Aristocratic Century: The Peerage of Eighteenth-Century EnglandCambridge University Press, 1984 - 193 Since the work of Butterfield and Namier in the 1930s, it has commonly been said that eighteenth-century England appears atomised, left with no overall interpretation. Subsequent work on religious differences and on party strife served to reinforce the image of a divided society, and in the last ten years historians of the poor and unprivileged have suggested that beneath the surface lurked substantial popular discontent. Professor Cannon uses his 1982 Wiles Lecture to offer a different interpretation - that the widespread acceptance of aristocratic values and aristocratic leadership gave a remarkable intellectual, political and social coherence to the century. He traces the recovery made by the aristocracy from its decade in 1649 when the House of Lords was abolished as useless and dangerous. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the peerage re-established its hold on government and society. Professor Cannon is forced to challenge some of the most cherished beliefs of English historiography - that Hanoverian society, at its top level, was an open elite, continually replenished by vigorous recruits from other groups and classes. He suggests that, on the contrary, in some respects the English peerage was more exclusive than many of its continental counterparts and that the openness was a myth which itself served a potent political purpose. Of the prospering burgeoisie, he argues that the remarkable thing was not their assertiveness but their long acquiescence in patrician rule, and he poses the paradox of a country increasingly dominated by a landed aristocracy giving birth to the first industrial revolution. His final chapter discusses the ideological under-pinning which made aristocratic supremacy acceptable for so long, and the emergence of those forces and ideals which were ultimately to replace it. |
Spis treści
Recruitment | 1 |
Education and religion | 34 |
Marriage | 71 |
The sinews of power political | 93 |
The sinews of power economic | 126 |
The sinews of power ideological | 148 |
Conclusion | 175 |
181 | |
Kluczowe wyrazy i wyrażenia
advowsons analysis Anne's reign aristocratic attendance Baron baronet Bedford bill bishops boroughs British peerage Cambridge Charles classes cohort College constitution created creations crown daughter decades diocese Earl eighteenth century election electoral elite endogamous English peerage estates Eton evidence Exeter father favour France French French nobility gentry Geoffrey Holmes George Glorious Revolution grandson Habakkuk Hanoverian Hanoverian England heirs held Henry historians Holmes House of Commons House of Lords important income increase influence interest Irish peers James John King knights Lady later Lord Lieutenant marriages married McCahill ministers monarchy Namier Newcastle nobility noble noblemen Norfolk Oxford Parliament Parliamentary patronage peerage connections period political position proportion rank reform regime revolution rise Rockingham Scottish peers Scottish representative peers seats seems seventeenth social society Somerset sons of peers suggested Table taxation Thomas University Viscount Walpole Westminster Whig William wrote