Politics and Provincial People: Sligo and Limerick, 1691–1761 – By D.A. Fleming

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The Origins of the English Parliament, 924–1327. By J.R. Maddicott. Oxford:Oxford University Press. 2010. xv, 526 pp. £30.00. ISBN 9780199585502.

Simon de Montfort’s ‘model’ parliament of 1265 has long exerted considerable attractionas the formal starting point of ‘proper’ English parliamentary history. Some of theparaphernalia of its seventh centenary celebrations in 1965 can still be seen in the bowelsof the Palace of Westminster’s Victoria Tower, and seem likely to be dusted down forfresh pageantry on the parliament’s next round anniversary in 2015. In a timely fashion,John Maddicott, in a new work based on his series of Ford Lectures delivered to theUniversity of Oxford in 2004, for his part dusts down an older orthodoxy, that the actualorigins of the English parliament must be sought, not in the political troubles of13th-century England, but much earlier, before the Norman conquest.

Maddicott takes as his starting point the early-10th-century reign of Æthelstan,when the lands ruled by the kings of the house of Wessex had grown too extensiveto be readily governed even by a mostly, or continually, peripatetic king. If the rulercould not come to his subjects to seek their advice and assent to his rule, then theymust come to him, and before long, periodic assemblies of the English king’s greatersubjects had become an integral feature of Anglo-Saxon royal governance. Royalgrants and appointments, the waging of war and the dispensation of justice wereamong the issues on which the king might seek counsel, as was the codification of thelaw. Yet, from an early date, the conciliar assemblies also adopted a festal character,providing a setting for the projection of the royal image, as, for instance, in the formof regular crown-wearings. The importance of such display was not lost on the Con-queror, who continued the pre-conquest tradition of summoning regular assemblies,placing particular emphasis on the regal ceremonial that served not only to impress onhis new English subjects the legitimacy of his rule as rightful successor to Edward theConfessor, but also to emphasize before his older Norman retainers, his newly-enhanced royal status.

It is a mark of how integral a part of political life these assemblies had become thatthey survived both the relative disinterest of William I’s sons and the troubles ofStephen’s reign, but it was only in the political upheavals of the reigns of John and of hisson Henry III that Maddicott finds the catalyst that caused the earlier conciliar and festalassemblies to evolve into an institution recognizable as something akin to the fully-fledged parliaments of the later 13th century and beyond. It was in this period that theassemblies became known by their later name, and that they acquired some of their keycompetences, not least among them the right to assent to levies of taxation. Appropri-ately, it is in this period that the bulk of the book is concentrated (the listing in anappendix of the conciliar assemblies held between 1235 and 1257 with an indication of

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their membership and the business transacted is a welcome and useful tool). By the endof the reign of Edward I, parliament had evolved into an institution that in 1327 – theend point of Maddicott’s discussion – could for the first, but not the last, time, play itspart in the unmaking of a king.

All of this might seem little more than whiggery writ large, but the author is at alltimes careful to emphasize the importance of contingency and accident, rather than anyform of predestination, in his evolutionary narrative. At no point is there a sense ofinevitability about the developments he describes. It is, above all, a story of pragmatism,rather than one of destiny. The early assemblies evolved reactively, rather than bydeliberate design.

This is an old-fashioned book in the best sense of the term.With its fluent, readableprose it harks back to an age of historiography when works of scholarship did not haveto be produced to order to meet the needs of the latest assessment exercise. It is a directconsequence of the nature of the sources for the period, but none the less refreshing,that Maddicott’s narrative is mostly unencumbered by the concerns of parliamentaryhistorians of later periods: here are no elections, divisions, prorogations or debates,no lobbying, patronage or pork-barrel politics. Nor is there much of an engagementwith the membership of the assemblies. There is nothing improper in this, as in an agewhen the assembles were attended by the early saint-bishops of the English Church,such an examination might well come to represent collective hagiography, rather thanprosopography.

Tribute must be paid to Oxford University Press for producing an extremely hand-some volume at a highly competitive price. If the sheer bulk of this magisterial volumeat first sight seems daunting, it has been rendered more accessible by a detailed index.Equally, Maddicott’s ‘big narrative’ is leavened by lively anecdotes, some of whichinadvertently appear to mirror later episodes in English history. Had he but known of it,James I, newly-escaped from Guy Fawkes’s attempt to blow up him and his lords, mighthave spared a thought for the witan who, in 978, suffered the indignity of falling throughthe collapsing floor of their upper-story meeting chamber at Calne, while the roundheadand cavalier factions of the English civil war might have harked back to Giffard thePoitevin’s demonstrative short-haired attendance in a festal assembly of William Rufus’sfashionably long-haired court in 1099.

There will be those to whom Maddicott’s argument will, nevertheless, be too whig-gish by far. Some will consider his continuities taken to extremes, while others willundoubtedly take umbrage at the author’s revival of a concept of English exceptionalismin the evolution of medieval representative institutions that seemed safely buried undera pan-European perspective developed since 1945. Yet, even those unwilling to bepersuaded by the book’s premises will have to admit the ultimate eloquence of itsargument, the author’s masterly command of his sources, and the attraction of the broadsweep of this study. If nothing else, Maddicott has put a neglected period in Englishparliamentary history back on the map. Henceforth, it will be impossible for any seriousstudent of the early centuries of the English parliament to ignore the age of proto-parliamentarianism. And that, surely, is ‘A Good Thing’.

HANNES KLEINEKEHistory of Parliament

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VictoriaTowerTreasures from the Parliamentary Archives. Edited by Caroline Shenton,David Prior and Mari Takayangi. London: Houses of Parliament. ParliamentaryArchives. 2010. 160 pp. £17.99. ISBN 9780956736307.

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Victoria Tower, CarolineShenton, the clerk of the records, and two of her colleagues at the ParliamentaryArchives, David Prior and Mari Takayanagi, have produced a sumptuous volume. Itspurpose is in 150 items (some with enlargements) superbly reproduced, together with asuccinct description of each, to indicate the breadth and diversity of the archive’sholdings. At the heart of the volume are key constitutional documents that have shapedthe nation: the death warrant of Charles I, the Declaration of Rights, the unions withWales (1536), with Scotland (1707), and with Ireland (1800), legislation reforming theelectoral system, and the message from Edward VIII to the house of lords informing itof his abdication. Some of the items are familiar from frequent reproduction, butillustrations of the acts, the journals of both Houses, the report on the trial of Mary,queen of Scots, Charles I’s letter in favour of mercy to the earl of Strafford with itsamendments, a specimen of Charles I’s letters written in cipher seized after the battle ofNaseby, the duke of Cumberland’s announcement of his victory at Culloden, and thepetition from Manchester in support of the abolition of slavery will be new. They willadd an invaluable dimension to all students of history, whether constitutional historiansor not. One of the most graphic illustrations is the plan of the Palace of Westminstershowing the extent of the destruction caused by the fire in 1834, which reveals how littlehad been destroyed.

In addition to the material relating to legislation and its passage, the workings of thehouse of lords and house of commons, and papers and memorabilia relating to membersof both Houses, which rightly form its heart, the parliamentary archive also houses acollection of prints, plans, designs, newspaper cuttings and photographs.Among the morecurious items in its possession are a permission to produce coffee, tea and chocolate inthe precinct of the palace in 1681, a pass for a reporter to attend the trial of WarrenHastings in 1789, a ticket left unallocated for the coronation banquet for George IV in1821, the silver trowel used for laying the foundation stone for the clock tower in 1845,the paper banner unfurled by two suffragettes in the house of commons in 1908, aprotective helmet issued by the air raid precautions committee during the Second WorldWar, and a bicycle lamp issued for a house of commons’ librarian during the war. Thelast never appears to have been used. There is also a fragment of a tombstone and aspecimen of oil slick from the tanker, Eleni V.

The treatment of the volume is chronological. It is divided into seven chapters, withwell-chosen headings and subsections. The commentaries for each of the items are, forthe most part, excellent, and set a standard for others to match. Even so, there are somehowlers. There is no evidence that from 1497, the clerk of the parliaments retained atWestminster the original acts after their receiving the royal assent: what we do know isthat in 1548, a previous clerk had kept material in his custody somewhere other thanWestminster.1 Provision for their safe keeping at Westminster may not have existed beforethe 1590s.2 The Lesser Hall of the medieval palace, later known as the White Hall and,perhaps, more familiarly to most as the Court of Requests, was not built in the 13thcentury but 100 years earlier (p. 83).3 There is one contradiction. In their foreword, Lord

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Speaker Hayman and Speaker Bercow refer to the catastrophic fire of 1834 destroying‘almost all of the old palace of Westminster’ (p. 6). Figure 100, one of the more fascinatinghighlights of the volume, and largely unknown until now, reveals how limited the firewas in extent. It puts a long-received perception right.The presence of the great seal onthe commissions granting assent to the two acts attainting Queen Catherine Howard andthe 3rd duke of Norfolk with his son (figs 11, 12) perhaps deserved some comment.Could not the current name for Cape Coast Castle (fig. 66) have been given? Thefragment of the tombstone (fig. 76) just seems quirky without a brief explanation notprovided by the extremely bald caption. Surely there is a tale to be told? An explanationof who ‘Redcoat’ (fig. 121) is would have helped those not familiar with all thepersonnel at Westminster. It concludes with an invaluable index.

ALASDAIR HAWKYARD

1 Parliamentary Archives, HL/PO/JO/10/14/2/3/170, cited in M.F. Bond, ‘The Formation of the Archives ofParliament 1497–1691’, in Prisca Munimenta. Studies in Archival and Administrative History, ed. F. Ranger (1973),119.2 A.Thrush, ‘The House of Lords’ Record Depository and the Clerk of the Parliaments’ House’, ParliamentaryHistory, xxi (2002), 367–73.3 J. Crook and R.B. Harris, ‘Reconstructing the Lesser Hall: An Interim Report from the Medieval Palace ofWestminster Research Project’, Parliamentary History, xxi (2002), 23, 28.

Parliament and Political Pamphleteering in Fourteenth-Century England. By G. Oliver.(York Medieval Press.) Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. 2010. xi, 232 pp.£60.00. ISBN 9781903153314.

The text, Historia Mirabilis Parliamenti, at the heart of this work, is a contemporarynarrative of the treason trials of the Merciless Parliament of 1388 and the events that ledup to them. The author was a Wiltshire cleric, Thomas Fovent, about whom so little isknown that it is impossible to make any clear sense of his career.This is the starting pointfor the argument that Oliver develops. She contends that Fovent’s lack of any knownclose connection with the Appellants negates the accepted notion that the Historia wascomposed by one of their dependents as apologia and explanation for their actions. Shenotes that the author shows himself closely interested in matters, most notably theinternal politics of the City of London, only tangentially related to the Appellant cause,and expends few words in praise of the Appellant lords.This is a challenging revision ofa widely- and long-accepted perception. Yet it does not convince. Although her analysisof the text may be enough to show that promotion of the Appellant cause was notFovent’s only aim in writing, this does not mean that it was not his principal one.Moreover, it is only partially true to say that he wastes few words in their praise. On oneoccasion he is fulsome – their ‘merits of goodness . . . resonated everywhere across theland’ (a passage Oliver herself cites) – and, to almost every mention of them, he appendsthe description ‘vigorous’, ‘renowned’, or ‘noble’. More revealing still is an early passagein which, in telling phrases, he excuses the Appellants for their resort to violence on thegrounds of defence of the realm.

