Whig Party Fortunes in the Yorkshire County Election of 1708

Abstract

The impact of State intervention in rural education was not to supplant the role of the aristocracy and gentry in providing schooling for those who lived on their estates. Rather it brought about a partnership between evolving State policy on the one hand and continuing propertied paternalism on the other. This article argues that the point of conjunction in the partnership occurred through the acquisition of government grants that were, throughout the period, linked to evolving conditionality. The responsibility for obtaining and maintaining school grants expanded the roles of landowners, as they became school managers as well as benefactors. Through the use of school logbooks these dual roles will be illustrated to show the complex relationship that some landowners in Northumberland had with their village schools which primarily focused on fulfilling the criteria for gaining government finance.     

The Extra‐Parliamentary Organisation of the Whig Junto in the Reign of William III

There is much evidence for the parliamentary organisation of the whig junto in Queen Anne's reign, but little for its extra‐parliamentary organisation. This note gives evidence for such extra‐parliamentary organisation late in the reign of William III from letters by both James Vernon and Robert Harley, which describe meetings of the junto and some of its supporters in the country houses of followers in the summers of 1698, 1699 and 1700.     

The Parliamentary Organisation of the Whig Junto in the Reign of Queen Anne: A Further Note

The parliamentary organisation of the whig Junto in the reign of Queen Anne was far superior to that of the tory party. At the centre were the meetings in which three or four of the five members of the Junto were present together with some of their followers. Evidence of such meetings is rare but here is presented a letter giving the details of a meeting of all five in April 1713 at the home of Lord Somers, together with their ally, the tory earl of Nottingham, probably to discuss the forthcoming peace proposals, to end the war of the Spanish Succession, and the protestant succession to the British throne.     

Return of the Whig: Reviewing Historiographies of the Meaning of “Secular” in the Australian Colonial Public Instruction Acts

The term “secular” in the Colonial Australian public instruction acts was always controversial. Recent policy debates seek to draw a connection between its original intent and removing religion from schools, notably Marion Maddox's Taking God to School (2014), and Catherine Byrne's “Free, Compulsory and (Not) Secular” (2013). The issue resurfaced recently in a NSW Teachers' Federation Research Paper (Waight, 2022), and in Gross and Rutland's Special Religious Education in Australia and Its Value to Contemporary Society (2021). I propose that while this is a valid public policy issue, any originalist argument actually relies upon a singular historiographical argument, namely a “Whig” historiography. However, across historians the meaning of “secular” has actually been evaluated through four different historiographies: a “Whig” progress narrative; economic materialism; critical theory; and a religious/nationalist approach. Maddox, Byrne and Waight's approaches can be characterised within a “Whig” approach to Australian education history, originally found in “The Melbourne School” of Austin and Gregory, and the textbooks of Barcan. Its revival presents a good opportunity to survey the topic of education historiography, assess the “Whig” argument, and to propose that religious/nationalist historiography provides a more accurate interpretation of the original intent of the term “secular.”     

The Latest Instalment in the Whig Interpretation of Australian Education History: Catherine Byrne's JORH Article “Free,Compulsory and (not) Secular”

The original meaning of the term “secular” in the “free compulsory and secular” nineteenth‐century Australian public education acts is often contested, and has recently become part of a contemporary debate about the presence of confessional religion in state schools. I outline four different interpretations expressed in Australian education history writing, then review the recent Journal of Religious History article “Free, Compulsory and (not) Secular” by Catherine Byrne, arguing that it belongs to the secular liberal or “Whig” interpretation of the meaning of “secular” in the acts. The article is critiqued for forcing sources to conform to an overly rhetorical narrative device: a polarised structure valorising Victorian legislator George Higinbotham, and demonising New South Wales legislator Sir Henry Parkes. The article is also criticised for sub‐optimal source‐work, lack of awareness of the corpus of Australian education history, and overt contemporary policy agendas. I also suggest that the larger “Whig” interpretation of “secular” as part of a liberal progress narrative, underemphasises a religious hermeneutic and a critical theory hermeneutic: that a Protestant consensus about state schooling and “secular” in the Public Education Acts was also a deeply sectarian device for excluding Catholics from a dominant social settlement, just one part of a systemically divided and prejudicial culture.