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Elections in 18th‐Century England: Polling, Politics and Participation Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2024-02-26 M.O. Grenby, Elaine Chalus
Introduction This special issue of Parliamentary History is one product of ‘Eighteenth-Century Political Participation and Electoral Culture’ (ECPPEC), a research project funded from January 2020 to June 2023 by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council.1 ECPPEC was designed to shed new light on participation in parliamentary elections in England in the long 18th century, from about 1695 to the
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A Tale of Two Poll Books – Wareham 1702 and Dorchester 1705 Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Kevin Tuffnell
The politics of Queen Anne's reign are characterised as the rage of party; Whigs and Tories contended over religion, the constitution and the succession, and foreign policy. This struggle was taken to the electorate in five elections during Anne's reign, and these raise a question concerning electors’ motivations, the answer to which remains elusive: were they acting according to principle, or reflecting
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Voting and Not Voting in Early 18th‐Century English Parliamentary Elections Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Chris Dudley
This article uses data from 28 poll books to explore voter behaviour over time in early 18th‐century English parliamentary elections (from 1710 to 1735). Voters in this period exhibited a high degree of partisan loyalty from one election to the next. But voters were also quite likely to drop out of the electorate between elections. As a case study of Sussex elections in 1734 shows, even among voters
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Controverted Elections, Electoral Controversy and the Scottish Privy Council, 1689–1708* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Robert d. Tree
Both the privy council and elections in early modern Scotland are understudied. The council itself has largely been described as a tool for crown management of elections. But it was fundamentally a court and standing committee charged with government administration, which was often supplicated to deal with cases of electoral impropriety and controversy. As elections became increasingly contested throughout
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Tory Travails and Collegiate Confusion: The Oxford University Election of 1722* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Nigel Aston
In terms of the unreformed franchise operative in the early 18th century, the University of Oxford made up an unusual parliamentary constituency. Here it was the votes of non‐resident members that could be decisive to the outcome if the seat was contested. In late Stuart and early Hanoverian Oxford, Tories were almost certain to be returned but, in the general election of 1722, the Tory vote was split
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Pittite Triumph and Whig Failure in the Cambridge University Constituency, 1780–96* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2024-02-26 David Cowan
Cambridge University has been featured in a wide range of studies of the long 18th century, but few have focused exclusively on the dynamics behind its politics. This is surprising since many of the Cambridge University electors were close to leading parliamentarians. The Cambridge University constituency was contested at each of the three successive general elections from 1780 onwards until 1796.
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Reading against Reform: The Bristol Library Society and the Intellectual Culture of Bristol's Elections in 1812* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Joshua j. Smith
This article pioneers a new methodological approach to the study of electoral politics by combining an analysis of the politics of reading, library association and the reading habits of electors in an English urban constituency in the early 19th century. By integrating an examination of reading practices and intellectual context into our analysis of electoral contests, political history scholars can
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‘No distinction exists as to religion, profession, or sex’: Imperial Reform and the Electoral Culture of the East India Company's Court of Proprietors, 1760–84 Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Ben Gilding
As contemporaries frequently pointed out, and often in disparaging terms, the governing institutions of the British East India Company contained an almost unprecedented ‘democratical’ element. By this, they were referring to the Company's General Court of Proprietors, its sovereign deliberative body, composed of all East India stockholders. Ownership of certain proportions of stock conferred the rights
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Corruption, Conspiracy and Collusion: Anti-Monopoly Petitioning in the Parliament of 1621* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-10-17 Ellen Paterson
In the Jacobean period, monopolies were central to crown financial policy. Through petitions, subjects protested the effect of these grants on their trades and livelihoods. In the parliament of 1621, the Commons’ standing committee for grievances emerged as an important recipient of anti-monopoly petitions. Moving beyond the current historiographical focus on institutional and procedural developments
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Counting the ‘Cavaliers’: Two Contemporary Analyses of the Political Wing of the Scots Jacobite Underground in the Union Parliament1 Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-10-17 Daniel Szechi, Christopher A. Whatley
Underground movements are understandably reluctant to record the names and numbers of their adherents because any such compilation is manifestly a hostage to fortune. Hence very few lists of politically active Jacobites actually compiled by the Jacobites themselves have survived to the present day. In the French foreign ministry archives at La Corneille, however, there is a rare and previously unknown/unused