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None the less, if Oliver is wrong to argue that the Historia was not an exercise inAppellant propaganda, she is surely right to insist that part of its historical value is lostif it is read only as that.Although Fovent shared the political concerns of the Appellants,she argues that he also identified with other interests – parliament (particularly theCommons) and the London guilds – who found themselves momentarily allied with theAppellants. It is in placing the Historia within the disturbed framework of Londonpolitics that she is at her most persuasive. She demonstrates that Fovent’s account of thetrial and execution of Sir Nicholas Brembre, the former mayor of London, reveals theauthor as a committed partisan, in London’s factional politics, of Brembre’s rival, Johnof Northampton. It may be going too far to suggest that, for Fovent, ‘the Ricardians. . . were simply an extension of Brembre’s party of merchant oligarchs who controlledLondon politics throughout much of the 1380s’ (p. 168), yet there can be little doubt thathis strong sympathy for the London guilds, and others compromised by Brembre’sdominance, gave him an additional reason to support the Appellants.

Much less persuasive, however, are her speculations on Fovent’s attitude to parliament.She suggests that the Historia belonged to a new category of historical writing. Like thefamous account of the Good Parliament of 1376, rehearsed in the Anonimalle Chronicle, itwas an early example of ‘an independent text, a piece of parliamentary reportage intendedfor circulation as it was’ (p. 35). She portrays both texts as serving a hunger, on the partof an educated and bureaucratic audience, for news of parliament, a hunger that existedoutside mere polemics. It was also an audience that, in her view, had an advanced viewof parliament’s place in the constitution. Just as the 1376 account, in describing theCommons’ attack on the crown, had staked ‘a new claim for the institution of parliamentin the governance of the realm’ (p. 38), so Fovent promoted ‘parliament as the institutionmost capable of reforming England’s government’ (pp. 64–5). Indeed, the ‘advent of theHistoria signified . . . that an unquantifiable, unknowable and ultimately uncontrollablereadership was being enticed by political discourse to partake in the scrutiny of RichardII’s court’ (p. 67). Such extravagant statements make few concessions to practicality. Shedevotes little time to describing how the contents of such texts as the Historia might havebeen circulated amongst this ‘readership’. She also contentiously speculates that royal bur-eaucrats,whom she identifies as the primary audience of the Historia,would see parliament‘as the centre of their political world’ and the arbiter of ‘the policy that governed their jobsand their lives’ (p. 81). Yet, as a group, royal bureaucrats had much to lose when the king’spower was compromised. It was the crown and not parliament that appointed them totheir offices, and, if in the crisis of 1386–8 they did come to view parliament’s role ascentral, most of them would have seen that as a state of affairs both unwelcome andtemporary. Bureaucratic careers were long, and crises, such as that of 1386–8, short.

Oliver also seeks to put the Historia in a long textual context, styling it as the firstsurviving example of what later ages would describe as a ‘pamphlet’.This begs a number ofquestions. ‘Pamphlets’ are intended for large audiences, but the less-than-straightforwardLatin of the Historia was hardly designed to embrace one. Further, if the Historia, as a textprepared to serve a burgeoning interest in parliament, stood at the beginning of the processof political pamphleteering, then the start was a very faltering one.There is a marked lackof similar texts for the 15th century, and Oliver is clearly aware of this difficulty. She seeksto remove it by implying a parallel between the Historia and the short and vituperativepolitical libels widely circulated in the mid 15th century, ignoring the differences in

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language, length, and mode of circulation.A closer parallel might have been drawn with atext that she does not mention, the Somnium Vigilantis, a defence of the attainder of theYorkists in 1459. Even so, it is hard to find much illumination in her repeated descriptionof Fovent as ‘pamphleteer’. None the less, although, to this reviewer, most of Oliver’sarguments fail to persuade, they are interestingly, and at times, ingeniously, developed. Shehas produced a thought-provoking book that advertises, to literal-minded historians, thevalue of looking beyond the most obvious meaning of a text.

SIMON PAYLINGHistory of Parliament

The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations. By Henry A. Jefferies. Dublin: FourCourts Press. 2010. 302 pp. £55.00. ISBN 9781846820502.

The publication of this monograph is to be warmly welcomed by scholars and studentsof the Reformation in Ireland, as it provides the first overview of the reform movementsince Robin Dudley Edwards’s Church and State in Tudor Ireland (1935). Furthermore, asthe author of a well-received monograph, Priests and Prelates of Armagh in the Age of theReformation (1997), and several scholarly articles on Tudor ecclesiastical history, DrJefferies – a strong proponent of the new religious history – is well qualified to write thisauthoritative survey.This is, however, much more than a work of synthesis. As evidencedby the meticulous citations and substantial bibliography, Jefferies has drawn upon exten-sive original research to fashion his study, which is divided into three parts.

He begins with a broadly positive overview of pastoral care, diocesan administration andthe laity in Ireland on the eve of the reformations. He then presents convincing evidencethat the late medieval Church ‘was in far better shape than has conventionally beenassumed’ (p. 38), pointing to a ‘surprisingly dense network of churches and priests’ (p. 38),‘aprogramme of physical renewal’ (p. 38), ‘good quality’ pastoral care, several bishops whoseepiscopates were ‘more efficacious and effective than has been assumed’ (p. 54), and ‘agenerally positive relationship between the laity and the diocesan Church and clergy up tothe eve of the reformations’ (p. 67). In Part II, Jefferies clearly shows the limited impact of‘the early Tudor reformations’, which he largely attributes to a fatal failure on the part ofreformers to address fundamental existing weaknesses in the Irish Church. Owing to thebrevity of the Marian regime, Jefferies concludes that Cardinal ‘Pole’s role in the Marianrestoration in Ireland was one of promise rather than achievement’ (p. 120). He does,however, credit Archbishop George Dowdall with laying foundations which helped ensurethat ‘the counter-reformation would find receptive congregations during Elizabeth’sreign’ (p. 121). In Part III, ‘the Elizabethan Reformation’, Jefferies situates his analysis ofattempts at religious reform within the context of increasingly militaristic Tudor policy inIreland. In so doing, he shows the enormity of the challenges that protestant clergy faced,and signals clearly that ‘the probability of failure was already high very early in the queen’sreign’ (p. 136), owing to a lack of protestant preachers and strong popular resistance.Equally, he sets out the very significant challenges encountered by those struggling tosustain the catholic mission in Ireland at that time. He then plausibly argues that during Sir

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Henry Sidney’s term as lord deputy, religious disaffection bound together many groups inIreland who felt increasingly alienated from the state owing to mounting secular griev-ances and religious upheavals. His examination of religious conformity, which is gener-ously illustrated with evocative contemporary commentaries, offers new insights intothe extent of survivalism in Ireland, and presents a robust challenge to the notion thatconformity can be interpreted as complacency or indifference in religion. He concludeshis study by succinctly attributing the failure of the reformations in Ireland to twointertwined variables, namely the strength of the general attachment to catholicism, andthe weakness of the state-sponsored protestant challenge.

Throughout this chronological survey, Jefferies challenges the reader not to succumbto a fatalistic acceptance that the reformations were doomed to fail from the outset. He,therefore, urges his reader to reflect constantly on the various contingencies at play indetermining the outcome to successive attempts at reform and, as a result, to reach adeeper, more critical and nuanced understanding of why the majority of these ultimatelyended in failure. Jefferies also highlights areas that require further scholarly attention, therole of women in religious change being one, although to his credit, this study shows acommendable sensitivity to female experiences of the reformations in this period. Thefact that Jefferies brings his considerable knowledge of the evolving religious andpolitical milieu in 16th-century England and Wales to bear on his analysis of contem-poraneous developments in Ireland, means that this book has much to offer thoseworking in the field of British history.

A particularly stimulating aspect of this monograph is Jefferies’s critical, and oftenchallenging, engagement with various historiographical interpretations of the reforma-tions in Ireland, most of which have been developed since the 1970s. He questions thedegree of importance that Colm Lennon attributes to religious confraternities in thwart-ing the reformations; he regards James Murray’s characterisation of Hugh Curwen,archbishop of Dublin, as ‘flawed’ (p. 131); he wonders whether the protestant zeal thatobtained in Galway during the 1580s was really as intense as Nicholas Canny claimed;and he contests Anthony McCormack’s downplaying the role of religion in the secondDesmond rebellion. Furthermore, he contradicts aspects of Ciaran Brady and VincentCarey’s interpretations of the Baltinglass rebellion, and questions Alan Ford’s assessmentof the court of faculties, and Helga Robinson-Hammerstein’s representation of Arch-bishop Adam Loftus. But while the strength and conviction of his counterargumentsvary, Jefferies’s grappling with contested points of interpretation is always scholarly inintent, aimed at providing a corrective, or presenting a more nuanced, analysis.

At the outset of his study, Henry Jefferies explains that: ‘This book has had a longgestation, its conception dating from as far back as my reading of Nicholas Canny’sseminal article “Why the Reformation failed in Ireland” ’ (p. 11). Having read thisbook, readers will appreciate Jefferies’s commendable achievement in fundamentallyreconfiguring our understanding of the place of religion in 16th-century Ireland and,by extension, the reasons for the failure of the Tudor reformations. It is, therefore, tobe highly recommended as essential reading to all scholars and students of the Tudorperiod.

MARY ANN LYONSNational University of Ireland, Maynooth

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Reshaping Ireland 1550–1700: Colonization and its Consequences. Essays Presented toNicholas Canny. Edited by Brian MacCuarta. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2011.374 pp. £50.00. ISBN 9781846822728.

This wide-ranging collection reflects the breadth of interests of its dedicatee, Pro-fessor Nicholas Canny. Its 15 chapters cover Tudor reforms and colonialism, theplantations and politics of the early Stuart period, the rebellion of 1641 and itsaftermath, and the viewpoints of members of the protestant and catholic communitiesthrough to the 1680s and 1690s. The contributors are also varied: they include anumber of Canny’s senior colleagues from universities in Ireland, Britain and America,and seven of his former research students at the National University of Ireland,Galway. The contributions are generally of a very high standard, including anoverview of Tudor reform strategies by Ciaran Brady, a study of Irish attitudes to-wards the English language by Bernadette Cunningham, an exploration of theprocess behind the collection and collation of the 1641 depositions by Aidan Clarke,and incisive case studies of the post-Restoration period by Alan Ford and TobyBarnard.

