English Society, 1688-1832 : Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice During the Ancien Regime

This book is the first survey of the period between the Glorious Revolution and the Reform Bill to attempt to outline some general explanations of England as an ancien-regime state, dominated politically, culturally and ideologically by the three pillars of an early-modern social order: monarchy, aristocracy, church. In this schematic study, which stems from his earlier work on party-politics in these years, Dr Jonathan Clark combines techniques of analysis, historiographical review and narrative to produce a new and challenging synthesis of political ideology, religion, psephology, social structure and cultural hegemony. In its major reinterpretations of such diverse subjects as the wider impact of economic growth, the nature of the social hierarchy, Jacobitism, the Church of England, radicalism, Edmund Burke and the Reform Bill, this study has much to offer to students and senior historians alike.