The Victorians: A Very Short

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The Victorians: A Very Short Introduction
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ABOLITIONISM Richard S. Newman AMERICAN IMMIGRATION

THE ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS
Charles L. Cohen
ACCOUNTING Christopher Nobes
ADDICTION Keith Humphreys
ADOLESCENCE Peter K. Smith
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Andrew Bowie
ADVERTISING Winston Fletcher
AERIAL WARFARE Frank Ledwidge
AESTHETICS Bence Nanay
AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY
Jonathan Scott Holloway
AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGION
Eddie S. Glaude Jr
AFRICAN HISTORY John Parker and
Richard Rathbone
AFRICAN POLITICS Ian Taylor
AFRICAN RELIGIONS
Jacob K. Olupona
AGEING Nancy A. Pachana
AGNOSTICISM Robin Le Poidevin
AGRICULTURE Paul Brassley and
Richard Soffe
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
Hugh Bowden
ALGEBRA Peter M. Higgins
AMERICAN BUSINESS HISTORY
Walter A. Friedman
AMERICAN CULTURAL HISTORY
Eric Avila
AMERICAN FOREIGN RELATIONS
Andrew Preston
AMERICAN HISTORY Paul S. Boyer
David A. Gerber
AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL
HISTORY
Jennifer Ratner-­Rosenhagen
THE AMERICAN JUDICIAL SYSTEM
Charles L. Zelden
AMERICAN LEGAL HISTORY
G. Edward White
AMERICAN MILITARY HISTORY
Joseph T. Glatthaar
AMERICAN NAVAL HISTORY
Craig L. Symonds
AMERICAN POETRY David Caplan
AMERICAN POLITICAL HISTORY
Donald Critchlow
AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES
AND ELECTIONS L. Sandy Maisel
AMERICAN POLITICS
Richard M. Valelly
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY
Charles O. Jones
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Robert J. Allison
AMERICAN SLAVERY
Heather Andrea Williams
THE AMERICAN SOUTH
Charles Reagan Wilson
THE AMERICAN WEST
Stephen Aron
AMERICAN WOMEN’S HISTORY
Susan Ware
AMPHIBIANS T. S. Kemp
ANAESTHESIA Aidan O’Donnell
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
Michael Beaney
ANARCHISM Alex Prichard
ANCIENT ASSYRIA Karen Radner
ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART AND
ARCHITECTURE Christina Riggs
ANCIENT GREECE Paul Cartledge
ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN
SCIENCE Liba Taub
THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
Amanda H. Podany
ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Julia Annas
ANCIENT WARFARE
Harry Sidebottom
ANGELS David Albert Jones
ANGLICANISM Mark Chapman
THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE John Blair
ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR
Tristram D. Wyatt
THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
Peter Holland
ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia
ANSELM Thomas Williams
THE ANTARCTIC Klaus Dodds
ANTHROPOCENE Erle C. Ellis
ANTISEMITISM Steven Beller
ANXIETY Daniel Freeman
and Jason Freeman
THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS
Paul Foster
APPLIED MATHEMATICS
Alain Goriely
THOMAS AQUINAS Fergus Kerr
ARBITRATION Thomas Schultz and
Thomas Grant
ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn
ARCHITECTURE Andrew Ballantyne
THE ARCTIC Klaus Dodds and
Jamie Woodward
HANNAH ARENDT Dana Villa
ARISTOCRACY William Doyle
ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes
ART HISTORY Dana Arnold
ART THEORY Cynthia Freeland
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Margaret A. Boden
ASIAN AMERICAN HISTORY
Madeline Y. Hsu
ASTROBIOLOGY David C. Catling
ASTROPHYSICS James Binney
ATHEISM Julian Baggini
THE ATMOSPHERE Paul I. Palmer
AUGUSTINE Henry Chadwick
JANE AUSTEN Tom Keymer
AUSTRALIA Kenneth Morgan
AUTISM Uta Frith
AUTOBIOGRAPHY Laura Marcus
THE AVANT GARDE David Cottington
THE AZTECS Davíd Carrasco
BABYLONIA Trevor Bryce
BACTERIA Sebastian G. B. Amyes
BANKING John Goddard and
John O. S. Wilson
BARTHES Jonathan Culler
THE BEATS David Sterritt
BEAUTY Roger Scruton
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Mark Evan Bonds
BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS
Michelle Baddeley
BESTSELLERS John Sutherland
THE BIBLE John Riches
BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Eric H. Cline
BIG DATA Dawn E. Holmes
BIOCHEMISTRY Mark Lorch
BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION
David Macdonald
BIOGEOGRAPHY Mark V. Lomolino
BIOGRAPHY Hermione Lee
BIOMETRICS Michael Fairhurst
ELIZABETH BISHOP
Jonathan F. S. Post
BLACK HOLES Katherine Blundell
BLASPHEMY Yvonne Sherwood
BLOOD Chris Cooper
THE BLUES Elijah Wald
THE BODY Chris Shilling
THE BOHEMIANS David Weir
NIELS BOHR J. L. Heilbron
THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
Brian Cummings
THE BOOK OF MORMON
Terryl Givens
BORDERS Alexander C. Diener and
Joshua Hagen
THE BRAIN Michael O’Shea
BRANDING Robert Jones
THE BRICS Andrew F. Cooper
BRITISH CINEMA Charles Barr
THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION
Martin Loughlin
THE BRITISH EMPIRE Ashley Jackson
BRITISH POLITICS Tony Wright
BUDDHA Michael Carrithers
BUDDHISM Damien Keown
BUDDHIST ETHICS Damien Keown
BYZANTIUM Peter Sarris
CALVINISM Jon Balserak
ALBERT CAMUS Oliver Gloag
CANADA Donald Wright
CANCER Nicholas James
CAPITALISM James Fulcher
CATHOLICISM Gerald O’Collins
CAUSATION Stephen Mumford and
Rani Lill Anjum
THE CELL Terence Allen and
Graham Cowling
THE CELTS Barry Cunliffe
CHAOS Leonard Smith
GEOFFREY CHAUCER David Wallace
CHEMISTRY Peter Atkins
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY Usha Goswami
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Kimberley Reynolds
CHINESE LITERATURE Sabina Knight
CHOICE THEORY Michael Allingham
CHRISTIAN ART Beth Williamson
CHRISTIAN ETHICS D. Stephen Long
CHRISTIANITY Linda Woodhead
CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS
Russell Foster and Leon Kreitzman
CITIZENSHIP Richard Bellamy
CITY PLANNING Carl Abbott
CIVIL ENGINEERING
David Muir Wood
THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Thomas C. Holt
CLASSICAL LITERATURE William Allan
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY
Helen Morales
CLASSICS Mary Beard and
John Henderson
CLAUSEWITZ Michael Howard
CLIMATE Mark Maslin
CLIMATE CHANGE Mark Maslin
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
Susan Llewelyn and
Katie Aafjes-van Doorn
COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL
THERAPY Freda McManus
COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
Richard Passingham
THE COLD WAR Robert J. McMahon
COLONIAL AMERICA Alan Taylor
COLONIAL LATIN AMERICAN
LITERATURE Rolena Adorno
COMBINATORICS Robin Wilson
COMEDY Matthew Bevis
COMMUNISM Leslie Holmes
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Ben Hutchinson
COMPETITION AND ANTITRUST
LAW Ariel Ezrachi
COMPLEXITY John H. Holland
THE COMPUTER Darrel Ince
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Subrata Dasgupta
CONCENTRATION CAMPS
Dan Stone
CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
Ross H. McKenzie
CONFUCIANISM Daniel K. Gardner
THE CONQUISTADORS
Matthew Restall and
Felipe Fernández-Armesto
CONSCIENCE Paul Strohm
CONSCIOUSNESS Susan Blackmore
CONTEMPORARY ART Julian
Stallabrass
CONTEMPORARY FICTION
Robert Eaglestone
CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY
Simon Critchley
COPERNICUS Owen Gingerich
CORAL REEFS Charles Sheppard
CORPORATE SOCIAL
RESPONSIBILITY Jeremy Moon
CORRUPTION Leslie Holmes
COSMOLOGY Peter Coles
COUNTRY MUSIC Richard Carlin
CREATIVITY Vlad Glăveanu
CRIME FICTION Richard Bradford
CRIMINAL JUSTICE Julian V. Roberts
CRIMINOLOGY Tim Newburn
CRITICAL THEORY
Stephen Eric Bronner
THE CRUSADES
Christopher Tyerman
CRYPTOGRAPHY Fred Piper and
Sean Murphy
CRYSTALLOGRAPHY A. M. Glazer
THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION
Richard Curt Kraus
DADA AND SURREALISM
David Hopkins
DANTE Peter Hainsworth and
David Robey
DARWIN Jonathan Howard
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
Timothy H. Lim
DECADENCE David Weir
DECOLONIZATION Dane Kennedy
DEMENTIA Kathleen Taylor
DEMOCRACY Naomi Zack
DEMOGRAPHY Sarah Harper
DEPRESSION Jan Scott and
Mary Jane Tacchi
DERRIDA Simon Glendinning
DESCARTES Tom Sorell
DESERTS Nick Middleton
DESIGN John Heskett
DEVELOPMENT Ian Goldin
DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY
Lewis Wolpert
THE DEVIL Darren Oldridge
DIASPORA Kevin Kenny
CHARLES DICKENS Jenny Hartley
DICTIONARIES Lynda Mugglestone
DINOSAURS David Norman
DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
Joseph M. Siracusa
DOCUMENTARY FILM
Patricia Aufderheide
DREAMING J. Allan Hobson
DRUGS Les Iversen
DRUIDS Barry Cunliffe
DYNASTY Jeroen Duindam
DYSLEXIA Margaret J. Snowling
EARLY MUSIC Thomas Forrest Kelly
THE EARTH Martin Redfern
EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE Tim Lenton
ECOLOGY Jaboury Ghazoul
ECONOMICS Partha Dasgupta
EDUCATION Gary Thomas
EGYPTIAN MYTH Geraldine Pinch
EIGHTEENTH‑CENTURY BRITAIN
Paul Langford
THE ELEMENTS Philip Ball
EMOTION Dylan Evans
EMPIRE Stephen Howe
EMPLOYMENT LAW David Cabrelli
ENERGY SYSTEMS Nick Jenkins
ENGELS Terrell Carver
ENGINEERING David Blockley
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Simon Horobin
ENGLISH LITERATURE Jonathan Bate
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
John Robertson
ENTREPRENEURSHIP Paul Westhead
and Mike Wright
ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS
Stephen Smith
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
Robin Attfield
ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
Elizabeth Fisher
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS
Andrew Dobson
ENZYMES Paul Engel
EPICUREANISM Catherine Wilson
EPIDEMIOLOGY Rodolfo Saracci
ETHICS Simon Blackburn
ETHNOMUSICOLOGY Timothy Rice
THE ETRUSCANS Christopher Smith
EUGENICS Philippa Levine
THE EUROPEAN UNION
Simon Usherwood and John Pinder
EUROPEAN UNION LAW
Anthony Arnull
EVANGELICALISM
John G. Stackhouse Jr.
EVIL Luke Russell
EVOLUTION Brian and
Deborah Charlesworth
EXISTENTIALISM Thomas Flynn
EXPLORATION Stewart A. Weaver
EXTINCTION Paul B. Wignall
THE EYE Michael Land
FAIRY TALE Marina Warner
FAMILY LAW Jonathan Herring
MICHAEL FARADAY
Frank A. J. L. James
FASCISM Kevin Passmore
FASHION Rebecca Arnold
FEDERALISM Mark J. Rozell and
Clyde Wilcox
FEMINISM Margaret Walters
FILM Michael Wood
FILM MUSIC Kathryn Kalinak
FILM NOIR James Naremore
FIRE Andrew C. Scott
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Michael Howard
FLUID MECHANICS Eric Lauga
FOLK MUSIC Mark Slobin
FOOD John Krebs
FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY
David Canter
FORENSIC SCIENCE Jim Fraser
FORESTS Jaboury Ghazoul
FOSSILS Keith Thomson
FOUCAULT Gary Gutting
THE FOUNDING FATHERS
R. B. Bernstein
FRACTALS Kenneth Falconer
FREE SPEECH Nigel Warburton
FREE WILL Thomas Pink
FREEMASONRY Andreas Önnerfors
FRENCH LITERATURE John D. Lyons
FRENCH PHILOSOPHY
Stephen Gaukroger and Knox Peden
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
William Doyle
FREUD Anthony Storr
FUNDAMENTALISM Malise Ruthven
FUNGI Nicholas P. Money
THE FUTURE Jennifer M. Gidley
GALAXIES John Gribbin
GALILEO Stillman Drake
GAME THEORY Ken Binmore
GANDHI Bhikhu Parekh
GARDEN HISTORY Gordon Campbell
GENES Jonathan Slack
GENIUS Andrew Robinson
GENOMICS John Archibald
GEOGRAPHY John Matthews and
David Herbert
GEOLOGY Jan Zalasiewicz
GEOMETRY Maciej Dunajski
GEOPHYSICS William Lowrie
GEOPOLITICS Klaus Dodds
GERMAN LITERATURE Nicholas Boyle
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY
Andrew Bowie
THE GHETTO Bryan Cheyette
GLACIATION David J. A. Evans
GLOBAL CATASTROPHES Bill McGuire
GLOBAL ECONOMIC HISTORY
Robert C. Allen
GLOBAL ISLAM Nile Green
GLOBALIZATION Manfred B. Steger
GOD John Bowker
GÖDEL’S THEOREM A. W. Moore
GOETHE Ritchie Robertson
THE GOTHIC Nick Groom
GOVERNANCE Mark Bevir
GRAVITY Timothy Clifton
THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND
THE NEW DEAL Eric Rauchway
HABEAS CORPUS Amanda L. Tyler
HABERMAS James Gordon Finlayson
THE HABSBURG EMPIRE
Martyn Rady
HAPPINESS Daniel M. Haybron
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
Cheryl A. Wall
THE HEBREW BIBLE AS LITERATURE
Tod Linafelt
HEGEL Peter Singer
HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood
THE HELLENISTIC AGE
Peter Thonemann
HEREDITY John Waller
HERMENEUTICS Jens Zimmermann
HERODOTUS Jennifer T. Roberts
HIEROGLYPHS Penelope Wilson
HINDUISM Kim Knott
HISTORY John H. Arnold
THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY
Michael Hoskin
THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY
William H. Brock
THE HISTORY OF CHILDHOOD
James Marten
THE HISTORY OF CINEMA
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING
Doron Swade
THE HISTORY OF EMOTIONS
Thomas Dixon
THE HISTORY OF LIFE Michael Benton
THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS
Jacqueline Stedall
THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE
William Bynum
THE HISTORY OF PHYSICS
J. L. Heilbron
THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL
THOUGHT Richard Whatmore
THE HISTORY OF TIME
Leofranc Holford‑Strevens
HIV AND AIDS Alan Whiteside
HOBBES Richard Tuck
HOLLYWOOD Peter Decherney
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
Joachim Whaley
HOME Michael Allen Fox
HOMER Barbara Graziosi
HORMONES Martin Luck
HORROR Darryl Jones
HUMAN ANATOMY Leslie Klenerman
HUMAN EVOLUTION Bernard Wood
HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY
Jamie A. Davies
HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT Adrian Wilkinson
HUMAN RIGHTS Andrew Clapham
HUMANISM Stephen Law
HUME James A. Harris
HUMOUR Noël Carroll
IBN SĪNĀ (AVICENNA)
Peter Adamson
THE ICE AGE Jamie Woodward
IDENTITY Florian Coulmas
IDEOLOGY Michael Freeden
THE IMMUNE SYSTEM
Paul Klenerman
INDIAN CINEMA
Ashish Rajadhyaksha
INDIAN PHILOSOPHY Sue Hamilton
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Robert C. Allen
INFECTIOUS DISEASE Marta L. Wayne
and Benjamin M. Bolker
INFINITY Ian Stewart
INFORMATION Luciano Floridi
INNOVATION Mark Dodgson and
David Gann
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Siva Vaidhyanathan
INTELLIGENCE Ian J. Deary
INTERNATIONAL LAW
Vaughan Lowe
INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION
Khalid Koser
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Christian Reus-Smit
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
Christopher S. Browning
INSECTS Simon Leather
INVASIVE SPECIES Julie Lockwood and
Dustin Welbourne
IRAN Ali M. Ansari
ISLAM Malise Ruthven
ISLAMIC HISTORY Adam Silverstein
ISLAMIC LAW Mashood A. Baderin
ISOTOPES Rob Ellam
ITALIAN LITERATURE
Peter Hainsworth and David Robey
HENRY JAMES Susan L. Mizruchi
JAPANESE LITERATURE Alan Tansman
JESUS Richard Bauckham
JEWISH HISTORY David N. Myers
JEWISH LITERATURE Ilan Stavans
JOURNALISM Ian Hargreaves
JAMES JOYCE Colin MacCabe
JUDAISM Norman Solomon
JUNG Anthony Stevens
THE JURY Renée Lettow Lerner
KABBALAH Joseph Dan
KAFKA Ritchie Robertson
KANT Roger Scruton
KEYNES Robert Skidelsky
KIERKEGAARD Patrick Gardiner
KNOWLEDGE Jennifer Nagel
THE KORAN Michael Cook
KOREA Michael J. Seth
LAKES Warwick F. Vincent
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
Ian H. Thompson
LANDSCAPES AND
GEOMORPHOLOGY
Andrew Goudie and Heather Viles
LANGUAGES Stephen R. Anderson
LATE ANTIQUITY Gillian Clark
LAW Raymond Wacks
THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS
Peter Atkins
LEADERSHIP Keith Grint
LEARNING Mark Haselgrove
LEIBNIZ Maria Rosa Antognazza
C. S. LEWIS James Como
LIBERALISM Michael Freeden
LIGHT Ian Walmsley
LINCOLN Allen C. Guelzo
LINGUISTICS Peter Matthews
LITERARY THEORY Jonathan Culler
LOCKE John Dunn
LOGIC Graham Priest
LOVE Ronald de Sousa
MARTIN LUTHER Scott H. Hendrix
MACHIAVELLI Quentin Skinner
MADNESS Andrew Scull
MAGIC Owen Davies
MAGNA CARTA Nicholas Vincent
MAGNETISM Stephen Blundell
MALTHUS Donald Winch
MAMMALS T. S. Kemp
MANAGEMENT John Hendry
NELSON MANDELA Elleke Boehmer
MAO Delia Davin
MARINE BIOLOGY Philip V. Mladenov
MARKETING
Kenneth Le Meunier-FitzHugh
THE MARQUIS DE SADE John Phillips
MARTYRDOM Jolyon Mitchell
MARX Peter Singer
MATERIALS Christopher Hall
MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS
Richard Earl
MATHEMATICAL FINANCE
Mark H. A. Davis
MATHEMATICS Timothy Gowers
MATTER Geoff Cottrell
THE MAYA Matthew Restall and
Amara Solari
THE MEANING OF LIFE
Terry Eagleton
MEASUREMENT David Hand
MEDICAL ETHICS Michael Dunn and
Tony Hope
MEDICAL LAW Charles Foster
MEDIEVAL BRITAIN John Gillingham
and Ralph A. Griffiths
MEDIEVAL LITERATURE Elaine
Treharne
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
John Marenbon
MEMORY Jonathan K. Foster
METAPHYSICS Stephen Mumford
METHODISM William J. Abraham
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION
Alan Knight
MICROBIOLOGY Nicholas P. Money
MICROBIOMES Angela E. Douglas
MICROECONOMICS Avinash Dixit
MICROSCOPY Terence Allen
THE MIDDLE AGES Miri Rubin
MILITARY JUSTICE Eugene R. Fidell
MILITARY STRATEGY
Antulio J. Echevarria II
JOHN STUART MILL Gregory Claeys
MINERALS David Vaughan
MIRACLES Yujin Nagasawa
MODERN ARCHITECTURE
Adam Sharr
MODERN ART David Cottington
MODERN BRAZIL Anthony W. Pereira
MODERN CHINA Rana Mitter
MODERN DRAMA
Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr
MODERN FRANCE
Vanessa R. Schwartz
MODERN INDIA Craig Jeffrey
MODERN IRELAND Senia Pašeta
MODERN ITALY Anna Cento Bull
MODERN JAPAN
Christopher Goto-Jones
MODERN LATIN AMERICAN
LITERATURE
Roberto González Echevarría
MODERN WAR Richard English
MODERNISM Christopher Butler
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY Aysha Divan
and Janice A. Royds
MOLECULES Philip Ball
MONASTICISM Stephen J. Davis
THE MONGOLS Morris Rossabi
MONTAIGNE William M. Hamlin
MOONS David A. Rothery
MORMONISM
Richard Lyman Bushman
MOUNTAINS Martin F. Price
MUHAMMAD Jonathan A. C. Brown
MULTICULTURALISM Ali Rattansi
MULTILINGUALISM John C. Maher
MUSIC Nicholas Cook
MUSIC AND TECHNOLOGY
Mark Katz
MYTH Robert A. Segal
NANOTECHNOLOGY Philip Moriarty
NAPOLEON David A. Bell
THE NAPOLEONIC WARS
Mike Rapport
NATIONALISM Steven Grosby
NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE
Sean Teuton
NAVIGATION Jim Bennett
NAZI GERMANY Jane Caplan
NEGOTIATION Carrie Menkel-Meadow
NEOLIBERALISM Manfred B. Steger
and Ravi K. Roy
NETWORKS Guido Caldarelli and
Michele Catanzaro
THE NEW TESTAMENT
Luke Timothy Johnson
THE NEW TESTAMENT AS
LITERATURE Kyle Keefer
NEWTON Robert Iliffe
NIETZSCHE Michael Tanner
NINETEENTH‑CENTURY BRITAIN
Christopher Harvie and
H. C. G. Matthew
THE NORMAN CONQUEST
George Garnett
NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS
Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green
NORTHERN IRELAND
Marc Mulholland
NOTHING Frank Close
NUCLEAR PHYSICS Frank Close
NUCLEAR POWER Maxwell Irvine
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Joseph M. Siracusa
NUMBER THEORY Robin Wilson
NUMBERS Peter M. Higgins
NUTRITION David A. Bender
OBJECTIVITY Stephen Gaukroger
OBSERVATIONAL ASTRONOMY
Geoff Cottrell
OCEANS Dorrik Stow
THE OLD TESTAMENT
Michael D. Coogan
THE ORCHESTRA D. Kern Holoman
ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
Graham Patrick
ORGANIZATIONS Mary Jo Hatch
ORGANIZED CRIME
Georgios A. Antonopoulos and
Georgios Papanicolaou
ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY
A. Edward Siecienski
OVID Llewelyn Morgan
PAGANISM Owen Davies
PAKISTAN Pippa Virdee
THE PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI
CONFLICT Martin Bunton
PANDEMICS Christian W. McMillen
PARTICLE PHYSICS Frank Close
PAUL E. P. Sanders
IVAN PAVLOV Daniel P. Todes
PEACE Oliver P. Richmond
PENTECOSTALISM William K. Kay
PERCEPTION Brian Rogers
THE PERIODIC TABLE Eric R. Scerri
PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD
Timothy Williamson
PHILOSOPHY Edward Craig
PHILOSOPHY IN THE ISLAMIC
WORLD Peter Adamson
PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY
Samir Okasha
PHILOSOPHY OF LAW
Raymond Wacks
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
Barbara Gail Montero
PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICS
David Wallace
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Samir Okasha
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Tim Bayne
PHOTOGRAPHY Steve Edwards
PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY Peter Atkins
PHYSICS Sidney Perkowitz
PILGRIMAGE Ian Reader
PLAGUE Paul Slack
PLANETARY SYSTEMS
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
PLANETS David A. Rothery
PLANTS Timothy Walker
PLATE TECTONICS Peter Molnar
PLATO Julia Annas
POETRY Bernard O’Donoghue
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY David Miller
POLITICS Kenneth Minogue
POLYGAMY Sarah M. S. Pearsall
POPULISM Cas Mudde and
Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser
POSTCOLONIALISM Robert J. C. Young
POSTMODERNISM Christopher Butler
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
Catherine Belsey
POVERTY Philip N. Jefferson
PREHISTORY Chris Gosden
PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY
Catherine Osborne
PRIVACY Raymond Wacks
PROBABILITY John Haigh
PROGRESSIVISM Walter Nugent
PROHIBITION W. J. Rorabaugh
PROJECTS Andrew Davies
PROTESTANTISM Mark A. Noll
PSEUDOSCIENCE Michael D. Gordin
PSYCHIATRY Tom Burns
PSYCHOANALYSIS Daniel Pick
PSYCHOLOGY Gillian Butler and
Freda McManus
PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC
Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis
PSYCHOPATHY Essi Viding
PSYCHOTHERAPY Tom Burns and
Eva Burns-Lundgren
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Stella Z. Theodoulou and Ravi K. Roy
PUBLIC HEALTH Virginia Berridge
PURITANISM Francis J. Bremer
THE QUAKERS Pink Dandelion
QUANTUM THEORY
John Polkinghorne
RACISM Ali Rattansi
RADIOACTIVITY Claudio Tuniz
RASTAFARI Ennis B. Edmonds
READING Belinda Jack
THE REAGAN REVOLUTION Gil Troy
REALITY Jan Westerhoff
RECONSTRUCTION Allen C. Guelzo
THE REFORMATION Peter Marshall
REFUGEES Gil Loescher
RELATIVITY Russell Stannard
RELIGION Thomas A. Tweed
RELIGION IN AMERICA Timothy Beal
THE RENAISSANCE Jerry Brotton
RENAISSANCE ART
Geraldine A. Johnson
RENEWABLE ENERGY Nick Jelley
REPTILES T. S. Kemp
REVOLUTIONS Jack A. Goldstone
RHETORIC Richard Toye
RISK Baruch Fischhoff and John Kadvany
RITUAL Barry Stephenson
RIVERS Nick Middleton
ROBOTICS Alan Winfield
ROCKS Jan Zalasiewicz
ROMAN BRITAIN Peter Salway
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Christopher Kelly
THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
David M. Gwynn
ROMANTICISM Michael Ferber
ROUSSEAU Robert Wokler
RUSSELL A. C. Grayling
THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY
Richard Connolly
RUSSIAN HISTORY Geoffrey Hosking
RUSSIAN LITERATURE Catriona Kelly
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
S. A. Smith
SAINTS Simon Yarrow
SAMURAI Michael Wert
SAVANNAS Peter A. Furley
SCEPTICISM Duncan Pritchard
SCHIZOPHRENIA Chris Frith and
Eve Johnstone
SCHOPENHAUER
Christopher Janaway
SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Thomas Dixon and Adam R. Shapiro
SCIENCE FICTION David Seed
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
Lawrence M. Principe
SCOTLAND Rab Houston
SECULARISM Andrew Copson
SEXUAL SELECTION Marlene Zuk and
Leigh W. Simmons
SEXUALITY Véronique Mottier
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Stanley Wells
SHAKESPEARE’S COMEDIES
Bart van Es
SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS AND
POEMS Jonathan F. S. Post
SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGEDIES
Stanley Wells
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Christopher Wixson
MARY SHELLEY Charlotte Gordon
THE SHORT STORY Andrew Kahn
SIKHISM Eleanor Nesbitt
SILENT FILM Donna Kornhaber
THE SILK ROAD James A. Millward
SLANG Jonathon Green
SLEEP Steven W. Lockley and
Russell G. Foster
SMELL Matthew Cobb
ADAM SMITH
Christopher J. Berry
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
John Monaghan and Peter Just
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Richard J. Crisp
SOCIAL WORK Sally Holland and
Jonathan Scourfield
SOCIALISM Michael Newman
SOCIOLINGUISTICS John Edwards
SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce
SOCRATES C. C. W. Taylor
SOFT MATTER Tom McLeish
SOUND Mike Goldsmith
SOUTHEAST ASIA James R. Rush
THE SOVIET UNION Stephen Lovell
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
Helen Graham
SPANISH LITERATURE Jo Labanyi
THE SPARTANS Andrew J. Bayliss
SPINOZA Roger Scruton
SPIRITUALITY Philip Sheldrake
SPORT Mike Cronin
STARS Andrew King
STATISTICS David J. Hand
STEM CELLS Jonathan Slack
STOICISM Brad Inwood
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
David Blockley
STUART BRITAIN John Morrill
SUBURBS Carl Abbott
THE SUN Philip Judge
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY
Stephen Blundell
SUPERSTITION Stuart Vyse
SYMMETRY Ian Stewart
SYNAESTHESIA Julia Simner
SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY Jamie A. Davies
SYSTEMS BIOLOGY Eberhard O. Voit
TAXATION Stephen Smith
TEETH Peter S. Ungar
TERRORISM Charles Townshend
THEATRE Marvin Carlson
THEOLOGY David F. Ford
THINKING AND REASONING
Jonathan St B. T. Evans
THOUGHT Tim Bayne
TIBETAN BUDDHISM
Matthew T. Kapstein
TIDES David George Bowers and
Emyr Martyn Roberts
TIME Jenann Ismael
TOCQUEVILLE Harvey C. Mansfield
LEO TOLSTOY Liza Knapp
TOPOLOGY Richard Earl
TRAGEDY Adrian Poole
TRANSLATION Matthew Reynolds
THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES
Michael S. Neiberg
TRIGONOMETRY
Glen Van Brummelen
THE TROJAN WAR Eric H. Cline
TRUST Katherine Hawley
THE TUDORS John Guy
TWENTIETH‑CENTURY BRITAIN
Kenneth O. Morgan
TYPOGRAPHY Paul Luna
THE UNITED NATIONS
Jussi M. Hanhimäki
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES
David Palfreyman and Paul Temple
THE U.S. CIVIL WAR Louis P. Masur
THE U.S. CONGRESS Donald A. Ritchie
THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
David J. Bodenhamer
THE U.S. SUPREME COURT
Linda Greenhouse
UTILITARIANISM
Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and
Peter Singer
UTOPIANISM Lyman Tower Sargent
VATICAN II Shaun Blanchard and
Stephen Bullivant
VETERINARY SCIENCE James Yeates
THE VICTORIANS Martin Hewitt
THE VIKINGS Julian D. Richards
VIOLENCE Philip Dwyer
THE VIRGIN MARY
Mary Joan Winn Leith
THE VIRTUES Craig A. Boyd and
Kevin Timpe
VIRUSES Dorothy H. Crawford
VOLCANOES Michael J. Branney and
Jan Zalasiewicz
VOLTAIRE Nicholas Cronk
WAR AND RELIGION Jolyon Mitchell
and Joshua Rey
WAR AND TECHNOLOGY
Alex Roland
WATER John Finney
WAVES Mike Goldsmith
WEATHER Storm Dunlop
THE WELFARE STATE David Garland
WITCHCRAFT Malcolm Gaskill
WITTGENSTEIN A. C. Grayling
WORK Stephen Fineman
WORLD MUSIC Philip Bohlman
WORLD MYTHOLOGY
David Leeming
THE WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATION Amrita Narlikar
WORLD WAR II Gerhard L. Weinberg
WRITING AND SCRIPT
Andrew Robinson
ZIONISM Michael Stanislawski
ÉMILE ZOLA Brian Nelson