As the editor points out in his introduction, many of the chapters bear theimprint of Canny’s work, either by subject matter or by methodology. AnnaleighMargey’s analysis of the early colonial maps of Ulster and Virginia provides animportant insight into the ‘Atlantic world’. These highly-decorated maps were notonly a practical tool for policy makers and planters, but also a means to imposean English interpretation on alien landscapes. Jane Ohlmeyer’s survey of the Irishpeerage in the 17th century – a precursor of her forthcoming book on the subject– includes an exhaustive analysis of their ethnicity, ranks, religion, landholdings,and the geographic origins of their wives. The result is, however, inconclusive. AsProfessor Ohlmeyer admits, the peerage was disparate, united only by their ‘personalloyalty to the Stuart kings’, and their importance as ‘agents of anglicization’ (p. 146)remains doubtful. Jason McHugh’s case study of the 1641 rebellion in Wexfordexplores how the traditional loyalty to the crown of this Irish county was subvertedby the growing influence of the catholic Church in the early decades of the 17thcentury. This created a strong sense of ‘communal identity’, and also helped to legiti-mise the rising by framing it as ‘a just, defensive and holy war’ (p. 214) against aprotestant aggressor. Other Irish communities are examined in David Finnegan’schapter on the Old English attitude to Gaelic Irish history in the period before therebellion, Kevin Forkan’s survey of the Ulster Scots during the 1640s and PadraigLenihan’s work on how the Irish catholic elite was affected by the defeat at Aughrimin 1691.

The influence of Professor Canny helps to give some coherence to the volume, whichmight otherwise become a series of loosely-connected essays on Irish history in the 16thand 17th centuries.This lack of focus is, perhaps, the inevitable weakness of the Festschriftformat; but, as this book demonstrates, it is a weakness that can be offset by the qualityof the individual contributions.

PATRICK LITTLEHistory of Parliament

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Royalists and Royalism During the Interregnum. Edited by Jason McElligott andDavid L. Smith. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2010. x, 267 pp.£60.00. ISBN 9780719081613.

Recent years have witnessed a demonstrable resurgence of scholarly interest in royalistsand royalism during the civil wars and interregnum. For a long time, supporters ofCharles I and Charles II were overlooked in favour of parliamentarians, in terms of ideasand armies, high and low politics, and religious and political radicals, not least because ofwhiggish and Marxist ideas about their place in the tide of history.Their ‘victory’ in 1660was easily dismissed as pyrrhic, corrected by the Glorious Revolution, and it becamerather too easy to characterise cavaliers as romantic but wrong.The process of rethinkingroyalism has been a long time coming, even after an assault on conventional grandnarratives was provided by revisionist scholarship in the 1970s, but it is now fully underway, not least thanks to the editors of this book. Indeed, this is the second volume ofessays that McElligott and Smith have edited, and it comes in the wake of Royalists andRoyalism During the English Civil Wars (2007).

As its title suggests, the new collection turns attention from the 1640s to the 1650s,in order to concentrate on the experiences and activities of royalists during the repub-lic and interregnum. In doing so, it offers a series of challenges to conventional ideasand approaches. It emphasizes the need to look beyond hard-line absolutists and plot-ters, not least in the chapters on ‘episcopalian conformity’ (by Kenneth Fincham andStephen Taylor) and on Peter Heylyn (by Anthony Milton). It demonstrates theimportance of looking beyond the elite, with Lloyd Bowen’s recovery of the ‘action-able language’ of popular royalism, which was anything but ‘sub-political’, and whichinvolved attacks on parvenus and social upstarts in local administration, as well asspecific references to men like Fairfax and Cromwell. It focuses attention on thosewho went abroad as well as on those who stayed at home, either as conformists orinternal exiles (in a series of chapters by Geoffrey Smith, Ann Hughes and JulieSanders, Jan Broadway, and D’Maris Coffman), and it also draws attention to royalismin the American colonies, even if McElligott’s case for the authenticity of a royalistdeclaration from Virginia seems a little tendentious. And in a number of ways, itanalyses royalist dimensions of the burgeoning field of political culture and printculture, from literature (James Loxley, Marcus Nevitt) to printed images of Charles I(Helen Pierce), and from the antiquarian scholarship of William Dugdale (Broadway)to the scandalous journalism of The Man in the Moon (McElligott). In their chapter onroyalist exiles in the Low Countries, indeed, Hughes and Sanders offer a stimulatingdiscussion of the role of female cavaliers, in terms of patronage, information networksand political intrigue, and in terms of the relationships between ‘gender, place andexile’ (p. 143). And, in a final chapter by Coffman, the book also looks to the activityof royalists after 1660, in terms of how the administrative reforms of the earl ofSouthampton were coloured by interregnum experiments and experiences.

As with any volume of essays, this is a somewhat mixed bag in terms of quality, butthe best essays involve evidence, approaches and arguments which provide thought-provoking new directions for scholarship and research. The most important lesson toemerge is the need to recognize the complexity of interregnum royalism. By turningattention away from clerics such as Henry Hammond and Gilbert Sheldon, for

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example, Fincham and Taylor offer a powerful challenge to assumptions about the linkbetween royalism and episcopalianism, and highlight how Calvinist and non-Calvinistroyalist divines such as Robert Skinner, Robert Sanderson, Ralph Brownrigg, JohnGauden and Godfrey Goodman came to terms with interregnum regimes. They heldlivings and even dedicated books to Cromwell, while at the same time flouting theban on episcopal ordination fairly extensively. As such, they were engaged in ‘guardednonconformity’ (p. 31). This is echoed in Broadway’s treatment of Dugdale, whosecareer in the 1650s reveals accommodation as well as the creation of a royalist identity.Anthony Milton, meanwhile, challenges received wisdom about the Laudian cleric,Peter Heylyn, by arguing convincingly that he represents a strand of royalism (notedelsewhere by Sean Kelsey) which was prepared to criticize the kingship of Charles I.Heylyn, in other words, rejected hagiographical ideas about a martyred king, andexpressly challenged arguments by Hamon L’Estrange which lauded Charles as a manof conscience let down by Arminians and evil counsellors. Heylyn’s Charles, by con-trast, was naïve, incompetent and submissive, consistently ‘vailing’ his crown. Thisnuanced and complex picture of royalism is also evident in other essays. It emergesstrongly from the analysis of Hughes and Sanders, which recognizes that differentEuropean cities had subtly different cultures, and that the political culture of exile wasnot simply experienced but also ‘constructed’. Places thus ‘conditioned’ experiences,but royalists also responded to their environments, and such responses were ‘inflectedand shaped by gender’ (p. 144). And it is clear also in Coffman’s analysis of financialadministration in the early 1660s, in the sense that Southampton adopted a pragmaticattitude to both royalists and their enemies, and was prepared to learn from interreg-num experiences, in order to improve on them and overcome their structuralproblems.

In addition, however, these essays also suggest another lesson, and one which is lessclearly, consistently, or comfortably, expressed. This involves the need to recognize thecomplexity not just of ‘royalism’ but also of the response to it from republicans andCromwellians. What emerges from a number of essays, in other words, is that thereaction to royalism involved something other than simple repression. The authoritiesapparently turned a blind eye to the practice of episcopal ordination; the response topopular royalism was ambivalent; and little concerted action was taken against thosewho printed images of the dead king. Far from being marginalised, royalist authorswere fairly free to publish works which overtly revealed their allegiance. Here theproblem is not the conclusions that are reached, but the surprised tone expressed byat least some of the authors, and the interpretations which are sometimes offered. Itdoes not seem right to characterise the response to printed images of the king, forexample, as indecisive, and it certainly ought not to come as any real surprise thatDugdale’s overt identification with royalism and royalist circles went unmolested. It haslong been clear that the rulers and administrators of interregnum England were some-thing other than dogmatic and humourless puritans. Whether or not men like Crom-well were entirely consistent about ‘healing and settling’, they certainly displayedpragmatism in the face of prayer-book protestantism, and clearly felt able to distinguishbetween seditious behaviour and mere displays of royalism. As such, perhaps the mostimportant lesson of this volume, and of so much recent scholarship, is that ‘royalists’,‘parliamentarians’ and ‘Cromwellians’ resist being caricatured and compartmentalised,

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that they require subtle analysis, and that modern scholarship ought to treat themtogether rather than separately.

JASON PEACEYUniversity College London

Religion, Politics, and Dissent 1660–1832: Essays in Honour of James E. Bradley.Edited by Robert D. Cornwall and William Gibson. Farnham: Ashgate. 2010.xiii, 254 pp. £55.00. ISBN 9780754663843.

This Festschrift was, in 2010, presented to James E. Bradley, whose learned and finely-crafted books, articles and essays have, in the past 30 years, greatly enriched ourunderstanding of religion and politics in 18th-century England. Besides his meticulousscholarship, Professor Bradley’s moral commitment underpins his thinking and writing:indeed, his Religion, Revolution, and English Radicalism (1990) is dedicated to ‘the studentsin Beijing and Prague, who in 1989 led the struggle against oppression and advanced thecause of human rights through their suffering’. It is thoroughly fitting, therefore, that thevolume, in its two parts (‘Accommodating Religious Heterodoxy’ and ‘Religion, Politics,and Society’), examines the themes of faith, politics, and freedom.

The editors’ useful introduction spotlights some of the key issues raised by ProfessorBradley’s work (notably in relation to J.C.D. Clark’s thinking), and also summarizes thecontent of the volume’s essays. Part I examines 17th- and 18th-century religiousorthodoxy/heterodoxy, through case studies of individuals whose lives and opinionsilluminate a range of important themes. Thomas C. Pfizenmaier separates the complextheology of Samuel Clarke and Isaac Newton from William Whiston’s arianism. StephenTaylor examines, and contextualises, a sermon preached in 1731 by William Bowman,vicar of Aldborough, who maintained that the clergy ‘have no Authority, but what theyderive from the Civil Power’ – a view, with others, which, following angry criticism, hewas obliged to retract. Richard A. Muller outlines Philip Doddridge’s attempts toaccommodate theological orthodoxy to rationalist thinking, and Rena Denton charts the‘theological basis for radicalism’ of the dissenting pastor, James Murray (1732–82).Conyers Middleton’s arguments concerning miracles in his Free Inquiry (1749), and theensuing furore, are analysed by Robert G. Ingram, while Grayson Ditchfield describesthe career of Edward Evanson (1731–1805), who, when prosecuted in the church courts,resigned as vicar of Tewkesbury because of his anti-trinitarianism and other heterodoxspeculations.

Two of the essays grouped under ‘Religion, Politics, and Society’ continue the bio-graphical theme. Robert D. Cornwall explores the case of Roger Laurence, a formerdissenter who conformed to the Church of England and who, in 1708, was baptised by ananglican clergyman because Laurence felt unsure of his dissenting baptism’s validity.Laurence’s view produced dismay.Were baptisms performed by ministers of non-episcopalchurches, in Britain and abroad, invalid?Was George, elector of Hanover, likely to becomeking and head the Church of England, properly baptised? Controversy was aroused, too, byArchbishop Markham’s denunciation of the American rebels in a sermon of 1777 – which,

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as Nigel Aston shows, seemed decidedly too authoritarian to many, most notably in thehouse of lords.The remaining essays study, by contrast, themes rather than people.WilliamGibson elucidates the many complexities of anglican and dissenting voting from 1689 to1710, countering simple church-tory, dissent-whig models, and David Wykes elegantlyreinvestigates the arguments and manœuvres which, between 1714 and 1719, led to therepeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts. Lastly, in a tour de force, PeterNockles describes anglicans’, dissenters’, and Roman catholics’ different responses toFoxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’, set against changing circumstances from c.1760 to c.1850.

