Studies in Modern History
2 total works
Robert Walpole foiled the Atterbury Plot by preventive arrests and holding those he suspected illegally without bail or trial. When Parliament met and the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, he used show trials, decided by votes along party lines and depending on forged evidence, to curb the Tory party, to reuinted the Whig party and to consolidate his hold on power. Rich in new material, this book unravels for the first time the scale and international dimension of a plot which posed the most serious challenge to the Hanoverian regime before the '45 rebellion.
In one of the more sudden shifts of perspective, and hotly contested controversies of recent historical and literary scholarship, our view of Johnson has been fundamentally changed. This volume offers the best up-to-the-moment account of what has been achieved, and points to the new directions in which scholarship is developing. It will be essential reading for all concerned with eighteenth-century studies.