Available soon:
IMAGINATION Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei

For more information visit our website

www.oup.com/vsi/
 Martin Hewitt

THE
VICTORIANS
A Very Short Introduction
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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© Martin Hewitt 2023
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Contents

Acknowledgements xvii

List of illustrations xix

1 The challenge of generalization 1

2 Living with the Victorians 4

3 The Victorian as period 19

4 Victorianism 39

5 Victorian configurations 56

6 Eminent and less eminent Victorians 80

7 The Victorian world 104

References 121

Further reading 125

Index 129
Acknowledgements

This study emerges out of several decades of thinking about the

Victorians, encouraged at the outset by Asa Briggs’s idiosyncratic
but always stimulating doctoral supervision, and then confirmed
by the investment in Victorian Studies made with the loyal
backing of Christine Hallas and other colleagues at what was then
Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds. The demands of an
inaugural lecture for the professorship of Victorian Studies to
which the college appointed me did much to coalesce the ideas
about the Victorian as period summarized in Chapter 2, and
students on undergraduate and MA courses helped me refine the
ideas there and in Chapter 1.

Over the years I’ve also drawn insight and inspiration from
colleagues and collaborators involved in the Journal of Victorian
Culture, the British Association for Victorian Studies, and at
Manchester Metropolitan, Huddersfield, and Anglia Ruskin
universities, far too many to mention. I’m especially grateful to
Patrick Leary, Tom Crook, and Susie Steinbach for reading drafts,
and to Joanne Shattock, Isobel Armstrong, Peter Mandler, Helen
Rogers, Rohan McWilliam, David Amigoni, and the late and
much-­missed Simon Dentith, Malcolm Chase, and Rosemary
Mitchell for assistance and encouragement with other work on
which this volume has drawn.
 For all this, without the repeated patience of the VSI
commissioning editors at OUP, and then the support of the
Principal and Fellows of St Hugh’s College Oxford, who elected me
as the first Belcher Visiting Fellow in Victorian Studies in 2019,
and then adjusted and extended the fellowship in response to the
disruptions of COVID-­19, it is doubtful whether the book would
have been completed. I hope this portrait is a fitting return for the
hospitality of the St Hugh’s community and the generosity of
Margaret Belcher in funding the Fellowship.
The Victorians

xviii
List of illustrations

1 Hew Locke, Foreign Exchange 5 Pears Soap advert based on

(Birmingham, 2022) 17 J. E. Millais, Bubbles
Hew Locke, Foreign Exchange, 2022 (c.1888–9) 101
© Hew Locke. All rights reserved, © Victoria and Albert
DACS/Artimage 2022 Museum, London

2 Edwin Landseer, Windsor 6 John Brett, Britannia’s

Castle in Modern Times Realm (1880) 105
(1841–3) 46 John Brett/Tate Images
Royal Collection Trust/Wikipedia
7 ‘Hold on John’, Punch
3 Holman Hunt, The Light of (2 April 1898) 106
the World (1853) 71 Punch Cartoon
Keble College/Wikipedia Library/TopFoto

4 Luke Fildes, Applicants for

Admission to a Casual Ward
(1874) 89
Luke Fildes/Tate Images
Chapter 1
The challenge of
generalization

A century ago, when the Victorian age had scarcely begun to be a

focus of scholarly examination, perhaps the most influential of all
studies of the period opened with the provocative assertion that
‘The history of the Victorian Age will never be written. We know
too much about it.’ A hundred years later even though they have
largely passed out of direct memory, it remains even more the case
that we know too much about the Victorians to render them in
35,000 words without systematic and often flagrant
simplification.

Every characterization in the pages which follow is defenceless

against the challenge that it underestimates complexity, smooths
over unevenness, and excludes difference, that it offers a ‘totalizing
account’ which would dissolve on closer scrutiny. Indeed any
impression to the contrary must be tenaciously resisted. The
reader should be under no illusion. Victorian Britain was a
mass of tensions and contradictions, of inconsistencies and
incompatibilities, of instabilities and competing subjectivities. It
was fiercely insular and determinedly global; the railway age and
the heyday of the horse; both smug and anxious; a time of
extraordinary change but also of remarkable continuities,
producing enormous wealth and pitiless poverty. Patterns were
always under construction; conventions never uncontested. All
characterizations of the Victorian—­and in particular all
1
 formulations of what ‘the Victorians’ did or thought—­in the pages
that follow must be read as prefaced with a silent ‘on balance’, ‘on
the whole’, or ‘predominantly’, omitted in the interests of economy
and elegance.

None of this inevitable historical messiness is any reason not to

generalize or to attempt to sketch the broad patterns and norms
around which diversity was arrayed, and this is especially so in the
case of the Victorians. Partly because Victorian culture was
shared across all classes and groups to a remarkable extent, the
intellectual life of the period profoundly structured by pervasive
underlying assumptions, languages, and reference points. Partly
because Victorian Britain was marked by particularly powerful
social norms and expectations, bearing down on, to a greater or
lesser extent, all parts of society. Partly because in exploring the
shades and balances of the period, writings about the Victorians,
including those by the Victorians themselves, have very often
The Victorians

begun with a general interpretation which they have proceeded to

dismantle or subvert. The Victorians, as the historian John
Darwin has put it, ‘agreed on generalities but differed in detail’,
and it is only by comprehending the general pattern that we can
fully understand the nature of the diversity.

As historians have long recognized, one of the most difficult

challenges in studying any period in the past is getting a sense of
the particular combination of ways of thinking and ways of living
which characterized it. This is perhaps especially true of ‘the
Victorians’ because the Victorian period has been the site of a set
of particularly rich engagements from a variety of perspectives,
which have not always, indeed perhaps rarely, successfully
balanced the two poles of thinking and living.

In what follows I have tried to develop a portrait of the period

which explores the mutually constitutive operations of experience,
action, and reflection. I do so by addressing five questions which
seem to me to be critical in approaching the Victorians. Why do
2
we continue to be fascinated by the Victorians? How does the
Victorian age work as a historical period? What was distinctive
about it, what gave it its particular character? Who were the
Victorians, as individuals and collectivities? How far were those
phenomena we might describe as ‘Victorian’ a global presence in
the 19th century?

Beyond this, the aim here has been to be as capacious as space will
allow, and to extend the cast of individual Victorians presented
in the discussion as far as possible. This requires a certain
allusiveness and even abruptness. Some of the individuals
appearing in the following pages will be familiar, others less so,
but in either case there has been little time for introductions.
While their significance for the argument should be apparent, the
fullness of their example may have to be the subject of further

The challenge of generalization

investigation.

3
Chapter 2
Living with the Victorians

What is it about the Victorians? Over 120 years after the death of
Queen Victoria they still command a degree of attention and
occupy a place in British and indeed global culture which no other
period in history can match, possessing a cultural significance and
carrying a degree of ideological freight without parallel. It isn’t
hard to recognize from the ways that the term ‘Victorian’ is used in
contemporary debates and discourse that it is rarely a neutral
designation like ‘19th century’. Rather it is almost always a loaded
term. While most period designations, even ‘Elizabethan’ or
‘Georgian’, are denotative and might describe a body of literary
work or a style of furniture, ‘Victorian’ is connotative, laden with
associations and meanings. Not surprising, then, that the
Victorians not only have their own ‘-ism’ but also have their
homologue, ‘Dickensian’.

Why are the Victorians unique in this respect and what are the
consequences?

There are several obvious reasons. The length of the reign, the
longest in British history before it was surpassed in the 21st
century by Elizabeth II, has something to do with it, as do
elements of nostalgia for a time when Britain was the dominant
global superpower, and western versions of culture and progress
were spreading rapidly across the globe. But equally important is
4
the seemingly perpetual presence of the Victorians, the extent to
which despite enormous effort they have never been safely
consigned to the past, so that we continue to feel ourselves
cohabiting with them. In Britain in particular, the history of the
20th century looks at times like one long and largely unsuccessful
struggle to escape, of the fear expressed by the mid-­century poet
and writer David Paul that ‘We have not succeeded . . . in relegating
[the Victorians] to a glass case. They refuse to stay in the case.’

‘It remains true’, Paul added, ‘that in most Englishmen today [he
was writing in 1952] you can still find an ill-­concealed Victorian.’
The same might have been said about colonial societies and other
parts of the anglophone world. And of course, although the
Victorian period might have ended in 1901, the Victorians
themselves lived on. Even restricting the designation to those who

Living with the Victorians

were 21 in 1901, it was not until 1955 that Britain had its first
post-­Victorian prime minister. Winston Churchill’s leadership in
the Second World War, William Beveridge’s conception of the
British welfare state, Frederick Lugard’s classic development of
‘indirect’ imperial rule in Africa were all in this sense Victorian.
The architect of mid-­century macro-­economic orthodoxy, John
Maynard Keynes, was himself only six months shy of 18 when
Victoria died, and older more firmly Victorian thinkers lived on to
shape western intellectual life, even when they professed to
repudiate the Victorians. The philosopher Bertrand Russell, born
1872, continued to publish until the year before his death in 1970.

Even as the youngest Victorians passed away indirect influences

remained. In his autobiography, the British Conservative prime
minister John Major recalled the formative presence of his own
Victorian father, born in 1879, who had ‘a tireless fund of evocative
stories that stretched back well into the nineteenth century’. The
historian Asa Briggs, whose writings and talks established the
orthodox view of the Victorians for much of the second half of the
20th century, and who was brought up in inter-­war Keighley,
which he remembered as ‘very much a Victorian community’,
5
 conceded that he was himself ‘a bit of a Victorian’. And intimacy
with the great Victorians was constantly replenished through the
final third of the century by a new breed of monumental
biographies, typified by Robert Blake’s Disraeli (1966) and
Gordon Haight’s George Eliot (1968), in which psychology
replaced piety or prejudice, and the Victorians became flesh
and blood.