There is, naturally, much in this volume to interest readers of Parliamentary History.The1662 Act of Uniformity created ‘dissent’; theToleration Act of 1689 gave it legal existence.Gibson shows the importance of religion in various elections.Wykes’s essay deftly con-denses the arguments in the upper House of Wake,Atterbury, Hoadly and Kennett.Taylornotes that Bowman’s claim was contrary to the Book of Common Prayer, and that theprayer book was prescribed by parliamentary statute.There are human asides too. In theLords, Shelburne castigated Markham for ‘his want of manners’, and the earl of Abingdon,a pupil atWestminster School when Markham was its headmaster, mocked the archbishopin print (‘as I am now out of his clutches’). But, perhaps above all, the volume emphasizesthe importance of orthodoxy/heterodoxy in the period considered (non-trinitariandissent was not legalised by the Toleration Act, and unitarianism remained illegal until1813, despite earlier de facto toleration).Wykes shows the considerable fear in parliament ofanti-trinitarianism in the 1710s. Evanson’s life highlights much of interest regardingheterodox opinion within the established church. Heterodox critics of the governmentwere vocal during the American war. Overall, this orthodoxy/heterodoxy theme deservesstill more scholarly consideration elsewhere.

COLIN HAYDONUniversity of Winchester

Honour, Interest and Power: An Illustrated History of the House of Lords, 1660–1715.Edited by Ruth Paley and Paul Seaward, with Beverley Adams, Robin Eagles andCharles Littleton. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press for the History of ParliamentTrust. 2010. xxii, 394 pp. £30.00. ISBN 9781843835769.

One of the most welcome, as well as necessary, developments in the field of parliamentaryhistory over the past 15 years has been the extension of the History of Parliament projectfrom the house of commons – the sole concern of its published volumes to date – to thehouse of lords.Under the leadership of Ruth Paley and her colleagues, it is anticipated thatthe first formal offering of The History of Parliament:The House of Lords 1660–1715 will bepublished in 2013–14. The present volume could be seen as a trailer, or taster, for itssuccessor, and in a sense it is. But it is a much more substantial achievement than such averdict might imply. It is a substantial and high-quality production in its own right;deeply-researched, fully up-to-date, and beautifully-illustrated history. The volumedeserves particular credit for its treatment of the house of lords in its broadest context. Ittakes into account the social history of the peerage (hence the ‘honour’ of the title), its

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privileges, economic strength and local leadership (hence ‘interest’), and the crucial role ofthe upper chamber in the political and judicial life of the nation (hence ‘power’). Full usehas been made of the most recently-available primary sources, such as the Entring Book ofRoger Morrice, and of the research of leading scholars of the subject, notably thedistinguished work of Dr Clyve Jones.The choice of period – Restoration to George I – iseminently suitable as an advertisement for the series as a whole, since in these years theauthority of the house of lords, in relation to successive ministries and to the Commons,was, arguably, at its height.

Moreover, this was one of the most dramatic and shifting eras in the entire history ofthe upper chamber. Having been abolished in the aftermath of the execution of CharlesI and with its survival as an institution far from guaranteed, the house of lords wasrestored, together with the monarchy and the Church of England, in 1660, with itspowers intact and its highly-exclusive membership broadly comparable to that of thepre-1640 period. Its continuing importance was fully evident in the years immediatelythereafter, with the Cavalier Parliament, the Exclusion Crisis, the revolution of 1688–9,the Act of Settlement (1701), the Hanoverian succession followed by a jacobite rebellion(and the threats of several others). One of the most notable changes to the upperchamber was, of course, the Anglo-Scottish Act of Union in 1707, which not only sawthe addition of 16 representative peers from the northern kingdom (itself a new categoryof peer), but an extension of the appellate jurisdiction of the Lords to Scotland, a matterwhich was to prove highly controversial.This theme is admirably expounded in chapter8. At the same time, the Lords witnessed a series of major impeachments, from that ofClarendon, through Danby and Sacheverell, to that of the earl of Oxford.The period wasalso one of considerable procedural change, much of it necessitated by the need formeetings of parliament each year after 1689, when more sophisticated techniques ofsecuring attendance, organising proxy voting, and fitting the house of lords for the ‘rageof party’ were devised. One of the merits of the present volume is the careful attentionwhich it devotes to procedural issues and the circumstances in which they arose; andthere are lucid explanations of the technicalities of peerage creations, the litigation overdormant and extinct peerages, and the continuing importance of private legislation todefend and promote the interests of leading aristocratic families. One is left in no doubtas to the extent to which the private interests of peers could have considerable ramifi-cations for the country as a whole.

Dr Paley and her team have sensibly combined a broadly chronological approach witha series of informative and succinct analytical essays.There are eight substantive chapters,followed by an appendix dealing with the Hanoverian succession and the defeat of thewell-known (or notorious) Peerage Bill of 1719, with, as the authors wryly note, itsimplications for the difficulties of reforming the house of lords. The central themes,appropriately, are the constitutional role of the Lords, the nature of the English (and from1707 the British) aristocracy, the income and expenditure of the peerage, the lords inparliament (with a telling section on the episcopal membership) and the House as aworking chamber. Finally, the implications for the Lords of the widening of the politicalnation after 1689 are analysed, with perceptive comments on the aristocratic involvementin elections. Here, perhaps, more might have been said about popular perceptions of theupper House and of the aristocratic order more generally. Each chapter is illuminated byapposite case studies, which are themselves valuable essays in political, legal and social

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history. This reviewer particularly admired the neat account of the colourful career ofCharles, 4th Baron Mohun, the short but effective summary of Edward Stillingfleet’scontribution to the ‘comprehension’ debate and the entertaining excursion into Londonclubs and coffee houses.Visually, the book is greatly enhanced by an excellent variety ofwell-reproduced illustrations, including portraiture, engravings, architecture, broadsides,official documents and manuscript division lists.

The volume perhaps takes an excessively dismissive view of the power of the houseof lords after 1722.The ‘upsets for the administration’ (p. 344) which it produced in themiddle and later years of the 18th century were, perhaps, ‘occasional’. But in addition tothe examples cited we might recall the defeat of the Tithe Bill in 1736, difficulty ofsecuring the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, and the Lords’ part in the defeat, not onlyof a piece of legislation but an entire ministry in December 1783. And at least until thelarge-scale peerage creations of Pitt the Younger had taken full effect by the 1790s, thehouse of lords required careful leadership and management, and, as Dr Michael McCahillhas demonstrated convincingly, its acquiescence could not be taken for granted. As awhole, however, this magnificent volume will be welcomed by specialists, by under-graduates (for whom it provides a first-class entrée to the period) and by general readers.It deserves to adorn many a coffee table as well as many a library shelf, and a paperbackedition would be an advantage. It is best regarded as a supplement to, not a substitute for,the ‘more comprehensive account’ (p. xix) due in 2013–14.

G.M. DITCHFIELDUniversity of Kent

The Making of the Irish Protestant Ascendancy: The Life of William Conolly, 1662–1729. By Patrick Walsh. (Irish Historical Monograph Series.) Woodbridge: TheBoydell Press. 2010. x, 229 pp. £65.00. ISBN 9781843835844.

It is surprising that there has been no biography of William Conolly (1662–1729),Speaker of the Irish house of commons from 1715 to his death, and arguably one of themost important Irish political figures of the first half of the 18th century. Conolly’s risefrom obscurity from one of the remotest parts of Ireland to become Speaker, a revenuecommissioner and several times a lord justice, is a biographer’s dream. Yet, as Walshindicates, the absence of a personal and political archive has not helped. Walsh is,therefore, to be congratulated in identifying the various small, and often patchy, collec-tions that has allowed him to write this book. Indeed his recent co-editing, with DrA.P.W. Malcomson, of The Conolly Archive (Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2010) hasmade these papers more widely accessible. Walsh’s approach is not one of biographyper se, but, in a now established historiographical trend, he adopts a thematic approachwhereby the wider context of Conolly’s activities can be considered. As a result, hispolitical life unfolds chapter by chapter, until all his power and influence is revealed.

Conolly’s story is not as romantic (or derogatorily ‘mean’) as contemporaries andthose that came after him have painted it. Conolly was born into a relatively humble, ifa somewhat aspirant, county Donegal family.The Conollys had at some stage in the 17th

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century, converted from catholicism to the established Church of Ireland, indicating awillingness to set aside principle to pursue the social and economic advantages thatconversion brought. Conolly’s uncle was a collector of revenue long before his ownpublic career began, while his father had begun the process of assembling property in thecounty while Conolly was a minor. Indeed young Conolly’s beginnings in the legalprofession may have been designed to further his family’s ambitions. If they were, theyoutgrew all expectations.Walsh identifies a number of factors that account for Conolly’srise to prominence within the new political relatives of post-revolutionary Ireland.Among the most important was his marriage in 1694 to Katherine Conyngham, thedaughter of Sir Albert Conyngham, a Donegal landowner. Circumstance allowedConolly, as guardian of the Conyngham heir, to command two borough seats which theConynghams controlled. The other significant factor was his legal career, which, con-centrated in north-west Ulster, allowed him to establish a network of contacts among theinfluential. There he acted for the corporation of Londonderry and the London-basedIrish Society. His legal career made him wealthy, while his acumen and growing expertiseattracted the attention of powerful figures, such as the duke of Ormond. By the 1690she was well placed to avail of the redistribution of forfeited property that followed JamesII’s defeat in 1691. Despite efforts to prevent him and others from acquiring property,in which he led the vanguard, Conolly emerged with an estate of 48,000 acres. By hisdeath in 1729 he had over 150,000 acres and a rental income of £14,900 per annum,making him one of the wealthiest individuals in the kingdom. Walsh’s careful recon-struction of his wealth is one of the book’s strengths, allowing us to appreciate thefoundation on which Conolly’s political success was built.

