An Enlightenment Statesman in Whig Britain

Lord Shelburne, prime minister in 1782-83, was a profoundly important politician, whose achievements included the negotiation of the peace with the newly-independent United States. He was also unusual in being both a strong supporter of the crown and a man of the enlightenment, with strong connections to an international network of reformers, philosophes and intellectuals, and also an Anglo-Irishman, one of only a few to hold ministerial office in Hanoverian Britain. This book presents a fresh appraisal of this interesting statesman and the world in which he lived. It discusses his political career, his constitutional ideas and the people with whom he shared these ideas, his family including the vibrant social and intellectual life centred on his home at Bowood House, his estates including those in Ireland and his finances, and his religious views and connections. Overall, this new assessment of Shelburne and his context contributes much to recent approaches to understanding eighteenth century aristocracy, gender, Enlightenment, and the four nations of Britain and her empire. Nigel Aston is Reader in Early Modern History in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Leicester. Clarissa Campbell Orr is Reader in Enlightenment, Gender and Court Studies at Anglia Ruskin University.