ABSTRACT
Loyalism is reconsidered here in the light of the historiography. Yorke recanted his radicalism after his trial and remained a loyalist until his death. His loyalism did not reflect a consistent political allegiance. His early loyalist political writings suggest a move towards a liberal reform position, and only in his later political journalism can he be identified as a Pittite Tory. Yorke consistently claimed independence from any party. His journalism, supported by the Treasury, took a xenophobic anti-French stance as Napoleon threatened to invade Britain. Yorke again invoked vitriolic rhetoric, familiar from his radical days. His political life remained turbulent. He challenged Sir Francis Burdett to a duel in 1806 over a political dispute. Cobbett condemned Yorke in strongly racist terms.
Yorke’s Letters from France (1804) is analysed here. This Romantic text records his travels in France in 1802. It brings together Yorke’s revolutionary past in Paris with his loyalist present revealing his political and emotional responses. It weaves together stories, myths, and memories. Yorke’s graphic representation of the violence of Revolutionary France is prescient of Thomas Carlyle’s French Revolution (1837). Yet he retained regret for the loss of revolutionary ideals in the face of Napoleon’s tyrannical empire-building.
