Geoffrey Holmes and the House of Lords Reconsidered

The publication of Geoffrey Holmes's British Politics in the Age of Anne , arguably, did more than any other volume of the period to reinvigorate interest in the house of lords in the Augustan period. The upper chamber, which had been largely overlooked by historians such as Sir Lewis Namier and Robert Walcott, had come to be regarded as a very inferior partner to the house of commons, populated by great landowners whose principal interest was to see the furtherance of their kinship networks. Holmes's work demonstrated clearly the central role of the Lords in British political life and revised radically the accepted orthodoxy that family predominated over ideology in the early 18th century. This article seeks to reassess Holmes's contribution to the study of the Lords in the light of research undertaken since the publication of British Politics and to suggest some ways in which Holmes's model, which remains broadly unassailable, might be reshaped.     

Geoffrey Holmes and the Public Sphere: Augustan Historiography from Post-Namierite to the Post-Habermasian

This article attributes the relative lack of attention to the 'public sphere' in Geoffrey Holmes's work to the pervasive influence of Lewis Namier and the Namierite conception of political history. Holmes's British Politics can be understood as a product of what might be called the revisionist's dilemma. Because the main thrust of the argument of this work was to challenge the Namierite interpretation of the structure of politics in Anne's reign, Holmes could not fail but to replicate the structures of the original Namierite paradigm. Nevertheless, Holmes's demolition of the Namierite view of Augustan politics also opened up new possibilities for further research; it ultimately widened our understanding of the 'political' and it prepared the ground for the remarkable interdisciplinary dialogue between literary historians, intellectual historians, and political historians. The article concludes with a discussion of how Holmes's successors began to build on his work in ways that can help explain why the Habermasian public sphere paradigm emerged to the foreground of current scholarship in a field where it had been ignored for three decades. Historians are now beginning to build a detailed post-Habermasian understanding of the ways in which the public sphere affected the structures of politics in later Stuart Britain. Work along these lines may well finally help explain the transformation of British politics from an age of Stuart revolutions to the age of Hanoverian oligarchy.     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
From Reformation to Improvement. Public Welfare in Early Modern England. By Paul Slack.
The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics. The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex 1585–1597. By Paul E.J. Hammer.
The Stuart Parliaments 1603–1689 . By David L. Smith.
World Enough and Time. The Life of Andrew Marv dl. By Nicholas Murray.
The Age of Faction. Court Politics, 1660–1102. By Alan Marshall.
Radical Whigs and Conspiratorial Politics in Late Stuart England . By Melinda Zook.
Eighteenth Scotland. New Perspectives . Edited by T.M. Devine and J.R. Young
Unionist-Nationalism. Governing Urban Scotland, 1830–60 . By Graeme Morton.
An Appetite for Power. A History of the Conservative Party Since 1830 . By John Ramsden.
Gladstone. Heroic Minister 1865–1898 . By Richard Shannon.
Salisbury. Victorian Titan . By Andrew Roberts.
The Politics of Retirement in Britain, 1878–1948 . By John Macnicol.
Churchill. His Radical Decade . By Malcolm Hill.
Bonar Law . By R.J.Q. Adams. London: John Murray.
The British Conservative Party in the Age of Universal Suffrage, Popular Conservatism, 1919–1929 . By Neal McCrillis.
Labour in Crisis. The Second Labour Government 1929–1931 . By Neil Riddell.
Thatcherism and British Politics 1975–1999 . By Brendan Evans.
British Parliamentary Election Results 1983–1997 . Compiled and edited by Colin Railings and Michael Thrasher
Governing Scotland: Problems and Prospects. The Economic Impact of the Scottish Parliament . Edited by John McCarthy and David Newlands     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
The Chief Governors: The Rise and Fall of Reform Government in Tudor Ireland, 1536–1588. By Ciaran Brady.
Natural Rights and the New Republicanism. By Michael P. Zuckert.