As the Victorians died off, their material legacies lived on.

Commentators who set out to capture the essence of 20th-­century
Britain were struck by the extent to which it bore the impress of
its Victorian past. J. B. Priestley’s English Journey (1934) offers a
classic presentation of a Britain saturated with Victorian survivals,
from eccentric manor houses straight out of Dickens, to industrial
regions clinging to the vestiges of Victorian prosperity. Painted
around the same time, Victorian Survival (1931) by the American
painter Grant Wood offered a parallel reflection, juxtaposing a
The Victorians

forbidding great-­aunt with the telephone as contrasting forms of

endurance. In Britain in the 1960s slum clearances, and even the
‘Beeching axe’ which led to the closure of over 2,300 railway
stations and 5,000 miles of railway lines, only tinkered with these
survivals. The national railway network, the sewage and sanitation
system, the housing stock and urban morphologies, all remained
predominantly Victorian. At the end of the century British
popular bestsellers and television shows were still exploring ‘What
the Victorians Did for Us’, or ‘the Victorian-­ness of the world in
which we live’. And this is without the vestigial Victorianism of the
eponymous Victorian brands the British consumer continues to
buy—­Rimmel cosmetics, Cadbury’s chocolates, and Colman’s
mustards—­or the Tennyson Avenues and Crimea Streets in which
some continue to live. If outside Britain such material legacies
were less obvious, there were still innumerable everyday survivals,
postage stamps and photographs, policemen and detectives,
department stores and museums, golf and tennis, bacon and eggs
and breakfast cereals, bicycles and telephones, Christmas cards
and valentines.
6
Intellectual legacies also appear almost anywhere one looks. Our
everyday language is full of Victorian coinages: ‘dinosaur’,
‘scientist’, ‘colour prejudice’, even the concept of ‘normal’. The
British version of parliamentary democracy and the Houses of
Parliament as its embodiment are both essentially Victorian.
British welfare policies and institutions continue to be powerfully
influenced by the sorts of assumptions which were enshrined in
the Victorian Poor Law. The British film classification regime and
the variants implemented by almost all its settler colonies are to
all intents an extension of Victorian approaches to the censorship
of books and plays.

It was once conventional to argue that despite the forces of inertia

the sexual and generational revolts of the 1960s brought ‘The End
of Victorianism’. But the 1960s counter-­culture had a surprisingly

Living with the Victorians

complicated relationship with the Victorians, repudiating their
puritanism and prudery, but gravitating to ‘Victorian’
neighbourhoods in cities like San Francisco, absorbing Victorian
dress into hippie style, drawing inspiration from all sorts of
Victoriana, from the Pre-­Raphaelite influences of Led Zeppelin’s
lead guitarist Jimmy Page to the scraps of Victoriana running
through the Beatles’ 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
album. Imperial pretensions were abandoned, but only by force,
and beliefs about the incapacities and inadequacies of
colonial peoples and minority populations remained virtually
unquestioned not just up to but well beyond independence, as the
challenges of the 2010s, the Windrush scandal and the Black Lives
Matter movements, show.

Certainly the 1960s did nothing to dent the pre-­eminence of the

Victorians in the anglophone cultural canon. In many respects the
opposite. After 1918 the reputation of the Victorians had gone into
steep decline. Cleaner modern lines swept away old decorative
styles, and Victorian art and literature, condemned for their
sentimentality, was not far behind; paintings by first-­rank artists
were sold off for just a few pounds. But this almost 40-­year eclipse
7
 proved temporary, and by the 1950s, the tide was turning again.
Victorian architecture was once more appreciated, the market
for Victorian art rebounded, communities repackaged and
relaunched their Victorian museums and heritage attractions, and
Victorian literature consolidated its position as the default
playbook for costume drama in film and television. The ‘Main
Street U.S.A.’ attraction at the early post-­war Disney theme parks
was a nostalgic celebration of American small town life at the very
end of the Victorian period. A host of late 20th- and early
21st-­century novelists, including Margaret Attwood, Peter
Ackroyd, Peter Carey, Beryl Bainbridge, and Amitav Ghosh, have
excavated the Victorian condition in fiction. The extraordinary
frenzy of attention prompted by the centenary of Victoria’s death
in 2001, from the major Victorian Britain exhibition at the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London, to satellite events like the
Tate’s Victorian Nudes, did nothing to exhaust appetites, as the
willingness of museum curators across the English-­speaking
The Victorians

world to give space to an ever-­extending variety of Victoriana,

from Victorian photocollage (Chicago, 2010) to ‘badass rebel
women’ of the era (New York Museum of Modern Art, 2018),
demonstrates.

And on top of this lies the extraordinary phenomenon of what has

come to be known as ‘neo-­Victorianism’, exemplified by the
enormous success of Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet (2002),
and Fingersmith (2005), or the popularity of Sherlock Holmes
reinterpretations or the stylized Victorian violence of the BBC/
Amazon Prime’s Ripper Street (2012‒16). There is nothing
unusual in literature engaging with history, but the later 20th and
21st centuries have invested in an especially powerful way in the
interpenetrations of the Victorian past, the present, and the
imagined future. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s The
Difference Engine (1990) and Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age
(1995) helped spawn a whole gothic steampunk subculture across
not just fiction, film, and television but also comic books and
videogames. In the Marvel Comics universe the character of
8
Mister Sinister as a Victorian Darwinist scientist was
progressively articulated from his original appearance in the
1980s through to the 2010s, and the Assassin’s Creed game series
and films like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen take
advantage of the gaslit gothic aesthetics of Victorian London while
trading on knowing reference to Charles Dickens, Florence
Nightingale, Charles Darwin, and Alexander Graham Bell.

Perhaps understandably, critical approaches to neo-­Victorian

literature rarely dwell on concerns about its historical
representativeness. Events like the 2019 Compass festival in
Connecticut, with its ‘Splendid Teapot Racing’ event, open to
anyone bringing a teapot on a remote-­controlled chassis,
alongside demonstrations of cane fighting and parasol defence,
luxuriate in the unapologetic anachronism of steampunk. But by

Living with the Victorians

focusing attention on the ways in which the past might intrude
into the present and shape the future, neo-­Victorianism vividly
affirms the ways the Victorians continue to haunt the
contemporary consciousness.

Using the Victorians

The dazzling inventiveness of neo-­Victorianism reminds us that
the afterlife of the Victorians has always been as much a matter of
usefulness as status, a reflection of the ease with which they can be
appropriated and exploited. And indeed, throughout the 20th
century the Victorians functioned as a strange hybrid of sounding
board and Aunt Sally: not just in Britain, the Victorians remained
the 20th century’s cultural ‘other’, a context against which new
generational identities were forged and new ways of thinking
tempered, a space in which values could be challenged or affirmed,
and evil could be both distanced and domesticated. Historical
fictions of the Victorian have never entirely escaped from the
pleasures of pointing out just how far the Victorians fell short
of their own self-­image and our subsequent achievement.
Neo-­Victorian literatures often seek to validate contested elements
9
 of contemporary culture by affirming their vibrancy and longevity
against the cul de sac of Victorian values.

These strategies inflected attitudes towards the Victorians for

much of the 20th century. In the years before and after the First
World War vitriolic anti-­Victorianism of the sort propounded by
modernists like Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound was increasingly
vocal, and the patrician sneers of Lytton Strachey and the
Bloomsbury Group echoed at least superficially by T. S. Eliot and
W. H. Auden sought to undermine Victorian influence rather than
enshrine it. The foundational text of this attitude, Strachey’s
Eminent Victorians (1918), presented his four Victorians, Thomas
Arnold, Florence Nightingale, Cardinal Manning, and General
Gordon, not as the heroes of Victorian hagiography, but as
drunkards, tyrants, humbugs, and charlatans. Anti-­Victorianism
became part of the small change of anglophone intellectual life,
the period a soft option for satire, as in Auden’s later description
The Victorians

of it as the time when ‘Crying went out and the cold bath came in |
with drains, bananas, bicycles and tin’. Victorianism was also a foil
for attempts to throw off prudery and sexual repression in the
1960s, as in John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman
(1969), or a frame for 21st-­century reappraisals of colonialism as
represented by Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers (2000) or
Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries (2013).

At the same time, the 20th-­century reaction against the Victorians

always had its counterpoint in figures who looked back fondly on
the certainties and social stability of the Victorians in comparison
with the vulgarity and atomism of inter-­war Britain. It would be
easy to dismiss this as rather shallow nostalgia. And no doubt
there was a powerful current of wistfulness. The Second World
War imbued the Victorian era with a new allure. The public was
suddenly, as the critic Basil Willey put it, ‘yearning nostalgically
after it. . . . In that distant mountain country all that we now lack
seems present in abundance: not only peace, prosperity, plenty
and freedom, but faith, purpose and buoyancy.’ The enormous
10
popularity of Kilvert’s Diary, the journal of an obscure Victorian
clergyman, published in 1941, suggests that in a period of
industrial decline and international eclipse, the Victorians, ruling
the waves and overseeing an empire on which the sun never set,
were suddenly more attractive company.

In more recent decades versions of the Victorians have tended to

combine both approaches, offering the opportunity to revel in our
modern superiorities while cultivating a sneaking envy for the
privileges and simplicities of the Victorians, who emerge as
materialist but enterprising, complacent but secure, inclined to
hypocrisy but at least able to believe. In the late 1990s the British
Labour cabinet minister Roy Hattersley paid testimony to the
instructive escapism offered by a volume such as Asa Briggs’s
Victorian People, confessing that ‘When, during previous

Living with the Victorians

Christmasses, joy to all men has become too much to bear, I have
regularly slipped away to the lavatory with Robert Lowe, Anthony
Trollope, John Bright and Arthur Roebuck.’

It is a short step from nostalgia to deference, or at least a belief

that the Victorians still have much to teach us. From H. W.
Massingham’s The Great Victorians (1932) to Dinah Birch’s Our
Victorian Education (2008) the Victorians have also been framed
as the first moderns, wrestling—­often successfully—­with the same
kinds of problems facing 20th-­century society, and so a source of
useful ideals, attitudes, and philosophies of practical assistance, as
a way of obtaining ‘courage and refreshment’. And a 21st-­century
justification of Victorian literature like Philip Davis’s Why
Victorian Literature Still Matters (2008) offers a different but
equally nutritive sense of the importance of the Victorians and
their literature: that they provide assumptions which offer
empowerment and a space to feel, that it is impossible, as Davis
puts it, ‘to do without what the Victorians stand for’.

The controversy which raged in Britain in the 1980s when

Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party urged a return to
11
 ‘Victorian Values’ was only the most infamous instance of this
approach. Thatcher’s determination to use the Victorians both as
morally exemplary and as part of the ‘great landmarks’ of British
history ensured that they occupied a central place in Britain’s
late-­century school curriculum. In America, neo-­liberalism readily
drew on Victorian examples in critique of the social problems of
permissive society. And although we might imagine that 40 years
on few would look to the Victorians in this way, political leaders
continue to proclaim Victorian heroes and inspirations, Theresa
May paying homage to Joseph Chamberlain, Boris Johnson to
Churchill, and even Barack Obama drawing inspiration for his
central message of hope from the Victorian painting of that name
by George Frederick Watts.

Implications
When so much is at stake there is a danger of inauthenticity, of
The Victorians

making representations of the Victorians more self-­serving than

truth-­serving. To be fair, popular presentations of the Victorian
often show a scrupulous concern with ‘accuracy’ at the level of
detail, a sense of the responsibility the present owes to the past,
but at times there is little regard to truth in the reimagination
of spirit or message, or as respects the underlying historicity
of the past. This is certainly the case for film and television
representations, all the more treacherous as a guide for their
superficial realism. For example, the understandable imperatives
of diverse casting which have gathered pace within the last few
years tend to create an image of the past which while not
absolutely dishonest gives a fundamentally misleading impression
of the racial textures of Victorian society. The lampoon in
Malcolm Bradbury’s novella Cuts (1987), in which the film
executive responds to an actor’s questioning that Gladstone would
actually appear naked before Victoria playing the ukulele by
asserting that the ‘fictionalised verity’ he aims at takes real people
and events, but is ‘not slavishly bound to actual facts’, offers a

12
reflection of the priority often given by television executives and
popular novelists to message over veracity.

The relationship between the contemporary climate crisis and

Victorian environmentalism offers a case in point. Although in
recent years several Victorians have been co-­opted as pioneers of
modern environmental campaigns, Victorian notions of the
environment were primarily shaped by long-­standing equations
of nature with God’s creation and the Victorians’ ‘green’
consciousness was largely a function of literary anti-­industrialism
and anti-­modernism. So, while they could be horrified at the
desecration wrought by a new railway, Victorians were largely
unmoved by the way in which British globalism ravaged forests in
New Brunswick, depleted soils in the American south, and
exterminated carnivores in India and Africa. The Victorians

Living with the Victorians

provide little useful guidance in responding to these issues.
Despite occasional interventions like W. H. Hudson’s The Purple
Land that England Lost (1885), or the cultural critic John
Ruskin’s The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century (1884), the
Victorians’ emphasis was generally on the sort of local landscape
preservation championed by Hardwicke Rawnsley and the
National Trust, or an anxiety about resource exhaustion, rather
than the sorts of global sustainability concerns which emerged in
the 20th century. Instead of seeking self-­validation through
demonstrating the length of the history of ecocritical sensibilities,
or searching for Victorian values and expressions which might be
serviceable in the contemporary moment, ideals such as Ruskin’s
‘There is no wealth but life’, we might better understand the
Victorian ‘greens’ by accepting them on their own terms.

