The Memoirs and Speeches of James, 2nd Earl Waldegrave 17421763 [Paperback]

A standard edition of a classic text, here compared with Waldegrave's speeches and other writings.A classic of eighteenth-century political literature, Wadegraves' Memoirs have an additional significance as a record of the momentous political crisis of 17547, which heralded the break-up of the early Hanoverian party system. This edition sets the Memoirs against a much fuller account of the politics of the 1740s and 50s.A classic of eighteenth-century political literature, Wadegraves' Memoirs have an additional significance as a record of the momentous political crisis of 17547, which heralded the break-up of the early Hanoverian party system. This edition sets the Memoirs against a much fuller account of the politics of the 1740s and 50s.The Memoirs of James, 2nd Earl Waldegrave (171563) rank with those of Horace Walpole and Lord Hervey as classics of eighteenth-century political literature. They have an additional significance as a record of the momentous political crisis of 17547, which heralded the break-up of the early Hanoverian party system and laid the foundations for the pattern of alignments of the last half of the century. Waldegrave's Memoirs, first published in 1821, played a major part in the development of the Whig interpretation of the English past by apparently providing evidence in support of the Holland House thesis of a new royal absolutism, devised at Leicester House in the 1750s and implemented on the accession of George III in 1760. In an important introduction, Dr Clark unravels the nineteenth-century historiographical misconceptions of this problem and shows how Waldegrave's text was misused for polemical Whig purposes.List of illustrations; Preface; List of abbreviations; Textual conventions; Introduction; 1. The court society; 2. The family background; 3. The political career of James, 2nd Earl Waldegrave, 17411763; 4. The publication of the memoirs; 5. The historical influence of the memoirs; 6. The text of the memoirs; Index.