The Manuscripts

In the 1880s, when Auguste Molinier[1] produced his edition of the Vita Ludovici, he had access to seven manuscripts that he designated A-G. Henri Waquet[2] in his 1929 edition of the text used an eighth manuscripts adding Manuscript H to Molinier’s seven. Since then, three additional manuscripts that contain copies of the Vita Ludovici, unknown to Waquet have come to light that can be lettered I-L. Of these manuscripts, eight (A, D, E, G, H, I and L) provide a complete text. Four manuscripts (B, C, J and K) are incomplete and only provide fragments of the text. Manuscript F is important in having a text that is significantly different and more detailed in some areas from the other manuscripts especially in relation to the events of 1124.

Manuscript A

Bibliothèque Mazarine: 2013, ancien 543; 266 folios in two columns

This volume consists of 266 leaves written in two columns containing a collection of narrative texts relating to the history of the Papacy and France (Liber Pontificalis, Historia ecclesiatica by Hugh de Fleury, extracts from Gregory of Tour, the Gesta Normannorum of William of Jumieges and fragments from the Chronicle of Adon de Vienne etc.) Molinier saw the manuscript as a sort of universal history since the birth of Christ formed by the juxtaposing of distinctive historical works and attributed it, if not to Suger himself then to his disciples.[3] He appears to base this conclusion, which he recognised was tenuous to Suger’s biographer William’s statement about Suger’s knowledge of and interest in history. The Vita Ludovici is to be found at the end of the manuscript from folio 232. Apart from glosses written during the thirteenth century, it is possible to distinguish the work of two hands. The first copied folios 1-231, probably compiled under the direction of Suger and worked between 1120, the year of Louis VII’s birth until the death of the young Philip in 1131 or at the latest the death of Louis VI in 1137.[4] The second was responsible for the final thirty-five leaves occupied by the work of Suger and worked around 1160-70.[5] The manuscript originated in the abbey of St-Denis[6] and Molinier argued that it was ‘perhaps’ regarded as a ‘first draft of Grandes chroniques de Saint-Denis’ and that the second copyist had access to Suger’s own copy of the Vita Ludovici.[7] This copy of the work of Suger is the oldest and best of the manuscripts and it is probable that all the other manuscripts derive from this work.

Manuscript B

Bibliothèque Nationale, 17546, ancien Notre-Dame 135; 39 folios in two columns; incomplete

This manuscript is structured very like Manuscript A but it is smaller consisting of thirty-nine leaves of which Suger’s text fills up the last twenty. The first part of the manuscript consists of a universal chronicle that stops in 1109 and is made up of passages borrowed from Adon de Vienne, Reginon de Prüm, Aimoin and his continuators. The Vita Ludovici is incomplete and ends in the middle of a sentence in chapter 26 with the words ‘scismaticum Burdinum’ on folio 39. The remainder of the manuscript existed in 1596 when Pithou used the manuscript but it appears to have been lost in the seventeenth century. [8]

The writing is the same throughout the manuscript and it was produced towards the end of the twelfth century. The scribe either used Manuscript A or, more probably a manuscript other than A but very close to it and since lost. He brought to the text some humorous corrections but he also made a significant number of omissions.

Manuscript C

Bibliothèque Nationale, 17657, ancien Notre-Dame 133; 163 folios in two columns; incomplete

This manuscript consists of material on Charlemagne (folios 1-16: Eginard and the Pseudo-Turpin) and events in the history of Normandy and England (folios 17-115: William of Malmesbury Gesta Anglorum and folios 120-158: William of Jumieges Gesta Normannorum). In addition, there are three fragments of the Vita Ludovici on folios 117-119.

· From ‘Guilelmus usui militia’ to ‘materiam’ covering the war between the young Louis and William Rufus and his death in 1100. [9]

· From ‘ad partes Normannorum’ to ‘ulterione’ covering the interview between Henry I and Louis VI at Neaufles. [10]

· From ‘de illustrem Antiochenum’ to ‘vitam amisit’covering the exploits of Bohemond. [11]

These fragments were probably copied in the 1160s. The final fragment of the Vita Ludovici is on folios 158-163 from ‘de venerande memorie’ to ‘stilum replicemus’[12] and examines the visit of Paschal II to France and the quarrel over investitures. This fragment was written by a different scribe after the Lateran Council of 1179.[13] He changed certain of Suger’s phrases and omitted certain words or groups of words.

There are undeniable parallels between Manuscripts C and D in their transcription of the Vita Ludovici. They derive from a common but lost source, similar to A and reproduced exactly in C but badly transcribed in D. The lost source was contemporaneous to Suger but was not his original text.

Manuscript D

Bibliothèque Nationale, 12710, ancien Saint-Germain; 89 folios

This is a very complex manuscript executed in relatively small script by at least nine scribes. The date and provenance are difficult to establish. Palaeographical evidence suggests a date at the end of the first half, or about the middle of the twelfth century. The manuscript gives the impression of a sort of commonplace-book containing a large variety of historiographical and hagiographical texts concerning the history of France. Saint-Denis has been suggested as the place of origins on the basis of its textual links to Manuscript A. However, documents relating to Dinant on folio 83 and a reference to a Liber Lobiensis on folio 32 suggest an origin in the diocese of Liège. In the sixteenth century, the book belonged to the monastery of Saint-Feuillien-du-Rœulx in Belgium and then passed to the library of Saint-German-des-Prés near Paris.

Many of the omissions in Manuscript C are also found in Manuscript D written after 1180. The Vita Ludovici is found in folios 12-25 and is transcribed in its entirety. As in Manuscript A, it forms part of a general history[14]. The scribe of Manuscript D knew Manuscript A and used it for several texts but did not utilise it for Suger’s text. He transcribed it poorly from an alternative manuscript, the same one used by the transcriber of Manuscript C. This is clear from the words and groups of words that are missing in both manuscripts.

Manuscript E

Bibliothèque Nationale, 5925, ancien Colbert 290

Manuscript E consists of dense collection of histories and chronicles concerning the kingdom of France down to 1223. It was produced in the middle of the thirteenth century and was one of the principal sources for the Chroniques françaises de Saint-Denis. The Vita Ludovici is on folios 199-232. Although it has closer links with Manuscript A than Manuscript B, it is arguably based on an intermediate manuscript since lost.

Manuscript F

Bibliothèque Nationale, 5949

Manuscript F exists in two versions. The original manuscript is in the Bibliothèque Mazarine 554, a parchment of 652 pages written for Charles V in the middle of the fourteenth century. There is an excellent copy made in the seventeenth century for André Duchesne. It is a collection of texts, made by a monk from St-Denis for a universal chronicle from 1057 to 1270 and consists of a partial copy of the Chronicle of William de Nangis (second redaction), Henry of Huntingdon Historia Anglorum, the Secreta fidelium of Marino Sanudo and the Vita Ludovici that reveals information found in no other manuscript.

Both Molinier[15] and Waquet[16] spend some time examining Manuscript F. Paul Viollet[17] argued, and Molinier supported this view in his preface that this redaction was produced by Suger himself after he had produced the original text. He argued that Suger had returned to his text and revised it as part of producing a new historical work that was interrupted by his death. Waquet was not convinced by their argument citing the work on O. Holder-Egger[18] who concluded that there was no evidence for a second redaction produced by Suger. Several of the passages cited by Molinier that seemed relevant to new circumstances in reality are little more than rather verbose developments of the original text. Even where there is something new, there is little reason to attribute them directly to Suger. O. Holder-Egger argues that the passage in the Vita Ludovici on the banner of St Denis could not have been the work of an individual living before the fourteenth century.

There may, however, be support for Viollet and Molinier’s view of Manuscript F from Linda Grant.[19] She argues that ‘it is difficult to believe that Suger was not using passages written as events happened; he must have started recording the deeds of the king many years before his subject’s death in 1137, with Louis’ blessing and cooperation.’ She bases this conclusion of the detailed nature of those parts of the text dealing with the early years of Louis’ life. Writing then stopped in the early 1130s, she argues and was taken up again after Louis’ death when Suger added the section on Louis’ lengthy final illness and revised the rest adding extra information, reflections and linking passages. She points to two occasions when ‘the seam shows’: for example, the end of chapter 1 marks the death of William Rufus but in the middle of chapter 16 is a paragraph beginning ‘Prefatus itaque rex Henricus, Guilelmo fratri deliciter succedens’, sections that succeed and complement one another. Whether her sequencing of the writing of Louis’ life is correct, the construction of the work over a long period of time with textual revisions and additions may well be how Suger wrote. If this was the case, then there could be an argument for a further revision in the late 1140s that supports Viollet’s thesis. Clearly, however, this revision was not available to the scribe of Manuscript A when he transcribed the Vita Ludovici in the 1160s and that I think poses a real problem because if it existed at that time at St-Denis why did he not use it? On balance, I am inclined to the view that Manuscript F is later and, in the absence of compelling evidence to support Viollet that the view of Holder-Egger that it originated in the fourteenth century in the reign of Charles V (born 1338; king 1364-1380) is the most likely explanation.

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[1] Ibid, Molinier, Auguste, (ed.), Vie de Louis le Gros par Suger, pp. xvii-xxii.

[2] Ibid, Waquet, Henri, (ed.), Vie de Louis VI le Gros, pp. xvii-xxiv.

[3] Ibid, Molinier, Auguste, (ed.), Vie de Louis le Gros par Suger, p. xvii, xviii cit, ibid, Lecoy de la Marche, A., (ed.), Oeuvres completes de Suger, recueilles, annotées er publiées d’après les manuscrits, pp. 382.

