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This thesis is a re-evaluation of William Wilberforce's abolitionist activity in the House of Commons, 1788-1825. Under-used manuscript sources, as well as the parliamentary record and abolitionist literature, form the basis of the research. The historiography has relied on biographies of Wilberforce, which have in turn relied on a biography written by Wilberforce's sons after his death. Revisiting Wilberforce's correspondence and diaries offers new perspectives on his actions both in and out of the House of Commons. The thesis draws on the historiography on abolition to reassess Wilberforce's contribution in conversation with the range of topics that have attracted interest, including the extra-parliamentary campaign and enslaved-led rebellions. In doing so, this thesis bridges the gap between biographies of Wilberforce and the historiography of the abolition campaigns. The first half of the thesis focuses on the parliamentary campaign against the British Atlantic slave trade, 1787-1807, analysing Wilberforce's actions and rhetoric. It demonstrates that Wilberforce took an increasingly decisive role in the anti-slave trade campaign over time, and that his rhetoric, both in is speeches and in his 1807 Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, was targeted at his audience in the House of Commons. The second half investigates abolitionist activity after 1807 – enforcing British abolition, encouraging other countries to abolish the slave trade, and efforts to reform and gradually abolish slavery – and Wilberforce's contributions after his retirement in 1825. It argues that the second half of Wilberforce's career was in many ways a mirror of the first, because the abolitionists mimicked successful methods from pre-1807 when addressing a variety of concerns post-abolition. Similarly, his rhetoric as exemplified in his three publications between 1814 and 1823 followed the same lines as his 1807 Letter.

Sir William Hamilton was the British Envoy to the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily between 1764-1799. The thesis explores his interests in natural philosophy and antiquarianism. It examines his contribution to Neoclassical design and, via the Wedgwood factory, its extension to the ‘middling people’. Hamilton’s extraordinary network of contacts is explored throughout the text. The thesis focusses on three major areas. The first explores his two vase collections, their publication and significance. Secondly Hamilton’s empirical approach to the geology of the Neapolitan Caldera is examined. The third element considers the social changes of the late eighteenth century and their interplay with Hamilton’s life and public reputation. The outcome was Hamilton’s dismissal from the Naples post in 1799. Hamilton is most commonly known and admired for the publication of his two vase collections, yet the thesis demonstrates that his contribution to them is far less than is commonly believed. The author of the first, Pierre-François Hugues, known as 'Baron d'Hancarville' published his own prehistory of ancient art under the title Antiquités etrusques, grecques et romains, tirees du cabinet de M. Hamilton (Naples, 1766-1776). It was not the catalogue raisonné that Hamilton’s desired and funded. The outcome was a text largely unrelated to the exquisite coloured plates of ancient vases. Hamilton’s Collection of Engravings from Ancient Vases Mostly of Pure Greek Workmanship was published between 1791and 1795. He wrote an excellent introduction, but most of the work was that of Wilhelm Tischbein and Count Italinsky. Emma Hamilton’s agency in publicising ancient vases via her Attitudes in which they featured has not previously been adequately recognised, equally true of her role as a diplomat. Hamilton and his wife cannot be separated in these respects. Where Hamilton has been grossly underestimated, remedied in the thesis, relates to his inductive research into natural philosophy, made known to a wider public by his superb two volumed work Campi Phlegraei, written and published by the Envoy. The thesis demonstrates how he advanced understanding of volcanoes, seismology and charting the boundaries of the Neapolitan Caldera. Additionally, his perception of the enormity of geological time and the universality of natural scientific events is explored in a manner not previously undertaken. In summary, Hamilton should be viewed as a significant eighteenth century figure noted for fashioning Neoclassical taste and as a major contributor towards the modern science of geology.

