by John Pearson
Michael Brock, The Great Reform Act (London: Hutchinson, 1973).
Thomas Creevey, The Creevey Papers, ed. John Gore (London: John Murray, 1948); Captain Gronow’s Reminiscences, ed. C. Hibbert (London: Kyle Cathie, 1991). Both describe Althorp in Parliament.
Abraham B. Kriegel, ed., The Holland House Diaries (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
Sir Denis Le Marchant, A Memoir of John Charles, Viscount Althorp, Third Earl Spencer (London: Bentley, 1876). The nineteenth-century official life.
Guy Paget, The History of Althorp and the Pytchley Hunt (London: Collins, 1977).
Ellis Archer Wasson, Lord Althorp and the Whig Renaissance (New York: Garland, 1987). A primary source on Althorp and the Reform Act.
Chapter 10: The Holy Tramp
Father Pius (Devine), The Life of Father Ignatius of St Paul (Dublin: Duffy, 1866). Although something of a work of hagiography, written by a fellow Passionist monk, this remains the standard work on the subject. It includes much of Ignatius’s own journals, from which the account of his visit to Lord John Russell is taken.
Josef Vanden Bussche, Ignatius (George) Spencer, Passionist (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1991). Provides a more measured view of Ignatius’s life and takes account of modern reseach.
Father Ignatius. His diaries are in the possession of the Order of Passionists. The letters to and from his mother, Lavinia, Countess Spencer, are in the Northamptonshire Record Office.
Jerome Vereb, Ignatius Spencer, Apostle of Christian Unity (CTS Publications, 1992). Particular notice is made of his role as an apostle of ecumenicalism.
Chapter 11: The Red Earl
David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the English Aristocracy (CT: Yale University Press, 1991). Fascinating on the overall aristocratic decline of the period.
Virginia Cowles, Edward VII and his Circle (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1956).
Joseph Friedman, Spencer House: Chronicle of a Great London Mansion (London: Zwemmer, 1993). Account of renovations to the house by the fifth Earl.
Peter Gordon, ed., The Papers of the Fifth Earl Spencer (Northampton: Northamptonshire Record Society, 1981). In the absence of a full-scale biography of the Red Earl, Peter Gordon’s introductions to the two volumes are businesslike and illuminating on the details of his life.
Joan Hassell, The Lonely Empress. Elizabeth of Austria (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963). Details of the Empress hunting and at Althorp.
Sir Sydney Lee, King Edward VII (London: Macmillan, 1925).
Christopher Sykes, Four Studies on Loyalty (London: Collins, 1948) for an account of Sir Tatton Sykes’s ordeal.
Chapter 12: ‘Dearest Boy’
King George V. The letters from Spencer to King Edward VII and George V and the description of Althorp from the diary are at Windsor Castle and are quoted by gracious permission of H.M. the Queen.
Christopher Hassall, Edward Marsh (London: Longmans, 1959). Gives an account of the sixth Earl at Althorp.
John Johnson, The Lord Chamberlain’s Blue Pencil (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990).
Michaela Reid, Ask Sir James (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1987). Describes the death of Margaret Spencer.
Charles Robert, sixth Earl Spencer. Correspondence to and from his mother is in the Northamptonshire Record Office.
Anne Thwaites, Edmund Gosse (London: Secker and Warburg, 1984). Tells of Lord Spencer’s friendship with the author of Father and Son; Spencer’s letters to Gosse are in the Library of the University of Leeds.
Chapter 13: Jolly Jack’
Sir Alan Lascelles, End of an Era (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1986). Gives details of Jack Spencer at Cambridge.
Christopher Hassall, Edward Marsh (London: Longmans, 1959).
S.N. Behrman, Duveen (London: Random House, 1957).
Chapter 14: The Fermoys
New York Times, 30 September 1900.
Chapter 15: Raine’s War
Angela Levin, Raine and Johnnie (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993).