[4] Lair, Jules, ‘Memoire sur deux chroniques latines composées au XII^e siecle a l’abbaye de Saint-Denis’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartres, vol. xxxv, (1874), pp. 543-570 argued on p. 570 that the list of French kings that ended with the words ‘Ludovicus rex genuit Phillippum, Ludovicum et Henricum’ on folio 222 that it was not produced before 1131.

[5] Viollet, Paul, ‘Une grand chronique latine de Saint-Denis: observations pour server à l’histoire des oeuvres de Suger’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartres, vol. xxxiv, (1873), pp. 241-254 argued that the final folios could not have been copied before 1162.

[6] For historical writing at St-Denis, see Spiegel, Gabrielle M., The Chronicle Tradition of Saint-Denis: a Survey, Brookline, Mass., 1978.

[7] Ibid, Molinier, Auguste, (ed.), Vie de Louis le Gros par Suger, pp. xvii-xviii.

[8] Pithou, P., Historia Francorum scriptores, vol. xi, Frankfort, 1596, pp. 95-135.

[9] Ibid, Waquet, Henri, (ed.), Vie de Louis VI le Gros, p. 6 (lines 20-21) to p. 14 (line 4).

[10] Ibid, p. 98 (line 1) to p. 112 (line 8).

[11] Ibid, p. 44 (line 1) to p. 50 (line 8).

[12] Ibid, p. 50 (line 10) to p. 68 (line 18).

[13] In the title of this chapter, written in the same hand as the other fragments, it says ‘De nostri temporis concilio a papa Alexandro III Rome celebrato’. This dates it to shortly after 1179.

[14] Lair, Jules, ‘Memoire sur deux chroniques latines composées au XII^e siecle a l’abbaye de Saint-Denis’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartres, vol. xxxv, (1874), pp. 543-570 showed it was a collection of copies and extracts drawn together by a French historian in order to compose a chronicle of the kings of France.

[15] Ibid, Molinier, Auguste, (ed.), Vie de Louis le Gros par Suger, pp. xxii-xxviii and 133-164

[16] Ibid, Waquet, Henri, (ed.), Vie de Louis VI le Gros, pp. xxii-xxiv

[17] Viollet, Paul, ‘Une grand chronique latine de Saint-Denis: observations pour server à l’histoire des oeuvres de Suger’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartres, vol. xxxiv, (1873), pp. 241-254. Luchaire, Achille supported his thesis in ‘Une trés ancienne histoire de France. La compilation du manuscript latin 5949 A’, Revue historique, vol. xxxiv, (1887), pp. 259-276.

[18] Holder-Egger, O., ‘Zu Sugers Vita Ludowici VII regis’, Neues Archic der Gesellschaft für altere deutsche Geschintkunde, vol. ccvii, (1901), pp. 186-197.

[19] Grant, Linda, Abbot Suger of St-Denis: Church and State in Early Twelfth-Century France, London, 1998, pp. 38-42.

Vita or Gesta? 2

Certainly, Suger is ‘selective’ in his account of Louis’ life. There is much that is left out and historians have to turn to other historians like Orderic Vitalis to fill in the details. There is little on Louis’ life before the age of eleven, little on the tensions between him and his father over his second ‘marriage’ to Bertrada, their falling out over Louis being knighted away from home in 1098 or Bretrada’s attempt to have him imprisoned and poisoned in England in 1100-1101. Louis’ marriage to Adelaide de Maurienne in 1115 is mentioned briefly and his eldest son Philip is introduced only to die. It may be that Suger did not view these events as having any real bearing on the purpose of the text. However, there are other omissions that can be explained by Suger’s personal political and religious agenda. There is little on the factionalism of Louis’ court linked to the growing power of the Garlande family especially Stephen de Garlande leading to the crisis of 1127 when he was ousted from his position as chancellor. In fact, there is little on the mechanics of governing France under Louis. This was certainly deliberate on Suger’s part and reflects his desire, from the vantage point of the 1140s to distance himself and perhaps by extension Louis from the rule of the Garlandes.

He briefly mentions the house of St. Victor in Paris that Louis founded in 1113 and that played a significant part in twelfth century spiritual and intellectual life but he remains silent on Louis’ involvement with any other monasteries. St Bernard of Clairvaux and the religious tendencies he represented are ignored though there is a passing reference to his having advised on the coronation of the young Louis in 1131 in Manuscript F. It is Louis’ relationship with St-Denis that is the focus of his attention and particularly his relationship with Suger whose predecessor Adam gets scant recognition.

Establishing a clear link between the Capetian monarchy and St-Denis was at the heart of Suger’s writing. The abbey was under pressure from several quarters in the first decades of the twelfth century. First, to the church of Reims was promoting the cult of St Remigius as a rival to that of Dionysius: in his prologue, Suger described himself as ‘abbot of the blessed Denis the Areopagite’[1]. In 1090, the young prince Louis had subscribed to a document issued by his father confirming the possessions and immunities of the competing saint’s abbey in Reims. Louis had come into direct conflict with Reims over his coronation at Orleans in 1108 and although Both Philip and the young Louis were crowned at Reims in 1129 and 1131 respectively, the tensions between St-Denis and Reims comes out strongly in Suger’s text. Wherever possible, Suger showed Reims in a bad light. Secondly, during the 1120s, Peter Abelard had correctly challenged the claim that Dionysius the Areopagite was the patron of the abbey causing considerable internal dissension at St Denis. Abelard was accused as a traitor to the Crown, was thrown into prison, managed to escape and sought sanctuary in the lands of Theobald of Blois. Suger decided to drop the whole matter and allowed Abelard to live wherever he chose on condition that he did not enter another monastery. He did not object when Abelard became a very unhappy abbot himself a few years later and took no part in the attacks by Bernard of Clairvaux that resulted in Abelard’s condemnation at the Synod of Sens in 1140. Suger’s major concern in the years after he bacame abbot was the reform of St-Denis. He may have regarded his predecessor Adam as his ‘spiritual father and foster parent’ but he found the abbey buildings in disrepair, its revenues uncollected and its possessions alienated after Adam’s death. Thirdly, king Philip I had chosen to be buried, not in St-Denis but at the abbey of St-Benoit-sur-Loire reinforcing Suger’s less than flattering view of him unlike the Chronicle of Morigny that described him as a ‘man of wisdom’.[2] Suger contrasted Philip’s indolence with Louis’ activity to the extent that even during his father’s lifetime he was described as ‘defender of his father’s kingdom’. The language used in the text, especially the verbs and adverbs of speed reinforced the view that Suger’s Louis spent his life in continuous activity. It was Louis’ devotion to St-Denis from childhood and the fact that he lived a ‘good life’ and had a ‘good death’ that strengthened Suger’s claims for the abbey. Central to his restatement of the centrality of St-Denis to the French monarchy was Suger’s embellished account of the threatened German invasion of 1124. Louis conducted himself ‘with great humility’ at St-Denis asking the blessed Dionysius for aid, taking the battle standard, the mythic oriflamme[3] from the altar in a ceremony Suger implied meant that Louis recognised that he was a vassal of the abbey.[4] His account of events is open to question in several important respects but behind the rhetoric there is a king clearly devoted to St Denis. Royal donations and privileges especially the extension of St-Denis’ local jurisdiction and the concessions of the Lendit fair helped restore the legal and economic authority of the abbey. Louis’ support was essential and in his text, Suger shows again and again just how St-Denis profited.

Louis may have been at the centre of the canvas but St Denis and St-Denis were always in its background. They provided the link between the ideal visibility of human society and the order and justice of the invisible, divine hierarchy with Louis progressing from ‘a handsome youth…admirable for his development of moral character and for the growth of a well-made body’ to his approaching death when he ‘put off his kingship and laid down his kingdom’: the move from the material state of external beauty to the invisible state of enlightenment. The Vita Ludovici can be seen in terms of the Pseudo-Dionysian notion of anagogical ascent where readers, in contemplating the life of Louis VI share in the experience of enlightenment that his life reflected and that access to that enlightenment is achieved by following the mos anagogicus, the anagogical way. [5]

The Vita Ludovici operates on several different levels. First, it can be regarded as a ‘gesta’ to the extent that it recounts the deeds of Louis VI. Secondly, it is a ‘vita’ albeit a selective biographical study of Louis VI covering his life from his adolescence through to his death. In both these respects it is a partial account subject to the problems of reliability that historians encounter when dealing with medieval sources. The ‘gesta’ and ‘vita’ dimensions of the Vita Ludovici operate at the level of the visible in that they say what happened in a world in which there was disorder, threats to the authority of the Crown that were countered by an active and, within limits successful monarch. The degree of narrative credibility is determined by the third, and for Suger most important aspect of his work, its mystical and invisible quality. Suger has created a cultural image of kingship and its role in a cosmologically defined hierarchy of being, a means through which people may seek enlightenment through contemplating the ‘deeds’ and ‘life’ of Louis VI.

Suger wrote neither a traditional ‘gesta’ nor a traditional ‘vita’ in the sense that they are recognised in medieval historiography. The narrative of Louis’s life and deeds is important for the gloss it gives on the increasing authority of Capetian monarchy and the importance of individuals in bringing about fundamental political change. Yet to view the Vita Ludovici simply in those terms is to miss the central thrust of Suger’s writing. It is true that, unlike most of his ecclesiastical contemporaries, Suger never wrote a theological text but for a full understanding of why he wrote about Louis VI we have to recognise the centrality of the ideas of the Pseudo-Dionysius to his thinking. The Vita Ludovici can, in this sense be seen as a work of theology, a religious and educative tract using secular events as the medium through which Suger explored the Dionysian dualities of ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’, order and chaos, strength and weakness, authority and rebellion, secular and ecclestiastical, and good and evil. The memory of what had happened allowed others to contemplate what was to come. As Speigel says at the end of her paper[6]: ‘To Suger, the recollection of the past was not only a memory; it was also and perhaps more important, the promise of the future.’