During the period 1716 to 1847 successive generations of the Dukes and Duchesses of Montagu, and Buccleuch and Queensberry, were lauded in life, and commemorated after death, for their charitableness. Known as the Montagu Douglas Scott line, they nurtured an enduring familial reputation for benevolence. This thesis tests the reality of a wide range of their charitable activities in this era, against that historical image. The recently opened family archive has yielded a plethora of rich sources making the private charitable giving and medical decisions of these Dukes and Duchesses accessible for the first time. This thesis therefore redresses the lack of detailed research into the charitable activities of aristocratic families, including their own health and welfare needs, for this time period. Focusing on five generations of Dukes and Duchesses, three with houses and estates in both England and Scotland, the variations observed are thus attributed to gender, time and place. In their own written words, the historical benevolent practices of these high-ranking donors are uncovered through their responses to private, strategic petitions from those in need of welfare, and to the rhetoric deployed in charities' public appeals for assistance. The complexity of influences and imperatives underpinning their charitable and medical decisions are thus unravelled. These benevolent practices are located in the giving structure at large, whilst medical choices are situated in the context of what could be contemporarily supplied. Hence, a familial lens is constructed through which historical developments in charity and medicine can be viewed. The impact of the family's charitableness on its recipients is revealed too in their petitions for assistance and in the reports of their observers. Thus, the role of this aristocratic charity is relocated in survival strategies and appraised as a source of welfare provision. Whether this was indeed a performance of noblesse oblige that went above and beyond traditional expectations of aristocratic benevolence is therefore addressed.

This thesis explores the relationship between celebrity and the public-sphere through a case study of the life of William Long-Wellesley (1788-1857). A junior member of the powerful and well-connected Wellesley family, Long-Wellesley married into the largest fortune in Regency Britain, became a Tory MP and enjoyed moderate success as an author. But he owed his celebrity status to public curiosity about his rakish and extravagant lifestyle. A study of Long-Wellesley’s celebrity history is important because it enables an investigation into the framework of the public sphere. In the second half of the eighteenth-century a new form of public sphere emerged, partly as a result of the rise of urban intellectual middle-class society in Western Europe, especially in England. It has been argued that the collective engagement of private people, coming together in a ‘public sphere’, resulted in the formulation of ‘public opinion’ for the purpose of acting as a corrective authority to the state. The general scholarly consensus has therefore argued that public opinion belongs to the political sphere. This thesis sets out to challenge that premise, and the assumptions that underpin it, by demonstrating that public opinion was more culturally derived, and found its inspiration in publicity. The parameters of the public sphere in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century were more broadly defined than the traditional political focus suggests. Instead, it will be established that audiences were stimulated through a wide variety of sources, including spectacle, novelty, and celebrity. This thesis aims to re-position celebrity in the public sphere, showing how it impacted upon public opinion. It focuses on the life of Long-Wellesley because he offers many examples of how celebrity was represented in Britain during the Regency period. His decision to create and distribute his own sensational narrative makes Long-Wellesley a worthy case study; not least because he was the chief purveyor of, rather than a helpless victim of, malicious rumour and gossip. He is a prime example of how non-political spectacle influenced public opinion and helped to change the moral climate.

This thesis is an examination of printed political ephemera, produced and distributed during election canvasses between 1790 and 1832. Previous studies have highlighted the popular, public nature of election rituals during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, although, to date, few have fully appreciated the level and range of printed literature produced during the course of canvassing. This thesis uses a broad range of printed and manuscript evidence including political ephemera, local newspapers, election receipts, and correspondences from borough and county elections, highlighting the level of work which went into orchestrating a canvass in the unreformed era, especially by candidates, their political agents, and printers. The focus of this study is the borough and county constituencies of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire, with particular emphasis on borough elections. Between 1790 and 1832, this region, along with the rest of the country, underwent profound social and political change, and so this thesis not only acts as an important test case for the operation of local political culture nationally, but also represents the first comprehensive study of printed electoral culture for the region. The central premise of this thesis is fourfold. Firstly, it aims to reinstate the importance of printed canvasses to the study of political culture and electoral politics, which have often been seen as secondary to the local press. Secondly, it argues that, such was the fast paced nature of elections and electioneering that, in comparison to provincial newspapers, handbills, broadsides, songs and ballads offered a much more versatile form of communication between candidates and voters. This thesis also re-examines the assumption that, for much of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, local elections were dominated by local concerns and personalities. Finally, this thesis considers the audience, reach, and reception of election canvasses, arguing that, although printed canvasses were not always designed with non-voters in mind, the public nature of print and other election rituals meant that they were much more inclusive than initially appears.