The danger in approaching the Victorians through the lens of our

own preoccupations like this is that we isolate, we decontextualize,
we over-­interpret, we pay insufficient attention to circulation,
readership, or influence, and in doing so, we make the Victorians
appear a great deal more like us than they actually were.

13
 The Victorians offer a standing risk of this sort of unwarranted
familiarity. The adaptations of the Forsyte Saga by the BBC (1967)
and ITV/PBS (2002‒3) both offered a subtle canvas of
contradictory forces and tendencies, but television adaptors and
film directors regularly succumb to the temptation to make
Victorian characters in the image of their contemporary
equivalents. Despite the factories, the global reach, the suburbs,
and the sewers, we are not living in the Victorian period. Despite
the illusion of empathy, the Victorians were not just like us.
To understand the Victorians requires awareness (and indeed
wariness) of these differences: of the powerful pull of religious
belief, not least on those who most stridently repudiated it; of
precarity and the spectre of absolute poverty; of the casual racism
founded on distance and contempt rather than closeness and a
sense of threat; of a social mobility in which hierarchies of caste
and class were difficult to shake off and wealth rarely decisive.
We need to consider the implications of a society without cars and
The Victorians

planes, radio and television, recorded music and the internet,

where branded food and world cuisines, domestic showers,
electrical appliances, old age pensions, and paperbacks were all
largely unheard of.

Debates over ‘cancel culture’ are at one level a symptom of the

challenge of managing not only the presence but also the distance
of the past, and of the entanglements of memory and honour.
Each historical moment must decide for itself which achievements
and which attitudes it wishes to celebrate and which to condemn,
while accepting that its standards are as transient and of the
moment as those it judges. The arguments against
commemorating Cecil Rhodes’s violent and exploitative
imperialism or the sexism of many Darwinists’ belief in female
biological inferiority are unanswerable. The moral reckoning of
the often-­hidden sources of individual and collective wealth is a
necessary part of uncovering both realities and legacies of the past
which are often occluded. But care is needed. If contemporary
uses should be governed by contemporary values, historical
14
understanding is rarely achieved by the desire to apportion guilt.
That a Darwin or a Huxley shared some of the common prejudices
of their period should not prevent us from celebrating their
intellectual achievements (while distancing ourselves from those
prejudices). It certainly cannot prevent us from recognizing their
historical importance, just as the significance Mary Seacole has for
our own perspective on the past should not disguise her relative
insignificance to her contemporaries. We can judge our Victorian
heritage from the standpoint of the present, but we can only
understand Victorian history from the perspective of the past.

Writing the Victorians

That each era composes its own version of the past is a truism
especially apposite for the Victorians, because their continued

Living with the Victorians

presence has inevitably prompted conflicts of possession, and the
resulting rollercoaster reputation makes writings about the period
a particularly treacherous terrain. Many of the ‘classic’ studies of
the Victorians, including George Malcolm Young’s Victorian
England: Portrait of an Age (1936), Walter Houghton’s The
Victorian Frame of Mind (1957), and George Kitson Clark’s The
Making of Victorian England (1965), which all carry the illusion
of currency because of the frequency with which they have been
repackaged and republished, were an intervention in the debates
of their day over the reputation of the Victorians as much as they
were dispassionate histories, and they need to be read with this
in mind.

More recently university historians have been reluctant to address

the Victorians as an appropriate object of general interpretation,
except perhaps in the sort of student-­oriented texts of which Susie
Steinbach’s Understanding the Victorians (2016) and David
Gange’s The Victorians: A Beginner’s Guide (2016) are the best
examples. It has most often been literary scholars, of whom
Richard Altick and Robin Gilmour stand out, who have produced
broad academically rigorous interpretative surveys of the period.
15
 Tellingly, none of the multi-­volume histories of Britain of the last
40 years have chosen to take the Victorian period, or even some
loose approximation to it, for the scope of a volume. Theodore
Hoppen’s The Mid-­Victorian Generation for the Oxford History of
Britain comes closest, but even this covers only the central
two-­thirds, from 1846 to 1886. In part these vagaries are just a
consequence of editorial fiat or a reflection of the general fear that
reifying any period distorts and fragments the continuities and
complexities of history. But they also reflect a specific suspicion
and at times disdain of the claims of the ‘Victorian’ as a period or
category, of the sort intimated by the observation of the American
cultural historian Morse Peckham that ‘If we think that there once
actually existed “Victorian culture” we shall for ever be hopelessly
confused.’

Seeking to avoid the dangers of datedness drives readers to the

steady stream of more ambitious syntheses for the general reader,
The Victorians

including A. N. Wilson’s The Victorians (2002), Simon Heffer’s

High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of the Modern (2013),
and innumerable television-­series spin-­offs like Jeremy Paxman’s
The Victorians (2009). Inevitably, some of these are stronger than
others. Despite a substantial cargo of detail, they often reveal
more about the idiosyncrasies of the authors than of the
Victorians. Even when they escape from the unrelenting rhetoric
of relevance, more recent popular studies often offer a view of the
Victorians which reinforces the privileging in contemporary
culture of personal characteristics and individual stories over
general contexts and collective experiences, emphasizing ideas
and perceptions over action and reality.

Conclusion
The controversies over Rhodes and the apparently insatiable
public demand for the Victorians across all media show that as the
21st century has progressed the implications of the Victorians
have become no less urgent, even if as each year passes the
16
 Living with the Victorians

1. Hew Locke, Foreign Exchange (Birmingham, 2022).

17
 intimacy of our connection to them weakens. The appearance of
Jacob Rees-­Mogg’s The Victorians: Twelve Titans Who Forged
Britain in 2019 with its portentous moralizing, and of Hew
Locke’s reimagining of the city’s statue of Queen Victoria in his
Foreign Exchange installation for the Birmingham 2022 Festival,
make clear that it would still be premature to assume that the
Victorians have finally been safely consigned to history (Figure 1).

We should be clear about what we want from the Victorians and

careful that our sense of them does not become whatever is most
serviceable to us; that, for example, we emphasize their doubt
because we have embraced our own, or condemn their certitudes
because we have lost ours. We should be wary of the extremes
both of nostalgia and of moral outrage. Above all, it will help in
understanding the Victorians if we keep the different contexts, the
tensions, and complexities of Victorian Britain in play: the
conjunctions of change and continuity, ambition and
The Victorians

complacency, conformity and division.

18
Chapter 3
The Victorian as period

When exactly was the Victorian period? And what does it mean to
think of it as a historical ‘period’?

For an era possessed of a literary canon, famous ‘greats’, and even

its own ‘-ism’, the limits adopted for the Victorian period have
been remarkably flexible. Formally Victoria acceded to the throne
on 20 June 1837 and reigned until her death on 22 January 1901.
Although unfashionable, treating the years between these dates as
a discrete period is not as ridiculous as it might at first seem.
Victoria did have a historical influence in her own right. Her
accession brought a change of mood, a sense of a break with the
Hanoverian monarchy of the long 18th century; and her longevity
eventually encouraged contemporaries to think of themselves as
Victorians, living in an ‘age’ defined by the Queen. We should not
underestimate both Victoria’s active involvement in government
decisions, and the cultural glue she provided, embodied in the
proliferation of images, the statues, the Victoria Halls and Victoria
Parks. Republicanism was insignificant; the Victorians were
instinctively monarchist.

The Queen read the official papers and met regularly with her
prime ministers to tell them her thoughts and wishes, and where
the standing of the monarchy was particularly touched, as in
respect to her elevation to Empress of India in 1876, her wishes
19
 were even more important. A conservative by temperament,
someone whose attitudes and sensibilities progressed little from
adolescence, H. G. Wells’s description of her as ‘a giant
paperweight that for half a century sat upon men’s minds’ was
only partly unfair. It was no accident that Lytton Strachey’s
Bloomsbury counterblast against the Victorians progressed from
his Eminent Victorians to the Queen as a supplementary target of
his corrosive invective.

But as the influence of the monarchy declined the regnal dates of

kings and queens have diminishing relevance for national history,
and so, for all the contemporary acknowledgement of her
importance, scholars have generally been reluctant to take the
notion of a unitary Victorian period seriously. It is suggested that
the apparent coherence given by Victoria’s longevity is at best
spurious, and at worst positively debilitating, constraining history
within unhelpful boundaries and even hobbling these years with a
The Victorians

gendered identity which has fed into the negative stereotypes of

Victorianism. The literary historian John Lucas maintained that
‘except in the most rigorously controlled of contexts, “Victorian”
and “Victorianism” are terms we could well do without. They are
all too frequently employed in ways that are chronologically
indefensible, historically dubious, intellectually confusing, and
ideologically unacceptable.’

Part of the problem has been the lack of any real consensus about
what we mean when we say that there was a ‘Victorian period’,
and in suggesting here that there was one, we should clear up
some potential misapprehensions. Defending the idea of a
Victorian period does not mean slavishly insisting on the specific
importance of 1837 or 1901. Nor does it imply that the beginnings
and ends of the Victorian years were marked by a revolutionary
historical rupture which effectively broke connections with what
came before or after. Neither does it suggest any sort of
unchangeableness or stasis across the 60 years, especially as

20
regards ideology or ‘zeitgeist’ (that invaluable German word which
is used to indicate the ‘world view’ of a period or collective).

We might as easily say the reverse is true. Britain in 1895 was in

many, perhaps in most, respects quite different from the Britain of
1840. The reign was punctuated with important moments of
change, not least in the national mood or the tone of public life,
moments which require us to think of it as comprising several
distinct sub-­periods. Nonetheless the start and end of the reign
did coincide with moments of wide-­ranging transformation, even
if only roughly, and there were powerful persistences and
continuities across the intervening period. Where change occurred
during the Victorian years, it often did so within consistent
vectors of development, lines laid down in the early years and
progressively worked through.

The Victorian as period

The rest of this chapter aims to provide an outline of the
chronological pattern which resulted, and tries to give a sense of
the structure of the period. My argument is that the nature and
timings of the major historical watersheds of the 1830s and the
years around 1900, and of the less dramatic but still important
transitions which occurred between these two moments,
effectively create a series of sub-­periods.

Traditionally, historical surveys talk of early, mid-, and late

Victorian Britain. With respect to the first, it is widely accepted
that the years 1848‒51 saw a meaningful change, ushering in the
mid-­Victorian years. Conventionally the mid-­Victorian period is
presented as coming to an end in the years 1867‒70. The problem
with this approach is that it leaves a final late Victorian period
which is as long as the first two periods combined and lacks their
coherent character. At times a solution has been sought by
pushing the end of the mid-­Victorian years on to the mid-­1870s or
even 1880. But there is no obvious divide in the mid-­1870s, and a
better solution is to acknowledge that the important events of the

21
 mid-­1880s amount to a further inflection point, creating not three
but four sub-­periods, early, mid-, and (from around 1885) late
Victorian, and also what we might describe as the ‘high Victorian’
period from the late 1860s to the mid-­1880s. As we shall see, each
of these has their distinct identity while sharing in the underlying
character of the period as a whole which is explored further in the
next chapter.

Opening
In truth, 1837 was a rather nondescript year to serve as the start of
a momentous period in British history. It marked less a point of
departure than the culmination of a period of intense and
widespread change. At best it offered portents, signs of the times
which can be read retrospectively. So, the start of a new reign
required a general election which saw one Benjamin Disraeli
elected to parliament for the first time. The first steamship
The Victorians

designed for crossing the Atlantic, the SS Great Western, was

launched and the patent on which the first commercial telegraph
operated was granted. The publication of Thomas Carlyle’s French
Revolution set the tone for a period haunted by the fear of
revolution, while the first serial issues of Dickens’s Oliver Twist
announced the arrival of a new literature. But these are merely
straws in the wind.

The year 1832, on the other hand, offers a much more convincing
starting point for a Victorian period. Agricultural unrest and the
agitation for reform made this a year of profound crisis. The
‘Great’ Parliamentary Reform Act which emerged was in many
respects a limited and conservative measure, leaving most of the
adult population without a vote, and the aristocratic elites
entrenched in control. But its significance lay less in the numbers
than in the sense of modernization it mobilized. Politics was
opened up. The most egregious examples of ‘rotten boroughs’ with
tiny electorates were removed, and the representation of
expanding towns and cities was enhanced. And most importantly,
22
a hotchpotch of eligibilities to vote based on accidents of custom
and tradition was replaced by just two parallel urban and rural
franchises each based on deliberate calculations of individual
fitness. Quite suddenly, the politics of the 1810s seemed part of a
distant past. Sir James Mackintosh, the Whig law reformer,
reflecting on the changes, suggested that it was as if he had ‘lived
in two different countries and conversed with people who spoke
different languages’.

And this was just the start. By ushering in almost continuous

Whig government from 1832 to 1841 the Act made the 1830s a
pivotal decade of reform, a word now much more frequently
and approvingly invoked. Mackintosh’s remarks reflected the
wider transformation which took place with notable rapidity in
the middle years of the 1830s, a transformation which in many
respects marked the end of Britain’s ancien régime. The

The Victorian as period

18th-­century legal system, based on the ‘bloody code’ of savage
intimidatory sentencing, was dismantled, leading amongst other
things to a rapid decline in the use of the death penalty. The
remnants of the political repression introduced during and
immediately after the Napoleonic wars were relaxed. The evils of
unrestricted industrial working hours were addressed, albeit only
in part, by factory legislation. The position of the Church of
England as in effect an executive arm of the state was dramatically
loosened, and the self-­serving and often self-­nominating closed
municipal corporations which had ruled many of the country’s
towns were reformed to allow greater popular control and
efficiency.