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‘It Must End, or I Must End’: Castlereagh, Mental Health and Politics in Regency Britain Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-10-17 Andrew Brunatti
Viscount Castlereagh (1769–1822), Britain's polarising foreign secretary and leader of the house of commons from 1812–22, has been studied through the lens of diplomacy and politics, but never through the lens of mental health. As 2022 marked the 200th anniversary of Castlereagh's suicide, mental health is still the missing link in our understanding of both Castlereagh as a public and private figure
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The Referendum Issue and the Edwardian Constitutional Crisis Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-10-17 Roland Quinault
This article considers the debates generated by referendum proposals during the constitutional crisis from 1909 to 1914. None of those proposals were adopted and they have received little attention from historians but they were not without significance. Some Conservatives saw the referendum as a way of democratically protecting the right of the house of lords to veto legislation passed by the house
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Re-assessing the Conservative Anti-EEC Rebellion of 1971–2* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-10-17 Tim Aker
Historians have overlooked the 1971–2 Conservative EEC rebellion because of the relative ease with which Edward Heath took the UK into the European Economic Community (EEC). In contrast with the rebellion over ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, Heath did not lose a vote on ‘Europe’. However, the episode marks a turning point in the way anti-EEC dissent was expressed in the Conservative
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‘Old and unfit for other service?’ Maintaining the Fabric of Parliament c.1660–1760 Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-06-07 Robin Eagles
The old palace of Westminster developed organically over the period it was used by parliament. As well as the Lords and the Commons, it was also home to the law courts and a number of people, officials and otherwise, who lived on site. It was also a commercial hub. On occasion, there were initiatives to redevelop the complex but these were never acted upon. Instead, there was a regular programme of
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Catherine of Braganza during the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis: Anti-Catholicism in the Houses of Commons and Lords, 1678–81* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-06-07 Eilish Gregory
This article evaluates how Catherine of Braganza was scrutinised in parliament during the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis, 1678–81. During this period, politicians used Catherine as a political pawn to try and pressurise Charles II to secure the line of succession, which included proposals that he should divorce her and remarry, in order to secure the line of succession away from his Catholic convert
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Parliament and the English County Magistrate: The Parliamentary Aspirations of Sir George Onesiphorus Paul 1780–1810* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-06-07 Louise Ryland-Epton
County magistrates in Georgian England enjoyed an enviable amount of power. However, their influence was not restricted to the sphere of their county. Instead, Westminster's dependence upon them for the operation of local government, to conduct judicial practise and help create domestic policy, meant that, for good or ill, they potentially had a pivotal role within the workings of the English state
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The Passage of the Welsh Church Bill under the 1911 Parliament Act and the Impact of War Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-06-07 David W. Jones
In 1910, David Lloyd George, who was serving as chancellor of the exchequer in the Liberal government, opined that: ‘Wales had been solid for disestablishment for 40 years’ (The Times, 18 Jan. 1910, p.12). According to Lloyd George, this aspiration had been thwarted by the political reality that: ‘if a Bill went up to the House of Lords it would not have the slightest chance of getting through’. At
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‘There will be no shortage of Cabinet ministers taking part in the Scottish referendum campaign. The same is not true in Wales’: New Labour, Old Struggles, and the Advent of Welsh Devolution* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-06-07 Adam Evans
Devolution to Scotland and Wales was a central pillar of the legislative agenda of the Labour government elected in 1997, yet despite the constitutional significance of this programme it was undertaken without particular enthusiasm by the then prime minister, Tony Blair. Nowhere was this blend of significant change, yet pervasive lack of passion (or interest) more apparent than devolution to Wales
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Notes on Contributors Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-01-31
Lisa Berry-Waite is a historian of modern Britain and specialises in political, gender and women's history during the late 19th and 20th centuries. She works at The National Archives as a records specialist and holds a PhD in History from the University of Exeter. Lisa is an associate fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the Women's History Network. Amy Galvin holds a PhD from the
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Revisiting the War in the Receipt, 1572–1609* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Kirsty Wright
This article explores a protracted dispute in the exchequer of receipt that initiated lasting procedural reform. The argument revolved around contested narratives of exchequer history which had direct implications for officers’ fees, rights and status. The ferocity of the dispute has rendered it one of the most-studied episodes in exchequer history, yet historians have largely focused on procedural
