Inventing the Victorian age: the Greville Diary and its Early Critics

The Journals of Charles Greville, clerk to the Privy Council from 1821 to 1859 are among the most well-known, well-respected and widely cited sources for the political and social history of their times. What is less well-known is the controversy they aroused among Greville's Victorian readers when first published (less than a decade after Greville's death) in 1874. The purpose of investigation here is to chart the course and extent of reader reaction as it unfolded during 1874–75, to explore ways of accounting for its intensity and, finally, to attempt evaluation of its impact as a cultural experience conducive to the emergence among readers of a conscious recognition of themselves as ‘Victorians’. When read in the context of the preoccupations of its first readers, Greville's Journals prove to be anything but a dead historical source. Instead, reader reaction is found to be driven by a series of contemporary concerns. They include the question of the degree of respect owing to hereditary authority; the definition of standards of honourable behaviour in protection of the private dealings of people of public reputation; and the very degree of reliability to be attributed to diary-based ‘memoirs’, given their contestable genre. Even so, participants in the controversies which broke out on all these fronts found themselves admitting common ground in acknowledging across their differences that the ‘Victorian’ age in which they lived was a decisive cultural and political break from the past world the Journals recorded.     

Sorcery at court and manor: Margery Jourdemayne, the witch of Eye next Westminster

Margery Jourdemayne, the ‘witch of Eye next Westminster’, Eleanor, duchess of Gloucester, and three scholars of the ducal household were foremost amongst those accused of treasonable witchcraft in 1441. The paper explores Margery's part in this episode, and then examines her background: her husband William came from a prosperous Middlesex yeoman family living at Acton, and he himself was a manorial official on Westminster Abbey's Ebury (Eye) estate.     

The Politics of Chivalry: Sir Robert Walpole,the Duke of Montagu and the Order of the Bath

This article explores the complex circumstances surrounding the foundation of the order of the Bath in 1725, and seeks to correct the commonly‐held view that it was initiated by Walpole simply to augment the patronage available to his supporters in parliament. The proposal for a new order of chivalry based on the medieval ‘knighthood of the bath’ in fact emanated from the court, having been prompted by one of its central figures, the duke of Montagu. Walpole and his colleagues were by no means oblivious to the practical political value of such a move, but having only lately consolidated their position at court, their main priority was to seize a unique opportunity to flatter the new royal dynasty and garner popularity for it through the medium of the order's rediscovered history. The ministers selected the order's 36 founder‐knights with considerable input from senior courtiers, but ensured that those nominated were mostly peers and MPs who could evince ministerially useful connections between court and parliament. Though the order was later derided as a symptom of Walpoleian corruption, its foundation can be regarded as something of a turning point in Walpole's rise to power.     

Making the Lancastrian capital at Leicester: the battle of Boroughbridge,civic diplomacy and seigneurial building projects in fourteenth-century England

Though a community of some note throughout the Middle Ages, Leicester really came to the forefront of England's consciousness following a series of political and economic crises in the first decades of the fourteenth century. Thereafter the relationship between the town and its Lancastrian lords was forced to shift from one of sometimes indifferent, sometimes overwhelming, clientage to a more balanced and mutually beneficial association. This increasingly positive relationship found physical expression in two projects in particular: the renovation of Leicester Castle and the foundation of the Newarke Hospital and College. This building programme gave the Lancastrian dynasty not only a place to stay, entertain and pray in southern England, but also a solid base from which to face the political and economic turmoil of the fourteenth century. This fact, along with Leicester's growing connection to the English royal family, would distinguish the town, and bequeath it an importance even once its Lancastrian lords had become kings of England. Leicester exemplifies important themes in later-medieval urban history. The town not only derived concord out of conflict with its lords in the face of difficult economic circumstances; it also brought some of the most potent aspects of both the English and continental traditions of urban-seigneurial relations together, especially in terms of the lord's political and physical connections with the town under his control.     