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[1] Robert Hanning has made some useful comments on the effects of chroniclers stating the rhetorical principles of historiography in their Prologues in his review of Lecroix, Benôit, L’Historiens au moyen age, Paris, 1971 in History and Theory, vol. xii, (1973), pp. 419-434. Hanning argued that the conscious expression of rhetorical tradition that occurred in much medieval writing had a paradoxical role: ‘in providing not a guide to perceiving and communicating the meaning of history but rather as a context within which the author and audience shared a common intention – to address themselves to the needs of the past for instruction and edification.’ He believes this provided a ‘verbal context’ in which historians located themselves and won acceptance from their audiences but do not describe the methods or purposes that governed or inspired their work. For Suger, this ‘context’ lies in friendship, duty and especially remembrance.

[2] Ibid, Mirot, Leon, (ed.), La Chronique de Morigny (1095-1152), p. 21. La Chronique de Saint-Pierre-le-Vif de Sens, edited by R.H. Bautier and M. Gilles, Paris 1979, p. 146 also viewed Philip more favourably.

[3] The practice of depositing the royal flag at St-Denis started with Hugh Capet. The flag did not belong to the monastery but had originally been Charlemagne’s. The Chanson de Roland is the main source for this: ‘Saint Pierre fut, si aveit num Romaine/Mais de Munjoie iloec out pris eschange’ and the Nova Gesta Francorum, written at St-Denis in the early twelfth century reiterated this legend: ‘Mox ut Leo in eius loco successit missis legatis ad pium regem Karolem clavis confessionis Sanct Petri simul et vexillum romane urbis direxit’ (Bibliothèque Nationale lat 11793, fol. 27v). It is described as a gift from Pope Leo to Charlemagne recognising his status as emperor of the Roman people; this explains why it is sometimes called ‘Romane’. The Chanson de Roland described it as an ‘Orie flambé’ (the flag with ears) and gives Monjoie as its preferred name. Until the end of the eleventh century, the banner retained its religious significance while becoming more and more important as a symbol of the nation. There was, however, a second standard at St-Denis, that of the Vexin. This was, in origin feudal without previous royal associations but its importance as a royal standard was sealed when Louis VI took it from the saint’s altar in 1124 and ‘invited all France to follow him’ to face the threat of the German invasion. Increasingly the distinction between the banner of St-Denis and Charlemagne’s Oriflamme became confused though probably not before the reign of Philip Augustus later in the twelfth century and this is reflected in the dual battle cry of the French: ‘Montjoie Saint Denis’. See Spiegel, Gabrielle M., ‘The Cult of Saint Denis’, Journal of Medieval History, vol. i, (1975), pp. 43-69, printed in her ibid, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography, especially pp. 153-155.

[4] The claims Suger made for St-Denis are based, to a certain extent on a charter that purported to have been given to the abbey by Charlemagne in 813: Muhlbacher, E., (ed.), Monumenta Germaniae Historica Diplomatum Karolinorum I: Pippini, Carlomanni, Caroli Magni Diplomata, Hannover, 1906: D.Kar.286, pp. 428-430. This said that all archbishops and bishops should defer to the church of St-Denis, which is the head (‘caput’) of all the churches in the kingdom and that its abbot is primate of the church of France.

[5] What follows draws on the Pseudo-Dionysian arguments of Spiegel, Gabrielle M., ‘History as Enlightenment: Suger and the Mos Anagogicus’, in ibid, Gerson, P. L., (ed.), Abbot Suger and St Denis, pp. 151-158, printed in her ibid, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography, see p. 175.

[6] Spiegel, Gabrielle M., ‘History as Enlightenment: Suger and the Mos Anagogicus’, in ibid, Gerson, P. L., (ed.), Abbot Suger and St Denis, pp. 151-158, printed in her ibid, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography, p. 177.

Vita or Gesta?

The Capetian kings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries have been little studied by English historians. Few of the ‘Capetian chronicles’ are available in English translations though the Anglo-Saxon and especially Anglo-Norman writings of historians like Orderic Vitalis, that have much to say on political relations between England, Normandy and France are.  My blog for the next few months will concentrate on the life and writings of Abbot Suger of St-Denis and includes a new translation of his life of Louis VI (Vita Ludovici grossi) based on an examination of most of the extant manuscripts and available French and English translations. This provides valuable insights into the nature of writing history in the early to mid-twelfth century where personal and political agendas often meant that the ‘history’ written was deliberately partial and ‘constructed’ to get across a particular message. It also deals with the problems faced by a French monarchy trying to assert its authority outside its own domains against the vested interests of an aristocracy that proved powerfully dangerous.

There are significant difficulties in defining the different types of historical writing from the medieval period[1]. When is a chronicle not a chronicle but an annal? The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a case in point: called a chronicle but clearly a set of annals. What is the difference between an annal and a chronicle? Is it simply a case of the way in which each was produced, the one written rather like an annual diary often by different writers, the other as a coherent piece of history in which the author adduces causation to events? Is the one a work of ‘history’ and the other a means through which history may be written? Yet, these questions, important though they undoubtedly are, do not resolve the problems with the different genres. If the difficulty of defining in any precise way what chronicles, annals, lives and deeds actually are is incapable of satisfactory resolution, perhaps historians need to look at their purpose, the agendas that lay behind these historical writings. Suger did not give his biography of Louis VI a title and the manuscripts containing the text gave it different names. However, in the prologue of the text in which Suger wrote to bishop Josselin of Soissons, he used the term ‘gesta’: ‘serenissimi Regis Francorum Ludovici gesta approbate scientie vestrie arbitrio delegamus…’ (I am sending for your approval and wisdom the deeds of the most serene Louis, King of the French) though at the beginning of chapter 28 he uses the term ‘Ut autem ad propositum recolende Regis hystorie revertamur…’ (But let us return to our aim, which is to write a history of the king.). The use of ‘deeds’[2] rather than ‘history’ or ‘life’ can also be found in comments made by Odo de Deuil[3], Suger’s successor as abbot of St-Denis and William, his biographer refers on three occasions to Suger’s account of Louis’ deeds[4]. The problem is that, with two exceptions[5], editors of the text have used the word ‘life’ rather than ‘deeds’[6]. The writing of the ‘deeds’ of particular individuals was an important feature of the historiography of the eleventh and twelfth centuries[7]. These works focus on the reporting of deeds rather than providing detailed biographical information. Essentially they tell the ‘heroic’ story[8] and Cusimano and Moorhead suggest that they are linked ‘perhaps’ to the old French chanson de geste[9]. Suger’s biographer William said that he was a lover of stories and that when he was in a good mood he loved to stay up to the middle of the night telling of the deeds of heroic men[10]. This, according to Cusimano and Moorhead[11] suggests that the episodic nature of the book owed ‘something to the techniques of a raconteur’. More to the point, I think is the continued importance of orality in a period when literacy was the preserve of the few. The problem with using the term ‘gesta’ for Suger’s study of Louis VI is that it lacks the distinguishing features of chronicles of this genre: a commitment to chronological progression through a reign or life; clear thematic development usually grounded in ethical precepts defining ‘good’ and ‘bad’ kingship; and a degree of historical completeness. The focus on Louis is often lost in favour of long digressions that even Suger recognises are of little relevance to his central character. He almost seems to need to remind himself to get back to the point. Perhaps it is better to look at Suger’s writing as a piece of ‘selective’ biography[12] much in the same way that William of Apulia’s poem on Robert Guiscard and William of Poitiers’ discussion of William the Conqueror are selective. Suger did not simply produce a collection of incidents arranged in a broadly chronological way since an examination of the individual sections shows both a clear internal logic and structure[13]. At the heart of Suger’s Vita Ludovici was an individual who protected the people, the church and, as in the case of the planned German invasion in 1124, France against disputes, disorder and attacks that threatened peaceful order. The innocent and disadvantaged came to Louis to seek his aid and Louis hastens to put things right. This is made clear in the opening chapter of the work: ‘You might have seen this young man dashing across the frontiers into Berry, then into the Auvergne, now into Burgundy, with a handful of men, and returning just as quickly to the Vexin…’. The proud and the recalcitrant are defeated or destroyed and the peace that had earlier existed was restored. There is a clear divine purpose in the text. The individual chapters may be more or less autonomous and more or less chronological but the tone of the text reiterates the same message: the king will restore God’s order and will defeat those who threaten that order. It is that divine purpose that gives the text its selectivity. Gabriel Spiegel argues that each chapter of the Vita Ludovici ‘contains the narration of a single ‘event-unit’ that may, but does not necessarily, delimit a comparable unit of historical time, hence the chronological imprecision all commentators on the text have found so puzzling.’[14] She points to the triadic structure of the chapters where disruption of the established order is followed by Louis’ attempt to deal with the results of that disruption and ends with a final restoration of the proper hierarchical ordering of society. This triadic structuring can be seen throughout the Vita Ludovici even in those chapters on successive popes who come to Philip I and Louis VI to seek their aid to put right certain wrongs. On occasions as, for example in chapter 26 where Louis is defeated at Brémule in 1119, Suger is hard-pressed to maintain the structure but maintain it he does even if the resolution of the disruption is far from convincing. To sustain this structure, Spiegel argues

