English Society 1688 1832 Ideology Social Structure And Political Practice During The Ancien Regime

An extensively revised edition of a classic of modern historiography.

This is a revised and rewritten edition of a work first published in 1985 as English Society 1688-1832. That book arrived at the opening of a new phase in English historiography, which questioned much of the received picture of English society as secular, modernising, contractarian, and middle class; it began the recovery of the 'long eighteenth century', the period which saw a form of state defined by the close relationship of monarchy, aristocracy and church. In particular, it placed religion at the center of social and intellectual life, and used ecclesiastical history to illuminate many historical themes more commonly examined in a secular framework. In its updated form, this book reinforces these theses with new evidence, which extends its arguments into fresh areas of inquiry.

This book explores the relationship between religion and politics in England from the accession of George III to the First Reform Bill, considering the political and social ideas of Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, Dissenters, deists and atheists. It examines the effect of the French Revolution on Christian political and social theory as well as reactions to the American Revolution, riots and disorder, economic and social education, secularisation, 'Blasphemy and Sedition', the growth of atheism, and the Reform of the Constitution in 1826-32. Major figures such as Burke, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Coleridge, Bentham and Wesley are considered, but popular, everyday arguments are also analysed. The book examines Christian views on political obligation and the right of rebellion, and suggests that religion was used as a means of social control to maintain public order and stability in a rapidly changing society.

Through a series of studies focusing on individuals, this volume highlights the continued importance of religion and religious identity on British life throughout the long eighteenth century. From the Puritan divine and scholar Roger Morrice, active at the beginning of the period, to Dean Shipley who died in the reign of George IV, the individuals chosen chart a shifting world of enlightenment and revolution whilst simultaneously reaffirming the tremendous influence that religion continued to bring to bear. For, whilst religion has long enjoyed a central role in the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British history, scholars of religion in the eighteenth century have often felt compelled to prove their subject's worth. Sitting uneasily at the juncture between the early modern and modern worlds, the eighteenth century has perhaps provided historians with an all-too-convenient peg on which to hang the origins of a secular society, in which religion takes a back-seat to politics, science and economics. Yet, as this study makes clear, in spite of the undoubted innovations and developments of this period, religion continued to be a prime factor in shaping society and culture. By exploring important connections between religion, politics and identity, and asking broad questions about the character of religion in Britain, the contributions put into context many of the big issues of the day. From the beliefs of the Jacobite rebels, to the notions of liberty and toleration, to the attitudes to the French Wars, the book makes an unambiguous and forceful statement about the centrality of religion to any proper understanding of British public life between the Restoration and the Reform Bill.

Most eighteenth-century literary scholarship implicitly or explicitly associates the major developments in English literature and culture during the rise of modernity with a triumphant and increasingly tolerant Protestantism while assuming that the English Catholic community was culturally moribund and disengaged from Protestant society and culture. However, recent work by historians has shown that the English Catholic community was a dynamic and adaptive religious minority, its leaders among the aristocracy cosmopolitan, its intellectuals increasingly attracted to Enlightenment ideals of liberty and skepticism, and its membership growing among the middle and working classes. This community had an impact on the history of the English nation out of all proportion with its size—and yet its own history is glimpsed only dimly, if at all, in most modern accounts of the period. The Papist Represented reincorporates the history of the English Catholic community into the field of eighteenth-century literary studies. It examines the intersections of literary, religious, and cultural history as they pertain to the slow acceptance by both Protestants and Catholics of the latter group’s permanent minority status. By focusing on the Catholic community’s perspectives and activities, it deepens and complicates our understanding of the cultural processes that contributed to the significant progress of the Catholic emancipation movement over the course of the century. At the same time, it reveals that this community’s anxieties and desires (and the anxieties and desires it provoked in Protestants) fuel some of the most popular and experimental literary works of the century, in forms and modes including closet drama, elegy, the novel, and the Gothic. By returning the Catholic community to eighteenth-century literary history, The Papist Represented challenges the assumption that eighteenth-century literature was a fundamentally Protestant enterprise. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.