Book of common prayer

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E.A. Smith

This book is the only up-to-date survey of the history of the House of Lords, and its impact on British politics and society, in the period from Waterloo to the First World War. It shows how the Lords adapted to, and survived, the 'age of reform'; and traces their changing relationship with the House of Commons and the British people at large. It fills an important gap, for the peerage were, and contrived to remain, major actors in the politics of the age. This survey thus illuminates not only the parliamentary and constitutional history of the time, but also, much more widely, the changing character of nineteenth-century Britain itself. E.A. Smith begins his account with the House of Lords before the 'Great Reform Act' of 1832. Tracing the changing fortunes of the Lords through and after the passage of the Act, he explains how an institution founded on aristocratic privilege and landed wealth, and seeming to embody all that was anachronistic and reactionary, managed to survive into the new era of mass Parliamentary democracy and retain for itself a very substantial influence on, and voice in, the nation's political and social life. How was it done? This remarkable record of adaptation and survival is shown to have its origins in the period immediately after 1832 when, largely through the influence of the Duke of Wellington, the Lords were induced to accept the new conditions. Radical agitation for the abolition of the House declined accordingly. Moreover, as Dr Smith makes clear, Victorian politics and society remained aristocratic in character despite the extension of the franchise, and even the Liberal and Labour governments of the twentieth century have been reluctant to undertake fundamental reform. Even the Parliament Act of 1911, with the passage and implications of which the main part of the book closes, did not undermine the political foundations of the Lords in the way that is usually assumed; and the House has continued to exercise important functions as a restraining influence on policy and legislation down to our own time. As the only comprehensive treatment of this important subject, Dr Smith's book will immediately become necessary reading for scholars and students; but its lively and engaging style will also appeal to anyone interested in the development of the British Parliamentary constitution, the survival and adaptation of the British aristocracy, and the changing character of British politics and society before the First World War.

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edited and translated by Cary J. Nederman

"This volume offers for the first time in English translation several important commentaries on the political scene in early fourteenth-century England. Walter de Milimete's On the Nobility, Wisdom, and Prudence of the King (1327), the two versions of William of Pagula's Mirror of King Edward III (1331 and 1332), and William of Ockham's Whether a Prince Can Receive the Goods of the Church for His Own Needs, namely, in Case of War, Even Against the Wishes of the Pope (1338). All of these treatises offer important insight into such matters as the extent of the king's power in the fourteenth century and earlier, the relationship between church and state, and the particular duties of the ruler toward various of his subjects."--BOOK JACKET.

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Robert Blake and Wm. Roger Louis

Essays examine Churchill's family life, foreign policy, social reforms, economic ideas, views on Zionism, and relationship with the monarchy and fellow statesmen.

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James Chandler

1819 was the annus mirabilis for many British Romantic writers, and the annus terribilis for demonstrators protesting the state of parliamentary representation. In 1819 Keats wrote what many consider his greatest poetry. This was the year of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, The Cenci, and Ode to the West Wind. Wordsworth published his most widely reviewed work, Peter Bell, and the craze for Walter Scott's historical novels reached its zenith. Many of these writings explicitly engaged with the politics of representation in 1819, especially the great movement for reform that was fueled by threats of mass emigration to America and came to a head that August with an unprovoked attack on unarmed men, women, and children in St. Peter's Field, Manchester, a massacre that journalists dubbed "Peterloo.". But the year of Peterloo in British history is notable for more than just the volume, value, and topicality of its literature. Much of the writing from 1819, argues James Chandler, was acutely aware not only of its place in history, but also of its place as history - a realization of a literary "spirit of the age" that resonates strongly with the current "return to history" in literary studies. Chandler explores the ties between Romantic and contemporary historicism, such as the shared tendency to seize a single dated event as both important on its own and as a "case" testing general principles. To animate these issues, Chandler offers a series of cases of his own built around key texts from 1819.