Suger wilfully violates chronological order, conflating events or deferring the conclusion of a chapter until he can properly narrate the resolution of the disturbance and the restoration of order…The chronological looseness of the Vita Ludovici, therefore, is the result not of confusion but of narrative intention... [15]

In some respects, there is much of the traditional hagiographical tradition in Suger’s writing with Louis as a secular ‘saint’ translating into human events and actions the principles governing the celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies of the Pseudo-Dionysius[16], the Areopagite whom the monks of St-Denis mistakenly identified with their own patron saint.. Suger certainly composed a series of lessons for the liturgical office at St-Denis on the anniversary of Louis’ death and, as early as 1124 he provided for Louis’ anniversary to be celebrated at St-Denis. A passage in the Chronicle of Morigny refers to Suger having composed lessons during the period 1139-1142.[17] Suggestions that the lessons were extracts from Suger’s text have been made by two of his editors[18] but there is some evidence to suggest that the text pre-dated the lessons even if it was revised after.[19] At the end of chapter 32, he referred to pope Innocent II in the perfect tense: ‘The lord pope in blessed succession enhanced the glory of the most Holy See by the merits of his life and his devotion to duty.’ This suggests that this was written after Innocent died in 1143 and the earliest references to his work on Louis VI occurred shortly after that date.[20]

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More recent general texts on the Capetians available in English include: Dunbabin, J., France in the Making 843-1180, 2^nd ed., (Oxford University Press), 2000, Hallam, Elizabeth and Everard, Judith, Capetian France 987-1328, 2^nd ed., Longman, 2001 and Bull, Marcus, (ed.), France in the Central Middle Ages 900-1200, (Oxford University Press), 2002

[1] On the problem of defining medieval texts see Guenée, Bernard, ‘Histoire, Annales, Chroniques: Essai sur les genres historiques au moyen age’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, vol. iv, (1973), pp. 997-1016, reprinted in his Politique et Historie au moyen-age: recueil d’articles sur l’histoire politique et l’historiographie médiévale (1956-1981), Paris, 1981, pp. 279-298.

[2] Carpentier, E., ‘Histoire et informatique: Recherches sur la vocabulaire des biographies royals françaises’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, vol. xxv, (1982), pp. 3-30 provides support for the use of ‘gesta’ for Suger’s work.

[3] Odo of Deuil De Perfectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, edited and translated by Virginia Gingerick Berry, New York, 1948, p. 3.

[4] A. Lecoy de la Marche, (ed.), Oeuvres completes de Suger, recueilles, annotées er publiées d’après les manuscrits, Paris 1867, pp. 382 and 403.

[5] Suger: The Deeds of Louis the Fat, translated with introduction and notes by Richard Cusimano and John Moorhead, Washington, 1992 and Suger: La geste de Louis VI et autres oeuvres, edited by Michel Bur,  Paris, 1994.

[6] What follows is grounded in a reading of Spiegel, Gabrielle M., ‘History as Enlightenment: Suger and the Mos Anagogicus’, in Gerson, P. L., (ed.), Abbot Suger and St Denis, New York, 1986, pp. 151-158, printed in her The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography, London, 1997, pp. 163-177.

[7] Examples of this genre include: Wipo’s The Deeds of the Emperor Conrad, William of Poitiers’ The Deeds of William the Conqueror, William of Apulia’s The Deeds of Robert Guiscard, the anonymous Deeds of Stephen and Otto of Freising’s The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa.

[8] Links have been made between Suger and the crusading works with ‘gesta’ in their title especially the anonymous Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum and Fulcher of Chartres Gesta Francorum Iherusalem peregrinantium and Suger twice stated that his book was an account of the ‘gesta Francorum’ in chapters 1 and 10. On this see Hunt, Tony, ‘L’inspiration ideologique du Charroi de Nîmes’, Revue belge de philology et d’histoire, vol. lxvi, (1978), pp. 580-606.

[9] Ibid, Suger: The Deeds of Louis the Fat, p. 7.

[10] William Vita Sugerii, in ibid, Lecoy de la Marche, A., (ed.), Oeuvres completes de Suger, recueilles, annotées er publiées d’après les manuscrits, pp. 382 and 389.

[11] Ibid, Suger: The Deeds of Louis the Fatp. 7.

[12] The notion of ‘selective’ biography is not a type of historical writing exclusive to the medieval period. In the nineteenth century for example, politicians were especially prone to getting their biographies published so that they could tell their sides of the story and were often extremely ‘selective’ with the ‘facts’. We still have ‘official’ biographies today written by historians often with access to family papers unavailable to other scholars. The idea that biography should narrate an individual’s life ‘warts and all’ is quite recent and authors today are often at pains to emphasise that their conclusions have not been influenced by surviving family members. Take Harold Wilson, apart from his own self-justificatory writings and the biographies published while he played a central part in public life in the 1960s and 1970s, three biographies were published in 1992-1993: Pimlott, Ben, Life and Times of Harold Wilson, Morgan, Austen, Harold Wilson: A Life and Zeigler, Philip, Wilson: The Authorized Life of Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, the first ‘balanced’, the second ‘critical’ and the third ‘official’.

[13] This is made clear in Spiegel, Gabrielle M., ‘History as Enlightenment: Suger and the Mos Anagogicus’, in ibid, Gerson, P. L., (ed.), Abbot Suger and St Denis, New York, 1986, pp. 151-158, printed in her ibid, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography, pp. 163-177.

[14] Ibid, Spiegel Gabrielle M. ‘History as Enlightenment: Suger and the Mos Anagogicus’, pp. 151-158, printed in her ibid, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography, p. 166.

[15] Ibid, Spiegel, Gabrielle M., pp. 151-158, printed in her The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography, pp. 169-170.

[16] On Suger’s links to the Pseudo-Dionysius, see Panofsky, Erwin, Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St-Denis and its Art Treasures, Princeton, 2^nd ed., 1979 and Simson, Otto von, The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order, 2^nd ed., New York, 1964. Modifications to their views are suggested in Zinn, Grover A., ‘Suger, Theology and the Pseudo-Dionysian Traditions’, in ibid, Gerson, P. L., (ed.), Abbot Suger and St Denis, pp. 33-40. Kidson, Peter, ‘Panofsky, Suger and St Denis’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. i, (1987), pp. 1-17 argues that there is no need to see Suger as having been directly influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius.

[17] Mirot, Leon, (ed.), La Chronique de Morigny (1095-1152), 2^nd ed., Paris, 1912, p. 69.

[18] Ibid, Lecoy de la Marche, A., (ed.), Oeuvres completes de Suger, recueilles, annotées er publiées d’après les manuscrits, p. v and Molinier, Auguste, (ed.), Vie de Louis le Gros par Suger, Paris 1887, p. xvii, n^o 1. Waquet, Henri, (ed.), Vie de Louis VI le Gros, Paris, 1929 ignored the question.

[19] Hugenholtz, F. and Teunis, H., ‘Suger’s Advice’, Journal of Medieval History, vol. xii, (1986), pp. 191-205 suggest that Suger’s approach to the Vita Ludovici was influenced by events that occurred early in the reign of Louis VII.

[20] The earliest references to the text can be found in Liber de rebus administratione sua gestis, ibid, in Lecoy de la Marche, A., (ed.), Oeuvres completes de Suger, recueilles, annotées er publiées d’après les manuscrits, p. 171 and this work has been dated by ibid, Panofsky, Erwin, Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St-Denis and its Art Treasures, p. 142 to between 1144-1145 to 1148-1149.

Medieval sources: an introduction

There are significant difficulties in defining the different types of historical writing from the medieval period[1]. There are also major problems in defining ‘history’ in the medieval context. Medieval historical writings contain emphases and biases that would be unacceptable for historians today. In fact, as the work of Alexander of Telese shows, today’s clear distinction between propaganda and history was something that did not really concern medieval historians who saw history as having a specific contemporary ‘purpose’. Medieval writings were, as William of Apulia’s Gesta Roberti Guiscardi clearly demonstrated, highly ‘selective’ in character. While this may well be a characteristic of all historical writing (in essence no historical writing would be possible without it), there is no pretence of disguising the specific purpose for which the work was written. Medieval historical writing was designed to inform its audiences but often to inform them of a specific political or religious agenda. What we would call distorting the truth, is seen by medieval historians as getting across or ‘spinning’ their particular message. Purpose is at the heart of understanding medieval texts.

History was not a profession in the medieval period.  It required no specialist training, nor did it provide career pathways.  It was distinct from other forms of literature and what distinguished it was its claim to be presenting the truth.  There are significant difficulties in defining the different types of historical writing from the medieval period.[1]  When is a chronicle not a chronicle but an annal?  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a case in point: called a chronicle but clearly a set of annals.  What is the difference between an annal and a chronicle?  Is it simply a case of the way in which each was produced, the one written rather like an annual diary often by different writers, the other as a coherent piece of history in which the author adduces causation to events?  Is the one a work of ‘history’ and the other a means through which history may be written?  Yet, these questions, important though they undoubtedly are, do not resolve the problems with the different genres.  If the difficulty of defining in any precise way what chronicles, annals, lives and deeds actually were is incapable of satisfactory resolution, perhaps historians need to look at their purpose, the agendas that lay behind these historical writings.[2]  Chris Given-Wilson suggests the following questions need to be addressed in the preface of his book:

· Why did chroniclers record the events of either the past or the present?

· What purposes did they think the writing of history ought to serve, whether short-, medium- or long-term?

· How did they decide what to include and what to omit?

· How did they set about the task of amassing evidence and what criteria did they use to evaluate it?