Lords of the Ascendancy. The Irish House of Lords and its Members 1600–1800. By Francis G. James.
Oliver Cromwell. By Peter Gaunt.
British Parliamentary Lists, 1660–1800. A Register. Edited by G. M. Ditchfield, David Hayton and Clyve Jones.
The Suffolk Poll Book 1710. (Raymonds Original Poll Books.) Exeter: S. A. and M. J. Raymond.
The Suffolk Poll Book 1790. (Raymonds Original Poll Books.) Exeter: S. A. and M. J. Raymond.
Lords of Parliament. Studies, 1714–1914. Edited by R. W. Davis.
The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785. By Kathleen Wilson.
British 'Non-Elite' MPs, 1715–1820. By Ian R. Christie.
The Patriot Opposition to Walpole. Politics, Poetry, and National Myth, 1725–1742. By Christine Gerrard.
The Birth of Romantic Radicalism: War, Popular Politics and English Radical Reformism 1800–15. By Peter Spence.
Henry Brougham and his World: A Biography. By Trowbridge H. Ford.
Modern Wales. Politics, Places and People. By Kenneth O. Morgan.
The Liberal Ascendancy, 1830–1886. By T. A. Jenkins.
A Selection from the Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826–93) between September 1869 and March 1878. Edited by John Vincent.
The Age of Upheaval. Edwardian Politics 1899–1914. By David Brooks.
A Lonely Grave: The Life and Death of William Redmond. By Terence Denman.
Churchill and the Politics of War, 1940–1941. By Sheila Lawlor.
England Arise! The Labour Party and Popular Politics in the 1940s. By Steven Fielding, Peter Thompson and Nick Tiratsoo.     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Scenes from Provincial Life: Knightly Families iri Sussex 1280–1400 . By Nigcl Saul.
Parliament and the Crown in the Reign of Mary Tudor . By Jennifer Loach.
Mary Stewart, Queen in Three Kingdoms . Edited by Michael Lynch
The Forced Loan and English Politics 1626–1628 . By Richard Cust.
Reluctant Revolutionaries: Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688 . By W. A. Speck.
A Kingdom without a King: The Journal of the Provisional Government in the Revolution of 1688 . Edited by Robert Beddard.
A Parliamentary History of the Glorious Revolution . Edited by David Lcwis Jones.
War and Economy in the Age of William III and Marlborough . By D. W. Jones.
Robert Harley: Speaker, Secretary of state and Premier Minister . By Brian W. Hill.
London Newspapers in the Age of Walpole. A Study of the Origins of the Modern English Press . By Michael Harris.
Lord Bute: Essays in Reinterpretation . Edited by Karl W. Schweizer.
Subject Catalogue of the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1801–1900 Edited by Petcr Cockton.
Patronage and Principle: A Political History of Modern Scotland . By Michael Fry.
Party and Politics, 1830–1852 . By Robert Stewart.
Later Victorian Britain 1867–1900 . Edited by T. R. Gourvish and Alan O'Day.
Florence Arnold-Forster's Irish Journal . Edited by T. W. Moody and R. A. J. Hawkins
The Climax of Liberal Politics: British Liberalism in Theory and Practice 1868–1918 . By Michael Bentley.
The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln . By Bernard Wasserstein.
The House of Lords . By Donald Shell.     

Jacobite Politics in the Age of Anne

Every political movement has watershed moments when decisions are taken with very long-term consequences. This article explores one such moment with respect to the jacobite movement during the reign of Queen Anne. Implicitly building on Geoffrey Holmes's model of the workings of the whig and tory parties in the age of Anne, the article analyses the turn to the Scots that took place within jacobite politics between 1702 and 1710. Throughout the 1690s the English jacobites had dominated the politics of the jacobite movement. Cementing their hold on the jacobite court's outlook and policies there was, too, an intrinsic anglocentrism at royal and ministerial level. Yet by 1715 the Scots jacobites were clearly equal partners with the English within the movement, and this parity was to shape the entire subsequent history of the jacobite cause. This shift within the politics of the movement was, moreover, not simply a corollary of the union. This article argues that the shift to the Scots was far more fundamental in terms of the outlook and policies of the movement, and ultimately did not depend on the immediate military utility of the Scots jacobites, but on a new perception of them as a uniquely important resource.     