The thesis examines the practice of morbid anatomy as it was articulated and developed in late Georgian Britain. This practice, I argue, was a particular way of investigating disease that was specifically anatomical, in contrast to much other work on disease in this period. It originated in William Hunter’s anatomy school at Great Windmill Street, and was developed partly by Hunter himself but especially through the work and publications of Matthew Baillie. At the school, Baillie learnt anatomy in the Hunterian manner, and applied these lessons to the study of disease. His major publications Morbid Anatomy (1793) and A Series of Engravings (1799–1803) clarified and promoted this practice to a wider public in text and image, and were widely circulated. In the nineteenth century, morbid anatomy came to be central to British approaches in the study of disease, distinct from the historiographically much better-known, concurrent developments in Paris. By focusing on morbid anatomy, I argue that Paris’s “birth of the clinic” was part of a wider story which had an important, and distinctive, British component. My interpretation of Baillie’s texts and activities incorporates approaches from the history of medicine, art history, and book history, thereby treating all of the various knowledge-making practices involved as vital to the development of morbid anatomy. Processes of dissection and preservation were designed to gain sensory knowledge of the diseased cadaver, and to keep that knowledge in the form of preparations; features of anatomy books were employed to present disease as anatomical; skilled artisans worked to enhance the epistemic content of Baillie’s morbid anatomy illustrations; and after criticism, Baillie modified his work to mollify his critics whilst restating the essentially anatomical nature of his work. Baillie’s work thus spanned various medical, publishing, and artistic concerns, and I explore morbid anatomy in the same way.

This study examines the development of theories of civil religion in Hanoverian Britain. In the aftermath of the seventeenth-century wars of religion, theorists of civil religion sought to render Protestant Christianity a faith whose ecclesiology was compatible with the civil state and whose practice encouraged civilised society. It presents lay thinkers including Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury, John Trenchard, Thomas Gordon, Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Edward Gibbon, and David Hume, alongside clergymen such as Edmund Gibson, bishop of London, William Warburton, bishop of Gloucester, and Conyers Middleton. It considers such Dissenters as Joseph Priestley and Richard Price, who refashioned civil religion variously along Unitarian and congregational lines. In contrast to the usual scholarly preoccupation with the argument of Jean-Jacques Rousseau that Christianity could never become a civil religion, this study demonstrates how Hanoverian intellectuals constructed a Christian civil religion. They sought to purge the civil state and society of superstition, priestcraft, and enthusiasm by creating a religion of virtue, sociability, and happiness. They drew on the church-state relationship generated during the ‘long Reformation’ in England and Scotland by which the secular civil magistrate governed the national church and regulated its priests, who were to preach the simple morality of the gospel. Hanoverian theorists of civil religion synthesised primitive Christianity with the ancient civil religions, relying above all on Cicero. Irrespective of their inward views about the normative truths of the articles of faith of the churches of England and Scotland, civil religionists sought to reconcile them with civil ends. They believed that outward observance of the Reformed religion was a criterion for belonging within the Christian commonwealth of Hanoverian Britain.

This thesis explores the existence and outlook of a European officer class in the mid- to later 18th century by studying the army officers of Britain and the Habsburg Monarchy from the War of the Austrian Succession to the eve of the French Revolutionary Wars. It illuminates the character of such an officer class of ‘Military Europe’ with its own cultural customs and practices. Furthermore, it details similarities, differences and peculiarities of both officer corps. This is achieved by analysing the social and national composition of both armies, with a focus here on the Habsburg Army due to the fact that it took in great numbers of foreigners and that the muster lists give an indication of how great the proportion of nobility was. A comparison with the British case shows striking similarities but also obvious differences. In a further step the ability of individuals for social advancement and national mobility is scrutinised on both sides. In this context, the state’s care for its officers and their social security is also taken into account. One possibility to acknowledge the officers’ service was to raise their status, either by ennoblement or through increasing the prestige of the uniform in court and society, its transformation into an ‘Ehrenkleid’ (garment of honour). As officers increasingly became servants to the state, rather than noble retainers and military enterprisers, they were also subject to professionalization efforts by the sovereigns. What becomes apparent, however, is that the officers did not only react to such measures but that at least a significant part of them actively worked on improving the service, thereby exhibiting a growing professionalism. In order to explore the coherence of the officer corps in those armies, with officers all following the same codes and accepting each other as equals, the thesis looks into core values (including honour, duty, courage and loyalty) binding them together and separating them from the enlisted men. The thesis will also offer a glimpse of their engagement with civilian society and culture as well as their role as ‘foot soldiers of Enlightenment’. On a European level, interaction between these officers proves their general acceptance of and respect for each other, while at the same time acting as state representatives in wartimes. Their interaction with non-European and non-state military forces and their leadership marks out the fluid boundaries of military Europe, but also exhibits the pervasiveness of European military culture.

