Faction Displayed

Faction Displayed: Reconsidering the Impeachment of Dr. Henry Sacheverell features a collection of essays that examine the turbulent partisan culture during Queen Anne’s reign that ensued as a result of the 1710 parliamentary trial of English clergyman Henry Sacheverell.

• Features several essays originating from a 2010 conference held at the Palace of Westminster to mark the tercentenary of Sacheverell’s impeachment
• Links events in Parliament to the public that was both fascinated and enraged by them
• Explores the nature of the public sphere and critiques Habermas’s notion of it
• Offers a form of cultural parliamentary history and addresses the many forms of partisanship evident in the ‘rage of party’

Acknowledgements

Bibliographical Note

List of Contributors

Introduction: The View from 1710 (MARK KNIGHTS)

1. The Current State of Sacheverell Scholarship (W.A. SPECK)

2. The Spin Doctor: Sacheverell's Trial Speech and Political Performance in the Divided Society (BRIAN COWAN)

3. The ‘End of Censorship’ and the Politics of Toleration, from Locke to Sacheverell (GEOFF KEMP)

4. Sacheverell's Harlots: Non-Resistance on Paper and in Practice (EIRWEN E.C. NICHOLSON)

5. Irish Tories and Victims of Whig Persecution: Sacheverell Fever by Proxy (D.W. HAYTON)

6. Addison's Empire: Whig Conceptions of Empire in the Early 18th Century (STEVE PINCUS)

Note and Documents

7. A Non-Resisting, Passively Obedient Revolution: Lord North and Grey and the Tory Response to the Sacheverell Impeachment (DANIEL SZECHI)

Index

“Faction Displayedtrace[s] the ways in which the controversy was spun … richly documented.” (London Review of Books, 21 August 2014)

Mark Knights is Professor of History at the University of Warwick. His research focuses on political culture in the early modern period. His most recent publication, The Devil in Disguise: Deception, Delusion and Fanaticism in the Early English Enlightenment (2011), includes a chapter about the Sacheverell trial. In 1710, the English clergyman Doctor Henry Sacheverell became embroiled in a celebrated show trial before the House of Lords that developed into one of the greatest controversies of the early 18^th century. Faction Displayed: Reconsidering the Impeachment of Dr. Henry Sacheverell features a collection of essays that closely examine the turbulent partisan culture—and bitter public furore—that ensued as a result of the 1710 parliamentary trial of Dr. Henry Sacheverell. Impeached for sermons that challenged the principles underpinning the Revolution of 1688, Sacheverell had lashed out against fundamental Whig ideas about religious toleration, moderation, and a right to resist tyrants—ideas that precipitated one of the largest printed debates in the first half of the eighteenth century. Readings reveal how Sacheverell’s trial cast a wider net on ways the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ transformed British society, as well as how it provides deeper insights into the character of Britain’s ‘public sphere’.

Faction Displayed offers important new insights into the politics, religion, press, discourse, ideology, economics and imperialism of a critical period in English history. Part 1 covers the theoretical foundations of intercultural sociolinguistic analysis. The articles presented in Part 2 and 3 illustrate the analytical applications of this theoretical framework, and Part 4 focuses the reader on issues relating to intercultural discourse and communication.