Notes
The enclosure movement
The enclosure movement is the name given to the conversion by landlords of open fields into those surrounded by hedges and fences in an attempt to maximise farming yields. The process, which began in the late Middle Ages with sheep farming, reached its peak in the mid-eighteenth century in response to new methods of arable farming. Enclosure often led to the loss of rights over common land and accordingly provoked social discontent.
The woollen industry in the sixteenth century
Wool was one of the most important industries in medieval and Tudor England. It was produced both for export in its natural state to the Continent and as the raw material for the manufacture of cloth in cities such as Norwich. The export trade was monopolised by the Merchant Adventurers Company, who had headquarters or Staples in Antwerp and later Hamburg. The slow decline of the broadcloth industry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries created severe economic problems.
James I and the inflation of honours
The accession of James I in 1603 brought a marked liberality to the distribution of favours and aristocratic titles, which his predecessor Elizabeth had granted only sparingly. James’s natural extravagance, together with his consequent need for money, led to a corrupt market in honours. The peerage almost doubled in number during his reign, an absurd inflation that reduced both its own standing and that of the monarchy.
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86)
Soldier, statesman and poet whose early death in battle at Zutphen led to his being admired as the epitome of Elizabethan chivalry. His literary circle, who were influenced by the new Protestant and humanist ideas, included Edmund Spenser. None of his writing, including the prose romance Arcadia (1590) was published until after his death.
Charles I and the Civil War (1642-49)
The Civil War was very broadly a conflict between those who sought to limit the scope of the King’s powers and those who supported him. The latter, known as the Royalists, were based at Oxford, while the former, known as the Parliamentary party, were based at Westminster. The forces of Parliament, commanded by Oliver Cromwell, eventually prevailed and captured Charles, who was executed in 1649 after refusing all attempts at reform. The country was then ruled by Cromwell until his death in 1658. The monarchy was restored in 1660.
Protestants and Catholics
Anti-Catholicism was one of the dominant characteristics of life in England in the two centuries that followed the death of Queen Mary in 1558. Roman Catholicism was associated by the State with such threats to the nation as the Armada, the Gunpowder Plot and rebellion in Ireland, and Catholics became a discreet, gentry-led minority of the population, their religion often a bar to social advancement. Under the Stuart kings, Catholicism was more openly tolerated, especially at court itself.
Early Whigs and Tories
Whigs and Tories were the pejorative names given to each other by the two political parties that emerged in the late seventeenth century. The Whigs were often merchants favouring liberal ideas, while many of the Tories were more conservative country landowners. The Tories were favoured by Charles II and, after his death in 1685, some Whigs placed their faith in his illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, who began a rebellion in the West Country in the hope of deposing his uncle, James II. Monmouth was speedily defeated at Sedgemoor and executed.
The Tories retained the upper hand in Government until the succession of George I in 1714, when they became tainted by the support of some of their number for the Stuart line. For the next fifty years, public life was dominated by the Whigs, who became the party trusted by the monarchy. They purged the Army, Church, Law and local government of Tories, who did not emerge from the wilderness until the advent of Pitt the Younger in the 1780s.
The Glorious Revolution
James II, who had been a Roman Catholic since 1660, devoted much of his short reign to advancing Catholicism’s fortunes in Britain. He promoted Catholics to key posts in the Army and
Government, reviving Protestant fears of persecution. The birth of his heir in 1688 prompted several politicians to invite the staunchly Protestant William of Orange (who was married to James’s daughter Mary) to invade England. James II fled and was succeeded by William and Mary, who ruled jointly until her death in 1694. William was succeeded in 1702 by Mary’s sister, Anne.
Jacobites
There were a number of attempts to restore to the throne the exiled Stuarts, whose supporters were known as Jacobites, from the Latin for James (Jacobus). The two most substantial risings took place in 1715 and 1745; on the latter occasion the troops of James II’s grandson (’Bonnie Prince Charlie’) reached Derby. Both revolts attracted support from Scots (as an expression of nationalism) and, more discreetly, from Tories.