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The Political Mistress: Intimacy, Emotion, and Parliamentary Politics in the Late 18th Century Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Natalie Hanley-Smith
Between c.1796 and 1809, Lady Harriet Ponsonby, Countess Bessborough and Lord Granville Leveson Gower were embroiled in a passionate affair. Their liaison created tensions in aristocratic society because they belonged to rival political parties, the Whigs and the Tories respectively. In the early years of their relationship, Leveson Gower was emerging on the political scene, while the countess was
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Cato Street Conspiracy and Consuming Crime: How Radical Politics Fed into the Public's Passion for Violent Media Coverage* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Caitlin Kitchener
The Cato Street Conspiracy ended in failure, with its five leading radicals executed. This conspiratorial insurrection caught the media's attention, creating a vibrant visual culture of the stable and execution. Arguably, the conspiracy's treason was not directed at the king but rather parliament and government through its aim to assassinate the cabinet. Although usually considered as an end point
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Restraining Political Passion: Medals of the Birmingham Political Union and the 1832 Reform Act Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Kerry Love
The Birmingham Political Union ‘of the Lower and Middle Classes of the People,’ was formed by Thomas Attwood and others in 1829, becoming one of the largest organisations to strive for parliamentary reform during the period leading up to the 1832 Reform Act. This article seeks to explore the role material objects had within the Union's activities, focusing on medals given to Union members and the ideologies
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‘That Gleaming Sword of Satire’1: Power, Passion and Parliament in the Mid-Victorian City Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Lucy Kilfoyle
Political print satire, construed as an articulation of sedition and dissent, is most commonly associated in Britain with its 18th-century ‘Golden Age’. Beyond Victorian fiction, the go-to 19th-century source tends to be the hegemonic, London-centric Punch. It is not widely known that, as Punch mellowed and popularised in the 1860s and 1870s, England's booming urban centres gave rise to a distinct
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The Ulster Women's Declaration and the Passion of Women in the Campaign against Home Rule, c.1886–1912* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Ciara Stewart
On Ulster Day, 28 September 1912, Unionist leaders orchestrated the mass signing of the Ulster Covenant and the Women's Declaration against Irish home rule. These were highly emotive documents and the ‘passion’ expressed by women contrasted with the men, as the Covenant implied a pact with God while the Women's Declaration promised to support their male counterparts. The Declaration, with 234,046 signatures
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‘A rancour and a passion would be introduced into politics’: Perceptions of the Woman MP in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Britain* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Lisa Berry-Waite
On 21 November 1918, the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act was passed, which enabled women over the age of 21 to stand for parliamentary election. Unlike women's suffrage, there was no sustained campaign to allow women to sit in parliament. However, this does not mean that the issue was ignored in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This article traces perceptions of the woman MP in the pre-1918
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Passion, Parliament, and the Pen: Articulations of Female Citizenship in Britain, c.1790–1890 Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2023-01-31 Amy Galvin
Among the plethora of political shifts that defined the Age of Reform, this article will uncover a female narrative of changing conceptions of citizenship, asserting that, despite their formal exclusion, women articulated a distinctly female understanding of citizenship through writing. Furthermore, it will explore the significance of parliament to women's experiences. The spaces in which citizenship
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The Ceremonial Mace in the House of Commons and Great Maces of Cities and Boroughs in the 16th and Early 17th Century* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Kathrin Strauss
The Commons obtained the service of a royal sergeant-at-arms in 1414. Alongside him, the sergeant-at-arms brought his mace. Originally a blunt weapon and a badge of the sergeants-at-arms’ office, the later merely ceremonial mace became associated with the Speaker of the House and part of the Speaker's processions by the mid 16th century. I will argue that the change in parliamentary rituals was an
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Grenville's Postponement of the Stamp Act Reconsidered* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Jon Kukla
In March 1764 George Grenville announced plans to raise revenues in America for colonial defence with stamp duties. Opinions differ about why Grenville then postponed the Stamp Act until a year hence. Writing in 1950, Edmund S. Morgan found the decision puzzling. Peter D.G. Thomas and John L. Bullion subsequently offered procedural explanations. Grenville envisaged the Stamp Act as a firm precedent
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The Economic Achievement of Sir Robert Peel 1841–6* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Norman Gash
Norman Gash (1912–2009), the leading authority on the ‘age of Peel’, died on 1 May 2009, having left instructions to his daughters that the bulk of his private correspondence and personal papers should be destroyed. A small exception was made in respect of material relating to Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850), the subject of his most famous historical and biographical labours. A collection of papers and
