J.P.Sommerville

 

XX: THE AGE OF WALPOLE

Q: Was England under Walpole an aristocratic one-party state in which ideals, religion, and principles were subordinated to self-interest (or abandoned altogether), and bribery and corruption ruled?

 

General

  1. P Langford, A polite and commercial people: England 1727-1783
  2.  JB Owen, The eighteenth century, 1714-1815

 

Walpole

  1. JH Plumb, Walpole: the king's minister, 2 vols
  2. HT Dickinson, Walpole and the Whig supremacy
  3. P Langford, The Excise Crisis: society and politics in the age of Walpole
  4. J Black ed., Britain in the age of Walpole
  5. BW Hill, Walpole

 

Ideas

  1. HT Dickinson, Liberty and property
  2.  JAW Gunn, Beyond liberty and property
  3. C Robbins, The eighteenth-century commonwealthmen
  4. R Browning, Political and constitutional ideas of the court Whigs
  5. I Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his circle: the politics of nostalgia in the age of Walpole
  6. B Goldgar, Walpole and the wits: the relation of politics and literature 1722-42

 

Religion and the church

  1. N Sykes, Church and state in England in the eighteenth century
  2. N Sykes, From Sheldon to Secker
  3. N Sykes, Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London
  4. J Redwood, Reason, ridicule and religion: the age of Enlightenment in England 1660-1750
  5. MR Watts, The dissenters, vol. 1: from the Reformation to the French Revolution

 

Parliament, politics and the constitution

  1. EN Williams ed., The eighteenth century constitution [documents with commentary]
  2. L Colley, In defiance of oligarchy: the Tory party 1714-60
  3. AS Foord, His Majesty's opposition 1714-1832
  4. R Sedgwick, The history of parliament: the House of Commons 1715-54, 2 vols [very detailed]
  5. C Jones, ed., Britain in the first age of party 1680-1750 [collection of essays]
  6. JA Phillips, Electoral behaviour in unreformed England [on elections and corruption]
  7. C Jones and L Jones, eds, Peers, politics, and power: the House of Lords 1603-1911

 

Finance

  1. PGM Dickson, The financial revolution in England: a study in the development of public credit, 1688-1756

 

A different and fashionable theme

  1. L Colley, Britons: forging the nation 1707-1837
    [has much on Walpole's period and the rest of the century; about development of a British - as opposed to English, Scottish, Welsh - national identity)]

 

and for background to this:

  1. B Bradshaw and J Morrill, eds, The British problem c1534-1707: state formation in the Atlantic archipelago