “surprisingly ill informed” about “wider political issues”; they were “simply not concerned with affairs of state.”

The Malampaya field development comprises subsea wells in 820 meters water-depth producing via a subsea manifold and two 16 inch diameter inconel clad flowlines to a shallow water platform 30 km distant. Condensate is removed on the platform and the dry gas is then transported via a 504 km long 24 inch export pipeline to an onshore gas plant at Tabangao (Batangas, Luzon Island) for extraction of H2S. The condensate is stored in the platform CGS Caisson prior to export via a short 3 km long 24 inch diameter pipeline and CALM buoy (Fig 11). The Malampaya Deep Water Gas to Power Project in the Philippines has delivered first gas as advertised on October 1st 2001. The gas production is from five high rate deep water subsea gas wells. This paper summarises the delivery of the wells, in particular, the specific challenges that had to be surmounted to deliver high quality wells whilst remaining within the tight Malampaya project schedule. These challenges related to the deployment of leading edge well technology systems in an environmentally pristine and remote area. This within a country with extremely limited petroleum infrastructure and very long supply lines. The definition and management of good performance within this context and the management of the many interfaces with other disciplines working concurrently required unique ways of working to be established. Within the technical arena, many novel solutions were adopted with respect to rig modifications, drilling with losses, management of hydrates, horizontal Xmas trees, monobore well completions, coiled tubing perforating from a semi-sub well test clean-up and extensive/detailed planning. Organisationally, a working atmosphere was developed based on open, detailed and relentless inter-team challenge. This led to drilling and completing, genuinely to the "limit" of what was achievable for Malampaya. INTRODUCTION Malampaya, developed and operated by Shell Philippines Exploration BV (SPEX), is the first and only gas development in the Philippines. The five subsea wells are the first link in a production chain that supplies 30% of the mainland power requirements. In each well, high deliverability and high availability are critical from day one and throughout the full 25 year field life. There are no other fields that can supplement any shortfall in well performance. Planning was initiated in Houston in late 1998 and moved to Singapore and Manila in mid-1999. Offshore execution started in early-2000 and was completed by September 2001. Innovative business processes and technical solutions were employed in "striving for excellence" in an environment characterised by a very short planning time and a multitude of project interfaces. The Malampaya gas wells were handed over to the production team, on time and within budget. They have been proven capable of production rates exceeding 120MMscf/day. Included in this paper are the key highlights from planning, drilling, completing and commissioning the Malampaya gas wells.

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