· Why were they so interested in prophecy, portents and other preternatural phenomena?

· How did they conceive of time and space?

· What was the most appropriate form for the presentation of their work and why?

· What ‘message’ did they hope that their readers (or hearers) would take from their work?

· To what extent were they free to express their own views rather than being constrained by political or religious pressures?

· To what use or uses might their chronicles be put and how did that affect what they wrote and how they wrote them?

· How did memories congeal into history and what was history for?

When reading a collection of medieval sources, it is easy to be seduced by crisp, clear translations and confident presentation, and forget what every historian who has dealt first-hand with medieval documents knows.  Often, modern editions and translations are based not upon original documents, but on later copies which may have been deliberately altered or inadvertently corrupted.  When the text is dubious or incomprehensible, modern versions try to make sense of it, but often gloss over the difficulties.  Sometimes, multiple copies exist that differ in detail or even in broad strokes.  These differences are usually smoothed over in modern translations or editions, where the variants are relegated to footnotes.

For the next few months I intend to include some translated and footnoted sources on my blog that relate to the Normans.  In some cases, as for example, with the Life of Louis VI, they deal with issues other than the Normans while others, such as William of Apulia and Geoffrey Malaterra deal specifically with the diasporic nature of Norman expansion in the eleventh century.

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[1] On the problem of defining medieval texts see Guenée, Bernard, ‘Histoire, Annales, Chroniques: Essai sur les genres historiques au moyen age’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, vol. iv, (1973), pp. 997-1016, reprinted in his Politique et Historie au moyen-age: recueil d’articles sur l’histoire politique et l’historiographie médiévale (1956-1981), Paris, 1981, pp. 279-298.

[2] On this issue see Given-Wilson, Chris, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England, (Hambledon), 2004.  Though the book focuses on the period after 1200, it contains much that is relevant to the tenth and eleventh centuries,

Popular Literature

Ian Haywood

The Revolution in Popular Literature: Print, Politics and the People, 1790-1860

(Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Cambridge University Press), 2009

332pp., £22.99 paper, ISBN 978-0-521-10349-7

Originally published in 2004 and justly well received and now available in paperback, this study examines the evolution of popular literature in Britain in the Romantic and Victorian periods. The key to understanding popular literature is the clash between radical and reactionary politics and the need of both to win the support of the ‘common reader’. The result was the use of print culture to try to influence the newly literate groups in society. The critical problem was what should people be encouraged to read and the difficulty in ensuring that this was the case once that decision had been made. The problem with a literate society is that people will choose to read what they want to read not just what the authorities would like them to read. In that respect, radical politics from the 1790s played a decisive role in the transformation of popular literature from the plebeian literature of the 1790s through to the mass-circulation fiction and newspapers of the 1840s. Divided this three sections, Ian Haywood has concentrated on the importance of the 1790s, the two decades after the end of the French Wars in 1815 and the literature associated with Chartism. If knowledge is power, then popular literacy and popular literature were the means through which power could be achieved or, in the case of loyalist writers, retained, something Hannah More recognised. Whether literature produced for a political audience or politics embellished by writers for a literary audience, the important of popular literature to the development of popular culture was and remains important.

Chartism and Poetry

Mike Sanders

The Poetry of Chartism: Aesthetics, Politics, History

(Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Cambridge University Press), 2009

300pp., £50 hard, ISBN 978-0-521-89918-5

Literature played a central role in the political as well as the cultural development of Chartism. [1] Most Chartist newspapers included literary contributions and the Northern Star featured an arts page containing original and reprinted poetry, serialised fiction and book reviews. Poetry was particularly well regarded by Chartists for its own sake and as a sign of civilised values and literature was part of the discussion within the movement on a range of domestic and international political issues. It was what Thomas Cooper saw as a ‘literature of your own’ that alone was sufficient to represent the Chartist cause. [2] This was literature in the public sphere and contrasted with middle-class attitudes to poetry and fiction that were more private and individually reflective and aesthetic rather than overtly collective and political. However, literature was not simply a vehicle for articulating political ideas but was also an important means of remembrance. Poems could be recited or sung and easily memorised, plays could be performed and stories could be read to audiences. They commemorated the actions of Chartists as a means of articulating a heroic past and a positive future.

Mike Sanders has produced an important study of the Northern Star’s poetry column with a complete list of all the poems published. Between 1839 and 1852, over a thousand poems written by more than 350 poets were published in the newspaper. Given the massive circulation of the Northern Star, these poems were among the most widely read or listened to poems in the nineteenth century perhaps the clearest expression of the populist and collective culture of Chartism and its supporters. The importance of Chartist poetry has long been recognised and is explored in an excellent chapter on Chartist poetry and literary history. The core of the work is the three chapters that explore the nature and importance of poetry at the three climactic points in the Chartist movement in 1839, 1842 and 1848. This is achieved by examining the ideological afterlife of the Newport rising, memory and nostalgia in the year of the mass strikes and ‘the future-hastening storm’ of 1848, the year of the European revolutions. Through his detailed analysis of the Northern Star, we now have a clearer idea of why reading and writing poetry played such a central role in Chartism’s struggles for fundamental democratic rights.

This volume must now be recognised as the leading study of Chartist poetry available to historians. Its subtle linkage of literature, aesthetics and history provides a clear contextual setting for examining the written word and makes one realise why Plato contended that poetry could be harmful.

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[1] Scheckner, Peter, (ed.), An Anthology of Chartist Poetry: Poetry of the British Working Class, 1830s-1850s, (Associated University Presses), 1989, pp. 15-58, Journès, Hugues, Une Littérature Révolutionnaire en Grande-Bretagne: La Poésie Chartiste, Paris, 1991, and Haywood Ian, (ed.), The Literature of Struggle: An Anthology of Chartist Fiction, (Scolar Press), 1995, pp. 1-25, provide a good summary of the significance of literature in the Chartist movement.

[2] Cooper’s Journal, Vol. 1, (9), 2 March 1850.

Sources: Peel in death

Lord Hatherton writing at the time of Peel’s death in 1850

Peel always seemed to me the most faultless of Ministers. The steadiness of his application and his facility of research, acquired from habit and good memory, were quite wonderful; he always appeared to me to do everything with great ease. He seemed to me not to have a particle of vanity or of undue ambition about him, but a constant of love of truth and desire to give it the victory. Naturally he did not appear to me good-tempered, but his temperament was not hasty, and his feelings were held under wonderful control. His friends, and even his most intimate colleagues, all complained that they could never learn his mind; yet at table or in the society of those he liked, or in a country ride or walk, he seemed unreserved and cordial, and at such times the good sense of his remarks and the liveliness of his anecdotes were very charming. He frequently carried the House away with him, but it was by his greater knowledge of his subject, and his superior power in handling facts, and by the moral character of his sentiments.

The death of Sir Robert Peel

The following report of Peel’s death was published in The Lamp, a Catholic newspaper, in July 1850

Sir Robert Peel is dead! A great instrument in the hand of Divine Providence has ceased to operate in mundane affairs! His task has been fully performed. He has been called to render an account of his stewardship, and in our heart’s core we wish that he may have been found acceptable in the unveiled presence of his JUDGE! It is not our object to follow in the track of the mere politicians of the day, who view his exit from this earthly scene as an event big with misfortune or fertile in blessings, as party feelings or personal bias may prompt them to prognosticate. Neither our judgment nor our hopes are limited to so narrow a range. True, our best sympathies for the last twenty years towards the man, and still shall they cling tenaciously to his memory; nor could any one more sincerely condole with the bereaved and deeply afflicted family of the great departed statesman; but we must confess we do not, like many others, hold his sudden call from among us, as an irreparable national loss. The designs of divine providence, though impervious to human intellect, must be wise and perfect - to us, to every thinking mind, they must be all-in-all, and we would sooner mistrust our own existence, than doubt for a moment that other fit agencies await the summons, to carry out and complete the great work or regeneration so well and nobly begun; by the late and deservedly lamented Sir Robert Peel.

Beyond comparison the most remarkable and distinguished English statesman of the age, it would appear he was called into existence to shiver the theories, and dash, by his extraordinary career, the prejudices, the hopes, the wishes, and the unsound principles of the millions who had staked their earthly welfare upon the power of genius and the subtle exercise of the human intellect. Starting into political life under the auspices of the proud old Tory Faction, he became at once their most able instrument, their cherished and favoured protégé. Endowed, however, with a mind capable of gathering and storing up practical wisdom, another name for expediency, he soon perceived that his haughty patrons secretly looked down on the young aspiring Commoner; but he was prudent, he had a noble card to play, and he was not slow in learning the true value of what the old school called constitutional principles. In the honesty of his heart he despised their hackneyed and used-up absurdities; He found himself trammelled, however, by the extensive influence and powerful interests of those whose index he had become, and who deemed him to be the best expositor of their sordid wishes and over-weening pretensions. Acting with that caution and moderation which were two great ingredients of his character, he closely watched the progress of events, drew knowledge from facts, waited his opportunity, and gradually converted his early masters into the unresisting slaves of his own proud will. On the altar of his loved country he immolated the Tory Faction, and gathered round his own name the grateful respect and admiration of that great body from which himself had sprung, the middle classes of Englishmen. Thus, under the direction of an over ruling providence, did he assume the championship of the men and the principles that in early life he had been brought forward to crush and annihilate.

