On the whole the governments of Britain between the end of Pitt's first administration in 1801 and the major cabinet reshuffle which transformed Lord Liverpool's ministry in 1822 have not impressed historians, though the performances of individuals, such as Lord Castlereagh's diplomacy and Lord Barham's naval reforms, have sometimes been singled out for praise. Recently, however, attempts have been made to rehabilitate the general performance of some of these administrations and their leaders; Mr. Gray has shown Perceval in a favourable light, Dr. Cookson has argued that Liverpool's ministry before 1822 was neither so reactionary nor so inefficient as has usually been alleged and that Liverpool's leadership was of a very high order, and Dr. Harvey has similarly offered a partial vindication of the Talents. The historiography of the Addington administration has followed a similar course, and its lack of favour is not difficult to explain. In the first place, Addington had the misfortune to incur the opposition of the two leading politicians of his day, the younger Pitt and Charles James Fox, whom most Victorian politicians and writers of the Tory and Whig persuasions respectively regarded with veneration. ' Then again, Addington's later career placed him squarely in the reactionary Tory tradition of Eldon and Castlereagh which had few articulate admirers after the demise of Wellington's government

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Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge were lifelong friends. They were also the daughters of best friends: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the two poetic geniuses who shaped the Romantic Age. Living in the shadow of their fathers’ extraordinary fame brought Sara and Dora great privilege, but at a terrible cost. In different ways, each father almost destroyed his daughter. And in different ways each daughter made her father. Growing up in the shadow of genius, both girls made it their ambition to dedicate themselves to their father’s writing and reputation. Anorexia, drug addiction and depression were part of the legacy of fame, but so too were great friendship and love. In this thesis I give the never-before-told story of how two young women, born into greatness, shaped their own histories. In doing I also re-examine the lives of Wordsworth and Coleridge and the significant role Dora and Sara played in their lives, their writing and their legacies. My study of the lives of Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge was written as a biography aimed at a readership beyond academia. While the narrative is based on primary manuscript sources, I have deliberately used the techniques of the professional biographer to create character, pace, conflict and drama. In order to fit within the PhD assessment criteria, which requires me to submit no more than 100,000 words, the material submitted here is an abridged version of a full-length double biography of Dora and Sara. This main thesis is preceded by a short critical essay with some details about the nature of the research as well as assessment of the PhD’s contribution to knowledge.

The loss of Minorca at the beginning oft he Seven Years' War created a well documented political crisis culminating in the arrest, trial , and execution of Admiral John Byng. Most of the historiography on this extraordinary event remains, however, mired in political, maritime, and military histories. This dissertation deviates from that trend. If Byng's execution is treated as a deviant case (which it most certainly was) then this remarkable episode can reveal much about several other aspects of eighteenth-century British society that has hithel10 remained below the surface. Thus, by way of microhistory, the research presented here looks past the political and military and attempts, instead, to connect Byng to the several other aspects of cultural Britain that allowed his execution to go forward . Communicative cultures remained potent: ballads and sermons are investigated alongside newspapers and pamphlets not only as conduits of information (or misinformation) but in gauging the potency of the messaging. This dissel1ation also takes an anthropological turn to add to the historical discourse of the eighteenth-century crowd. Thus, what develops is an argument put forward which takes into account individual behaviors as paJ1 of a mob scene whether processional or riotous. The Byng affair occurred during a precipitous rise in food prices. Problems of shortages exacerbated a national mood whereby both food riots and Byng protests occurred concurrently. This deviant case study affords an 0ppOJ1unity to compare various types of mob expressions: food riots, protests against the admiral, but also mob violence against impressment gangs as the nation readied for war. Finally, the dissertation addresses manning issues. Sickness pervaded the navy since impressments began in 1755. Economic changes, long in the making, likely contributed to this, explaining why Byng's fleet fell short of over 700 men as he made his way to the Mediterranean.

Through an examination of a variety letters and printed works, this thesis argues that the political influence of the Country interest during the administration of Robert Walpole has been systematically underestimated in the historiography. New and previously neglected archival sources have been uncovered to form a better understanding of how the Country interest operated during the period. The emergence of the Country helps to address wider historical issues, such as why a ‘rage of party’ under Queen Anne disappeared during the reigns of George I and George II, only to be replaced by shifting associations of power. This examination of the Country platform in the eighteenth century challenges the notion of Walpole's adept mastery of party and patronage in developing a Whig oligarchy. This thesis is concerned primarily with the traditional, textbook treatments of Walpole’s tenure in office and how orthodox views (most notably of the Whiggish variety) continue to permeate into the present historiography, affecting how the eighteenth century is interpreted. A variety of methodological approaches have been deployed to answer how the Country rose to prominence and why they became effective in their opposition to Walpole's administration. Inspiration has been drawn from the prosopographical approach to scholarship, frequently associated with Sir Lewis Namier. In this instance, prosopography was an effective tool to reveal that there is important evidence to be examined concerning the role of the Country outside of London. Micro-historical practices favoured by historians such as Steve Hindle are also utilised, with emphasis placed on tracing the methods in which individuals used language to demonstrate their alignment with Country politics, alongside how they implored others to join them. Finally, the Cambridge school of political thought, linked with the analysis of changing linguistic practice and most associated with Quentin Skinner and John Pocock is also adopted to place the ideas mentioned above in context. The emphasis on language used in private correspondence provides important insights when examining the link between political motivations and action.