Pittite politics between the premierships of Pitt and Liverpool has been overshadowed by those long eras of government and by the concurrent Napoleonic Wars. This has particularly caused the neglect of one leading Pittite, the prime minister Spencer Perceval, which is especially surprising given recent scholarly interest in the role of religion in politics and in conservative ideas. He is known either as the 'assassinated Prime Minister', or stereotyped as the 'Evangelical Prime Minister'. This thesis contends that Perceval was a significant, if sometimes unusual, figure in Pittite politics in 1807-12, that this era saw important policies pursued in areas such as church reform, and that Perceval is better understood as an 'Anglican Prime Minister' dedicated to upholding the established Church. Recovering Perceval helps us better understand the Pittites in general. He operated amongst a circle of like-minded politicians who supported church reform and opposed Catholic Emancipation. Each chapter duly recovers a topic which demonstrates the continuities between war-time and peace-time Pittite policies, underpinning the thesis's argument that post-1815 policies need to be understood in relation to the war-time experiences and actions of this generation of Pittites. These arguments are advanced through five chapters. The first chapter shows how Perceval's theological beliefs, contemporary descriptions, and his church patronage emphasise his transcendent Anglicanism. The second chapter stresses Perceval's and his coterie's role in strengthening and expanding the established Churches in England and Ireland. The third chapter highlights the twin importance of theological beliefs and the necessity of upholding the established Church in shaping Perceval's attitude towards Catholics, tithes, and nonconformists. The fourth chapter highlights the pragmatic approach the Pittites took to economic questions, and contrasts Perceval with the later 'liberal Tories' Canning and Huskisson. The fifth chapter illuminates Pittite policies that promoted Christianity in India and suppressed the slave trade.

This thesis is a study of the place of ‘party’ and different ways of understanding this phenomenon in eighteenth-century British political discourse, especially between 1714 and 1765. Party is one of the most basic concepts of politics. If we are looking for party in any form, the idea of partisan division may be at least as old as the earliest societies where there was competition for office. But what did ‘party’ mean in the eighteenth century? While ancient factions usually denoted interest groups representing different orders in the state, party in the eighteenth century had a range of meanings, some general and others more specific. Broadly speaking, it could either mean a parliamentary constellation vying for power, or carry the more sinister connotation of civil war-like division, with roots in the Reformation and its aftermath. In spite of the fact that the emphasis was on principles and beliefs rather than organisation in both cases, modern historians have tended to focus on the latter. The party debate was considered by political writers at the time to be profoundly important, and political life in the period simply cannot be understood without reference to party. Although ‘party spirit’ waxed and waned, ‘party’ was consistently a key word in political debate. By concentrating on the writings of Rapin, Bolingbroke, David Hume, John Brown, and Edmund Burke, in the context of political developments, this thesis presents the first sustained examination of the idea of party in eighteenth-century Britain. It demonstrates that attitudes towards party were more diverse, penetrating and balanced than previous research has managed to capture.

This thesis examines the visual representations of elite women, who wielded and were seen to transgress, gendered political roles through their activity in the elite socio-political spheres of eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Britain. In analysing the portraits and satirical prints of this select breed of women, this study questions the common bifurcation of gender debates in existing secondary literature, which include, but are not limited to, the porosity of traditionally conceived public and private spheres, contested masculine and feminine identities, and the gendering of morals and vices. The study will explore how predominantly male artists represented these women alongside an examination of how elite women were able to manipulate and choreograph their own portrayal. As such, it will probe how these political women utilised portraiture as a crucial means of self-fashioning; and likewise how their satirical representation was routinely subjugated to the male gaze. In doing so, it will reveal the varieties, vagaries and subtleties of the political power held by women and how this could be iterated, celebrated, or criticised in the visual culture of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Britain. Four case studies form this examination. The first, argues that three women from Rockingham-Whig social networks, Lady Elizabeth Melbourne, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and Hon. Anne Damer, used portraiture as a form of self-fashioning to both celebrate their friendship and declare their burgeoning political agency. Chapter two revisits the 1784 Westminster election, to probe the theme of rivalry in satirical prints representing female canvassers. It argues that the visual vocabulary expressed in such prints pertains to wider cultural debates concerning class and gender that crucially came to a head during this political event. The third chapter introduces the dialogues between portraiture and satirical prints through its examination of the visual media that politicised Scottish Pittite hostess, Jane, Duchess of Gordon. Whilst the duchess used painted portraiture to proclaim her adherence to culturally-inscribed gender roles, satirical prints attacked her for her perceived political access, acquired through her daughters’ marriages and through her close proximity with prominent members of the Pittite government. The thesis concludes with a study of arguably the most political woman in the period of study: Queen Charlotte, consort of George III. This chapter revisits her reputation, arguing that a close examination of visual culture reveals that the queen, long thought to be an uncontroversial figure, became deeply problematic after the king’s bout with ‘madness’. In seeking to connect the visual aspects of women’s political engagement, this thesis expands on previous work in gender, social, cultural, and art histories such as those by Elaine Chalus, Cindy McCreery, Marcia Pointon, and Kate Retford to further our understanding of women’s political activity and eighteenth-century visual culture.

