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’.
What Have Historians Done with Masculinity? Reflections on Five Centuries of British History, circa 1500–1950
I is now over ten years since John Tosh asked the question, “What should historians do with masculinity?” The history of masculinity was then emerging as, and has since become, a burgeoning field of enquiry, with close (although not always uncontested) links with women’s history, gender history, and the history of sexuality. This seemed a good point to take stock of the central themes and questions that have emerged. The articles in this special section survey the findings of historians of masculinity in Britain from the early sixteenth to the late twentieth centuries in order to assess what has been achieved and where the main gaps lie, where the field might be going, and what insights into the relationship between gender and change are yielded by a long-term chronological perspective. The articles that follow originate from a one-day colloquium, held at the University of Sussex in September 2003. Contributors with expertise in a range of different periods were invited, although it was intended that each contribution should overlap chronologically to aid the identification of key themes. Contributors were asked to reflect on four central questions. First, in what ways has masculinity (as both represented and experienced) been defined as a concept and deployed as an analytical category by historians? Second, what methodologies have been employed by historians of masculinity, and how have different approaches influenced