Henry Savile's Tacitus and the English role on the Continent: Leicester,Hotman, Lipsius

This article argues that Henry Savile's widely admired Tacitus of 1591 should not be read as an implied call for a more aggressive English stance against Spanish advances on the Continent (as one recent article suggests), but precisely for a more restrained and prudential approach. Secondly, it calls into question the generally accepted view that Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, played a prominent role in the composition of the book. It argues that in reconstructing the work's original intellectual context and especially that of the supplement The Ende of Nero and the beginning of Galba, the main emphasis should not be on Essex's political and military career, but on that of his stepfather Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. The article provides an investigation (as far as the surviving information allows) of the background in Continental politics and political thought in relation to the text of The Ende, which suggests that it should primarily be read from the perspective of the unsuccessful English intervention in the Low Countries in 1585–88.     

The Fall of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk and the Revival of Impeachment in the Parliament of 1621

The revival of impeachment in 1621 has tended to be viewed exclusively through the prism of parliament. However, this article, which builds on the work of Professor Allen Horstman, suggests that a key factor in impeachment's revival was the dismissal of Lord Treasurer Suffolk for corruption in 1618. Suffolk's removal caused widespread disquiet, since it was assumed that senior officials held office for life. In order to silence these criticisms it proved necessary for the king not only to put Suffolk on trial but also to justify by precedent the lord treasurer's removal. This latter task was performed by the former lord chief justice, Sir Edward Coke, himself not long disgraced, whose researches in the medieval parliamentary record revealed the following year that errant crown ministers had hitherto been held to account by means of impeachment. Coke subsequently put this discovery to good effect when parliament met in 1621. Against the backdrop of mounting criticism against his hated rival, the lord chancellor, Francis Bacon, Coke revealed the existence of impeachment to the house of commons, whose attention was then focused on finding a way to punish the monopolists, Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Michell. In so doing, Coke not only aided the lower House, which had been struggling since 1610 to find a way of punishing non‐members, but also sought to settle an old score.     

The Pepys Apocalypse (Cambridge,Magdalene College,MS Pepys 1803) and the readership of religious women

In 1405 Richard Scrope, archbishop of York, rebelled against Henry IV and was executed. He has been seen by historians as being easily led into rebelling against the king by other rebels and also as rather a fool. Although it survives in no contemporary copy, a Manifesto containing 10 charges against Henry's government was attributed to the archbishop by contemporaries. Contemporary chroniclers and historians alike have disparaged this document as having little to do with political reality and as such reflects the simple-mindedness of its author; Archbishop Scrope. This article discusses six of the charges (grouped in pairs) contained in various versions of the Manifesto that centre on Henry IV's alleged abuses of government, specifically: 1 and 2) that the king had oppressively taxed both his lay and clerical subjects; 3 and 4) that the king had replaced experienced government officials with new men who had lined their pockets and that the king had subverted the appointment to the office of sheriff; finally 5 and 6) that he subverted the selection process for knights of the shire and subverted their rights to ‘act freely’ in parliament. The article demonstrates that the archbishop's charges were not ‘naïve nonsense’ but reflected political reality and resonated with those who read them.     

The Clash of Interests: Commerce and the Politics of Trade in the Age of Anne

This article celebrates the contribution which Professor Holmes made to the field of British politics and society by the study of an important collection of political tracts. The compiler of the collection is identified as Sir Charles Cooke, one of the most significant commercial politicians of his day. The organisation of the collection illuminates the ways in which City politicians used various channels of information, both printed and personal, to support their political platforms. It also demonstrates how Cooke contributed to the defeat of the tories over the French Commerce Bill of 1713, by supplying key sources to combat the ministry's position. On a wider plane, although it suggests that partisan politics tainted all information advanced in the public sphere, this did not relieve political rivals of the need to establish the superior authority of their sources, and political success only saw Cooke redouble his efforts to gain as wide a base of information as possible. Statistical precision remained elusive, but his archive stands testament to a growing need for authority of source in a political world of party and vested interests.     