While secretary in Ireland, he had the misfortune to earn the applause, almost the adoration of the Orangemen. It was because he came forward the bitter opponent of Catholics and Catholicism. This was a great error on his part, a defect in the statesman, a crime in the governor, a sin against a crushed people. But time and opportunity were vouchsafed to correct it, and he did not permit the occasion to slip. Under his tyranny the Catholic people began to learn their own importance. O’Connell concentrated their powers, the association sprung into existence, grew rapidly into gigantic strength, and, finally assumed a position, from which the united efforts of religious bigotry and political intolerance failed to dislodge them. Sir Robert quailed before this new creation, this offspring of a mind mightier than his own; accordingly, he reconsidered his position, drew wisdom from facts, and casting all former prejudices aside, he gracefully bent to necessity and became the reluctant benefactor of the Church of God. Strange destiny his, if aught which God marks by a special interposition may be called strange. Singular that he was made not only the scourge of early party, but the champion of those whom he formerly despised and oppressed! but so it was. His great merit as a statesman was, that when he knew himself to be right, he proceeded in his course with fearlessness and candour. What he did, he did not do by halves; with the grace of sincerity he made his recantations and concessions; and in the case of emancipation, without hankering after or attempting to impose silly and insulting securities, &c., he admitted the Catholics freely into the temple of the constitution. The drag being thus removed from the wheel, Catholicity has since rolled forward with such an accelerating motion, as neither he nor his fellow labourers, nor his opponents, nor those whose condition he sought to ameliorate, had ever dreamed of. Two men alone perhaps possessed correct anticipations of the results. O’Connell, in the vivid picturings of faith, beheld the conquests which the untrammelled Church was destined to achieve. Lord Eldon, in the depression of despair, saw through his tears, as through an inverted lens, that ‘the sun of England’s glory had set for ever,’ and in his narrow view he was indeed prophetic. In Protestant ascendancy his bigoted soul had concentrated England’s glory, and with the emancipation act, that sun did truly set never to rise again!

Peel a ‘working class hero’

Obituary article on Sir Robert Peel in Chambers’ Papers for the People, volume iv, a cheap popular periodical aiming at a mass circulation.

He fell from official power into the arms of the people, whose enthusiastic plaudits accompanied him, on the evening of his resignation of office, to his residence in Whitehall Gardens. The spontaneous feeling of gratitude and respect which prompted those plaudits has since widened, strengthened, deepened, and will become more and more vivid and intense as the moral grandeur of his motives - the unselfish, self-sacrificing spirit which dictated his public conduct - pierce through, and consume in the clear and brilliant light of that truth and justice which, we are assured by an illustrious authority, has ever inspired his acts, the calumnious misrepresentations so unsparingly heaped upon him. By his humbler countrymen, that testimony to the moral worth of the departed statesman was not waited for, nor needed. They felt instinctively that he must be pure and single minded, as he was intellectually vigorous and great; for what had he, raised aloft upon the bucklers of a powerful and wealthy party, to gain by stooping from that dazzling height, to raise tip the humble and lowly from the mire into which ignorant and partial legislation had so long trampled them.

Sources: Peel the man

These extracts give contemporary descriptions of Sir Robert Peel: his appearance and habits

In person he was tall and well formed. His figure, slender rather than robust, made at that time no approach to corpulence. He was active, given to athletic sports; a good walker; fond of shooting, and a good shot...At twenty-one he was attentive to his dress, and dressed well and fashionably... It was still the fashion to wear powder in the hair at a dinner or evening party; and this fashion, which concealed the sandy colour of his hair, and suited his complexion, became him well.

Sir Lawrence Peel A Sketch of the Life and Character of Sir Robert Peel, London, 1860

Sir Robert was tall and well-made, except in his legs, and the defect of those only was that they were too thin, and that, as they tapered much towards the ancle [sic], they seemed too small for the upper man. From some peculiar formation he walked like a woman, - to use a common phrase, he ‘sidled’ along. [The tones of his voice] were more peculiar than those of any voice I ever heard, either on or off the stage. It combined all the softness and persuasiveness of a woman’s with the strength and sonorousness of a man’s.

Captain H. Martin A Personal Sketch of the late Lamented Sir Robert Peel, Hamburg, 1850

He seems self-assured that he is of importance [in the House of Commons]. As he enters at the green door below the bar, and the members, of whatever party, instinctively make way for him, he looks at no one, recognises no one, receives salutation from no one. He seems neither to know nor to be known by any member present. He moves straight on, gliding along the floor like something unreal, with steps half-sidling, on what O’Connell called his two left legs, as though he were preparing for the stately minuet. The broad, full frame tending, of late, to portliness, and looking still more full in the ample vest and long broad-skirted frock-coat seems almost a weight to its supports: an apprehensive man might fear that the sidling step would weaken into a slight stagger. An air of formality and pre-occupation is on the face. The countenance, though handsome and of fine mould, looks broad, flat, not open and traitless. An habitual suppression of feeling has left it without marked features. A complacent gravity alternates with an austere coldness. Or, the brows are elevated with a haughtiness not natural to him; and a strange contradictory smile, sometimes nearly humorous, sometimes almost self condemning, plays with a slight convulsive motion, as though not quite under control. Arrived at his place, he exchanges no recognitions with his immediate colleagues, but sits apart, his body prone upon his crossed legs, his hat down upon his ears, his face stretched forward in anxious attention or agitated with nervous twitches, while his right hand, the two fore-fingers forked, strokes slowly down the nose, or plays unconsciously with his seals, or the keys of his despatch-boxes, which lie before him on the speaker’s table.

Anon. Sir Robert Peel as Statesman and Orator, London, 1846

Peel: Changing historiography

Peel’s reputation in political and intellectual circles declined quite rapidly after his death in 1850. In part, this was a mark of the success of his free trade policies that remained the basis of government policy for the remainder of the century and it is easy to lose sight of just how significant Peel’s achievement actually was. In 1841, Britain was a country still wedded to protectionism; by 1846 it look forward to free trade. For Peel’s early historians, he comes across as an overly cautious administrator with a limited intellect and whose ideas evolved at roughly the same rate as the average person (Walter Bagehot) or as a half-hearted Liberal who spent his life pursuing modest measures of reform from within a party obviously unsuited to the task (Justin McCarthy and J.R. Thursfield).

Since the 1920s, Peel has been subject to some degree of rehabilitation beginning with the work of Anna Ramsey and George Kitson Clark and culminating in the two volume biography by Norman Gash published in 1961 and 1972. Gash sees Peel as a pragmatic administrator and an instinctively consensual politician whose great achievement was to establish the principles of the modern Conservatism. Peel’s career took on greater historical significance with the demise of the Liberal party and the impressive record of the Conservatives as the dominant political party in the twentieth century. For Gash, the Tamworth Manifesto was the key document in the evolution of Conservative ideas with its emphasis that his party must accept the need for gradual change to become a viable party of government and occupy the middle ground in politics. He argues that Peel helped the Conservatives extend the social basis of their support by appealing to urban middle class voters as well as landowners and farmers. Even the Conservative part, which repudiated his leadership in 1846, was soon forced to learn that there was no alternative but to adopt Peelite approaches to politics. Gash concluded that the period between 1830 and 1850 in British history was justifiable known as the ‘Age of Peel’.

This assessment of Peel has been called into question by a number of historians approaching the subject from different positions. Peel’s allegedly pragmatic style of administration, for example, does not fit well with his resolutely anti-reformist stance that he took on many major issues early in his career. The granting of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 came after a decade in which Peel had been one of the leading critics of such a policy. He opposed the 1832 Reform Act to the end; resisted the extension of religious equality to cover Jews in 1830 and, while he never explicitly opposed the abolition of slavery, his speeches in the 1820s and 1830s did nothing but place obstacles in the way of decisive action. Any claim that Peel was a consistent supporter of reform therefore rests on his record at the Home Office in the 1820s. Gash presents his efforts of consolidate the criminal law, abolishing many capital offences in the process as evidence of Peel’s humanitarian concerns. In 1974, however, Derek Beales demonstrated that Peel’s rationalisation of statutes had only limited effects and that credit was really due to the Whig ministers who continued the reforms in the 1830s. Gatrell[1] argued that Peel has no right to be regarded as a humanitarian Home Secretary and that his instinct was to resist appeals for clemency and allow the law to take its course.

It is difficult to accept that before 1832 Peel was a great reformer. However, it could be argued that the true test of Peel’s credentials comes with an examination of his career after 1832. Gash may be right in arguing that Peel tried to persuade the Conservative party to be more adaptable but it is less clear that he succeeded in transforming his party. Robert Stewart and Ian Newbould[2] have both shown that, despite Peel’s advocacy, the Conservative party was little changed by 1841. It remained the party of the English counties and smaller boroughs in the 1841 election, an event that was dominated in Conservative seats by agricultural protectionism. Peel certainly promoted constructive reforms after 1841 but he did so with the declining support of his own MPs.

The most important revision of Gash’s view of Peel has come from Boyd Hilton in a seminal article published in 1979[3]. Hilton does not see Peel as a pragmatist who sought the middle ground in politics, but as a rigid and doctrinaire leader who was unwilling to compromise on his views. His analysis focuses mainly on Peel’s thinking on economic policy arguing that it betrayed signs of his training as a mathematician at Oxford. Hilton maintains that Peel’s intellect was readily susceptible to the charms of a system and once convinced of the theoretical correctness of a proposition, it was necessary for him to fit everything else into the model. The problem was that Peel had an insufficiently flexible or creative intellect to adjust the model when the ‘facts’ did not fit. He suggests that Peel was probably converted to the principle of Corn Law repeal by the end of the 1820s and his doctrinaire adherence to laissez-faire principles meant that in the 1840s an opportunity was missed for the government to establish regulatory control over the railway network. So Hilton concludes that Peel’s legacy was not to modern Conservatism but that he could properly be seen as the originator of Gladstonian Liberalism and certainly the ‘moral energy’ created by his supreme sacrifice in 1846 was eventually transfused into the Liberal political tradition.

