ABSTRACT
Historiography has challenged the long established Whig orthodoxy that the Georgian state was ‘decentralized’, ‘underfunded’, ‘amateurish’ and ‘weak’. This revisionist thesis takes as its starting point Britain’s return to the power politics of continental Europe after a break of over 200 years. After the supposed Puritan excesses of Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the absolutist, pro-Catholic machinations of James II, the Revolutionary Settlement tried to create a balanced constitution in which church and state were complementary rather than rival autonomous forces. Though concurrence over the treatment of their social inferiors transcended religious denomination, the relationship between church and state was structured along political lines which were themselves contested. The role of Bath as an elite resort, and the place of the General Infirmary within the socio-cultural life of the city ensure that many presidents and governors feature in the Dictionary of National Biography, or the History of Parliament series which contain meticulous portraits of MPs sitting between 1715 and 1790.