It is Conolly’s political career that has attracted most historians’ attention. He isconsidered to be the architect of the ‘undertaker’ system and more broadly, the Irish‘protestant ascendancy’. His earlier career between 1692 and 1714, and his part in theacrimonious battles waged between whigs and tories, has not been accurately docu-mented until now. ‘A follower rather than a leader’ may best describe him in theseyears, though it seems that his capacity for work, serving on 231 committees between1703 and 1713, marked him out as ‘a man of business’ and capability. His politicalweight came from his command of a regional following in the north-west, which hewas able to add to a group of whig-orientated MPs under the leadership of AlanBrodrick, whom he would eventually surpass at the Hanoverian succession. One ofthe gaps in the book, though no fault of Walsh, is the lack of any material whichwould chart Conolly and Brodrick’s deteriorating relationship from about 1714.Conolly seems to have almost fallen into the Speaker’s chair; the other whig leadersbeing promoted to much more significant offices. Yet it was Conolly who ultimatelyshaped the role of the Speaker into a much more influential office than it had beenpreviously. His other significant achievement was his ability to manage a parliamentthat had become volatile, as triumphant Irish whigs scrambled for preferment anddivided into smaller factions, which made him indispensible to successive Englishministries.

Conolly’s pragmatism in dealing with parliament, and especially lord lieutenants, isseen here as a defining element in the emerging role of ‘undertaker’. Only once, duringthe 1724–6 Wood’s halfpence dispute, did the relationship between him and Englishministers come under pressure. Conolly’s political successes were somewhat balanced by

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his failure to repeal the Test Act, which prevented presbyterians from the full benefits ofoffice, and perhaps also the stillborn Bank of Ireland initiative.As Walsh rightly indicates,his successful parliamentary career dovetailed with his other offices, especially those ofrevenue commissioner and lord justice. Conolly was able to use the revenue to promoteclients and develop a powerful network of patronage much like Walpole did in England,though with differing emphases and results. Yet, as Walsh and others have argued,Conolly ensured that the revenue service was insulated from the worst excesses ofcorruption and, in some way, professionalised the service.

Walsh’s concluding impression that Conolly was ‘impressive rather than spectacular’within a broader British context may be correct, though the comparison is perhaps alittle inequitable. In Ireland, Conolly could not be matched. The vacuum left in parlia-ment after his death was indicative of this. Beyond providing the first authoritativefull-length account of how one of the most influential political careers and personalestates was acquired and kept, the book reveals how the organs of the Irish governmentdeveloped and were made to work. In this context the magnitude of Conolly’s achieve-ments can be appreciated all the more clearly.The book, therefore, is immensely valuablefor understanding how a man from relatively humble origins defined much of what was18th-century Irish politics.

DAVID A. FLEMINGUniversity of Limerick

Politics and Provincial People: Sligo and Limerick, 1691–1761. By D.A. Fleming.Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2010. xiv, 272 pp. £60.00. ISBN9780719081793.

The study of Irish politics in the 18th century has, too often, concentrated either onhigh politics or been too ‘Dublin-centric’. Similarly, regional studies have, at times, lackeda wider context. David Fleming’s new book falls into none of these traps. Focusing onSligo in the north-west and Limerick in the south-west he explores not just the localpolitical structures but also the political culture of these regions, showing how actions onthe periphery could influence, as well as be influenced by, those at the centre. Fleming’schoices of Limerick and Sligo as exemplars of provincial Ireland are well made. Limerick,with a population of c.100,000 inhabitants in the early 18th century, was one of themore populous Irish counties, while Limerick city had been an administrative tradingand ecclesiastical centre since the medieval period. Its role as a regional centre might befruitfully compared with Galway,Waterford and even Cork. Sligo, on the other hand, was,and is, a less-populated area, with a total county population of no more than 40,000 inthe first half of the 18th century. The eponymous county town, while a substantialmarket town, with a hinterland extending into the neighbouring counties of Donegal,Leitrim and Roscommon, had none of the significance of Limerick. Despite this,Fleming shows that it had an active political life, and can be compared to other Irishprovincial centres like Derry, Drogheda, Kinsale and Coleraine, all of which had a vibrantand contested political culture.

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Fleming’s study begins with two detailed chapters looking at Sligo and Limerick inturn, analysing the socio-economic make-up of each county, before moving on to discusstheir parliamentary representation.These sections will be of particular interest to readersof this journal and show that political contests in both counties were far from stagnant.In Limerick, county politics in the three decades after the Williamite wars were domi-nated by ideological divisions, as whigs and tories hotly contested the county represen-tation. These contests continued even after the defection of the leading tory interest,Thomas Southwell, to the whig side, in 1707. By the 1720s, however, the whigascendancy in county politics was complete and the rival whig interests of the Southwelland Evans families competed for local hegemony. The boroughs of Askeaton andKillmallock were dominated in this period by the local lords of the soil, the Taylors andthe Olivers respectively. Limerick city was, however, as Fleming shows, much morecontested ground. In the 1710s, the political scene contained ‘a mix of potentiallycombustibles, including a Tory bishop, a politically divided garrison, and various localinterests, including what was left of the Jacobite oligarchy’ (p. 66).This, unsurprisingly, ledto hotly-contested elections.The national eclipse of the tories in 1715 did not bring anend to divisive politics in Limerick. Instead, the 1720s saw the military governor of thecity, General Thomas Pearce, intervene in the politics of the city corporation, causingnew divisions to emerge, while 1741 saw the first appearance of Edmond Sexten Pery,later Speaker of the Irish house of commons, on the national scene, as he unsuccessfullyattempted to unseat his victorious rival, George Maunsell, following a bitterly-contestedby-election.

Political contests in Sligo were tamer affairs, but they were not immune from theimpact of national divisions either, with local commentators noting the presence of‘court’ and ‘country’ factions in the 1690s, especially at a county level. In Sligo town, theonly borough in the county, the representation was first controlled by the Dublin-basedBurton family, and then by the Wynne family from the 1720s onwards.The Wynnes also,in time, achieved a hegemonic role in county politics, through property acquisition,military connections, and the consolidation of alliances with other county magnates.

Fleming’s handling of the parliamentary contests in both counties is expertly done, butas he makes clear, this was only one dimension of the political scene in both counties.He warns of the danger of concentrating too much on the political elites or, indeed, theelectorate that chose them, though he does provide a fascinating discussion, drawn froma rich wealth of evidence, at least in Irish context, of the electorate in both counties. Hisreal interest in terms of discerning a provincial culture is in the operation of localpolitical structures, and his third chapter discusses in great detail the offices open to thepolitically-conscious from the parish vestry upwards, showing how the protestant popu-lations of Limerick and Sligo were able to exercise political power at a local level.Participation in mercantile life is also examined, with his analysis of Limerick’s guilds andMasonic lodges showing that these venues for political interaction were not exclusivelyprotestant, and that the latitude granted to prospective catholic members was probablymuch greater than that given in Dublin and Cork, a tentative conclusion that can onlyinvite further research for other urban centres. Fleming also pays attention to moreinformal forms of politicisation, highlighting the role of the politics of display, looking atthe celebration of civic and national occasions. He also examines the rise of associationalculture, an increasingly-important research theme in 18th-century Irish studies,

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examining the importance of membership of local militias as well as the rise of politicalclubs, particularly in Limerick.

The final two chapters of the book examine the impact of the agents of the state onprovincial society, through innovative studies of the impact of the revenue service and thearmy on provincial Ireland. These chapters break new ground, with the chapter onthe revenue service being the first sustained attempt to examine the local impact ofthe largest branch of the state’s bureaucracy.The interactions between the state’s agents,in the form of revenue and military officers and local political interests, are carefullyanalysed, showing how access to patronage, as well as accommodations reached with localmagnates, contributed to the expansion of state power into the provinces. Fleming’sstudy, however, shows the complexity of this process and the negotiations that had to goon at every level between local provincial interests and the political administration inDublin. The provinces – as his studies of Sligo and Limerick show – had their ownpolitical cultures, structures and issues, which did not always coincide with those at thecentre. It would be interesting to know how much these cases were, or were not, typical,and if I were to have one quibble with this book, it is the lack of explicit comparisonswith other Irish, or even English, towns.The interweaving of the national context is veryably done, but the incorporation of the results of other local studies could only haveenhanced some of the author’s findings. Nevertheless, with its prodigious levels ofprimary research, excellent maps and clear tables, this book is a credit to its author andhis publisher, while its conclusions and illuminating discussions of the political culturesof Limerick and Sligo should only encourage other historians to look in greater detailat other regions and towns across Ireland.

PATRICK WALSHTrinity College Dublin

The Efflorescence of Caricature, 1759–1838. Edited by Todd Porterfield. Farnham:Ashgate. 2011. xiii, 224 pp. £65.00. ISBN 9780754665915.

The enormous expansion in the range, reach and regular output of visual satirical forms(principally those of hand-produced single-sheet caricatures) in the late-18th and early-19th centuries has long been recognized by political historians. However, until relativelyrecently, their value as cultural and political artefacts, comparable to more traditionallyvalorised textual outputs, has been under-appreciated. If historians have only lately begunto interrogate them seriously in this light (rather than as a productive source of potentialbook illustration), the field remains some way behind the comparable attention paidto those other well-known indicators of the late-18th-century ‘public sphere’: novels,plays and the newspaper press. This volume of essays offers an interdisciplinary andpan-European perspective upon a range of subjects which, cumulatively, evidence thetremendous flowering of visual satirical output in the late-Hanoverian period.The volumeneatly commences a year before George III’s reign and concludes a year after QueenVictoria’s accession; a time frame dictated less by conscious planning and more by theterminal dates of the essays chosen for publication. Nevertheless, the British monarchy

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remains a central focal point of discussion in the book, its assorted subject matter providing(as today) lively source material for contemporary satirists. Robert L. Patten offers asuggestive analysis of the way in which satirical treatment of George IV and QueenCaroline during the ‘trial’ of 1820 prefigures, in its ‘shaping’ of the couple like pears, the farmore incendiary treatment of Louis-Philippe in Charles Philipon’s subversive ‘Les Poires’,following the assumption of the French throne by the ‘Citizen King’ in July 1830.

