The Four Georges: An Awfully British Kind of Monarchy, 1714-1830
About this ebook
The relationship between this and the role of the monarchy in the British political system requires examination. The bedding down of the Glorious Revolution settlement included the crucial defence against Jacobitism. From then on, a practice of limited government begins to emerge: regular parliaments, frequent elections, and the scrutiny of the press. Adaptations occurred due to the challenges of the American and French revolutions, and the meritocratic ‘monarchies’ of Washington and Napoleon. British monarchy became linked to a more potent imperial nationalism. Wellington, the vanquisher of Napoleon, was never more than a servant of the often-preposterous George IV. How can that be? Crucially, Jeremy Black, with his own inimitable way of extracting the principle from the detail, shows that what materialised was a system that worked.
About the author
Jeremy Black is Emeritus Professor of History at Exeter University. He is a prolific lecturer and writer, the author of over 180 books. Many concern aspects of eighteenth-century British, European and American political, diplomatic and military history but he has also published on the history of the press, cartography, warfare, culture and on the nature and uses of history itself. He sits, or has sat, on the editorial boards of History Today, International History Review, Journal of Military History, and Media History.