Peel’s stature as a Great Statesman may have been reduced to some degree by recent historical writing. In part, this historiographical reaction against Peel is a consequence of the attention currently being given to the Whig governments of the 1830s and 1840s. We can no longer treat them as dismissively as Gash did. This should not, however, undervalue his political achievements. Peel did establish a system of fiscal and commercial policy that endured for almost a century. Perhaps even more importantly, he compelled the whole of the British ruling elite, Liberals and Conservatives, to be responsive to the needs of the growing urban population and this influence was vital in terms of establishing social stability. Peel’s influence lay across the political system and he may be said to have lad for foundation for the mid-Victorian ‘age of equipoise’ if only because this depended on the endorsement of his free trade policies across the political spectrum.

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[1] V. A. C. Gatrell, ‘Mercy and Mr. Peel’, The hanging tree: execution and the English people, 1770–1868, Oxford University Press, 1994, chapter 21.

[2] I.D.C. Newbould ‘Sir Robert Peel and the Conservative Party, 1832-1841: a Study in Failure?’ English Historical Review, volume xcviii, (1983), pages 529-557.

[3] Boyd Hilton ‘Peel: a re-appraisal’, Historical Journal, volume 22, (1979), pages 585–614.

Peel’s Reputation

Many contemporaries regarded Peel as having sacrificed his own career for the sake of the nation. Subsequent historians have reinforced this image. For Norman Gash he was the founder of modern Conservatism and the architect of the stability of the 1850s. His government is seen as one of the most able of the century. Yet he betrayed his party twice, in 1829 and 1846. He was unable to change the attitudes of his own party in the 1830s. He lacked political sensitivity particularly towards those who did not have his lofty vision. He was hardly a pragmatic politician but one bound by the principles of political economy he has adopted in the 1820s and his belief in the importance of expertise led to arrogance and intolerance towards those who saw politics simply in terms of power. His career may not have been ‘a study in failure’ as Ian Newbould suggested of his leadership of the Conservative Party in the 1830s but it was hardly one of innovation. Bagehot was correct when he suggested that Peel had ‘the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man’. His grasp of administrative detail was without equal but his legislative record contained little that may be regarded as original. His success was in adapting existing institutions, of accommodation to change; his failure was political, an inability to persuade his own party of the changing political environment created in 1832.

Reputation

The Peelite wing of the Conservative Party was gradually absorbed, between 1846 and 1859, into the Liberal Party. In his budget speeches of 1853-4 and 1860-66 Gladstone spoke of continuing and completing the free-trade policies of Sir Robert Peel. Within the family, Peel’s second son, Frederick, entered parliament as a Liberal in 1849; his eldest son, the third Sir Robert, who succeeded to the representation of Tamworth, served for four years as Irish secretary in Palmerston’s Liberal ministry of 1859–65; and his youngest son, Arthur Wellesley, began his political career as Liberal member for Warwick in 1865. It has therefore sometimes been suggested that Peel had all along been in the wrong party. But this is to ignore the fact that Peel himself, with his background, perceived no contradiction between manufacturing interests and Tory principles. To portray him as a Liberal manqué overlooks his abhorrence of Whig principles and his contempt for the Whigs’ levity and carelessness in government. It overlooks, too, the extent to which Peel’s supporters did not so much choose to be Liberal as have Liberalism thrust upon them.

Historians have often professed to see continuity between the Conservatism of the Tamworth manifesto and the Conservatism of subsequent generations. Certainly, a deferential attitude to crown, church, and aristocracy may be said to link Peel with Lord Salisbury and even with Stanley Baldwin. But Salisbury still referred to Peel as the man who had betrayed his party twice, and other Conservative leaders who conceded that one of Peel’s two changes of course might have been a principled one did not agree which one. Catholic emancipation ceased, after a generation, to be an emotive issue, but protection and free trade continued, as Balfour and Baldwin found, to divide the Conservative Party. Far into the twentieth century, the party related more easily to the pragmatism and balance of the 1842 budget than it did to the capitulation of 1846. Peel, who dominated the parliamentary debates of his age, found no assured resting place among succeeding generations of Conservatives.

In the Dictionary of National Biography, Peel’s grandson G. V. Peel wrote that in an age of revolutions Peel alone had had ‘the foresight and the strength to form a conservative party, resting not on force or corruption, but on administrative capacity and the more stable portion of the public will’. Certainly Peel re-educated the party after the debacle of 1831-2, and returned it to power in 1841. The case is strong, but the question then remains, why did Peel, in 1845-6, follow a course which led to the destruction of the party he himself had made? Peel explained that his ‘earnest wish’, during his tenure of power, had been ‘to impress the people of this country with a belief that the legislature was animated with a sincere desire to frame its legislation upon the principles of equity and justice’[1]. Peel wrote to Aberdeen on 19^th August 1847 that when he perceived that ‘it was impossible to reconcile the repeal of the Corn Laws by me with the keeping together of the Conservative party’, he had ‘no hesitation in sacrificing the subordinate object’. Here, he was not to be disappointed and he rose in the affections of the people in proportion as he lost the favour of his party. While members of one sectional interest, Tory landowners, draped their prints of Peel with crêpe or turned them to the wall and those of another, at the heart of the Anglican university establishment, made sure that Peel’s portrait never hung in his college dining hall, the nation’s fortuitous passage through the year of revolutions, 1848, showed that thoughts of the dissolution of our institutions were indeed being lost, as Peel had hoped they would be, amid the enjoyment of prosperity. Two years later, when Peel died, 400,000 working men contributed 1d each to a memorial fund, used to buy books for working men’s clubs and libraries.

Peel’s Speeches were published in four volumes in 1853, an imperfect edition but one that has never been replaced. Peel’s Memoirs, covering the three episodes he was most sensitive about, Catholic emancipation, the acceptance of the king’s commission to form a ministry in 1834-5, and the disintegration of the Conservative Party during the corn law crisis in 1845-6 were published by Philip Stanhope (Lord Mahon) and Edward Cardwell in 1856–7. But plans for an ‘official’ biography hung fire. Peel’s intimate, J. W. Croker, was the obvious choice. But he died in 1857 with nothing accomplished and the commission passed first to Goldwin Smith and then to Edward Cardwell, both of whom gave up. In 1891-9, C. S. Parker published three volumes of extracts from Peel’s papers that allowed Peel and his correspondents to speak for themselves, but offered little interpretation or evaluation. In the meantime various lives appeared: at least a dozen in the half century between 1850 and 1900. These were all based upon the readily available sources, and none was more authoritative than the article in the Dictionary of National Biography. No more could, perhaps, have been said, until Peel’s papers were deposited in the British Museum in 1922. Even then many years passed before the first full-length case for the consistency of Peel’s actions, the purity of his motives, and the scale of his achievement was at last made in Norman Gash’s two-volume biography (1961, 1972), a portrait so favourable that it has already led to less flattering revisions especially by Boyd Hilton and V. A. C. Gatrell.

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[1] Norman Gash, Sir Robert Peel, 2^nd edition, 1986, page 590.

Sources: Crisis of 1845-1846: 5

Extract from Peel’s final ministerial speech in the House of Commons, June 1846

After the repeal of the Corn Laws, Peel‘s government was defeated in a vote on a Coercion Act for Ireland. Peel resigned because of this. The extract below is part of his resignation speech

‘Sir, I now close the observations which it has been my duty to address to the House, thanking them sincerely for the favour with which they have listened to me in performing this last act of my official career. Within a few hours, probably, that power which I have held for a period of five years will be surrendered into the hands of another - without repining - without complaint on my part - with a more lively recollection of the support and confidence I have received during several years, than of the opposition which during a recent period I have encountered.

In relinquishing power, I shall leave a name, severely censured I fear by many who, on public grounds, deeply regret the severance of party ties - deeply regret that severance, not from interested or personal motives, but from the firm conviction that fidelity to party engagements - the existence and maintenance of a great party - constitutes a powerful instrument of government: I shall surrender power severely censured also, by others who, from no interested motive, adhere to the principle of protection, considering the maintenance of it to be essential to the welfare and interests of the country: I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist who, from less honourable motives, clamours for protection because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good will in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labour, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened by a sense of injustice.’

Disraeli’s assessment of Peel

Benjamin Disraeli made his political name because of his vitriolic attacks on Sir Robert Peel and there was no love lost between the two men. In this extract, Disraeli draws attention to what he saw as Peel’s failings. Disraeli also said that Peel was the ‘burglar of others’ intellect’, trading ‘on the ideas and intelligence of others’ and that his political life was ‘one great appropriation clause‘.

‘Nature had combined in Sir Robert Peel many admirable parts. In him a physical frame incapable of fatigue was united with an understanding equally vigorous and flexible. He was gifted with the faculty of method in the highest degree; and with great powers of application which were sustained by a prodigious memory; while he could communicate his acquisitions with clear and fluent elocution.

Such a man, under any circumstances and in any sphere of life, would probably have become remarkable. Ordained from his youth to be busied with the affairs of a great empire, such a man, after long years of observation, practice, and perpetual discipline would have become what Sir Robert Peel was in the latter portion of his life, a transcendent administrator of public business and a matchless master of debate in a popular assembly.