Whilst the essays by Pierre Wachenheim, Helen Weston, Richard Taws and SégolèneLe Men are largely concerned with French graphic satire – in this respect, the book’sstated desire to break out of national stereotypes is not always borne out by itsorganisation and content – historians of British political culture will find much ofvalue in other essays. Dominic Hardy explores George Townshend’s caricatured imagesof General James Wolfe during the Quebec campaign, comparing their subversivecontent with the iconographic cult which followed Wolfe’s death on the Heights ofAbraham (1759) whilst Reva Wolf shows how the figure of John Bull (a mainstay ofcaricature after about 1750) morphed into a visual metaphor of England itself.However, traditional English ‘star-turns’ of caricature, notably James Gillray, continue todominate discussions of the subject. Here, Douglas Fordham presents a highly-readableaccount of Gillray’s graphic ‘courtly encounters’ which is well attuned to recentscholarly work (including Cannadine’s conception of ‘Ornamentalism’) in visualisingset-piece diplomatic encounters with ‘the other’: Lord Macartney’s embassy to theemperor of China in 1793 offers the focal point of discussion. Elsewhere, ChristinaOberstebrink considers Gillray’s position within the traditional hierarchical ordering of‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms against the theoretical framework provided by CharlesBaudelaire’s conception of the ‘modern’ artist. Readers of Draper Hill’s classic biog-raphy of Gillray (1965) will find her work a challenging contrast in both style andtone. However, it is the consequences of Mike Goode’s essay, ‘The public and thelimits of persuasion in the age of caricature’, which are likely to be of most interestto political historians. Arguing against the conception of political historians like HarryDickinson that caricature was pre-eminently concerned with ‘persuasion’ in influenc-ing its audience’s perspective on the leading political issues of the age, Goode con-tends (or, as he sometimes admits, speculates) that caricatures were less concerned withpersuading their public than with exposing them to (and familiarising them with) arange of ‘character types and typical scenes that purported to express the public’sopinion’ (p. 122). In other words, both the satirised and the public alike were just somany different types of caricatured figure or personality type, a sort of visual tax-onomy of the population which lent familiarity and recognition to viewer and viewedalike. As Goode rightly notes: ‘graphic satire’s practitioners were invested in producingtypes and sticking to them’ (p. 120) – a notion of ‘stock images’ which is still in needof exploration, in so far as the leading politicians of the age are concerned.1

Most historians are used to the term ‘golden age’ in relation to the caricature outputof this period and, although this is not an unproblematic concept (not least for arthistorians), the term ‘efflorescence’ strikes a discordant note to this reviewer. Neverthe-less, putting a degree of editorial pretentiousness aside, the book deserves to be widelyread by scholars in a range of art-historical, literary and historical disciplines.A particulardebt of gratitude is owed to the book’s assistant editor, Ersy Contogouris, not only fortranslating some of the essays into English but for including an exemplary bibliography

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compiled from every reference in the book. Given the eye-wateringly small typeface inwhich the (sometimes very discursive) references are printed, this inclusion is an espe-cially welcome relief and a precedent which other volumes of this nature would do wellto emulate.

RICHARD A. GAUNTUniversity of Nottingham

1 For an important recent study along these lines, see Neil Gregory Howe, ‘The Politician in Caricature:TheCase of Charles James Fox’, University of Nottingham PhD, 2011.

The Duel: Castlereagh, Canning and Deadly Cabinet Rivalry. By Giles Hunt.London: I.B. Tauris. 2008. xiii, 214 pp. £20.00. ISBN 9781845115937.

Shortly before dawn on 21 September 1809, two senior members of the British cabinetmade their way to Putney Heath to fight a duel. Lord Castlereagh, the war secretary, hadchallenged George Canning, the foreign secretary, after learning that his erstwhilecolleague had been urging his dismissal from government during the previous months.After missing their first shots, the duelists resumed their positions and Castlereagh’s bulletpassed through Canning’s thigh. Although the injury was not fatal, the duel remains oneof the most remarkable episodes in British political history – alongside the assassinationof the prime minister, Spencer Perceval in 1812 – and will forever be associated with twoof the ablest and most influential foreign secretaries. In this engaging, well-researched andlively book, Giles Hunt tells the story of the duel in greater detail than ever before. Yethis book is more than that. He also charts the respective trajectories of the two youngIrish politicians from their early lives, locates them in the politics of the day, and evenoffers a new explanation of Castlereagh’s mental decline and suicide in 1822.

Hunt resists the temptation to see the duel as something more symbolic or significantthan a clash of personalities brought about, not least, by frustrated ambition. Contrary tothe image of Castlereagh as the unthinking reactionary and Canning as a foresightedliberal conservative, both men shared much in common in their political beliefs. Bothwere loyal to the memory of their mentor, Pitt, who died three years before the duel;both were staunch and unyielding supporters of the war against Napoleon; and bothwere lifelong supporters of catholic emancipation. Even after the duel, they set aside theirdifferences to co-operate on a number of occasions (such as over emancipation) andCanning professed admiration for Castlereagh’s work as foreign secretary after the latter’sdeath. Hunt’s depiction of Canning is the more convincing of the two portraits. Partlybased on an examination of family letters, Canning comes across as a man of ‘honour andprinciple’ – albeit not without faults – rather than an ambitious charlatan. Hunt’sestimation of both men is balanced and largely convincing. He also makes clear that thesimplistic view of Castlereagh as a staunch and unimaginative tyrant, peddled by Byronand Shelley, is highly misleading.

There are some fresh and arresting vignettes from the archives in the book andHunt has an eye for a potent anecdote, though there is not much which will surprise

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seasoned historians of the period. There are a few points where one mightquibble. Castlereagh, we are told, ‘inbibed the ethos of the Protestant Ascendancy’ inIreland and ‘read little or nothing apart from political writings’. Neither statement isaccurate. Castlereagh hated the term ‘ascendancy’, partly because of his presbyterianbackground and partly because he believed that it was a hindrance to the effectivegovernance of Ireland. Moreover, he read a wide range of literature, including Rous-seau, William Godwin, Lady Morgan, Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth. Hunt enterssafer ground after the Union of 1801, however, as the stories of Pitt’s two protégésconverge. He is right to point out, for example, that Castlereagh was never at ease inthe way that Canning was in Pitt’s company, yet that Canning – unlike Castlereagh –never served in Pitt’s cabinet. In fact, it might also be added that Castlereagh spentmore time with Pitt than with any other minister in the last few months of his life,and it was through Castlereagh that Pitt mediated his last views on how to conductthe war. Initially, Canning had a low estimation of Castlereagh’s qualities and he wassurprised and hurt to be overlooked for office at the expense of his fellow Irishman.In some cases they could co-operate well together, such as over the preparations forthe battle of Trafalgar and the bombardment of Copenhagen. But Hunt places theirduel in the context of the severe pressures which emerged over the conduct of thePeninsular campaign and the war effort more generally, citing the fall-out over theconvention of Cintra as a tipping point. Canning’s behaviour was not as malignant assome have suggested and he was upset by the way events unfolded in 1809. Bycontrast, Castlereagh’s sense of collegiality and loyalty was one of the clues to thelongevity of his career.

The latter chapters of the book contain some discussion of the foreign policies of thetwo men, though Hunt does not really go beyond conventional accounts provided inexisting diplomatic histories. The most original section of the book is the attempt toposit a new theory about the death of Castlereagh, who slit his own throat in August1822 after what appears to have been a mental breakdown. In 1788, while a youngstudent at Cambridge, Castlereagh confessed to his grandfather that he was sufferingfrom a condition which ‘cannot be directly acknowledged before the women’. As Huntcalculates, this was most likely to be a venereal disease. Hunt speculates that he may haveacquired syphilis, which remained dormant – manifesting itself during periodic bouts ofillness, but only reaching the tertiary stage in the last years of his life – until 1822,contributing to his paranoia and mental breakdown. An appendix in the book containsa testimony by a medical doctor that Castlereagh’s symptoms fit this theory.The idea iscertainly plausible. Equally, however, many of the symptoms which might be attributedto syphilis are also attributable to the gout, about which he complained regularly in laterlife. It is, perhaps, better to distinguish between the plausible and the probable. Cas-tlereagh was considerably overworked and there is no question that political pressure andmental exhaustion also played their part. ‘If he had suffered his mind to enjoy suchoccasional remissions’, suggested William Wilberforce, noting that Castlereagh rarely tookSunday off, ‘it is highly probably that the strings would never have snapped as they did,from over-tension’.

JOHN BEWKing’s College London

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Conservatism and British Foreign Policy, 1820–1920: The Derbys and their World.Edited by Geoffrey Hicks. Farnham: Ashgate. 2011. xii, 234 pp. £65.00. ISBN9780754669296.

In 2004 a conference was held at Knowsley Hall in Lancashire to consider ‘The viewfrom Knowsley’, by exploring the contribution made by successive earls of Derby tothe political and diplomatic history of 19th- and early-20th-century Britain. Thoughthe editor is at pains to deny the fact, this volume represents the proceedings of thatconference. The title is, in part, misleading; rather than offering a systematic explora-tion of ‘Conservatism and British foreign policy’ in the classic period of the ‘PaxBritannica’, the contributors to the volume are concerned with ‘The Derbys and theirworld’. That this turns out to be principally Conservative, aristocratic (Knowsley beingthe principal family seat) and concerned with high politics and diplomacy hardlycomes as a surprise. Nevertheless, the volume has a wider historiographical purpose– outlined by Geoffrey Hicks in the introduction and by John Charmley in anuncharacteristically under-stated conclusion to the volume. This purpose is to restorea tradition in Conservative foreign policy which vouchsafed the 1815 Vienna settle-ment as sacrosanct, disliked intervention in the domestic arrangements of Europeangovernments, preferred diplomacy to showy rhetorical sabre-rattling, and soughtpeaceful, negotiated solutions to the problems of great power diplomacy out of aconcern with the continental balance of power and an awareness of the probabledomestic impact (both political and economic) of extended military conflicts. Accord-ing to this interpretation, the tradition was perfected by Castlereagh and practised byAberdeen (as foreign secretary), the 14th earl of Derby (as prime minister of threeshort minority governments), the 15th earl (as foreign secretary in Disraeli’s govern-ment of 1874–8) and continued, inter alia, down to the time of Neville Chamberlainand appeasement in the 1930s. This tradition stands in contrast with the noisy liber-alism of Canning and Palmerston and the tub-thumping Conservative patriotism ofDisraeli during the Eastern crisis of 1875–8, the wartime Churchill and the post-Falklands Thatcher.Whilst the editor rejects any sense of an agreed ‘party line’ amongstthe contributors, Thomas Otte’s essay stands as the only real dissenting voice; in muchthe same way, Hicks’s distaste for talk of a ‘Norwich school’ of historians is counteredby the fact that two-thirds of the contributors are alumni of – or serving members offaculty at – the University of East Anglia, and about half are former students ofCharmley. However, the intellectual godfather of the volume (and its dedicatee) isJohn Vincent, whose pioneering work on the 15th earl’s diaries provides the ground-work (and a good many of the references) for what follows. Whilst it is argued at theoutset that women should be taken more seriously as political agents in the late-Victorian ‘world’ inhabited by the Derbys, the only female voice represented here (ascontributor and subject respectively) is Jennifer Davey’s essay on Mary, wife of the15th earl. Long part of the ‘black legend’ built up against her husband because of hersupposed intimacy with the Russian ambassador, Count Shuvalov, at the height of theEastern crisis, Mary Derby is here revealed to be an important political conduithelping to provide her husband with a path out of the political wilderness created byhis resignation from Disraeli’s government in 1878 and towards the acceptance ofcabinet office from Gladstone in 1882.