One of the ironies of these measures is that they occurred largely

independently of social and economic change. It was once the
historical orthodoxy that the political reforms of the 1830s were
responses to a sudden and dramatic ‘industrial revolution’ and the
rise of a new middle class, but nowadays it is recognized that the
economic and social change of the early 19th century, although
enormous, was also both gradual and uneven, characterized by the
23
 coexistence of old handicrafts and the new industries, and the
survival of established forms of paternalism and deference
alongside new class divisions brought about by the replacement of
relationships of mutual social obligation with transactions
confined to the ‘cash nexus’ of wages. Even so, there can be no
doubt that in important respects the 1830s did see the
acceleration of a series of changes which had been creating a
radically different ‘industrial society’, and that this, and in
particular the urban forms and problems which it produced,
became suddenly and intensely visible at this moment. In many
respects Victorian culture was shaped henceforth by its confused
and often contradictory attempts to make sense of this new
urban world.

Early Victorian challenge

Central to this awareness was a preoccupation with what came to
The Victorians

be known as the ‘Condition of England question’. Despite its

continued growth, early Victorian Britain was a period of
particularly sustained economic hardship and intense social
conflict. Rapid and largely uncontrolled urban development
would have inevitably brought challenges of sanitation and
pollution, especially given the rudimentary contemporary
understandings of the causes of disease. These were compounded
by the overcrowding and deterioration caused by the failure of
housing supply to keep pace with urban population growth, and
by a violent cycle of economic booms and slumps which produced
periodic episodes of large-­scale unemployment.

For sanitary reformers, urban investigators, and social novelists

the dislocations of the ‘Hungry Forties’ encouraged a diagnosis of
societal malaise rooted in an imagined deformation of the
working-­class home and family life. In contrast, the groups
bearing the brunt of the hardship blamed their position on their
political and economic impotence and mounted a sustained
challenge to the parliamentary settlements of the early 1830s,
24
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
reminds us of the doings of Justice, when she did act, in the reign of
James VI. Hunter and Strachan, a notary, were hanged on the 18th of
February, ‘as an example to the terror of others,’ says Fountainhall.
Three other persons, including a notary, were glad to save
themselves from a trial, by voluntary banishment. ‘Some moved that
they might be delivered to a captain of the recruits, to serve as
soldiers in Flanders; but the other method was judged more
legal.’[397]

The parish of Spott, in East Lothian, Dec. 30.

having no communion-cups of its own, was
accustomed to borrow those of the neighbouring parish of Stenton,
when required. The Stenton kirk-session latterly tired of this
benevolence, and resolved to charge half-a-crown each time their
cups were borrowed by Spott. Spott then felt a little ashamed of its
deficiency of communion-cups, and resolved to provide itself with a
pair. Towards the sum required, the minister was directed to take all
the foreign coin now in the box, as it was to be no longer current, and
such further sum as might be necessary.
The parish is soon after found sanctioning the account of Thomas
Kerr, an Edinburgh goldsmith, for ‘ane pair of communion-cups,
weighing 33 oz. 6 drops, at £3, 16s. per oz.,’ 1707.
being £126, 12s. in all, Scots money, besides
‘two shillings sterling of drink-money given to the goldsmith’s
men.’[398]

The Union produced some immediate 1708.

effects of a remarkable nature on the
industry and traffic of Scotland—not all of them good, it must be
owned, but this solely by reason of the erroneous laws in respect of
trade which existed in England, and to which Scotland was obliged to
conform.
Scotland had immediately to cease importing wines, brandy, and
all things produced by France; with no remeed but what was
supplied by the smuggler. This was one branch of her public or
ostensible commerce now entirely destroyed. She had also, in
conformity with England, to cease exporting her wool. This, however,
was an evil not wholly unalleviated, as will presently be seen.
Before this time, as admitted by Defoe, the Scotch people had
‘begun to come to some perfection in making broad cloths, druggets,
and [woollen] stuffs of all sorts.’ Now that there was no longer a
prohibition of English goods of the same kinds, these began to come
in in such great quantity, and at such prices, as at once extinguished
the superior woollen manufacture in Scotland. There remained the
manufacture of coarse cloths, as Stirling serges, Musselburgh stuffs,
and the like; and this now rather flourished, partly because the wool,
being forbidden to be sent abroad, could be had at a lower price, and
partly because these goods came into demand in England. Of course,
the people at large were injured by not getting the best price for their
wool, and benefited by getting the finer English woollen goods at a
cheaper rate than they had formerly paid for their own manufactures
of the same kinds; but no one saw such matters in such a light at that
time. The object everywhere held in view was to benefit trade—that
is, everybody’s peculium, as distinguished from the general good.
The general good was left to see after itself, after everybody’s
peculium had been served; and small enough were the crumbs
usually left to it.
On the other hand, duties being taken off Scottish linen introduced
into England, there was immediately a large increase to that branch
of the national industry. Englishmen came down and established
works for sail-cloth, for damasks, and other linen articles heretofore
hardly known in the north; and thus it was 1708.
remarked there was as much employment
for the poor as in the best days of the woollen manufacture.
The colonial trade being now, moreover, open to Scottish
enterprise, there was an immediate stimulus to the building of ships
for that market. Cargoes of Scottish goods went out in great quantity,
in exchange for colonial products brought in. According to Defoe,
‘several ships were laden for Virginia and Barbadoes the very first
year after the Union.’[399]
We get a striking idea of the small scale on which the earlier
commercial efforts were conducted, from a fact noted by Wodrow, as
to a loss made by the Glasgow merchants in the autumn of 1709. ‘In
the beginning of this month [November],’ says he, ‘Borrowstounness
and Glasgow have suffered very much by the fleet going to Holland,
its being taken by the French. It’s said that in all there is about eighty
thousand pounds sterling lost there, whereof Glasgow has lost ten
thousand pounds. I wish trading persons may see the language of
such a providence. I am sure the Lord is remarkably frowning upon
our trade, in more respects than one, since it was put in the room of
religion, in the late alteration of our constitution.’[400]
When one thinks of the present superb wealth and commercial
distinction of the Queen of the West, it is impossible to withhold a
smile at Wodrow’s remarks on its loss of ten thousand pounds. Yet
the fact is, that up to this time Glasgow had but a petty trade, chiefly
in sugar, herrings, and coarse woollen wares. Its tobacco-trade, the
origin of its grandeur, is understood to date only from 1707, and it
was not till 1718 that Glasgow sent any vessel belonging to itself
across the Atlantic. Sir John Dalrymple, writing shortly before 1788,
says: ‘I once asked the late Provost Cochrane of Glasgow, who was
eminently wise, and who has been a merchant there for seventy
years, to what causes he imputed the sudden rise of Glasgow. He said
it was all owing to four young men of talents and spirit, who started
at one time in business, and whose success gave example to the rest.
The four had not ten thousand pounds amongst them when they
began.’[401]
Defoe tells us that, within little more than 1708.
a year after the Union, Scotland felt the
benefit of the liberation of her commerce in one article to a most
remarkable extent. In that time, she sent 170,000 bolls of grain into
England, besides a large quantity which English merchants bought
up and shipped directly off for Portugal. The hardy little cattle of her
pastures, which before the Union had been sent in large droves into
England, being doubtless the principal article represented in the two
hundred thousand pounds which Scotland was ascertained to obtain
annually from her English customers, were now transmitted in still
larger numbers, insomuch that men of birth and figure went into the
trade. Even a Highland gentleman would think it not beneath him to
engage in so lucrative a traffic, however much in his soul he might
despise the Saxons whose gluttony he considered himself as
gratifying. It has often been told that the Honourable Patrick Ogilvie,
whom the reader has already seen engaged in a different career of
activity, took up the cattle-trade, and was soon after remonstrated
with by his brother, the Earl of Seafield, who, as Chancellor of
Scotland, had been deeply concerned in bringing about the Union.
The worthy scion of nobility drily remarked in answer: ‘Better sell
nowte than sell nations.’[402]
A sketch given of a cattle-fair at Crieff in 1723 by an intelligent
traveller, shews that the trade continued to prosper. ‘There were,’
says he, ‘at least thirty thousand cattle sold there, most of them to
English drovers, who paid down above thirty thousand guineas in
ready money to the Highlanders; a sum they had never before seen.
The Highland gentlemen were mighty civil, dressed in their slashed
waistcoats, a trousing (which is, breeches and stockings of one piece
of striped stuff), with a plaid for a cloak, and a blue bonnet. They
have a poniard knife and fork in one sheath, hanging at one side of
their belt, their pistol at the other, and their snuff-mill before; with a
great broadsword by their side. Their attendance was very numerous,
all in belted plaids, girt like women’s petticoats down to the knee;
their thighs and half of the leg all bare. They had also each their
broadsword and poniard, and spake all Irish, an unintelligible
language to the English. However, these poor creatures hired
themselves out for a shilling a day, to drive the cattle to England, and
to return home at their own charge.’[403]
Previous to the Union, the Customs and 1708. May 1.
Excise of Scotland were farmed respectively
at £30,000 and £35,000 per annum,[404] which, after every
allowance is made for smuggling, must be admitted as indicative of a
very restricted commercial system, and a simple and meagre style of
living on the part of the people. At the Union, the British government
took the Customs and Excise of Scotland into its own hands, placing
them severally under commissions, partly composed of Englishmen,
and also sending English officers of experience down to Scotland, to
assist in establishing proper arrangements for collection. We learn
from Defoe that all these new fiscal arrangements were unpopular.
The anti-union spirit delighted in proclaiming them as the outward
symptoms of that English tyranny to which poor Scotland had been
sold. Smuggling naturally flourished, for it became patriotic to cheat
the English revenue-officers. The people not only assisted and
screened the contrabandist, but if his goods chanced to be captured,
they rose in arms to rescue them. Owing to the close of the French
trade, the receiving of brandy became a favourite and flourishing
business. It was alleged that, when a Dutch fleet approached the
Scottish shores some months after the Union, several thousands of
small casks of that liquor were put ashore, with hardly any effort at
concealment.
Assuming the Excise as a tolerably fair index to the power of a
people to indulge in what they feel as comforts and luxuries, the
progress of this branch of the public revenue may be esteemed as a
history of wealth in Scotland during the remarkable period following
upon the Union. The summations it gives us are certainly of a kind
such as no Scotsman of the reign of Queen Anne, adverse or friendly
to the incorporation of the two countries, could have dreamed of.
The items in the account of the first year ending at May 1, 1708, are
limited to four—namely, for beer, ale, and vinegar, £43,653; spirits,
£901; mum,[405] £50; fines and forfeitures, £58; giving—when £6350
for salaries, and some other deductions, were allowed for—a net total
of £34,898, as a contribution to the revenue of the country.
The totals, during the next eleven years, go on thus: £41,096,
£37,998, £46,795, £51,609, £61,747, £46,979, £44,488, £45,285—
this refers to the year of the Rebellion— 1708.
£48,813, £46,649, £50,377. On this last
sum the charges of management amounted to £15,400. After this,
the total net produce of the Excise, exclusive of malt, never again
came up to fifty thousand pounds, till the year 1749. The malt tax,
which was first imposed in 1725, then amounted to £22,627, making
the entire Excise revenue of Scotland in the middle of the eighteenth
century no more than £75,987. It is to be feared that increase of
dexterity and activity in the smuggler had some concern in keeping
down these returns at so low an amount;[406] yet when large
allowance is made on that score, we are still left to conclude that the
means of purchasing luxuries remained amongst our people at a very
humble point.
I am informed by a gentleman long connected with the Excise
Board in Scotland, that the books exhibited many curious indications
of the simplicity, as well as restrictedness, of all monetary affairs as
relating to our country in the reigns of Anne and the first George.
According to a recital which he has been kind enough to
communicate in writing, ‘The remittances were for the most part
made in coin, and various entries in the Excise accounts shew that
what were called broad pieces frequently formed a part of the
moneys sent. The commissioners were in the habit of availing
themselves of the opportunity of persons of rank travelling to
London, to make them the bearers of the money; and it is a curious
historical fact, that the first remittance out of the Excise duties,
amounting to £20,000, was sent by the Earl of Leven, who delivered
£19,000 of the amount at the proper office in London, retaining the
other thousand pounds for his trouble and risk in the service. As the
Board in Scotland could only produce to their comptroller a voucher
for the sum actually delivered in London, he could not allow them
credit for more. The £1000 was therefore placed “insuper” upon the
accounts, and so remained for several years; until at last a warrant
was issued by the Treasury, authorising the sum to be passed to the
credit of the commissioners.’
After the middle of the century, the progress is such as to shew
that, whether by the removal of repressive influences, or the
imparting of some fresh spring of energy, the means of the people
were at length undergoing a rapid increase. In 1761, including part of
the first year of George III., the net total 1708.
Excise revenue had sprung up to £100,985.
It included taxes on glass (£1151), candles (£6107), leather (£8245),
soap and paper (£2992), and wheel-carriages (£2308). The total had,
however, receded fully fourteen thousand pounds by 1775. After that
time, war increased the rate of taxation, and we therefore need not
be surprised to find the Scottish Excise producing £200,432 in 1781.
In 1790, when Robert Burns honoured this branch of the revenue by
taking an office in it, it had reached but to the comparatively
insignificant sum of £331,117. In 1808, being the hundredth year of
its existence, it yielded £1,793,430, being rather more than fifty-one
times its produce during the first year.[407]

The Duke of Argyle resigning his place as June 1.

an extraordinary Lord of Session, in order
to follow his charge in the army, his younger brother, the Earl of Ilay,
succeeded him, though under twenty-five years of age; not
apparently that he might take part in the decisions of the bench, but
rather that he might be a learner there, it ‘being,’ says Fountainhall,
‘the best school for the nobility to learn that is in Europe.’

