Parliament, Politics and Policy in Britain and Ireland, c.1680 – 1832: Essays in Honour of D.W. Hayton

Parliament, Politics and Policy in Britain and Ireland, c.1680–1832 employs a variety of methodologies to expand our understanding of British and Irish parliamentary history from the exclusion crisis to the Great Reform Act. Uniting the scholarship of experts in the field with the voices of younger historians, the essays cast new light on familiar themes and also introduce previously unexplored issues. Using thematic survey, biographical inquiry, specific study, and other methodologies, the contributors discuss key topics and figures of the period. They also utilize the Irish Legislation Database to unearth new details about the history of the pre–Union Irish parliament. The essays on Irish history and parliament include discussions of the centrality of print, the regulation of trade and commerce, and the inauguration of the Hanoverian Succession. The ones on English history examine Pepys, Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Robert Peel, and provide new accounts of the House of Lords and the Excise Crisis, the impact of the West Indies on mid–Georgian elections, and the stimulus to economic development caused by the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Fresh and invigorating in nature, these essays provide a much–needed re–examination and reinterpretation of current perspectives on this period.

Clyve Jones is Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research and has been Editor of Parliamentary History since 1986. Previously he was Reader in Modern History at the University of London and Collection Development Librarian in the Institute of Historical Research. He has published extensively on the history of the House of Lords and of the peerage in the early eighteenth century. His most recent publications include A Short History of Parliament: England, Britain, the United Kingdom, Scotland and Ireland (2009) and British Politics in the Age of Holmes: Geoffrey Holmes′s "British Politics in the Age of Anne" 40 Years On (Wiley, 2009). James Kelly is Cregan Professor of History at St. Patrick’s College, Dublin City University, Ireland. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and of the Irish Manuscripts Commission and currently serves as Editor of Analecta Hibernica and Joint Editor of Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy . He is past–President of the Irish Historical Society and The Eighteenth–Century Ireland Society. He is the author or editor of several books on Irish history, including most recently, Clubs and Societies in Eighteenth–Century Ireland (2010) and Sir Richard Musgrave, 1746–1818: Ultra–Protestant Ideologue (2009).