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The long hiatus between the conference and the appearance of this volume has servedto blunt the originality of some of the essays: in particular, those chapters concerned withthe 14th earl.Work which was ‘forthcoming’ at the time of the Knowsley conference hasnow outpaced the original contributions. As such, the essays by Angus Hawkins, DavidBrown and Hicks himself may be regarded as primers for the more substantial mono-graphs which they have published in the intervening period. Andrew Lambert’s accountof Derby’s handling of the political patronage vested in the admiralty board during hisfirst ministry of 1852 offers a promising contrast though, by its nature, is drawn on amore limited scale. Conversely, two chapters on the 15th earl’s stewardship of foreignaffairs under Disraeli provide fresh and original insights. If Thomas Otte starts out asthough coming to praise Derby, by the end of his meticulously-researched study of the‘war-in-sight’ crisis of 1875, he has effectively buried him: ‘Derby was a troubled andinsecure politician, whose high office by far exceeded his capabilities’ (p. 127). Bycontrast, Bendor Grosvenor’s detailed exploration of Derby’s handling of the easternquestion (over which he ultimately resigned) offers readers all the necessary material fora defence of Derby’s position; a principled stance which brings to mind (though it is notstated here) Robin Cook’s resignation from the Blair government over Iraq in 2003.David Dutton’s chapter, exploring the 17th earl’s role as British ambassador to Parisduring the final stages of the First World War and in the subsequent peacemaking period,offers a fitting symmetry to the volume by moving the focus from the world inauguratedby the congress of Vienna to that established by the Treaty of Versailles. Though Derbywas famously described as ‘king of Lancashire’, he lacked any natural qualifications forthe Paris embassy, possessing neither diplomatic experience nor linguistic capacity. Yet hebecame closer to the French premier, Georges Clemenceau, than to his putative politicalsuperiors (Lloyd George and Curzon), and understood France’s desire for a great-powerguarantee of its eastern border with Germany along the Rhine. In this respect, Derby’sunwavering support for a new Anglo-French understanding, in place of the pre-warentente cordiale was, as Dutton shows, well in advance of political thinking and publicopinion on the issue.

Much like his ancestors before him, the 17th earl appears an uncharismatic andundemonstrative personality, his power deriving as much from ‘what he was than whathe did’ (p. 189).This characteristic, as hereditary in the earls of Derby as their enormouswealth, goes some way to explaining their effectiveness as public servants; but it may alsoexplain why the ‘view from Knowsley’ has remained obscured for so long.

RICHARD A. GAUNTUniversity of Nottingham

The Palace of Westminster on the Eve of the Conflagration, 1834. Edited by M.H.Port. London: London Topographical Society, Publication No. 171. 2011. Sevenplans and a booklet, vi, 37 pp. £15.00. ISBN 9780902087583.

In August 1833, the house of commons turned, once again, to what had become abugbear: the need to have for its use a set of plans to enable it to identify structural

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problems and to comment constructively on these. They approached the first commis-sioner of woods and works ‘to direct plans and sections of the house of commons, andall the buildings and apartments belonging thereto, to be prepared for the use of hisoffice, and to order copies of the same to be made, and placed in the library, for the useof any committee appointed to consider and report upon any proposed alteration’(booklet, p. 1). With work recently completed on improving the house of lords andvarious administrative buildings, the MPs had expressed concern over the persistentinadequacies of the lower House. But the cost of building a new chamber led to thematter being dropped. A committee appointed in the first session of the reformedparliament recommended the erection of a new building, only to have it rejected. Thecommissioning of a survey was something of a sop to those disappointed by therejection.The work was done by two surveyors,Thomas Chawner and Henry Rhodes,who presented their set of six plans and a section in 1834. The copy presented to thelibrary of the house of commons was destroyed in the fire of 16 October 1834, butthe prime version survived in the office of woods and works.This version was found inThe National Archives by M.H. Port, while working towards the final volume of TheHistory of the King’s Works, edited by H.M. Colvin (1963–82). It is this version which, 50years later, Port has now edited for the London Topographical Society.

Chawner and Rhodes’s survey consists of six plans (a general ground plan, a moredetailed survey of the offices on the ground floor, the principal storey, the mezzaninestorey, ‘two pair storey’ and the attic storey together with a cross-section running fromthe River Thames through the house of commons to St Margaret’s Street).Their surveywas executed when architectural drawings had achieved a standard of perfection rarelysurpassed. The drawings are both elegant and exquisite. They are a joy to behold. Theirstandard of reproduction is a credit to the team of photographers at The NationalArchives and to the London Topographical Society.

The achievement of Barry and Pugin in designing the new Palace of Westminster, oneof the high points in 19th-century architecture, has resulted in John Soane’s short-livedrebuilding in the early 19th century being largely forgotten. Soane’s magnificent draw-ings of the interiors are familiar to some, but these give no idea of how elegant thewhole scheme was, nor how practical it was. The Commons’ chamber (basically StStephen’s chapel slightly modified for parliamentary business over three centuries) mayhave had serious shortcomings, but the provision of committee rooms, libraries and otherfacilities, was the state of the art. The only serious default was the inadequate latrinefacilities (perhaps no worse than any other building in the early 1830s), with the flushingtoilets installed under the Tudors having been removed and not replaced. The furnacewhich had displaced the Commons’ bog house is clearly shown, but the furnace whichoverheated, causing the conflagration of 1834 is, strangely, nowhere to be seen. Thiscurious omission creates a measure of reservation as to the quality of the survey, but itis almost certainly no more than a minor error in its final presentation. Soane wascriticized for demolishing the old house of lords in 1823, a shell of little architecturalmerit, to make way for the new king’s entrance. Chawner and Rhodes’s section revealsthe superlative, 14th-century south window of Westminster Hall which Barry chose notto preserve, perhaps an even greater act of vandalism.

The reproductions of the survey are accompanied by a booklet in which Port sets thehistorical background. He sets out succinctly the series of schemes throughout the 18th

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and early 19th centuries to improve and rationalise the increasingly ramshackle medievalpalace, only for these to be largely aborted as the result of Britain’s frequent involvementin hostilities. He provides an exemplary commentary on each of the plans. His intro-duction and commentaries are further supplemented by a plan of the palace in 1793,showing the law courts in and around Westminster Hall, the old house of lords and theprince’s chamber demolished in 1823, together with a selection of prints illustrating thedifferent components of the palace as they appeared in the early 19th century. Thesemake the publication an essential tool for anyone wishing to understand the spaces andworkings of parliament on the eve of the fire of 1834.

There are two minor slips. The fire of ‘1512’ (correctly 1512–131) did not end themedieval palace’s history as a royal residence (p. 1), but merely curtailed it, as the itineraryof Henry VIII makes clear.2 In 1529 the king acquired Whitehall as the new Palace ofWestminster. The chapel of St Stephen’s College was not handed over to the house ofcommons as its constant meeting place in 1547 (p. 1), as the college was not dissolveduntil a year later, it being allocated to that purpose shortly afterwards.3 Altogether,however, this publication is another triumph for the London Topographical Society.

ALASDAIR HAWKYARD

1 A. Hawkyard and M. Hayward, ‘The Dressing and Trimming of the Parliament Chamber, 1509–58’,Parliamentary History, xxix (2010), 236.2 TNA, OBS1/1419.3 A. Hawkyard, ‘From Painted Chamber to St Stephen’s Chapel: The Meeting-Places of the House ofCommons at Westminster until 1603’, Parliamentary History, xxi (2002), 79.

Big Ben:The Great Clock and the Bells at the Palace ofWestminster. By Chris McKay.Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2010. xvii, 279 pp. £42.50. ISBN9780199585694.

Personal clashes, design, construction, technical problems and their resolution, innova-tion, casting and recasting, maintenance and restoration, and reversals and disasters inpeace and in war constitute the heart of this study. It reveals the inteconnection andinterdependence of aesthetics, politics, science and manufacture from Victorian Britainuntil the present day. One character emerges above all, Sir Edmund Bennett (Denison)bt, later lord Grimthorp, a lawyer with a private fortune originating in railway specu-lation. Perhaps best know today for saving St Albans Abbey from collapse, he was aclockmaker of some distinction, and the designer of the great clock, the bell Big Ben andits quarter bells at the Palace of Westminster.

Big Ben is lavishly illustrated with all but 310 figures made up of prints, drawings,photographs, documents and plans, with 15 of these duplicated in colour. These inthemselves make the book a highly-desirable acquisition. Unfortunately, none of thesefigures is keyed into the text, although in sequential order, and this task is left by ChrisMcKay, the copy editor and the text setter to the reader. Even more seriously, McKayhas ‘integrated the references to source material into [the] text where possible to avoidextensive footnotes’. In other words, there are no footnotes. This omission prevents

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anyone whose interest has been whetted by the book from following up any point.Thisdiminishes the achievement of the book. Sentences such as: ‘A lot of information wastaken from two sets of letters on the clock and bells in the National Archives’, withouteven the class numbers being given, are not helpful. The omission also disguises whatMcKay has overlooked. Consulting the invaluable The History of the King’s Works, ed.H.M. Colvin et al. (6 vols, 1963–82) and The Houses of Parliament, ed. M.H. Port (1976)would have transformed chapters 3 and 4 on the early history of the Palace ofWestminster up to the fire of 1834, and also strengthened later chapters. In particular, R.Allen Brown’s highly important article, ‘King Edward’s Clocks’ (Antiquaries Journal, xxxix(1959), 283–6), was evidently not used. The various medieval clocks at Westminster areconfused and conflated.The payment made by the dean of St Stephen’s College for theupkeep of a clock (p. 31) almost certainly relates to the college’s own clock in the toweradjoining Westminster Hall and, if not, perhaps this should have been explained.

Chapter 18, entitled ‘Iconic Big Ben’ is something of a disappointment. It promiseswell, with subsections on music discussing A.P. Herbert’s light opera ‘Big Ben’, stampsand HP Sauce, but the enormous range of memorabilia and other items depicting BigBen from the mid 19th century until the present day are dismissed in three lines, and BigBen as the subject for postcards is treated almost as scantily. Both memorabilia andpostcards are increasingly the subject of scholastic study and popular interest. Cartoons inwhich Big Ben figures merit no attention. Neither does painting. Thus John AtkinsonGrimshaw and Claude Monet make no appearance. Against this, over a page is allocatedto a reception held on 2 June 2009.The quality of the glossary, however, is exceptional,and sets a standard for others to follow.The use of the pronoun ‘he’ by McKay for BigBen is fascinating to the non-horologist, and perhaps deserved comment. Is this standardpractice in much the same way as ‘she’ is employed for boats, cars and airplanes?

ALASDAIR HAWKYARD

Jewish Parliamentarians. By Greville Janner and Derek Taylor. Edgware and Port-land: Vallentine Mitchell. 2008. xi, 228 pp. Hardback £35.00; paperback £16.95.ISBN 9780853038191; 9780853038177.

Jewish Parliamentarians has been made possible through the efforts of one of its number;jewish parliamentarians were only possible because of the Jews Relief Act 1858, when‘[t]he principle of a more tolerant and plural democracy had finally prevailed’ (p. 11).This volume marks the 150th anniversary. The story is an important and notable one,not least because ‘when some ethnic communities in Britain have few or weak centralorganizations, the Jews are an example of how successfully to approach the problems ofrelating to government’ (p. 2). Indeed, in a subject replete with stereotypes and caricature,one quality does seem to feature: high achievement. ‘They have always had a greaterpercentage of M.P.s than would have been the case if there had been proportionalreligious representation’ (p. 7).