The election of a knight to represent June 26.

Ross-shire in the British parliament took
place at Fortrose, under the presidency of the sheriff, Hugh Rose, of
Kilravock. There was much dissension in the county, and the sheriff,
whose son was elected, had probably reasons of his own for
appointing the last day of the week for the ceremony. This, however,
having led to travelling on Sunday, was taken into consideration by
the synod some months later, as a breach of decorum on the part of
the sheriff, who consequently received a letter from one of their
number who had been appointed to administer their censure. It set
forth how, even if the meeting had been dissolved on the Saturday
evening, many could not have got home without breaking the fourth
commandment; but Kilravock had caused worse than this, for, by
making the meeting late in the day, he had ‘occasioned the affair to
be protracted till the Sabbath began more than to dawn [two
o’clock],’ and there had been ‘gross disorders,’ in consequence of late
drinking in taverns. ‘Some,’ says the document, ‘who were in your
own company, are said to have sung, shott, 1708.
and danced in their progress to the ferry,
without any check or restraint, as if they meant to spit in the face of
all sacred and civil laws,’ The synod had found it impossible to keep
silence and allow such miscarriages to remain unreproved.
It is to be feared that Kilravock was little benefited by their
censure, as he left the paper docketed in his repositories as ‘a comical
synodical rebuke.’[408]

That remarkable property of human Aug. 18.

nature—the anxiety everybody is under that
all other people should be virtuous—had worked itself out in sundry
famous acts of parliament, general assembly, and town-council,
throughout our history subsequent to the Reformation. There was an
act of Queen Mary against adultery, and several of Charles II. against
profaneness, drunkenness, and other impurities of life. There was
not one of William and Mary for the enforcement of the fifth
commandment; but the general principle operated in their reign very
conspicuously nevertheless, particularly in regard to profaneness and
profanation of the Lord’s Day. King William had also taken care in
1698 to issue a proclamation containing an abbreviate of all the acts
against immorality, and in which that of Charles II. against cursing
and beating of parents was certainly not overlooked, as neither were
those against adultery. So far had the anxiety for respectable conduct
in others gone in the present reign, that sheriffs and magistrates
were now enjoined by proclamation to hold courts, once a month at
least, for taking notice of vice and immorality, fining the guilty, and
rewarding informers; moreover, all naval and military officers were
ordered to exemplify the virtues for the sake of those under them,
and, above all, see that the latter duly submitted themselves to kirk
discipline.
An act of the town-council of Edinburgh ‘anent prophaneness,’ in
August 1693, threatened a rigorous execution of all the public
statutes regarding immoral conduct, such as swearing, sitting late in
taverns, and desecration of the Lord’s Day. It strictly prohibited all
persons within the city and suburbs ‘to brew, or to work any other
handiwork, on the Lord’s Day, or to be found on the streets, standing
or walking idly, or to go in company or vague to the Castlehill [the
only open space then within the city walls], 1708.
public yards, or fields.’ It discharged all
going to taverns on that day, unseasonably or unnecessarily, and
forbade ‘all persons to bring in water from the wells to houses in
greater quantities than single pints.’ By another act in 1699, tavern-
keepers were forbidden to have women for servants who had not
heretofore been of perfectly correct conduct. All these denunciations
were renewed in an act of February 1701, in which, moreover, there
was a severe threat against barbers who should shave or trim any one
on Sunday, and against all who should be found on that day carrying
periwigs, clothes, or other apparel through the streets.
Not long after this, the Edinburgh council took into their
consideration three great recent calamities—namely, the fire in the
Kirk-heugh in February 1700; another fire ‘which happened on the
north side of the Land market, about mid-day upon the 28th of
October 1701, wherein several men, and women, and children were
consumed in the flames, and lost by the fall of ruinous walls;’ and
finally, ‘that most tremendous and terrible blowing up of gunpowder
in Leith, upon the 3d of July last;’ and, reflecting on these things as
tokens of God’s wrath, came to the resolution, ‘to be more watchful
over our hearts and ways than formerly, and each of us in our several
capacities to reprove vice with zeal and prudence, and promote the
execution of the laws for punishing the vicious.’
All originality is taken from a notorious parliamentary enactment
of our time by a council act of April 1704, wherein, after reference to
the great decay of virtue and piety, and an acknowledgment that ‘all
manner of scandals and immoralities do daily abound,’ it is ordered
that taverners, under strong penalties, shall shut at ten o’clock at
night, all persons harbouring there at a later hour to be likewise
punished.
Inordinate playing at cards and dice in taverns is instanced in a
council act of about the same period, as one of the most flagrant vices
of the time.
It is to be understood that the discipline of the church over the
morals of congregations was at the same time in full vigour, although
not now fortified by a power of excommunication, inferring loss of
civil rights, as had been the case before the Revolution. Much was
done in this department by fines, proportioned to the quality of
offenders, and for the application of these to charitable uses there
was a lay-officer, styled the Kirk-treasurer, who naturally became a
very formidable person. The poems of 1708.
Ramsay and others during the earlier half of
the eighteenth century are full of waggish allusions to the terrible
powers of even the ‘man’ or servant of the Kirk-treasurer; and in a
parody of the younger Ramsay on the Integer Vitæ of Horace, this
personage is set forth as the analogue of the Sabine wolf:
‘For but last Monday, walking at noon-day,
Conning a ditty, to divert my Betty,
By me that sour Turk (I not frighted) our Kirk-
Treasurer’s man passed.

And sure more horrid monster in the Torrid

Zone cannot be found, sir, though for snakes renowned, sir;
Nor does Czar Peter’s empire boast such creatures,
Of bears the wet-nurse.’[409]
 Burt, who, as an English stranger, viewed the moral police of
Scotland with a curious surprise, broadly asserts that the Kirk-
treasurer employed spies to track out and report upon private
individuals; so that ‘people lie at the mercy of villains who would
perhaps forswear themselves for sixpence.’ Sometimes, a brother and
sister, or a man and his wife, walking quietly together, would find
themselves under the observation of emissaries of the Kirk-treasurer.
Burt says he had known the town-guard in Edinburgh under arms
for a night besetting a house into which two persons had been seen
to enter. He at the same time remarks the extreme anxiety about
Sabbath observance. It seemed as if the Scotch recognised no other
virtue. ‘People would startle more at the humming or whistling of a
tune on a Sunday, than if anybody should tell them you had ruined a
family.’[410]
It must have been a great rejoicement to the gay people, when a
Kirk-treasurer—as we are told by Burt[411]—‘having a round sum of
money in his keeping, the property of the kirk, marched off with the
cash, and took his neighbour’s wife along with him to bear him
company and partake of the spoil.’
The very imperfect success of acts and statutes for improving the
habits of the people, is strongly hinted at by their frequent repetition
or renewal. We find it acknowledged by the Town Council of
Edinburgh, in June 1709, that the Lord’s Day is still ‘profaned by
people standing on the streets, and vaguing to fields and gardens,
and to the Castlehill; also by standing idle gazing out at windows,
and children, apprentices, and other 1708.
[412]
servants playing on the streets.’

James Stirling of Keir, Archibald Seton of Nov. 22.

Touch, Archibald Stirling of Carden,
Charles Stirling of Kippendavie, and Patrick Edmondstone of
Newton, were tried for high treason in Edinburgh, on the ground of
their having risen in arms in March last, in connection with the
French plan of invasion, and marched about for several days,
encouraging others to rise in like manner, and openly drinking the
health of the Pretender. Considering the openness of this treason, the
charges against the five gentlemen were remarkably ill supported by
evidence, the only witnesses being David Fenton, a tavern-keeper at
Dunkeld; John Macleran, ‘change-keeper’ at Bridge of Turk; and
Daniel Morison and Peter Wilson, two servants of the Laird of Keir.
These persons were all free to testify that the gentlemen carried
swords and pistols, which few people travelled without in that age;
but as for treasonable talk, or drinking of treasonable healths, their
memories were entirely blank. Wilson knew of no reason for Keir
leaving his own house but dread of being taken up on suspicion by
the soldiers in Stirling Castle. A verdict of Not Proven unavoidably
followed.[413]
It has been constantly remembered since in Keir’s family, that as
he was riding home after the trial, with his servant behind him—
probably Wilson—he turned about, and asked from mere curiosity,
how it came to pass that his friend had forgotten so much of what
passed at their parade for the Chevalier in March last, when the man
responded: ‘I ken very weel what you mean, laird; but my mind was
clear to trust my saul to the mercy o’ Heaven, rather than your
honour’s body to the mercy o’ the Whigs.’

Sir James Hall of Dunglass was Nov.

proprietor of a barony called Old Cambus.
Within it was a ‘room’ or small piece of land belonging to Sir Patrick
Home of Renton, a member of a family of whose hotness of blood we
have already seen some evidences. To save a long roundabout, it had
been the custom for the tenants of the ‘room’ to drive peats from
Coldingham Muir through the Old Cambus grounds, but only on
sufferance, and when the corn was off the 1708.
fields, nor even then without a quart of ale
to make matters pleasant with Sir James’s tenants. Some dispute
having now arisen between the parties, the tenant of Headchester
forbade Sir Patrick Home’s people to pass through his farm any more
with their peats; and they, on the other hand, determined that they
should go by that short passage as usual. The winter stock of fuel
being now required, the time had come for making good their
assumed right. Mr John Home, eldest son of Sir Patrick,
accompanied the carts, with a few servants to assist in making way. A
collision took place, attended with much violence on both sides, but
with no exhibition of weapons that we hear of, excepting Mr John’s
sword, which, he alleged, he did not offer to draw till his horse had
been ‘beat in the face with a great rung [stick].’ The affair was
nevertheless productive of serious consequences, for a blacksmith
was trod to death, and several persons were hurt. Had it happened
eighty years earlier, there would have been both swords and pistols
used, and probably a dozen people would have been killed.
The justices of the peace for Berwickshire took up the matter, and
imposed a fine of fifty pounds upon Mr John Home, as the person
chiefly guilty of the riot. He appealed to the Court of Session, setting
forth several objections to the sentence. The Earl of Marchmont,
whose daughter had married Sir James Hall, and two other members
of the justice-court, ought to be held as disqualified by affinity to sit
in judgment in the case. To this it was answered, that Sir James was
not the complainer, and his lady was dead. Home then alleged a right
to the passage. It was shewn, on the other hand, that there never had
been a passage save by tolerance and on consideration of the quart of
ale; and though it had been otherwise, he ought to have applied to
the magistrates, and not taken the law into his own hands: ‘however
one enters into possession, though cast in with a sling-stone, yet he
must be turned out by order of law. The Lords would not hear of
reversing the award of the justices; but they reduced the fine to thirty
pounds.’[414]

The family of the antiquary, Sir James 1709. Mar.

Balfour, to whom we owe the preservation
of so many historical manuscripts, appears to have been a very
unfortunate one. We have seen that his youngest son and successor,
Sir Robert, was slaughtered in the reign of 1709.
[415]
Charles II. by M‘Gill of Rankeillour. The
head of a succeeding generation of the family, Sir Michael Balfour,
was a quiet country gentleman, with a wife and seven children,
residing at the semi-castellated old manor-house, which we now see
standing a melancholy ruin, in a pass through the Fife hills near
Newburgh. He appears to have had debts; but we do not anywhere
learn that they were of serious extent, and we hear of nothing else to
his disadvantage. One day in this month, Sir Michael rode forth at an
early hour ‘to visit some friends and for other business,’ attended by
a servant, whom, on his return home, he despatched on an errand to
Cupar, telling him he would be home before him. From that hour,
Denmill was never again seen. He was searched for in the
neighbourhood. Inquiries were made for him in the towns at a
distance. There were even advertisements inserted in London and
continental newspapers, offering rewards for any information that
might enable his friends to ascertain his fate. All in vain. ‘There were
many conjectures about him,’ says a contemporary judge of the Court
of Session, ‘for some have been known to retire and go abroad upon
melancholy and discontent; others have been said to be transported
and carried away by spirits; a third set have given out they were lost,
to cause their creditors compound, as the old Lord Belhaven was said
to be drowned in Solway Sands, and so of Kirkton, yet both of them
afterwards appeared. The most probable opinion was, that Denmill
and his horse had fallen under night into some deep coal-pit, though
these were also searched which lay in his way home.’ At the distance
of ten months from his disappearance, his wife applied to the Court
of Session, setting forth that her husband’s creditors were ‘falling
upon his estate, and beginning to use diligence,’ and she could not
but apprehend serious injury to the means of the family, though
these far exceeded the debts, unless a factor were appointed. We
learn that the court could better have interposed if the application
had come from the creditors; but, seeing ‘the case craved some pity
and compassion,’ they appointed a factor for a year, to manage the
estate for both creditors and relict, hoping that, before that time
elapsed, it would be ascertained whether Denmill were dead or alive.
[416]

The year passed, and many more years after it, without clearing up
the mystery. We find no trace of further legal proceedings regarding
the missing gentleman, his family, or property. The fact itself
remained green in the popular 1709.
remembrance, particularly in the district to
which Sir Michael belonged. In November 1724, the public curiosity
was tantalised by a story published on a broadside, entitled Murder
will Out, and professing to explain how the lost gentleman had met
his death. The narrative was said to proceed on the death-bed
confession of a woman who had, in her infancy, seen Sir Michael
murdered by her parents, his tenants, in order to evade a debt which
they owed him, and of which he had called to crave payment on the
day of his disappearance. Stabbing him with his own sword as he sat
at their fireside, they were said to have buried his body and that of
his horse, and effectually concealed their guilt while their own lives
lasted. Now, it was said, their daughter, who had involuntarily
witnessed a deed she could not prevent, had been wrought upon to
disclose all the particulars, and these had been verified by the finding
of the bones of Sir Michael, which were now transferred to the
sepulchre of his family. But this story was merely a fiction trafficking
on the public curiosity. On its being alluded to in the Edinburgh
Evening Courant as an actual occurrence, ‘the son and heir of the
defunct Sir Michael’ informed the editor of its falsity, which was also
acknowledged by the printer of the statement himself; and pardon
was craved of the honourable family and their tenants for putting it
into circulation. On making inquiry in the district, I have become
satisfied that the disappearance of this gentleman from the field of
visible life was never explained, as it now probably never will be. In
time, the property was bought by a neighbouring gentleman, who did
not require to use the mansion as his residence. Denmill Castle
accordingly fell out of order, and became a ruin. The fathers of
people still living thereabouts remembered seeing the papers of the
family—amongst which were probably some that had belonged to the
antiquarian Sir James—scattered in confusion about a garret
pervious to the elements, under which circumstances they were
allowed to perish.

