The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1715-1754

"I chose this book because, like Jonathan Clark’s work, it was an absolutely seminal book. It destroyed the idea—which was then the absolute orthodoxy and associated with the work of Sir Lewis Namier—that there were no real political parties in the 18th century, just groups of people jostling to maintain their self-interest. By looking very, very closely at the lives and actions of individual members of parliament, Eveline Cruickshanks demonstrates the existence of political parties. Of course, once your demonstrate the existence of political parties, you are demonstrating the existence of divergent political goals. “The Tories were excluded from power for 48 years in fact, from 1714 to 1762.” Her case has always been—in the work she’s done following that text—that those divergent political goals were Jacobite versus non-Jacobite. Most scholars don’t go all the way with her on that. But, crucially, she is defining the conflicts of the 18th century in terms of political parties rather than in terms of individuals. That’s never been seriously attacked since, far less overturned. Once again, as Jonathan Clark was to do later with a much more comprehensive study, she is the first to set the scene for the idea that Jacobitism is about contestation about who wins and who controls the political process, rather than a battle between that process and people whose values are completely anachronistic to it. There remains a big debate about just how many Tories supported the restoration of the Stuarts. Certainly some did. Eveline Cruickshanks, to this day, believes that most or nearly all of them did, but there is quite a debate about that. Some Tories definitely supported the restoration of the Stuarts, and the Whigs opposed it: very much so. The Whigs were also associated with being pro-war with France to a much greater extent than the Tories were. There were a lot of attacks on the Tories for making peace, the Peace of Utrecht, in 1713, from the Whigs. “Without London, you hadn’t got the central economic power, and if you didn’t have the central economic power, there’s only one long-term outcome for your campaign: you will lose.” But if you just step back you see that neither George I or George II were prepared to see the Tories in power. The Tories were excluded from power for 48 years in fact, from 1714 to 1762. George III, the first Hanoverian born in England—a new broom—was a young man of 22 when he came to the throne in 1760. He introduced a Tory prime minister for the first time: Bute, who was also the first Scottish prime minister. Throughout the 1760s there were popular attacks, particularly in London, on Scots as closet Jacobites. That was very powerful and showed the antipathy and characterisation of the Tories as Jacobite was still there. Bute lasted in power just over a year. Even in the 1760s it was very difficult to sustain a Tory administration. The exclusion of the Tories from government is a smoking gun that they weren’t trusted to support the Hanoverian dynasty. To be fair to Sir Lewis Namier, there’s a lot of overlap. There are a lot of people in these two parties that believe the same things. That’s hardly surprising because there are a lot of people in different political parties in the UK today who believe the same things in quite a number of areas. But apart from Jacobitism, the key dividing lines would be: the Tories would be strongly against dissent: that is non-conforming Protestant churches in England. The Tories would also be likely to support the country interest, the the rural squirearchy against the interests of the City of London in particular, and the financial markets."