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Edinburgh's Local Liberal Party and the Political Crises of 1885–6* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-10-17 M.K. Thompson
This article examines Edinburgh's Liberal politics in the wake of the 1884–5 electoral reforms and the introduction of the Irish home rule debate. The objective is to uncover local nuances of this transitional period of Liberal politics. The Third Reform Act and the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885 fractured the local Liberal Party as Liberals fought to control the newly established single-member
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Institutions Ignored: A History of Select Committee Scrutiny in the House of Lords, 1968–2021 Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-10-17 John Connolly, Matthew Flinders, David Judge, Michael Torrance, Philippa Tudor
Within the vast seam of scholarship on parliamentary history the evolution and role of select committees in the house of lords, particularly in relation to investigatory or policy-focused committees, has been almost completely overlooked. They have been ‘institutions ignored’. This gap in the existing research base is particularly stark when compared with the very large literature on the history of
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The ‘Republican’ Publican: ‘Honest’ Sam House, Visual Culture, and the General Election of 1784* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-06-01 Callum D. Smith
Despite his ‘highest situation’ in life being that of a publican, Samuel House was the most frequently depicted member of the lower orders during the 1784 Westminster election and was directly credited in at least 33 different caricatures. To warrant such attention and depiction implies that House played a significant role as Fox's primary bridge to the plebeian Westminster vote; a demographic that
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The ‘Gothic Slum’: MPs and St Stephen's Cloister, Westminster, 1548–2017* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-06-01 Elizabeth Hallam Smith
The history of St Stephen's cloister in the Palace of Westminster, a fragile and little-known Tudor survival, exemplifies the long-standing tensions between preserving parliament's built heritage and meeting its political and business needs. Adjacent to the old house of commons, it was long part of a grand house for the auditors of the exchequer but came under the control of the commons Speaker in
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Thomas Sinclair and the Political Representation of Presbyteria 1892–1912 Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-06-01 Richard Holmes
Thomas Sinclair was a Belfast merchant who exercised a crucial influence on the formation of Ulster Unionism in the period 1886–1912. He had been a leading Presbyterian Liberal; but on Gladstone's conversion to Irish home rule became president of the Liberal Unionists, and worked over the next decades to secure the alliance of Presbyterian Liberals and Conservatives to resist home rule. This article
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Inevitable Results and Political Myths? Ilford North's 1978 By-Election* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-06-01 Marc Collinson
Reductive and teleological ‘path to power’ myths continue to underpin explanations of Margaret Thatcher's first general election success. The by-elections that eroded the Callaghan government's majority in the late 1970s, such as that at Ilford North in 1978, continue to be discussed as stepping stones to an inevitable victory, rather than acknowledged as examples of the fraught and uncertain realities
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Choreography of Defeat: The Fall of the 1979 Government Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-06-01 James Mitchell, Clifford Williamson
This article reassesses the attempt by the Labour government in 1979 to overcome challenges faced without an overall majority; the collapse of the Lib-Lab Pact; internal party dissent; and referendum results on Scottish and Welsh devolution. The efforts to patch together a parliamentary majority with other parties’ MPs while allaying opponents of devolution within the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP)
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‘A Knowing but a Discrete Man’: Scribal News and Information Management in Restoration England Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Jason Peacey
This article builds upon recent interest in scribal news by analysing official uses of manuscript newsletters during the Restoration, in domestic contexts as well as in relation to Anglo-Dutch affairs. It uses official correspondence and diplomatic archives to trace official attitudes to scribal news, as well as the processes devised for utilising newsletters. In part, this is a study of ‘information
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Diplomatic Residents in England and Approaches to Reporting Parliament in the First Years of George I* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Charles Littleton
This article seeks to enrich understanding of the conditions for news-gathering in the early 18th century by focusing on three of the most frequently referenced sources for reports on parliamentary proceedings: the diplomatic residents Louis-Frédéric Bonnet and René de Saunière de l'Hermitage, who compiled their despatches of political intelligence in manuscript, and the print journalist Abel Boyer
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‘Sir Madam’: Female Consumers of Parliamentary News in Manuscript Newsletters Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Rachael Scarborough King
This article examines the manuscript newsletters received by two women in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Anne Pole and Susannah Newey. Although women have often been excluded from discussion of manuscript news circulation, these women's newsletters, especially the parliamentary news they contained, reveal important information about the turn of the 18th-century news industry. Both women received