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

The impact of burgeoning consumerism and a new ‘world of goods’ has been well established in scholarly research on eighteenth-century England. In spite of this, we still now surprisingly little about the consumer. This thesis seeks to recover the figure of the consumer and establish its position as a key economic and social player on both the domestic and international stage. It argues for a significant shift in conceptual and practical attitudes to the consumer over the course of the eighteenth century. The consumer became a positive and productive economic force, and increasing emphasis was placed on training and cultivating this figure throughout a person’s lifecycle. This thesis focuses on the female consumer of dress. Women of the elite and middling sort were often the agents through which concerns about luxury and commercial corruption were raised. They also regularly engaged in the production of the items they consumed, bringing into question the artificial division placed between production and consumption in scholarly work. In order to tackle the nuanced character of the female consumer of dress, this thesis adopts an interdisciplinary approach, combining traditional archival research with an examination of contemporary literary, visual, and material culture. This approach paints a picture of a skilled and knowledgeable consumer, whose economic and material literacy was trained from childhood, and maintained throughout the lifecycle.

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

This thesis analyses the development of provincial Toryism during the period from the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 to the passage of the Reform Acts in 1832, examining the beliefs, organisations, and actions of local Tories particularly in some large British towns. In the early nineteenth century, the existence of two parties, Tory and Whig, became a major feature of parliamentary politics, and local political associations supporting each of them were gradually organised and became powerful and influential in urban centres. Local Tories expressed their opinions and acted together in order to support the Tory party in Parliament. They found support in different regions, and developed a recognisable network and identity in various British towns. Like parliamentary Tories, however, they were not completely coherent in their ideology nor entirely agreed in what policies to pursue. They were ‘issue-oriented’ associations, which were loosely connected with each other. They sometimes acted independently and flexibly, lacked complete unity, and were not controlled by the national party at Westminster. Taking these circumstances into consideration, this thesis attempts to reveal how national and local politics were connected, and some of the most important aspects of local Tory politics particularly in terms of identity and organisation Chapter One examines the political ideology of local Tories, by looking at the provincial Tory press published in Bristol, Colchester, and Edinburgh in particular. Chapter Two investigates Tory clubs and societies, such as the Pitt Clubs, the True Blue Clubs, the King and Constitution Clubs, the Brunswick Clubs, and the Orange Lodges, which were widely and deeply entrenched in British urban communities. Chapter Three examines Tory electoral politics in three large, open, freeman boroughs: Liverpool, Bristol, and Colchester. It analyses the political opinions and actions of the electors and non-electors and investigates the extent and the ways in which national issues impacted on these urban constituencies. Chapter Four also examines the impact of national issues on local Tory politics, but does so by presenting a case study of the involvement of local Liverpool Tories in such significant provincial political arenas as Corporation politics, mayoral elections, and public meetings. The Conclusion stresses the importance of the diverse and flexible reactions of provincial Tories to various political events occurring in the localities as well as at Westminster.