There was at this time a dearth of victual May.

in Scotland, and it was considered to be
upon the increase. The magistrates and justices of Edinburgh
arranged means for selling meal in open market, though in quantities
not exceeding a firlot, at twelve shillings Scots per peck. They also
ordered all possessors of grain to have it thrashed out and brought to
market before the 20th of May, reserving none to themselves, and
forbade, on high penalties, any one to buy 1709.
[417]
up grain upon the road to market.
A well-disposed person offered in print an expedient for
preventing the dearth of victual. He discommended the fixing of a
price at market, for when this plan was tried in the last dearth,
farmers brought only some inferior kind of grain to market, ‘so that
the remedy was worse than the disease.’ Neither could he speak in
favour of the plan of the French king—namely, the confiscating of all
grain remaining after harvest—for it had not succeeded in France,
and would still less suit a country where the people were accustomed
to more liberty. He suggested the prohibition of exportation; the
recommending possessors of grain to sell it direct to the people,
instead of victual-mongers; and the use of strict means for fining all
who keep more than a certain quantity in reserve. This writer
thought that the corn was in reality not scarce; all that was needed
was, to induce possessors of the article to believe it to be best for
their interest to sell immediately.[418]

There is an ancient and well-known July 21.

privilege, still kept up, in connection with
the palace and park of Holyroodhouse, insuring that a debtor
otherwise than fraudulent, and who has not the crown for his
creditor, cannot have diligence executed against him there;
consequently, may live there in safety from his creditors. At this
time, the privilege was taken advantage of by Patrick Haliburton,
who was in debt to the extraordinary amount of nearly £3000
sterling, and who was believed to have secretly conveyed away his
goods.
It being also part of the law of Scotland that diligence cannot be
proceeded with on Sunday, the Abbey Lairds, as they were jocularly
called, were enabled to come forth on that day and mingle in their
wonted society.
It pleased Patrick Haliburton to come to town one Sunday, and call
upon one of his creditors named Stewart, in order to treat with him
regarding some proposed accommodation of the matters that stood
between them. Mr Stewart received Patrick with apparent kindness,
asked him to take supper, and so plied his hospitality as to detain
him till past twelve o’clock, when, as he was leaving the house, a
messenger appeared with a writ of caption, and conducted him to
prison. Patrick considered himself as 1709.
trepanned, and presented a complaint to
the Court of Session, endeavouring to shew that a caption, of which
all the preparatory steps had been executed on the Sunday, was the
same as if it had been executed on the Sunday itself; that he had been
treacherously dealt with; and that he was entitled to protection
under the queen’s late indemnity. The Lords repelled the latter plea,
but ‘allowed trial to be taken of the time of his being apprehended,
and the manner how he was detained, or if he offered to go back to
the Abbey, and was enticed to stay and hindered to go out.’[419] The
termination of the affair does not appear.
A case with somewhat similar features occurred in 1724. Mrs Dilks
being a booked inmate of the Abbey sanctuary, one of her creditors
formed a design of getting possession of her person. He sent a
messenger-at-law, who, planting himself in a tavern within the
privileged ground, but close upon its verge, sent for the lady to come
and speak with him. She, obeying, could not reach the house without
treading for a few paces beyond ‘the girth,’ and the messenger’s
concurrents took the opportunity to lay hold of her. This, however,
was too much to be borne by a fairplay-loving populace. The very
female residents of the Abbey rose at the news, and, attacking the
party, rescued Mrs Dilks, and bore her back in triumph within the
charmed circle.[420]

The Rev. James Greenshields, an Irish curate, but of Scottish birth

and ordination—having received this rite at the hands of the deposed
Bishop of Ross in 1694—set up a meeting-house in a court near the
Cross of Edinburgh, where he introduced the English liturgy, being
the first time a prayer-book had been publicly presented in Scotland
since the Jenny Geddes riot of July 1637. Greenshields was to be
distinguished from the nonjurant Scottish Episcopalian clergy, for he
had taken the oath of abjuration (disclaiming the ‘Pretender’), and he
prayed formally for the queen; but he was perhaps felt to be, on this
account, only the more dangerous to the Established Church. It was
necessary that something should be done to save serious people from
the outrage of having a modified idolatry practised so near them. The
first effort consisted of a process raised by the landlord of the house
against Mr Greenshields, in the Dean of 1709.
Guild’s court, on account of his having used
part of the house, which he took for a dwelling, as a chapel, and for
that purpose broken down certain partitions. The Dean readily
ordained that the house should be restored to its former condition.
Mr Greenshields having easily procured accommodation elsewhere,
it became necessary to try some other method for extinguishing the
nuisance. A petition to the presbytery of Edinburgh, craving their
interference, was got up and signed by two or three hundred persons
in a few hours. The presbytery, in obedience to their call, cited Mr
Greenshields to appear before them. He declined their jurisdiction,
and they discharged him from continuing to officiate, under high
pains and penalties.
Mr Greenshields having persisted, next Sep.
Sunday, in reading prayers to his
congregation, the magistrates, on the requirement of the presbytery,
called him before them, and formally demanded that he should
discontinue his functions in their city. Daniel Defoe, who could so
cleverly expose the intolerance of the Church of England to the
dissenters, viewed an Episcopalian martyrdom with different
feelings. He tells us that Greenshields conducted himself with
‘haughtiness’ before the civic dignitaries—what his own people of
course regarded as a heroic courage. He told them positively that he
would not obey them; and accordingly, next Sunday, he read the
service as usual in his obscure chapel. Even now, if we are to believe
Defoe, the magistrates would not have committed him, if he had
been modest in his recusancy; but, to their inconceivable disgust,
this insolent upstart actually appeared next day at the Cross, among
the gentlemen who were accustomed to assemble there as in an
Exchange, and thus seemed to brave their authority! For its
vindication, they were, says Defoe, ‘brought to an absolute necessity
to commit him;’ and they committed him accordingly to the
Tolbooth.
Here he lay till the beginning of November, when, the Court of
Session sitting down, he presented a petition, setting forth the
hardship of his case, seeing that there was no law forbidding any one
to read the English liturgy, and he had fully qualified to the civil
government by taking the necessary oaths. It was answered for the
magistrates, that ‘there needs no law condemning the English
service, for the introducing the Presbyterian worship explodes it as
inconsistent,’ and the statute had only promised that the oath-taking
should protect ministers who had been in possession of charges. ‘The
generality of the Lords,’ says Fountainhall, 1709.
[421]
‘regretted the man’s case;’ but they
refused to set him at liberty, unless he would engage to ‘forbear the
English service.’ Amongst his congregation there was a considerable
number of English people, who had come to Edinburgh as officers of
Customs and Excise. It must have bewildered them to find what was
so much venerated in their own part of the island, a subject of such
wrathful hatred and dread in this.
Greenshields, continuing a prisoner in the Tolbooth, determined,
with the aid of friends, to appeal to the House of Lords against the
decision of the Court of Session. Such appeals had become possible
only two years ago by the Union, and they were as yet a novelty in
Scotland. The local authorities had never calculated on such a step
being taken, and they were not a little annoyed by it. They persisted,
nevertheless, in keeping the clergyman in his loathsome prison, till,
after a full year, an order of the House of Lords came for his release.
Meanwhile, other troubles befell the church, for a Tory ministry
came into power, who, like the queen herself, did not relish seeing
the Episcopalian clergy and liturgy treated contumeliously in
Scotland. The General Assembly desired to have a fast on account of
‘the crying sins of the land, irreligion, popery, many errors and
delusions;’ and they chafed at having to send for authority to
Westminster, where it was very grudgingly bestowed. It seemed as if
they had no longer a barrier for the protection of that pure faith
which it was the happy privilege of Scotland, solely of all nations on
the face of the earth, to enjoy. Their enemies, too, well saw the
advantage that had been gained over them, and eagerly supported
Greenshields in his tedious and expensive process, which ended
(March 1711) in the reversal of the Session’s decision. ‘It is a tacit
rescinding,’ says Wodrow, ‘of all our laws for the security of our
worship, and that unhappy man [an Irish curate of fifteen pounds a
year, invited to Edinburgh on a promise of eighty] has been able to
do more for the setting up of the English service in Scotland than
King Charles the First was able to do.’

The Lords of Session decided this day on Nov. 9.

a critical question, involving the use of a
word notedly of uncertain meaning. John Purdie having committed
an act of immorality on which a parliamentary act of 1661 imposed a
penalty of a hundred pounds in the case of 1709.
‘a gentleman,’ the justices of peace fined
him accordingly, considering him a gentleman within the
construction of the act, as being the son of ‘a heritor,’ or land-
proprietor. ‘When charged for payment by Thomas Sandilands,
collector of these fines, he suspended, upon this ground that the fine
was exorbitant, in so far as he was but a small heritor, and, as all
heritors are not gentlemen, so he denied that he had the least
pretence to the title of a gentleman. The Lords sustained the reason
of suspension to restrict the fine to ten pounds Scots, because the
suspender had not the face or air of a gentleman: albeit it was
alleged by the charger [Sandilands] that the suspender’s
profligateness and debauchery, the place of the country where he
lives, and the company haunted by him, had influenced his mien.’[422]

An anonymous gentleman of Scotland, writing to the Earl of

Seafield, on the improvement of the salmon-fishing in Scotland,
informs us how the fish were then, as now, massacred in their
pregnant state, by country people. ‘I have known,’ he says, ‘a fellow
not worth a groat kill with a spear in one night’s time a hundred
black fish or kipper, for the most part full of rawns unspawned.’ He
adds: ‘Even a great many gentlemen, inhabitants by the rivers, are
guilty of the same crimes,’ little reflecting on ‘the prodigious treasure
thus miserably dilapidated.’
Notwithstanding these butcheries, he tells us that no mean profit
was then derived from the salmon-fishing in Scotland; he had known
from two to three thousand barrels, worth about six pounds sterling
each, exported in a single year. ‘Nay, I know Sir James Calder of
Muirton alone sold to one English merchant a thousand barrels in
one year’s fishing.’ He consequently deems himself justified in
estimating the possible product of the salmon-fishing, if rightly
protected and cultivated, at forty thousand barrels, yielding
£240,000 sterling, per annum.[423]

At Inchinnan, in Renfrewshire, there fell 1710. Feb.

out a ‘pretty peculiar accident.’ One Robert
Hall, an elder, and reputed as an estimable man, falling into debt
with his landlord, the Laird of Blackston, was deprived of all he had,
and left the place. Two months before this date, he returned secretly,
and being unable to live contentedly 1710.
without going to church, he disguised himself for that purpose in
women’s clothes. It was his custom to go to Eastwood church, but
curiosity one day led him to his own old parish-church of Inchinnan.
As he crossed a ferry, he was suspected by the boatman and a beadle
of being a man in women’s clothes, and traced on to the church. The
minister, apprised of the suspicion, desired them not to meddle with
him; but on a justice of peace coming up, he was brought forward for
examination. He readily owned the fact, and desired to be taken to
the minister, who, he said, would know him. The minister protected
him for the remainder of the day, that he might escape the rudeness
of the mob; and on the ensuing day, he was taken to Renfrew, and
liberated, at the intercession of his wife’s father.[424]

The General Assembly passed an act, May.

declaring the marriage of Robert Hunter, in
the bounds of the presbytery of Biggar, with one John [Joan]
Dickson to be incestuous, the woman having formerly been the
mother of a child, the father of which was grand-uncle to her present
husband. The act discharged the parties from remaining united
under pain of highest censure.
The church kept up long after this period a strict discipline
regarding unions which involved real or apparent relationship. In
May 1730, we find John Baxter, elder in Tealing parish, appealing
against a finding of the synod, that his marriage with his deceased
wife’s brother’s daughter’s daughter, was incestuous. Two years later,
the General Assembly had under its attention a case, which, while
capable of being stated in words, is calculated to rack the very brain
of whoever would try to realise it in his conceptions. A Carrick man,
named John M‘Taggart, had unluckily united himself to a woman
named Janet Kennedy, whose former husband, Anthony M‘Harg,
‘was a brother to John M‘Taggart’s grandmother, which
grandmother was said to be natural daughter of the said Anthony
M‘Harg’s father!’ The presbytery of Ayr took up the case, and
M‘Taggart was defended by a solicitor, in a paper full of derision and
mockery at the law held to have been offended; ‘a new instance,’ says
Wodrow,’ of the unbounded liberty that lawyers take.’[425] The
presbytery having condemned the marriage as incestuous, M‘Taggart
appealed in wonted form to the synod, which affirmed the former