Of Male and Female Heirs; of English and Scottish Peerages: The Fine Tuning of the Peerage Bills of 1719

There were two versions of the Peerage Bill in 1719, one which was lost in the house of lords in April when the parliament was prerogued and one in December which was defeated in the house of commons. The first was constructed in debates in the Lords, in conjunction with the judges, based on resolutions introduced into the upper House by the duke of Somerset; the second was introduced into the Lords as a fully formed bill. Both bills underwent changes during their progress through the house of lords. The result was that the second bill differed significantly from the first. Based on the first bill, the second allowed for more peerages to be created, while trying to prevent the problems associated with female succession, particularly in the Scottish peerage, and more closely defining when a peerage had become extinct. This article is based on documents generated by the passage of the two bills through parliament which have not been studied before.     

The Battle of the Camel: Revolution,transition and tourism in Cairo

This article asks how the 25 January 2011 revolution in Egypt led to the entrenchment of existing forms of privilege and marginality. To answer this question, critical scholars have taken for granted the revolution's linear temporality and focused largely on institutional processes at the state level following the fall of President Hosni Mubarak. In contrast, I provide an original take on this question through extensive ethnographic engagement, focusing on moments of rupture and urban spaces of contestation at the time of the revolution and beyond. More specifically, I trace the significance of an understudied moment during the revolution: the ‘Battle of the Camel’, when horse/camel drivers who sell rides to tourists at the Pyramids charged at protestors in Tahrir Square. An ethnography of this moment allows me to draw out the complex temporalities of the revolution by recognizing diverse moments of contestation by marginalized subjects at its different ‘stages’. This article traces how these alternative temporalities were driven but also obscured by longer-term patterns of tourism and urban development. It finds that relations of power and marginality were reproduced through tourism and elite Egyptian visions of temporality and authenticity in the key urban spaces relevant to this battle – the Pyramids of Giza and Tahrir Square. These sites were positioned as spaces of Egypt's ‘authentic’ past and future respectively, reinforcing a colonial and neoliberal narrative of development that made possible the protection of tourism and elite priorities and the remarginalization of ‘underdeveloped’ camel drivers and street vendors in these sites.     

Republicans,Unionists and Jacobites: The 1st Marquess of Tweeddale and the Restoration of the British Parliament

Although John Hay, 1st marquess of Tweeddale, contributed significantly to both the ruthless overthrow of Charles I, and the establishment of the first British parliament in the 1650s, most of his political career was concerned with attempting to re-establish this parliament after it was dissolved at the restoration of Charles II. His first attempt ended in defeat at the hands of the king and the duke of Lauderdale in 1670, but following the overthrow of James VII and II in 1688, Tweeddale tried to persuade the prince of Orange to unite Scotland and England. The prince, however, showed much more interest in securing the crown of Scotland than uniting the two kingdoms. Tweeddale, as lord high commissioner to the Scottish parliament in 1695, responded by passing legislation designed to provoke the English parliament into accepting union. He was also engaged in a jacobite intrigue to restore King James. Tweeddale intended that the restored monarch would be little more than a puppet, who could be used to legitimise what was effectively a republican regime in all but name. By this means the restored parliament would avoid the unpopularity which brought down the first British parliament in 1660. Tweeddale's scheme came to nought, but the technique he employed to manipulate the English parliament, and exploit the jacobite threat, contributed to the restoration of the British parliament ten years after his death.     

King Stephen,the English church,and a female mystic: Christina of Markyate's Vita as a neglected source for the council of Winchester (August 1139) and its aftermath

