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Livestream: https://youtube.com/live/BM4poWMC1ms?feature=share The impeachment of Dr Henry Sacheverell in 1710 was more than just the prosecution of a firebrand High Church preacher for an incendiary sermon. The senior Whigs who pushed for the impeachment saw it as an opportunity to put the entire Tory Party and its political principles on trial. In the short-term, it backfired spectacularly. It proved the decisive moment in Robert Harley’s backstairs coup against the Whigs, but also gave rise to a national upsurge of pro- Church sentiment which propelled the Tories to landslide victory in the 1710 General Election. This lecture will show how the trial ultimately illustrated the inescapable dilemmas of a Tory Party that could neither fully accept nor bring itself to fully oppose the revolutionary settlement of 1689. Dr Sacheverell became, in truth, the figurehead not of Tory victory, but of the fatal ambiguities of post-Revolutionary Toryism.
When:
5 November 2024
3:30 pm
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