The Rise and Fall of the Post-War Settlement

The People's Peace: British History, 1945–1989. By Kenneth O. Morgan.
Power, Competition and the State : Vol. 2, Threats to the Postwar Settlement: Britain, 1961–74. By Keith Middlemas.
Power, Competition and the State: Vol. 3, The End of the Postwar Era. By Keith Middlemas.
Selecting the Party Leader: Britain in Comparative Perspective. By R. M. Punnett.
British Politics Since 1945: The Rise and Fall of Consensus. By David Dutton.
UK Political Parties Since 1945. Edited by Anthony Seldon.
British History, 1945–1987: An Annotated Bibliography. By Peter Catterall.     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550–1653. By Robert Brenner.
Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England. By Linda Levy Peck.
Civil War and Restoration in Three Stuart Kingdoms. The Career of Randal MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim, 1609–83. By Jane H. Ohlmeyer.
Justice Upon Petition. The House Of Lords and the Reformation of Justice 1621–1675. By James S. Hart.
Proceedings in Parliament, 1628: vol. V, Lords Proceedings in 1628; vol. VI, Appendices and Index. Edited by Mary Freer Keeler, Maija Jansson Cole, and William B. Bidwell.
Not Peace but a Sword: The Political Theology offhe English Revolution. By Stephen Baskerville.
Politics Under the Later Stuarts. Party Conflict in a Divided Society 1660–1715. By Tim Harris.(Studies in Modem History.)
The Making of a Great Power: Late Stuart and Early Georgian Britain, 1660–1722. By Geoffrey Holmes.(Foundations of Modern Britain.)
The Age of Oligarchy: Pre-Industrial Britain, 1722–1783. By Geoffrey Holmes and Daniel Szechi.(Foundations of Modern Britain.)
The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture. By R. O. Bucholz.
A Patriot Press. National Politics and the London Press in the 1740s. By Robert Harris.(Oxford Historical Monographs.)
The Insatiable Earl. A Life Of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. By N. A. M.Rodger.     

Visions of Albion: ancient landscapes,Glastonbury and alternative forms of nationalism

Nationalist visions are often connected with a cult of the land. This article considers some of the cultural‐nationalist ideas linked to the Somerset town of Glastonbury, a prominent New Age centre. It discusses the legacy of British pastoralism as shown in the work of H. V. Morton and Cecil Sharp. It considers the evolution of an English–Celtic tradition, drawing on the legacy of the Arthurian legend, but being re‐formulated in the late twentieth century as a vehicle for New Age conceptions of British society. The article concludes by evaluating the political values inherent in the New Age.     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Reform and Revival: English Government in Ireland 1470–1534. By Steven G. Ellis.
Anti-Calvinists.: The Rise of English Arminianism 1590–1640. By Nicholas Tyacke.
Archbishop William Laud. By Charles Carlton.
Politics, Society and Civil War in Warwickshire, 1620–1660. By Ann Hughes.
Soldiers and Statesmen: The General Council of the Army and its Debates, 1647–1648. By Austin Woolrych.
London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis. By Tim Harris.
John Locke's Liberalism. By Ruth W. Grant.
The Political Philosophy of Edmund Burke. By Iain Hampsher-Monk.
Liberal Anglican Politics: Whiggery, Religion and Reform 1830–1841. By Richard Brent.
Peel and the Victorians. By Donald Read.
Politics and the Churches in Great Britain 1869 to 1921. By G. I. T. Machin.
Corruption in British Politics 1895–1930. By G. R. Searle.
Éamon de Valera. By Owen Dudley Edwards.
Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill 1941–1945. By Martin Gilbert.
The First Thatcher Government 1979–83: Contemporary Conservatism and Economic Change. By Martin Holmes.     

