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"she moved with a simplicity that proved her to be unconscious of the charm which bound the world to her attraction" [Morning Chronicle]: died at 3.30am 1806, Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire

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2021-03-30

John Wilkes' behaviour divided even his most loyal friends. In spring 1769 William Fitzherbert complained:
"I would have gone upon my knees for his pardon... I love him, but in the light he stands I will do as much as any man in England to oppose him"

2 0
2021-03-18

He wasn't the only parliamentarian notable for developing a new dog breed. According to one tradition, the 2nd duke of Newcastle bred his Clumber Spaniels from animals rescued from the French Revolution

2 3
2021-03-04

Wading through an index & struck by successive entries for Robert Walpole:
entertains a large company
description of house & estate
illness of
unpopular (due to the Excise)
mobbed
burnt in effigy
The life of an in 6 movements

3 8
2021-02-23

1689 William III & Mary II were proclaimed King & Queen at the Banqueting House and presented with the Declaration of Rights by the marquess of Halifax as speaker of the House of Lords

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2021-02-13

"that some of our ministers can neither dance nor sing, would not be a reproach to them, if they had but somebody with them that could": guidance on suggesting all political negotiations should conclude with a dance-off?

8 16
2021-02-09

diplomats were human: in 1727 Lord Waldegrave wrote from Paris to his contact back in hoping that his last dispatch "did not show the influence of

3 9
2021-02-05

The death of the 7th earl of Leicester in 1743 resulted in a battle royal between his illegitimate daughter, Anne, & his niece, Elizabeth Perry, the one referred to as 'the Fairy' & the other as 'the Empress of Penshurst'. The Empress won.

0 2
2021-01-15

Yesterday's events in Washington a reminder of how easy it was to infiltrate the porous old palace of
https://t.co/GapxjsPx8L

4 7
2021-01-08

1688 James II reached but rapidly abandoned plans to push his cavalry forward to meet William of Orange as he didn't trust them not to defect. He took to his bed suffering from stress & constant nosebleeds

7 18
2020-11-19

1688 William of Orange made his landing at Torbay. With him was an invasion army numbering between 14,000 & 15,000, including troops from Switzerland, Finland & 200 black soldiers from Dutch plantations in

13 38
2020-11-05

"it is the Duty of a Good Citizen to assist as far as circumstances will allow every individual under sufferance for exertion in the cause of liberty"
Catharine Macaulay to John Wilkes, who was born 1725

2 1
2020-10-29

Beginning to chip away at a new biography, & have been referred from the off to EB Chancellor's Lives of the Rakes. It's going to be a good one...

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2020-09-24

"forced to grapple with a problem far beyond his statesmanship & indeed well-nigh insoluble, his career was one of disaster". Died 1792 former Frederick North, 2nd earl of Guilford, better known as Lord North.

3 6
2020-08-05

Grenville had considered applying for a a few years before going to the Lords, but admitted that he feared it might have "the appearance of putting myself hors de combat. I am not in the same mind about it for any 10 minutes together."

4 6
2020-07-18

1757 Thomas Potter was elected MP for Okehampton, completing the triangular arrangement by which he had left John Wilkes his seat at after Pitt the Elder quit Okehampton for Bath

9 3
2020-07-13

"What can be more necessary... than to set people right in that which most concerns them, their religious & civil liberties & justify the proceedings of the present age by those of the past?"
John Oldmixon, Whig historian, died 1742

3 2
2020-07-09

Died at noon 1816 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, impresario, playwright & MP, whose oratory in was second to none.
His death was "rapidly accelerated by grief, disappointment, & a deep sense of the neglect he experienced."

15 24
2020-07-07

1783 the House of Lords debated the bribery bill. The earl of Sandwich spoke against lambasting it as:
"a bill of absurdities & such as was fraught with much mischief to the constitutional freedom of election"

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2020-06-25

"The liberty of the press is the birth-right of a Briton, and is justly esteemed the firmest bulwark of the liberties of this country". Opening line of John Wilkes's The North Briton No.1 published 1762

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2020-06-05