This thesis examines the perceptions and practices of self-writing between 1700 and 1850 as products of the burgeoning information culture of the age. It demonstrates how priorities of information management and the shared, cultural valuing of knowledge shaped the way individuals wrote about themselves in an array of forms over the course of the period. In particular, it asserts that the arrival of the pre-structured diary in 1748 was a significant development because it confirmed and enacted the perception of selfwriting as a factual, empirical pursuit. By requesting the entry of brief 'data' into an essentially scientific form, the table, it made writing about the self an empirical, forensic exercise. This thesis finds that the priorities enshrined in this printed genre were reflected in the way it, and other forms were perceived and used. Individuals 'logged' their existence in pre-ordained categories, and expressed their emotions through snippets of reproduced 'fact'. These habits signalled a broader shift in the way the 'self' was expressed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This examination of self-writing provides new insights into the knowledge economy of the period. It argues that the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century culture of knowledge was characterised by the categorisation and management of information. The reproduction of these management systems in individuals' self-writing, this study contends, is an invaluable indicator of the extent to which the culture of information permeated. Above all, these self-writing forms are testament not just to the popularisation of information in this period, but its personalisation: individuals drew on the models, forms, and classifying structures employed in more informational genres to shape the way they wrote about themselves.

This thesis seeks to explore the important and numerous ways in which British political commentators engaged with fifth-century Be Athenian history, with particular reference to the rise and fall of Athenian sea power and maritime empire, in the eighteenth century. It argues that Athens provided British commentators with historical material in debates over the nature of maritime empire, the rights of colonists, the influence of luxury on imperial powers, the role of the individual in a free constitution, the causes of war, and the spread of factionalism and violence. This material was, at the same time, interpreted in the light of political concerns, while helping to shape the nature of various contemporary debates. The idea that the rise, decline, and fall of the fifth-century Athenian Empire and democracy was common intellectual currency and seen as politically useful is contentious. Edward Andrew argued that 'Athens definitely was not a model' for eighteenth-century thinkers, while J . T. Roberts sees Athens as an anti-democratic model. That is to sayan example of a constitution to be avoided. My thesis will add nuance to these accounts by considering the reception of various facets of Athenian history in total rather than individually. Over the coming chapters we will see how it is misleading to separate the history of the empire, the role of luxury, debates over Pericles, and the causes and violence of the Peloponnesian War. All these different strands together form a compelling case, I argue, for the importance of Athens in eighteenth-century British thought. This thesis will further point to the influence of readings of Thucydides, Plutarch, Herodotus, Xenophon, Aristotle, and others on the reception of Athenian history. The classical texts provided the raw material from which ideas of Athenian history were formed. This thesis will point to various traditions of reading these texts that were current in the eighteenth century, which provided material in contemporary political debates. Furthermore, I will explore ways in which readings of these texts problematised received wisdom. For example,. around the time of the American Revolution, Thucydides' depiction of the descent of the Athenian Empire into tyranny provided troubling material when compared with the perceived liberty of the British Empire.

This thesis examines aspects of the political career of Robert Wilmot Horton (1784-1841), a junior minister in the Tory governments of the 1820s and an advocate of state-aided emigration to the British colonies. It considers how far Wilmot conforms to existing conceptualisations of 'liberal Toryism', which are summarized in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 finds both ambition and principle in Wilmot's choice of party, while identifying fundamental aspects of his political make-up, in particular his devotion to political economy and his hostility to political radicalism. Chapters 3 to 5 explore his economic thinking. Chapter 3 charts Wilmot's gradual move away from a Malthusian approach to the problem of pauperism, and the resulting changes in his view of the role of emigration as a means of relief. Chapter 4 shows how his specific plan of colonization addressed broader considerations of imperial strategy and economic development. Chapter 5, exploring the wider context of economic debate, reveals Wilmot as an advocate of governmental activism in social policy, a critic of 'economical reform', and a moderate protectionist in the short term. Chapter 6 suggests that Wilmot, and the ministry as a whole, were driven by pragmatic rather than ideological considerations in their approach to the amelioration of slavery. Chapter 7 concludes that Wilmot's advocacy of Catholic Emancipation, on grounds of expediency, conformed to the approach normally ascribed to liberal Tories in principle if not in detail. Chapter 8 finds, in Wilmot's pamphleteering and lecturing, a striking instance of an 'outward turn' in political behaviour; and, in his support for parliamentary reform in 1831, a continuing determination to resist political radicalism. Overall, the thesis argues that Wilmot embraced political economy more in its 'secular' than its 'Christian' guise, but took interventionist positions on economic and social questions which set him apart from his colleagues. These conclusions complicate the task of retrieving a convincing ideology of liberal Toryism, if indeed there is one to be found.