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
Tudor Ireland: Crown, Community and the Conflict of Cultures 1470–1603. By Steven G. Ellis.
The Reign of Elizabeth I . Edited by Christopher Haigh.
The Road to Revolution: Scotland under Charles I, 1625–37. By Maurice Lee, jr.
Dangerous Positions: Mixed Government, the Estates of the Realm, and the Making of the 'Answer to the XIX Propositions'. By Michael Mendle.
The Jewish Community in British Politics. By Geoffrey Alderman.
The Cross of Saint Patrick: The Catholic Unionist Tradition in Ireland. By John Biggs-Davison and George Chowdharay-Best.
English Society 1688–1832: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice during the Ancien Regime. (Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics). By J. C. D. Clark.
Goodwin Wharton. By J. Kent Clark.
The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue. By John Robertson.
Lord Grenville 1759–1834. By Peter Jupp.
Henry Brougham: His Public Career 1778–1868. By Robert Stewart.
The Ballot Question in Nineteenth-Century English Politics. By Bruce L. Kinzer.
'Orator Hunt: Henry Hunt and English Working-Class Radicalism. By John Belchem.
Catholic Emancipation: Daniel O'Connell and the Birth of Irish Democracy 1820–30. By Fergus O'Ferrall.
Gladstone, Politics and Religion: A Collection of Founder's Day Lectures Delivered at St. Deiniol's Library, Hawarden, 1967–83. Edited by Peter J. Jagger.
The Politics of British Foreign Policy in the Era of Disraeli and Gladstone. By Marvin Swartz.
Austen Chamberlain: Gentleman in Politics. By David Dutton.
The First Labour Party 1906–14. Edited by K. D. Brown.
Victor Grayson: Labour's Lost Leader. By David Clark.
Lloyd George: From Peace to War 1912–1916. By John Grigg.
The Changing Constitution: Edited by Jeffrey Jowell and Dawn Oliver.     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
England's Empty Throne. Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation 1399–1422. By Paul Strohm.
The Wars of the Roses. Politics and the Constitution in England, c. 1437–1509. By Christine Carpenter.
King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom. By W. B. Patterson.
Dismembering the Body Politic. Partisan Politics in England's Towns 1650–1730. By Paul Halliday.
Gentleman Radical. A Life of John Home Tooke 1736–1812. By Christina and David Bewley.
A War of Ideas. British Attitudes to the Wars against Revolutionary France, 1792–1802. By Emma Vincent Macleod.
Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders. By Don Herzog.
Re-Reading the Constitution. New Narratives in the Political History of England's Long Nineteenth Century. Edited by James Vernon.
Reform and Respectability. The Making of a Middle-Class Liberalism in Early Nineteenth-Century Manchester , By Michael Turner.
Political Unions, Popular Politics and the Great Reform Act of 1832. By Nancy D. LoPatin.
The Journal of John Wodehouse First Earl of Kimberley for 1862–1902. Edited by Angus Hawkins and John Powell.
Liberal by Principle. The Politics of John Wodehouse 1st Earl of Kimberley, 1843–1902. Edited by John Powell.
The Women's Suffrage Movement. New Feminist Perspectives. Edited by Maroula Joannou and June Purvis.
Suffrage and Power. The Women's Movement 1918–1928. By Cheryl Law.
The Politics of the British Constitution. By Michael Foley.     