Thus gifted and thus accomplished, Sir Robert Peel had a great deficiency; he was without imagination. Wanting imagination, he wanted prescience. No-one was more sagacious when dealing with the circumstances before him; no one penetrated the present with more acuteness and accuracy. His judgement was faultless provided he had not to deal with the future. Thus it happened through his long career, that while he always was looked upon as the most prudent and safest of leaders, he ever, after a protracted display of admirable tactics, concluded his campaigns by surrendering at discretion. He was so adroit that he could prolong resistance even beyond its term, but so little foreseeing that often in the very triumph of his manoeuvres he found himself in an untenable position. And so it came to pass that Roman Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, and the abrogation of our commercial system, were all carried in haste or in passion and without conditions or mitigatory arrangements.

Sir Robert Peel had a peculiarity which is perhaps natural with men of very great talents who have not the creative faculty; he had a dangerous sympathy with the creations of others. Instead of being cold and wary, as was commonly supposed, he was impulsive and even inclined to rashness...

Sir Robert Peel had a bad manner of which he was sensible; he was by nature very shy, but forced early in life into eminent positions, he had formed an artificial manner, haughtily stiff or exuberantly bland, of which, generally speaking, he could not divest himself. There were, however, occasions when he did succeed in this, and on these, usually when he was alone with an individual whom he wished to please, his manner was not only unaffectedly cordial, but he could even charm...

For so clever a man he was deficient in the knowledge of human nature. The prosperous routine of his youth was not favourable to the development of this faculty. It was never his lot to struggle; although forty years in Parliament, it is remarkable that Sir Robert Peel never represented a popular constituency or stood a contested election.’

Benjamin Disraeli Lord George Bentinck , 1852

Sources: Crisis of 1845-1846: 4

Disraeli’s attack on Peel: 15^th May 1846: contemporary comment

Last week the debate in the House of Commons came to a close at last, wound up by a speech of Disraeli‘s, very clever, in which he hacked and mangled Peel with the most unsparing severity, and positively tortured his victim. It was a miserable and degrading spectacle. The whole mass of the Protectionists cheered him with vociferous delight, making the roof ring again, and when Peel spoke, they screamed and hooted at him in the most brutal manner. When he vindicated himself, and talked of honour and conscience, they assailed him with shouts of derision and gestures of contempt... . They hunt him like a fox, and they are eager to run him down and kill him in the open, and they are full of exultation at thinking they have nearly accomplished this object.

Charles Greville The Greville Memoirs, Longmans, Green, 1885, 21^st May 1846

The Duke of Wellington’s speech on the repeal of the Corn Laws: 28^th May 1846

Hansard, 3^rd series, volume LXXXVI, columns 1401-5

The Conservatives, under Sir Robert Peel, had won the election of 1841 on a platform of maintaining the Corn Laws. Within months, Peel was making adjustments to the protectionist system in place in Britain and by the end of 1845 had proposed to repeal the Corn Laws. Peel relied heavily on the Duke of Wellington to ensure that the Tory Lords supported the legislation proposed in the House of Commons.

My Lords, I cannot allow this question for the second reading of this Bill to be put to your Lordships, without addressing to you a few words on the vote you are about to give. I am aware, my Lords, that I address you on this occasion under many disadvantages. I address your Lordships under the disadvantage of appearing here, as a Minister of the Crown, to press this measure upon your adoption, knowing at the same time how disagreeable it is to many of you with whom I have constantly acted in political life, with whom I have long lived in intimacy and friendship with the utmost satisfaction to myself - on whose good opinion I have ever relied, and, I am happy to say, whose good opinion it has been my fortune hitherto to have enjoyed in no small degree. My Lords, I have already in this House adverted to the circumstances which gave rise to this measure. My Lords, in the month of December last, I felt myself bound, by my duty to my Sovereign, not to withhold my assistance from the Government - not to decline to resume my seat in Her Majesty’s Councils - not to refuse to give my assistance to the Government of my right hon. Friend [Sir Robert Peel] - knowing as I did, at the time, that my right hon. Friend could not do otherwise than propose to Parliament a measure of this description - nay, more, my Lords, this very measure - for this is the very measure which my right hon. Friend stated to the Cabinet prior to their resignation in the month I have referred to. My Lords, it is not necessary that I should say more upon that subject. I am aware that I address your Lordships at present with all your prejudices against me for having adopted the course I then took - a course which, however little I may be able to justify it to your Lordships, I considered myself bound to take, and which, if it was to be again adopted tomorrow, I should take again. I am in Her Majesty’s service - bound to Her Majesty and to the Sovereigns of this country by considerations of gratitude of which it is not necessary that I should say more to your Lordships. It may be true, my Lords, and it is true, that in such circumstances I ought to have no relation with party, and that party ought not to rely upon me. Be it so, my Lords - be it so, if you think proper: I have stated to you the motives on which I have acted - I am satisfied with those motives myself - and I should be exceedingly concerned if any dissatisfaction respecting them remained in the mind of any of your Lordships. I am aware that I have never had any claim to the confidence which you have all reposed in me for a considerable number of years. Circumstances have given it to me; in some cases the confidence of the Crown, and, in other, the zeal with which I have endeavoured to serve your Lordships, to promote your Lordships’ views, and my desire to facilitate your business in this House; and I shall lament the breaking up of that confidence in public life. But, my Lords, I will not omit, even on this night - probably the last on which I shall ever venture to address to you any advice again - I will not omit to give you my councel with respect to the vote you ought to give on this occasion. My noble Friend [Lord Stanley], whose absence on this occasion I much lament, urged you, and in the strongest manner, to vote against this measure; and he told you, in terms which I cannot attempt to imitate, that it was your duty to step in and protect the people of this country from rash and inconsiderate measures passed by the other House of Parliament, and which, in his opinion, were inconsistent with the views and opinions of the people themselves. My Lords, there is no doubt whatever that it is your duty to consider all the measures which are brought before you, and that it is your right to vote in regard to those measures as you think proper; and, most particularly, it is your duty to vote against those that appear to be rash and inconsiderate; but, my Lords, I beg leave to point out to your Lordships that it is also your duty to consider well the consequences of any vote you give on any subject - to consider well the situation in which you place this House - nay, my Lords, that it is the duty of every one of you to place himself in the situation of this House, to ponder well the consequences of his vote and all the circumstances attending it, and the situation I repeat, in which this House would be placed it it should adopt the vote which he himself is about to give. This, indeed, has been the line of conduct pursued by this House before. I myself once prevailed upon this House to vote for a measure on which it had pronounced positive opinions by former votes [Catholic Emancipation in 1829]; and persuaded it subsequently to take a course different from that which it had pursued on previous occasions, upon the same subject. My Lords, I now ask you to look a little at the measure in respect of which you are going to give your votes this night - to look at the way in which it comes before you, and to consider the consequences likely to follow your rejection - if you do reject it - of this Bill. This measure, my Lords, was recommended by the Speech from the Throne, and it has been passed by a majority of the House of Commons, consisting of more than half the Members of that House. But my noble Friend said that that vote is inconsistent with the original vote given by the same House of Commons on this same question, and inconsistent with the supposed views of the constituents by whom they were elected. But, my Lords, I think that is not a subject which this House can take into its consideration - for, first, we can have no accurate knowledge of the fact; and, secondly, whether it be the fact or not, this we know, that it is the House of Commons from which this Bill comes to us. We know by the Votes that it has been passed by a majority of the House of Commons; we know that it is recommended by the Crown; and we know that, if we should reject this Bill, it is a Bill which has been agreed to by the other two branches of the Legislature; and that the House of Lords stands alone in rejecting this measure. Now that, my Lords, is a situation in which I beg to remind your Lordships, I have frequently stated you ought not to stand; it is a position in which you cannot stand, because you are entirely powerless; without the House of Commons and the Crown, the House of Lords can do nothing. You have vast influence on public opinion; you may have great confidence in your own principles; but without the Crown or the House of Commons you can do nothing - till the connexion with the Crown and the House of Commons is revived, there is an end of the functions of the House of Lords. But I will take your Lordships a step further, and let you see what will be the immediate consequences of rejecting this Bill. It appears very clear, that whatever may be the result of this Bill in this House, the object I had in view in resuming my seat in Her Majesty’s Councils will not be attained. I conclude that another Government will be formed; but whether another government is formed or not, let me ask, do your Lordships suppose that you will not have this very same measure brought before you by the next Administration which can be formed? And do your Lordships mean to reject the measure a second time? Do you mean the country to go on in the discussion of this measure two or three months longer? But the object of the noble Duke and of the noble Lords who have addressed the House against this Bill is, that Parliament should be dissolved - that the country should have the opportunity of considering the question, and of returning other representatives; and that it may be seen whether or not the new House of Commons would agree to this measure or not. Now, really if your Lordships have so much confidence, as you appear to have, in the result of other elections, and in the exercise of public opinion on this question, I think that you might venture to rely upon elections which must occur, according to the common course of law, in the course of a twelvemonth from this time; and that you might leave it to the Parliament thus elected to consider the course which it will take on the expiration of the term of the Bill now before you; for that Bill is to last only till the year 1849. I think your Lordships might trust to that Parliament to take the matter into consideration at that time, without interfering with the prerogative of the Crown, by compelling the Queen to dissolve Parliament as the immediate consequence of the rejection of the present measure. Your Lordships, therefore, have now the option of immediately accepting this Bill, reserving it to another parliament to pass or reject it again, if again the question should be brought forward, or of rejecting the Bill now, and obtaining a fresh election, of which you are so desirous: your Lordships have that choice - you may reject the Bill now, or you may appeal again to the new Parliament to confirm or reject it, at the time when its operation will cease, in the year 1849.