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

This thesis draws upon evidence from over twenty archives in the UK and US. It uses the context of Liverpool, arguably the ‘second city of empire’ because of its extensive social, economic, and political networks overseas, to enhance knowledge of British imperialism during the American Revolutionary era (1763-1783).Part One analyses the ‘gentlemanly capitalist’ paradigm of P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins. In brief, this theory argues that the landed elite and financial-commercial services, concentrated upon the City of London, held sway over British imperial policy-making. This was chiefly because these interests were regarded as being ‘gentlemanly’, or socially acceptable, to the landed elite. In contrast, northern manufacturers were less influential in the imperial decision-making process. By working longer hours and being associated with labour unrest, industrialists were not perceived as being sufficiently gentlemanly by the ruling order. My dissertation tests this theory within the context of the late-eighteenth century. This is an original contribution to knowledge because most, although not all, studies of Cain and Hopkins focus upon later periods. Hanoverian Liverpool is an ideal test case because the town had a mixed economy. It contained a manufacturing base, served a wider industrial hinterland, and, because Liverpool was linked to the Atlantic empire, spawned a mercantile service sector community with interests in commerce and finance. This thesis generally supports Cain and Hopkins, but with some modifications. One of these is to view the late-eighteenth century as a period of emerging gentlemanly capitalism, referred to here as ‘proto-gentlemanly capitalism’. The fact that Liverpool merchants and the local landed elite were not yet fully socially integrated, is one of several reasons why the town lacked success in influencing imperial policy-making between 1763 and 1783.Warfare was synonymous with the Hanoverian empire. Therefore, Part Two expands our knowledge of the empire at home, or how the American War (1775-1783) impacted upon Liverpool economically, socially, and culturally. Previous histories of the economic impact of this conflict upon Liverpool concentrated upon overseas trade, and therefore stressed its negative consequences. However, this thesis looks at both overseas trade and domestic business. It paints a more nuanced picture, and, by using Liverpool as a case study, shows that the impact of warfare upon the UK economy produced mixed results. Finally, this thesis considers the socio-cultural impact of the war upon Liverpool. In the process, it demonstrates that military conflict affected both the northern and southern regions of Britain during the eighteenth century. Militarisation of the local community prompted discussions regarding the boundaries of national and local government. The War of Independence split opinion, thereby revealing divergent trends within British imperial ideology. Finally, on balance, the American War cultivated a ‘British’ national identity in the town (although there were still other identities present).

Previous studies of Bank Note forgery in England during the Bank Restriction Period have adopted a highly institutional focus. Thus, much is known about the role played by both the Bank of England and the workings of the criminal justice system in combating both forgers and forged note utterers. The question of how the new system of small denomination Bank Notes impacted upon the day to day lives and understandings of the people that used them has received far less attention. The actual means by which Bank Notes were themselves forged has also been overlooked. This has led to a somewhat two-dimensional view of these notes as material objects. This thesis will engage with common mentalities and perceptions, seeking to write a 'new history from below' of both Bank Notes and their forgery in this period. Its primary aims will be to explore the question of why the English people were so easily imposed upon by forged Bank Notes; the various means by which forged notes could be constructed; and what an analysis of both of these points can tell us about economic and social understandings of non-elite people at this time. It will be argued that by studying instances in which small denomination Bank Notes were routinely exchanged, we can highlight a significant dichotomy of understanding in a society that was starting to engage with a new culture of promise based fiduciary paper money, yet was still deeply rooted in early-modern notions of paper instruments as objects of personal credit and debt. The thesis will show that heavy exposure to Bank Notes at this time clearly equipped some contemporaries with their own personalised sets of aesthetic and material "standards", against which the "goodness" of any monetary instrument with which they were presented would be compared. Others continued to examine the material aspect of Bank Notes via a direct comparison or consultation with others. Neither approach was always successful and indeed whatever method was adopted, the common occurrence of the materials and technologies required to construct a credible imitation of a Bank Note meant that it was not just illiterate persons that were susceptible to being deceived. Even a reading of the Bank Note's literate text failed to provide sufficient defence against the activities of the forger.