It is hard to develop themes in a biographical dictionary, but one the authors stress ishow so many of their subjects saw no ‘incompatibility’ between their British nationality

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and their jewish ethnicity and/or faith: as Harry Morris put it: ‘between being a goodcitizen of the country and being a good Jew at the same time’ (p. 106). The nature ofjewish membership of parliament is yet another aspect of national life transformed by theFirst World War, when jews became more diverse in background and outlook throughthe dilution of the ‘cousinship’, and the rise of intermarriage and secularisation. More-over, real matters of policy arose which were processes rather than events: Palestine andzionism, anti-semitism, and after 1945, the state of Israel, about which there is muchdiscussion. Another theme is the broad progressivism of these parliamentarians (JohnSimon supported Charles Bradlaugh, so furthering the principle of a more tolerant andplural democracy), and certainly until the mid 1970s, a higher proportion was Liberal orLabour in party affiliation. The reasons for so pronounced a shift towards the Conser-vatives after 1974 are not clear, but appear associated with attitudes towards Israel.

This is all very interesting.The problem of the book is its quality, a doubt reinforcedon almost every page. Just because someone is a peer does not mean that they were‘obviously, never elected as an M.P.’ (p. 113).Winning seven or ten elections in a row isnot really a feat when it is a safe constituency (indeed all it requires is the member notresigning or being incapacitated) (passim). Over Suez, ‘[a]ll the Jewish Labour MPs toedthe party line and voted against the invasion’ (p. 114), as if none of them could havecome to that decision independently. Chapter 7, 1955–70, is entitled ‘Years of Change’,as if the rest of the century was marked by stasis. ‘Myer Galpern was Glasgow throughand through’, meaning, perhaps, that he was from Glasgow (pp. 122–3), whilst ArthurSamuel ‘was always a Norwich man’ (p. 66), meaning, presumably, that he was never notfrom Norwich.When the book is not platitudinous it is inconsistent: Labour’s decisionto readmit Neville Sandelson is described (perfectly reasonably) as ‘magnanimity on amunificent scale’ (p. 147), but John Diamond, who also abandoned the party to formanother intent on replacing it, was ‘welcomed back’ (p. 99).

Stylistic peccadillos grate even more than usual when found in a reference book.Thereare personal pronouns and exclamation marks, and there is emoting: ‘sadly’ – often whensomeone dies – or ‘happily’ when something nice happens; John Diamond ‘lived to theremarkable age of 96’ (p. 99), but when Frank Meyer died ‘[h]e was only 49’ (p. 77).There are clichés (‘safe pair of hands’, ‘ripe old age’ (passim)), and fatuities: ArthurSamuel’s ‘bounty knew no bounds’ (p. 67); Gillian Merron ‘believes in the possibility ofan individual being able to make a difference’ (p. 178); we have Lord Jacobovits to thankfor faith schools and the ‘benefits’ they bring (p. 171); aged 85 years, David Kerr professedthat his ‘ “enthusiasm for living is undiminished”. Long may that continue’ (p. 128) (hedied six months before publication); Anthony Steen ‘remains a Euro-realist’ (p. 151),whatever that means; Alex Carlile is both ‘a member of the Athenaeum’ and likes‘association football’ (truly, a ‘remarkable man’) (p. 160); ‘Dodging bullets on Normandybeaches was a long way from Maurice Edelman’s birth in Wales’ (p. 100), unlike most ofthose in the allied expeditionary force who, by implication, originated in north-eastFrance; Michael Fidler died ‘peacefully’ (p. 142), no doubt nowhere near Normandy.There is, admittedly, also hilarity in these pages. Bertram Straus MP introduced theTraffic Bill, ‘which limited the speed at which cars could travel in built-up areas. So ifyou’re convicted for speeding in town, it’s Straus’s fault!’ (p. 54). And it was unques-tionably an ‘odd coincidence’, at the very least, that in 1931 the successful candidate inDudley was a man called Dudley Joel (p. 87).

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No sources are given for any information or quotations, and only one suggestion forfurther reading. Dates of death are stated, usually twice in the same entry, and dates ofadmittance to parliament, usually twice, but other tabulations that may have benefitedthe reader – education, gender, occupation – are not. Bold page references in the indexfor the main entry is a basic practice, and a party abbreviation next to names in entrieswould also have helped. As for editing: some constructions are repeated in successiveentries; twice we are told that there were few jews in Gloucester (pp. 74, 99); MannyShinwell gets on so well with service chiefs that we are told that twice as well (pp. 69,72); Keith Joseph was apparently one of only two jewish tory MPs (p. 121) between 1945and 1974, yet Appendix C lists ten. Some index entries are incorrect, and whilst there isno entry for the Social Democratic Party, there is for SDP Friends of Israel. ‘England’ isfrequently used when ‘Britain’ is meant. There is a Second World War, but no First.Stanley Baldwin’s most famous utterance is misquoted (p. 83). Michael Fabricant’s (short)entry gives the information (twice) that he has a PhD in economics (p. 167). He doesnot, in fact, have a PhD (although he probably does not need a doctorate to know notto use Wikipedia as a source for a published claim, never mind one that is repeated).

This is a paean of sectional self-congratulation masquerading as a work of reference.It has been written by two authors responsible, the jacket informs us, for approaching100 books.They do not appear to have read many (admitting as much in the acknowl-edgements; Gordon Brown certainly cannot have read this volume given his foreword).There is a valuable and growing literature on jews in Britain, for much of which thepresent publisher can claim responsibility; in this case it is guilty of culpability. ‘Not a badeffort’, the authors reflect, typically (p. 188). Would that that could be said of thisgreatly-squandered opportunity.

MARTIN FARRNewcastle University

The Political Life of Josiah C.Wedgwood: Land, Liberty and Empire, 1872–1943. ByPaul Mulvey. (Royal Historical Society Studies in History.) Woodbridge: TheBoydell Press. 2010. xi, 230 pp. £50.00. ISBN 9780861933082.

As this well-written and perceptive biography points out, ‘Josh’ Wedgwood was one ofthe best-known politicians of his day, between 1906 and 1943. A wealthy scion of theWedgwood pottery dynasty, he was an exceptionally hard-working MP, first in theLiberal Party and, after 1919, in the Labour Party, tirelessly hounding ministers withquestions, delivering a stream of speeches in the Commons and around the country, andcampaigning incessantly for the causes dear to his heart. But he has now largely beenforgotten, for, as Mulvey points out, his ‘successes were few and [his] failures were many’(p. ix). Wedgwood never held high office, other than an undistinguished stint in theminority Labour government of 1924, and he had no significant legislative achievementsto his name. His renown was essentially as a parliamentary ‘character’ and someone whocould provide column inches for the newspapers through his outrageous speeches. In anot untypical example in 1933, he accused the maharajah of Alwar of roasting a live polo

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pony.When the maharajah protested that this was untrue,Wedgwood demanded specialbranch protection in case he was attacked by the Indian ruler. But Mulvey suggests thatWedgwood deserves a biography, not just because his career throws an interestingsidelight on early-20th-century politics, but also because it illuminates the crucialtransition in this period from individualism to collectivism. Wedgwood’s reputationthroughout his political life was as a fearless enemy of the state and a ceaseless advocateof individual freedom – a commitment that lay behind his best-known enthusiasm, forthe land taxation schemes of Henry George, but also motivated his opposition tomeasures as diverse as the Mental Deficiency Bill of 1913 and the Canal Boat Bill of1930. If Wedgwood achieved little, it was because he was swimming against the collec-tivist tide, and his career is an interesting means both of examining reactions to thegrowth of state power and a reminder that anti-collectivism could be a cause of the left,as well as the right.

However, the detailed coverage of Wedgwood’s life and career in Mulvey’smeticulously-researched book actually reveals a far more complex character than thefanatical and single-minded image that Wedgwood often conveyed. Despite his anti-collectivism,Wedgwood was an enthusiastic supporter of the South African war and theFirst World War and of the measures needed to win those wars. In 1914–18 he was anadvocate of greater state organisation of the economy and of conscription – he spokeabout the potential need for conscription only two days after war was declared. Wedg-wood was also a determined imperialist. After fighting in the South African war he rana district of the Transvaal as one of Milner’s ‘kindergarten’ of protégés; in the First WorldWar he not only volunteered to serve in a variety of capacities in 1914–16, he alsogleefully drew up annexationist war aims for the British empire in the Middle East.These activities suggest that Wedgwood’s patriotism ensured that he was not always theindividualist he declared himself to be.

The contradictions in Wedgwood’s political life do not stop there. He seemed to bemore interested in principles and campaigns than in power, and to have little interest inparty – he was in the unusual position of being returned for Newcastle-under-Lyme asan independent in 1918, and unopposed in 1931 and 1935, after saving the boroughfrom being swallowed up by Stoke-on-Trent. Yet he actually sought political employ-ment consistently. Dismissed from very junior office in the Edwardian Liberal govern-ment in 1907, he hoped for much better from Lloyd George in 1916, only to bedisappointed. His move to Labour in 1919 was probably prompted by ambition as muchas anything else. Stymied by MacDonald in 1929, he begged Henderson to be first highcommissioner in Egypt and then ambassador to the Soviet Union. Mulvey concludes thatWedgwood was handicapped by his lack of links to the trade unions, but his realdifficulty seems to have been a consistent ability to alienate those at the top of first theLiberals and then Labour.Wedgwood’s devotion to his much-lauded principles was alsomuch less unswerving than it might seem on first inspection. At the local level he tookmore or less whatever stance was needed to keep his beloved seat of Newcastle-under-Lyme, including declaring for tariff reform in 1918 to secure Conservative support andnationalisation of the mines to keep the backing of the North Staffordshire Miners’Federation. Mulvey also points out numerous occasions on which Wedgwood reversedhis stance on crucial issues. In fact, many of his beliefs seem to have been picked upthrough the accident of family connection: Wedgwood’s brother, Ralph, converted him

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to the cause of land taxation in 1905; his first wife, Ethel, profoundly influenced hisindividualism; and his son, Josiah, made him a Keynsian in the 1930s.

Wedgwood was not just a committed individualist, left behind by the tide of history.His views and career were far more varied, contradictory and random, than thisdescription suggests. But if he does not fit this mould neatly, he can, perhaps, be seen asanother sort of strange survival – as one of the last MPs in 20th-century politics toidentify himself as a Victorian. Wedgwood took a deep interest in the history of hisfamily, locality and the Commons – more or less single-handedly starting the History ofParliament project. The motivation behind all this activity was a profound sense of thetraditions of British political life and a patriotic reverence for the Victorian mantras ofliberty, protestantism and progress. His wealth and secure local base allowed him to go hisown way in politics, just like the radical businessmen who had occupied the Liberal backbenches in the mid 19th century. If one of them could have been transported to theCommons in the 1930s, one of the few MPs they might have dimly recognized wouldhave been ‘Josh’.

IAN PACKERUniversity of Lincoln

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Politics and Provincial People: Sligo and Limerick, 1691–1761 – By D.A. Fleming

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