'Ladies are often very good scaffoldings': Women and Politics in the Age of Anne

The age of Anne saw unprecedented politicisation of society, the expansion of patronage and the election of ten parliaments between 1695 and 1715. If, as has been argued for the second half of the 18th century, such factors facilitated women's political participation, then the prerequisites for women's political involvement, at least at the level of the political elite, existed in the age of Anne. Yet we still know surprisingly little about the shape and extent of women's political participation beyond the dynamics of the Augustan court. This article encourages historians of women and politics to return to the age of Anne and consider women's political participation writ large. Was this period, which has often been seen as a political watershed, also a watershed for women's political involvement? Through an examination of Elizabeth Coke's involvement in the Derbyshire election of 1710, where she served as her brother's political agent, this article calls historians' attention to the activities of one group of politically-active Augustan women – those who served as intermediaries and agents. It argues that politics could be one aspect of a broader familial agency, one which saw women step in and out of family, household, estate and political management, as necessary. Nor, it argues, should these women be seen as mere Swiftian 'scaffoldings'– as means to an end for politically-ambitious men. As agents and intermediaries, women as well as men played recognized political roles, in similar ways, in campaigns across the country; their involvement requires closer examination.     

Political Models and Political Transfer in the Shaping of Europe

This essays deals with the problem of reconstructing the ideological roots which made possible the phenomenon of political transfer in different European countries. The basis is obviously the dominance of the ‘British Model’ as the normal reference for the European Political Sciences. Even the opponents of such hegemony took it as the unavoidable polemic goal. This founded a sort of political ‘homogeneity’ that let live many different approaches and many national peculiarities, but in the end convinced the majority of European political scientists that some type of representative constitution had to be accepted. It was at the beginning of the twentieth century that the panorama changed. Elie Halévy's work on one side, discussing the sunset of the ‘British model’ in Britain itself, and on the other Max Weber's reflections on what he defined as ‘the community of destinies’ interpret a turning point in the approach of European political sciences to the possibilities of transferring political models.     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Bicameralisme. Edited by H. W. Blom, W. P. Blockmans, and H. de Schepper
History of the justices if the Peace. By Sir Thomas Skyrme
The Manufacture of Scottish History. Edited by I. Donnachie and C. Whatley
Secrets of the Kingdom: British Radicals fiom the Popish Plot to the Revolution of 1688- 1689.
The Revolution of 1688-89. Changing Perspectives. Edited by Lois G. Schwoerer.
Britons. Forging the Nation 1707- 183 7. By Linda Colley
Pitt the Elder. By Jeremy Black. (British Lives.)
Law, Politics and the Church of England. The Career ofStephen Lushington, 1782-1873.
The House Of Lirds in British Politics and Society 1815-1911. By E.A. Smith
The letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho 1885–1917. Edited by Jane Ridley and Clayre Percy.
TJ.: A Life of Doctor Thomasjones, C.H. By E.L. Ellis
'His Majesty's Loyal Opposition': The Unionist Party in Opposition, 1905191.5.
British Politics and the Great War: Coalition and ConJict, 1915–1918.
Anthony Eden: A Political Biography 193 1-1 957. By Victor Rothwell
Third Party Politics Since 1945: Liberals, Alliance and Liberal Democrats. By John Stevenson
Parliaments and Pressure Politics. Edited by Michael Rush.
The British General Election of 1992. By David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh.     

HISTORY WRITING WITHOUT CLOSURE

In The Work of History: Constructivism and a Politics of the Past, Kalle Pihlainen pays tribute to Hayden White's work on narrative constructivism through a comprehensive and critical evaluation of his work. The book's seven chapters are based on previously published and reworked essays, starting with Pihlainen's 2013 essay on narrative truth and ending with his 2006 essay on the confines of the form. The Work of History is timely in light of some world political leaders’ apparent immunity to facts, their use of history, and the role of power, as Pihlainen also discusses the ethics and politics of historical constructivism (xiii). At the same time, the book is “a meta-critical enterprise,” as White states in his foreword (x): it scrutinizes and explains White's work and its reception, including the debates on the production of knowledge, the ontological status of historiography, the various representations of history, and the kinds of audiences historians envision. Although narrative constructivism seems a bit passé, Pihlainen wants to further elaborate this theoretical approach to disentangle and explain some fundamental misconceptions about it that still exist among historians. One misconception is that constructivism inherently neglects the ethical impulse and supposedly lacks the potential for political engagement. Pihlainen urges historians and theorists to find ways of becoming politically committed in their writings and to challenge their readers to do the same.