Religion, politics and patronage in the late Hanoverian navy, c.1780–c.1820†
Sir Charles Middleton, Lord Barham (1726–1813), occupies a pivotal place in naval history. His evangelical religiosity is well known, but while considerable attention has been given to how this shaped his administrative reforms, his manipulation of patronage to promote his co-religionists has, until now, been ignored or brushed under the carpet. This article uses contemporary correspondence, diaries and printed works to reconstruct for the first time a powerful nexus that bound Pittite politicians to Wilberforce and his circle, one that spanned parliament, the church, naval administration and the seagoing officer corps. In doing so it throws new light on how evangelicals gained such a strong foothold in late Hanoverian public affairs.
CHRISTIAN IDEALS OF MANLINESS IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURIES*
ABSTRACT Christian ideals of manliness were articulated by writers across the religious spectrum throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At their heart was the shared ideal of the imitation of Christ, an all-encompassing Christian ideal of personhood. Whilst non-partisanship was itself an important ideal, theological differences and disagreements over the strictness of ideals led to accusations that some Christians, attacked as ‘moralists’ or ‘enthusiasts’, undermined or neglected ideals of manliness. At the same time, there were attempts to associate Christian ideals of manliness exclusively with the emerging ‘Evangelical’ party. In the historiography of masculinity in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, Christian ideals have often been marginalized, and, when considered, they have tended to be misconstrued by the adoption of church-party approaches. This review offers a detailed critique of Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall's account of Evangelical ideals of manliness in Family fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850 (1987; rev. edn, 2002). Their notion of distinctive ‘Evangelical’ ideals of manliness does not withstand scrutiny, and the key concepts associated with them, including ‘domesticity’, ‘the calling’, ‘the world’, ‘public’, and ‘private’, demand revision. At the same time, they gave insufficient consideration to ‘solitude’ and ‘charity’.
William Law and Religious Revival: The Reception ofA Serious Call
William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729) was one of the most widely disseminated religious works of the eighteenth century. In this essay, Isabel Rivers explores three main aspects of its history: how it was regarded by those members of the clergy who were profoundly affected by Law but who disagreed with his theology; how it was popularized and altered through abridgments that made it widely available to a very different kind of audience; and how Law and his successors thought devotional books such as this should be read, and to what extent the demands of such reading were inconsistent with a thirst for wider knowledge.