This thesis examines anti-Scottish sentiment or ‘Scotophobia’ in England and America from the accession of George III in 1760 to the end of the War of American Independence in 1783. It charts the development of popular Scotophobia from the radical political protest movement associated with John Wilkes in London to Sons of Liberty in America. I argue that anti-Scottish sentiment during these years was intrinsically connected to the imperial crisis which was to culminate in the American Revolution. American Patriots and their radical supporters in England blamed the increasingly coercive American policies of the British government on the secret influence of Scottish ministers such as the Earl of Bute and Lord Mansfield. They simultaneously attacked the Scottish people in general as the internal enemies of the British Empire, denouncing them as Jacobite rebels and the enemies of ‘Freeborn Englishmen’ in England and America. This imperial Scotophobia reached its peak at the outbreak of war in 1775, with both Americans and English radicals attacking the conflict as a ‘Scotch war’. I argue that Scotophobia during the war was truly transatlantic, providing both a scapegoat for British policy and a common enemy against whom American Patriots and English radicals could unite. Through this transatlantic Scotophobia, therefore, we can gain important insights into both English and American visions of empire and national identity on the eve of the Revolution. The appeals to ‘English liberty’ and attacks on a Scottish enemy show that some contemporaries believed the British Empire to be defined by Englishness rather than Britishness, an idea strongly associated with notions of liberty. We also see strong evidence of an Anglo-American identity which many in both England and America sought to hold onto even in the midst of war.

This is a study of the reaction of the Irish Brigade's officers to the French Revolution and that event's role in ending the restrictions on Catholics holding commissions in the British Army. The eighteenth century had seen considerable strides in Establishment attitudes as well as legislation which mitigated the seventeenth century legal restrictions on Catholics but the ultimate step of commissioning Catholics into the Regular Establishment of the British Army, the guardian of the Protestant Ascendancy, required the trauma of the French Revolution. Ironically, the changed ideological perspective which saw Catholics metamorphosize from the traditional enemy into persecuted ally also produced a coherent body of professional military officers in the guise of the emigres of the Irish Brigade. Their general reaction to the Revolution, mirroring that of their French brethren, re-enforced and confirmed their intrinsic identification with the established order. This permitted the creation, in October 1794, of the British Army's first established formation of Catholic officered troops in the shape of a re-raised Irish Brigade. Even then, substantive legislative changes were ultimately eschewed in favour of the established practice of not asking awkward questions. That the Brigade was ultimately reduced in December 1797 was due to administrative confusion, financial uncertainty and poor recruitment common to many freshly raised formations throughout the British Army, not to latent denominational prejudices amongst elements in the Ascendancy, at Westminster and at Court. Residual prejudice however ensured that it would only be in the aftermath of the Napoleonic conflict that the formal, if unenforced, statutory prohibitions were finally removed.

In his classic study, Man and the Natural World (1983), Keith Thomas assumed and asserted that by 1800 the inhabitants of English cities had become largely isolated from animal life. My research challenges this assumption by highlighting the prevalence and influence of horses and other four-legged livestock in London in the period 1714–1837. This study represents a deliberate shift in historical enquiry away from the analysis of theoretical literature and debates concerning the rise of kindness and humanitarianism, towards the integration of animals into wider historiographies and a demonstration of how animals shaped urban life. Reasserting the need to unbound the social, my research places human interactions with non-human animals centre stage in London’s history to reassess key issues and debates surrounding the industrial and consumer revolutions; urbanization and industrialization; and social relations. Following an introductory section, Chapter one assesses the role played by urban husbandry in feeding the metropolitan population and asserts that Hanoverian London was a thriving agropolis. Chapter two challenges and complicates the orthodox assumption that steam substituted animal muscle power in the industrial revolution and asserts that equine power helped to make London a dynamic hub of trade and industry. Chapter three examines the metropolitan trades in meat on the hoof and horses. These were significant features of the consumer revolution and major sectors of the British economy which impacted heavily on London life. Chapter four asserts that equestrian recreation played a powerful role in metropolitan culture, both promoting and acting as an alluring alternative to, sociability. Chapter five examines the heavy demands which horses and other livestock placed on metropolitan infrastructures, and assesses the city’s remarkable investment in these animals. In my conclusion, I consider the significance of recalcitrant interactions between plebeian Londoners and non-human animals.

This thesis examines the ways in which war, empire and the image of the military were mediated to the civilian, domestic population of late eighteenth-century Britain through visual forms. The focus of the thesis is on the years between circa 1775 and 1803; that is from the beginnings of the American War to the end of the short-lived Peace of Amiens. It examines the impact of conflict upon the production of visual culture and the instrumental role of images in the debates that accompanied the country's near continual state of war during this period. Following an introduction establishing the motivations, methods and scope of the thesis, the chapters take the form of a series of thematic studies, arranged chronologically and chosen to address a range of key issues and images. Chapter one examines the representation of the common soldier in popular and satirical prints of the 1770s and '80s, and locates these images in the context of contemporary responses to the American War. Chapter two takes as its theme the relationship between the military and London's social elite during that conflict. It looks closely at the visual and textual representation of two sites of fashionable assembly - the military camp and Royal Academy - and examines the fusion of social and political commentary in responses to these areas. Chapters three and four are concerned with the pictorial celebration of notable British military successes critical to be the reconstitution of the army following the defeat in America. The third chapter considers John Singleton Copley's epic contemporary history painting The Siege of Gibraltar (1791), examining this image of national consolidation and triumph in terms of the aftermath of the American War. The fourth chapter focuses on the visual representation of the Third Mysore War in the early 1790s from initial failure to eventual British victory. In the fifth chapter the shifts in the language and rhetoric of patriotism during war with revolutionary France and the ways in which this was in part worked through in visual representation of the military are examined.

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