| dc.description.abstract | It is the contention of this thesis that the crown
went through some rather marked change during the course
of the period, starting with the Bill of Rights and
effectively ending with the Act of Settlement in 1701. In
1689 the crown had an extensive prerogative and a limited
executive, in 1702 it had a more limited prerogative
(although it did come into operation until after Annets
1714
death) and an extensive executive. Thereafter, there was
no deterioration in the crown's position during the
subsequent decades to the period's end. The importance of
the crown has been underestimated because of the limited
amount of direct research on it as a political entity.
This thesis makes advances in terms of both factual
knowledge and historiography. Its body falls into two
principal parts. The first of these are three structural
analyses of crown patronage in relation to the peeragetitles,
central office and local office. The second is a
broad political narrative. The analyses show that the
crown was a very definite presence in high politics. Over
the period as a whole the crown defined the limitations
that its political managers had to operate within
these. As the period progressed crown prejudices,
especially with relation to the peerage, grew more marked
rather than declining in the Revolution Settlement's wake
as has been the general interpretation previouslY. In the
narrative. the reigns of William III, Anne and George I
are principally innovative in terms of historiography. For
George II's reign there is such advance but also a far
higher share of new material, the latter part of the
period having had far less research on it than the former
one. A notable example of this is the patterns of
occurrence and general character of Post-1727 tory
tergiversation. | en_US |