One of the central reasons for the disintegration of royal authority (sometimes called ‘the Anarchy’) during the reign of King Stephen of England is generally thought to have been his troubled relationship with the English church. The king was summoned to appear before the legate in England, Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester (who was also Stephen's brother), at a church council called for Winchester on 29 August 1139, in order to show cause for his conduct in arresting several prominent bishops and in confiscating their property. Several major chroniclers discuss the events leading up to and occurring at the council of Winchester, especially William of Malmesbury in his Historia novella and the anonymous Gesta Stephani. The versions of events contained in these sources are not entirely consistent. The present paper examines yet another recounting of the events of the council, seldom appreciated by historians of twelfth-century England, presented in the Vita of Christina of Markyate (c.1096/98–c.1155/66), composed by an anonymous monk of St Albans between 1140 and 1146. Christina was close to the abbot of St Albans, Geoffrey de Gorham, who was probably the patron of the Vita and who quite likely attended the Winchester council and apparently became involved in its aftermath. These events are recorded in some detail in the Vita, presenting us with a vivid recounting of the council and the immediate consequences thereof. The narrative of the Vita contains a somewhat different picture of the personalities and occurrences surrounding the Winchester council than we encounter in the chronicles. The current essay compares the Vita to the standard accounts. We argue that the Vita may be the earliest and possibly most reliable source for the events of the council. Moreover, if we privilege the report of the Vita, the council becomes an especially significant moment in the breakdown of relations between Stephen and the English church.     

Continuity,chance, and change: The character of the industrial revolution in England

This article examines the life and works of Robert Blakey, author of the first English-language history of political thought. Studies of Blakey have typically concentrated on one aspect of his life, whether as an authority on field sports or as an historian of philosophy. However, some of Blakey’s lesser-known ventures, particularly his early Radical politics, his hagiographies, and his attempts to write a biography of Charlemagne, heavily influenced his more famous works. Similarly, Blakey’s upbringing in a Calvinist tradition, rooted in the Scottish School of Common Sense philosophy helps makes sense of his philosophical and theological commitments, yet has been largely ignored. This article provides a sketch of Blakey’s life, tying these disparate strands together, and explaining their influence upon, and relevance to, the first history of political philosophy.     

King Stephen,the English church,and a female mystic: Christina of Markyate's Vita as a neglected source for the council of Winchester (August 1139) and its aftermath

One of the central reasons for the disintegration of royal authority (sometimes called ‘the Anarchy’) during the reign of King Stephen of England is generally thought to have been his troubled relationship with the English church. The king was summoned to appear before the legate in England, Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester (who was also Stephen's brother), at a church council called for Winchester on 29 August 1139, in order to show cause for his conduct in arresting several prominent bishops and in confiscating their property. Several major chroniclers discuss the events leading up to and occurring at the council of Winchester, especially William of Malmesbury in his Historia novella and the anonymous Gesta Stephani. The versions of events contained in these sources are not entirely consistent. The present paper examines yet another recounting of the events of the council, seldom appreciated by historians of twelfth-century England, presented in the Vita of Christina of Markyate (c.1096/98–c.1155/66), composed by an anonymous monk of St Albans between 1140 and 1146. Christina was close to the abbot of St Albans, Geoffrey de Gorham, who was probably the patron of the Vita and who quite likely attended the Winchester council and apparently became involved in its aftermath. These events are recorded in some detail in the Vita, presenting us with a vivid recounting of the council and the immediate consequences thereof. The narrative of the Vita contains a somewhat different picture of the personalities and occurrences surrounding the Winchester council than we encounter in the chronicles. The current essay compares the Vita to the standard accounts. We argue that the Vita may be the earliest and possibly most reliable source for the events of the council. Moreover, if we privilege the report of the Vita, the council becomes an especially significant moment in the breakdown of relations between Stephen and the English church.     

From Greece to Babylon: The political thought of Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686–1743)

This paper explores the political thought of Andrew Michael Ramsay with particular reference to his highly acclaimed book called A New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus (1727). Dedicated to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, to whom he was tutor, this work has been hitherto viewed as a Jacobite imitation of the Telemachus, Son of Ulysses (1699) of his eminent teacher archbishop Fénelon of Cambrai. By tracing the dual legacy of the first Persian Emperor Cyrus in Western thought, I demonstrate that Ramsay was as much indebted to Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History (1681) as he was to Fénelon's political romance. Ramsay took advantage of Xenophon's silence about the eponymous hero's adolescent education in his Cyropaedia, or the Education of Cyrus (c. 380 B.C.), but he was equally inspired by the Book of Daniel, where the same Persian prince was eulogised as the liberator of the Jewish people from their captivity in Babylon. The main thrust of Ramsay's adaptation was not only to revamp the Humanist-cum-Christian theory and practice of virtuous kingship for a restored Jacobite regime, but on a more fundamental level, to tie in secular history with biblical history. In this respect, Ramsay's New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus, was not just another Fénelonian political novel but more essentially a work of universal history. In addition to his Jacobite model of aristocratic constitutional monarchy, it was this Bossuetian motive for universal history, which was first propounded by the German reformer Philipp Melanchthon in his Chronicon Carionis (1532), that most decisively separated Ramsay from Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, author of another famous advice book for princes of the period, The Idea of a Patriot King (written in late 1738 for the education of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, but officially published in 1749).     

