In the dialects of Early Modern English (ENE) described by John Hart (c.1550) and John Wallis (c.1680), as in contemporary American and British English, a number of vowel nuclei alternate in quality and segmental composition, depending on the specification for the feature [+tense]. These alternations have motivated analyses in Chomsky and Halle 1968 (SPE) in which the abstractness of underlying representations, the arbitrariness of diacritically used feature specifications, and the limited scope of some rules, motivate a search for analyses which are preferable in terms of applicable evaluation criteria such as the simplicity metric and the Weak Alternation Condition. Furthermore, the SPE analysis of Hart's system accounts for a version of the phonetic facts which in some respects are inconsistent with Hart's descriptions. In §§ 3 and 4, we will see that, by proceeding from the phonetic facts and not, as did Chomsky and Halle, from an assumption about the underlying representations, we may indeed propose phonological subcomponents which, as § 6 concludes, are more highly valued than their SPE counterparts, described in § 5. In § 7 it will be seen that the present interpretation of the phonetic facts described by John Hart is a more faithful version of that description, and it will be concluded that this fact adds support to the present analysis of Hart's vowel alternations. Historical claims made by Chomsky and Halle will be examined in § 8.