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Inscripting Rebellion: The Newdigate Manuscript Newsletters, Printed Newspapers and the Cultural Memory of the 1715 Rising* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Leith Davis
In this essay, I bring a literary critic's perspective to the study of the continued use of manuscript newsletters in the 18th century. I suggest that by comparing and contrasting the treatment of political news in official manuscript newsletters and printed newspapers during a specific and limited time period in the early 18th century, the beginning of what became known as the 1715 Jacobite Rising
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Afterword Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Kate Loveman
Writers of scribal news in the 17th and 18th centuries were often keen to evade scrutiny of how their productions were created and transmitted but – as the articles in this volume have demonstrated – they certainly merit that scrutiny. The information that a political newsletter contained was not, and is not, confined to what the words on the page relay about events in parliament or other developments
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‘Our Masters the Commons Begin Now to Roar’: Parliament in Scribal Verse, 1621–81* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Edward Taylor
Scribal verse was an important source of news and comment about parliament in 17th-century Britain, especially in the 1620s and 1660s–80s. Unlike other forms of scribal news, poems that circulated in manuscript did not report on parliamentary proceedings as such, but either summarised parliamentary news or provided comment on parliament's actions, nature or wider purpose, and typically presented parliament
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Hot News: The Florence Resident Reports on the Great Fire of London Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Brendan Dooley, Davide Boerio
This paper analyses the European impact and circulation of news concerning the Great Fire of London in 1666. The study dwells on the diplomatic correspondence and manuscript newsletters of Italian diplomats residing in England, on the testimonies of contemporary observers, and on the production of printed news publications. In particular, it analyses the role played by the Tuscan resident in London
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(Extra)ordinary News: Foreign Reporting on English Politics under William III Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Michael Schaich
During the late 17th and early 18th centuries a number of German governments received regular updates on English politics from London-based intelligencers. This article examines and compares two sets of these reports from the year 1694, composed by Guillaume Beyrie and Frédéric Bonnet for the Guelph courts in Celle and Hanover and the Prussian court in Berlin respectively. It describes the distinctive
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Wodrow's News: Correspondence and Politics in Early 18th-Century Scotland* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Alasdair Raffe
This article examines the creation and consumption of scribal news by the early 18th-century Scottish Presbyterian minister Robert Wodrow (1679–1734). It argues that Scottish news culture depended on the interaction of printed newspapers, professionally produced newsletters from London, personal letters and oral communication. For Wodrow, at least, personal letters were the most important source. No
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Reporting Trials and Impeachments in the Reign of George I: The Evidence of the Wigtown and Wye Newsletters* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Robin Eagles
This article will examine how two newsletter collections reported the impeachments of the former ministers of Queen Anne in 1715, the trial of the earl of Oxford in 1717 and that of Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester in 1723. It will also consider how the two collections relate to one another and touch on the way the newsletters’ reporting of proceedings across parliamentary business during the
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The Formidable Machine: Parliament as Seen by Italian Diplomats at the Court of St James's in the First Half of the 18th Century Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Ugo Bruschi
To the representatives of Italian states in London, early 18th-century Britain often remained a puzzle. The Revolution Settlement presented them with the problem of identifying the real source of power, both in order to send home reliable information and to try to secure support for the interests of their princes, who were sometimes desperate for the friendship, or at least the lack of hostility, of
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Philip Yorke and Thomas Birch: Scribal News in the Mid 18th Century* Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Markman Ellis
This article examines the newsletter-writing practices of the Hardwicke circle, the intellectual coterie centred on Philip Yorke, 2nd earl of Hardwicke (1720–90), and Thomas Birch (1705–66). It begins by examining the ‘Weekly Letter’ written between Birch and Yorke from 1741–66 (BL, Add. MS 35,396-35,400). This comprised a letter written by Birch every Saturday when Yorke was not in London, describing
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What is Parliamentary History Now? Parliamentary History Pub Date : 2021-10-11 Richard A. Gaunt, J.P.D. Cooper
1 The 40th anniversary of Parliamentary History in 2022 seems an appropriate moment to reflect on the nature of the journal, and the broader environment in which it sits. It might be assumed that the remit of a publication devoted to research into ‘the history of parliamentary institutions in the British Isles (including the Scottish and Irish Parliaments) from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century’