Marlborough and the War of Spanish Succession
The death of the childless Charles II of Spain provoked a contest for the throne between Louis XIV’s grandson Philip and Charles, son of the Austrian Emperor. A grand alliance was formed by Britain, the Dutch Republic and several other European states against France, and between 1704 and 1709 the Allied forces under the Duke of Marlborough won a stunning series of victories at Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet. But Marlborough was replaced in 1711 after the Tories, who were opposed to the war, came to power, and peace was made at Utrecht in 1713.
Prime Ministers before Walpole
Robert Walpole (1676-1745) is regarded as Britain’s first true Prime Minster (originally a term of abuse), partly because of the length of his ascendancy (from 1722 to 1742) and partly because he drew his power from the Commons, refusing (unlike his predecessors) to move up to the Lords. But there had been obvious chief ministers before him, among them the second Earl of Sunderland (who held power under James II) and Anne’s principal advisers, Sidney Godolphin and Robert Harley. Walpole’s precedessors, however, had to rely far more than he on fickle royal favour.
The New Whigs
The accession of George III in 1760 brought an end to the exclusion of Tories from Government. The cohesion of the Whig party was then shattered when one of their number, Lord North, agreed to serve the King on his own terms. Britain’s defeat by the American revolutionaries brought to power the so-called New Whigs, who proclaimed themselves the true heirs of the party’s traditions of liberty and reform. They were supported by many of the great noble families, but despite the talents of their leader, Charles James Fox, George blamed them for the fall of North, and they were eventually dismissed in favour of Pitt the Younger.
The French Revolution and the Whigs
The central event of the eighteenth century, the overthrow of the French monarchy in 1789, caused deep divisions within the Whig party. Fear of the consequences of radicalism led to a schism in 1794, with many of the most aristocratic Whigs throwing in their lot with Pitt’s ministry. Another group remained in opposition under Fox, whose stance against the harsh measures brought in by Pitt to curb the threat of revolution in Britain helped to ensure that the Whigs continued to be identified with personal liberty.
The Ministry of All the Talents (1806-7)
The death of Pitt in 1806, while the country was at war with Napoleon, left no obvious figure in the ascendant. Lord Grenville became Prime Minister and forced George to accept his ally Fox as Foreign Secretary, while the former Prime Minister Henry Addington was also brought in to broaden the coalition. The ministry’s great success was the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, but otherwise its individual members had differing views on every important issue. Fox’s death in September 1806 further weakened it, and it was dismissed after falling out with George over its desire to extend Catholic emancipation.
Charles, second Earl Grey (1764-1845)
Prime Minister from 1830 until 1834. He first came to notice as a founder of the Society of the Friends of the People, whose radical ideas on parliamentary reform helped cause the schism among the Whigs in 1794. He succeeded Fox as Foreign Secretary in the Ministry of All the Talents, and then from 1807-30 was in opposition. As Prime Minister, he eventually secured the passage of the first Reform Act in 1832, which began to extend voting rights to the population at large. The tea is named after his son.
Later Dukes of Marlborough
The Marlboroughs are one of the great noble families in England, but have rarely played the national role they might have expected, devoting most of their energies instead to the upkeep of Blenheim. It was the fourth Duke who had Capability Brown landscape the palace’s grounds, but he ended his life as a recluse. The fifth Duke changed the family name to Spencer-Churchill, but otherwise did little beyond running up debts. The seventh Duke was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the 1870s; his younger son, Lord Randolph Churchill, became Chancellor of the Exchequer before rashly resigning, ending his political career at thirty-seven. His son was Winston Churchill.
Navarino (20 October 1827)
Naval engagement during the Greek War of Independence. A combined fleet of British, French and Russian ships, commanded by Vice Admiral Codrington, sought out and destroyed the Turkish-Egyptian fleet, which was anchored off the Greek coast. The victory made Greek independence certain, although Codrington was subsequently censured for having acted on his own initiative. The battle, in which Frederick Spencer captained Talbot, was the last action fought entirely under sail.
For Jane and Charles Cullum
and my wife Lynette
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © John Pearson 1999
First published by HarperCollins Publishers
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