This thesis argues that British naval officers provide a useful category of analysis for social and cultural historians. While previous scholarship has largely ignored naval officers or treated them as equivalent, socially and professionally, to army officers or the traditional professions, the present study argues that the nature of service at sea presented challenges to officers' social status. Drawing on thousands of recently-digitized sources, as well as extensive archival materials, it explores the formation of naval officers' social identity, the forces that shaped their careers, and the changing landscape of social status at the end of the eighteenth century. The demands of life at sea placed naval officers in a liminal social space. Their claims to gentility were contingent and contested. They needed to be proficient in practical as well as theoretical skills. At the same time, officers were expected to be gentlemen. How officers shaped, and were shaped by, the changing definitions of that term provides the framework for the thesis. It makes three central contributions to the fields of British social and naval history. First, it emphasizes the continuing significance of social status boundaries in Georgian Britain. The existing literature misconstrues the chronology of the changing nature of gentility and misunderstands the relationship of naval officers to issues of gentility and professionalism. Second, it recalibrates our understanding of the nature and mechanisms of patronage networks. Social backgrounds made relatively insignificant contributions to shaping officers' careers; patrons used a much wider range of criteria when selecting clients. Finally, it questions the traditional separation of naval history from social and cultural history. The Navy and naval officers were central to British life at the end of the eighteenth century and cannot be effectively analysed separately. The Navy was both socially unique and uniquely important to Britain during the crisis of the Wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.

This thesis revisits Joseph Addison's critically neglected periodical, The Free-Holder, which was originally published twice weekly between the 23rd December 1715 and the 29th June 1716. Prioritising The Free-Holder's status as a literary text this project reads the paper for the first time amidst early eighteenth-century theories of politeness and alongside contemporaneous partisan print. It argues that Addison pragmatically employs a polite approach which, by disguising acts of re-appropriation as reconciliation, enables him to commit extraordinary acts of partisan manipulation on behalf of the Whig ministry. A literary analysis of The Free-Holder reveals a series of striking and unacknowledged facets to Addison's approach. First, despite its partisan origins it makes very little reference to its own Whig identity and certainly never attacks Tory voters. Secondly, it employs rhetoric not only associated with the opposing Tory party but printed in their own press, poetry and propaganda. In examining these tendencies this thesis argues that Addison is not only addressing the Whig party faithful, as has previously been assumed, but also inquiring members of the opposition. This project concludes that The Free-Holder's ambition is to reclaim the act of changing sides from any dubious or amoral connotations and instead brand it as an act of politeness, enabling any Tory readers who have been swayed by his arguments to convert from Tory to Whig without any need for guilt, shame or embarrassment. The final pages of this thesis critique the keynote lecture delivered by Ed Miliband at the 2012 Labour party conference in Addisonian terms, revealing that almost three hundred years late The Free-Holder project is still very much alive.

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

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

This thesis is the first in depth study that has been undertaken concerning Edinburgh and Glasgow’s identities and rivalry. It is not an economic or a social study driven solely by theory. Essentially, this is a cultural and political examination of Edinburgh and Glasgow’s identities and rivalry based on empirical evidence. It engages with theory where appropriate. Although 1752 – 1842 is the main framework for the period there are other considerations included before this period and after this timeframe. This study provides the reader with a better understanding of the ideas highlighted in the introduction and it also indicates the degrees of changes as well as continuity within the two cities. Therefore, this thesis is not a strict comparison of the two cities and neither does it provide for a complete contextual breakdown of every historical event over the course of every year. The primary focus is kept on an array of primary written sources about the two cities over the course of the period, with only brief reflections about other places, where it is deemed appropriate. The thesis is driven by the evidence it has uncovered in relation to identity and rivalry, and the study uses particular events and their impact on the two cities within a particular historical narrative. As it is a preliminary report of its kind, there are, of course, many gaps which are opportunities for further research. This is something that the conclusion of this thesis returns to. Identity and rivalry are words not attached to any particular corpus of research material but rather are buried in an array of primary sources that are wide-ranging and all encompassing. Most have been uncovered in individual collections and in the literature of the time, including newspapers, guidebooks, travellers’ accounts, civic histories, speeches, letters, and in entries for the Encyclopaedia Britannica and also the Old and New Statistical Accounts. Although historians may have examined some of this material it has not necessarily been employed by them to investigate how the cities’ identities and rivalry evolved. The period was influenced by the ideas birthed from the Enlightenment and Romanticism, by the impact of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and by the intense processes harboured by urbanisation, industrialisation and by political and social change as the Georgian city became a Victorian one, so consideration of these important aspects must be afforded, as well as the particular historians’ ideas about them and how they affected cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow within a Scottish and a British context.

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

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

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