The Bullion Controversy and the history of political thought: experience,innovation and theory

ABSTRACT

In 1797 the British government relieved the Bank of England of the obligation to pay specie for its notes upon demand; then, after bitter debate and sustained inflation, it restored this burden in 1821. The episode is studied as the “Bullion Controversy”, and it is commonly assigned high significance in the development of monetary theory. Yet the Bank stood as an old target for so-called “country” thought, which suspected commerce of corroding virtue and undermining the proper functions of Parliament. Both the Bank and the Whig regime that created it in 1694 had withstood such attacks, but in the nineteenth century these critical voices were joined by political economists who reworked the existing lines of attack, above all by presenting themselves not as defenders of an ancient virtue but as the champions of a modern, commercial society that was being endangered by the government's and the Bank's ignorance and self-interest. This paper thus examines the Bullion Controversy in relation to the history of political thought, and reveals how the return to convertibility represented an early victory for political economy's self-styled “theorists” in reforming the state's institutions in the nineteenth century.     

制度背后的技术、环境与政治:以清代柴塘岁修专项银设立为中心

清代两浙大规模从柴塘改建为石塘开始于乾隆第五次南巡。乾隆希望通过河工、海塘来成就不朽功勋,谕令在并不需要改建的柴塘中伺机改建石塘,强调以柴塘作坦水且不必岁修,这违背了石塘需要间接护岸工程的技术要求。乾隆深知如果新建石塘仍建设与维护间接护岸工程,将无疑说明其决策失误。当臣工谈到新修石塘需修筑坦水或者岁修作为石塘外护的柴塘,他的反应是: 反复声称柴塘作为石塘外护不需岁修,把决策失误责任推卸给相关臣工,隐晦或者露骨暗示钦差大员把责任推卸给相关人员。即使皇帝极力维护自己决策正确,但客观技术要求终使他批准了柴塘岁修专项银制度,也从侧面说明了其决策不当。整个过程充分说明,在涉及古代大型公共水利工程的制度问题时,技术与环境因素往往要让位于政治,在制度、技术、环境和政治因素的复杂交织中,历史的复杂性得以凸显。     

The Professors' Africa: Economists, the Elections of 1907, and the Legitimation of German Imperialism

German economists led by Gustav Schmoller created the KolonialpolitischesAktionskomité (colonial-political action committee) duringthe so-called ‘colonial crisis’ of 1906–1907to promote the German colonial empire at a time when it wassuffering much scandal and criticism. Widely esteemed and enjoyingthe appearance of non-partisanship, they worked closely withthe government of Bernhard von Bülow during the electionsof 1907, arguing that colonial empire was economically and politicallyindispensable and that its financial burdens were bearable.Straddling a position between the economic imperialism of manyGerman liberals and the settler colonialism prevalent in conservativeand radical nationalist circles, they helped secure a middleground that enabled the Bülow bloc and developed many ideasfor colonial reform that came into currency during the Dernburgera (1906–1910). Through lecturing, the mass disseminationof relatively high-quality literature, and the demarcation ofthe new academic sub-discipline known as Kolonialwissenschaft(colonial science), a potent complex of liberal-nationalistambitions was fused with a new ‘scientific’ colonialismthat helped redefine and legitimate a German civilizing missionin Africa and forge an imperialist ideology that gained a nationalaudience.