2011 - University College London

UCLHISTORY 

Spring 2011 For members of the History Alumnus Association 

In association with 

The golden 

goose that 

never cackled 

A visit to Bletchley Park 

Also this issue: 

Amélie Kuhrt reflects 

Alan Baxendale: obituary 

Life at the Foreign Office 

UCL examinations: the early years 

Honour, politics and duelling 1798-1822

CONTENTS SPRING 2011 

View from the Bridge 

Nicola Miller, Head of Department, reports 

Alan Baxendale OBE: notable reformer of prison education 

An obituary and appreciation from Professor Seán McConville 

Examinations in the early years of UCL 

David d’Avray takes a glimpse at how it used to be... 

Amélie Kuhrt: a pioneer reflects 

On becoming a historian, life as a German in post-war England and much else 

Students win prizes! 

The winners for 2009-10 

Publications update 

A selection of books and articles published by Department members in 2010 

A life at the Foreign Office 

Kate Crowe (1971) lifts the lid on life as a historian in government 

The golden goose that never cackled 

Katharine Housden reports on a recent Association visit to Bletchley Park 

YOUR CHANCE TO GET INVOLVED 

About the Association, its forthcoming events and how you can take part 

Honour, politics and duelling, 1798-1822 

Jurriaan van Santvoort on the importance of the British aristocracy’s code of honour 

In memoriam: Martin Welch 

Sad news about a former member of the Department 

Cover image from Bletchley Park: Katharine Housden 

UCLHISTORY is published by University College London History Department Alumnus Association. 

Articles are © 2011 the authors. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the 

Editors, UCL or of members of the History Department. Articles may be edited, deferred or omitted for 

space, legal or other reasons. UCLHISTORY has no views. 

Editors: Helen and Neil Matthews, 17 Peters Close, Prestwood, Great Missenden, Bucks HP16 9ET 

Email: uclhistory@btinternet.com 

Alumnus Association Membership: Dr Britta Schilling, History Department, UCL, Gower Street, London 

WC1E 6BT Email: b.schilling@ucl.ac.uk 

Items for publication should be sent to the Editors. Letters, articles or comment can be handwritten, typed, 

sent on CD or emailed. The Editors use Microsoft Word and can read any file which Word can import. If in 

doubt, save it as a .TXT file or e-mail it and we can sort something out. Photos can be posted or e-mailed. If 

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acceptable as well (add a message explaining what the photo is showing). Saving at relatively high resolution 

is appreciated as it increases our layout options. Please state your degree programme and year of graduation 

when writing. Please also let us know if you are willing for your contribution to appear, not just in UCLHISTORY, 

but also in future on the Alumnus Association website. Thanks to all contributors to this issue. 

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DEPARTMENT 

NEWS 

Nicola Miller, 

Head of the 

History 

Department, 

gives an 

update on 

Departmental 

developments 

View from 

the Bridge 

The Department has been enhanced 

this year by the arrival of three new 

academic colleagues, all of whom are 

in the early stages of their careers: 

� Caroline Waerzeggers, Lecturer in 

Ancient Near Eastern History 

� John Sabapathy, Lecturer in 

Medieval History 

� Sarah Snyder, Lecturer in 

International History 

Caroline works on religion in the Ancient 

Near East. As mentioned last year, she is 

currently running a research project ‘By 

the Rivers of Babylon: New 

Perspectives on Second Temple Judaism 

from Cuneiform Texts’. 

John, who was a research student of 

David d’Avray, is particularly interested 

in political accountability in medieval 

Europe and has begun a new project on 

medieval dialogues. He has also been 

commissioned to write the volume on the 

thirteenth century for the Oxford History 

of Medieval Europe. 

Sarah’s forthcoming book is about the 

role of human rights in the late stages of 

the Cold War. In her next project she 

plans to explore how questions of human 

rights helped to shape US policy during 

the earlier decade of the 1960s. 

In addition to their research, all three are 

designing fascinating new courses for 

both undergraduates and MA students, 

strengthening our provision across the 

board. 

In May, we will also welcome Dina 

Gusejnova, who won a Leverhulme 

early career fellowship, and will be 

spending three years with us under that 


scheme. She, too, will contribute to the 

teaching programme. Her work is on 

twentieth-century intellectual history, 

particularly ideas of cosmopolitanism 

and internationalism during the inter-war 

years. 

Current staff have also had their work 

recognised in a variety of notable ways. 

Bernhard Rieger won an AHRC 

Fellowship to spend more time writing 

his book on the transnational history of 

the Volkswagen Beetle, which has taken 

him into the new territory of Mexican 

history as well as back to his more 

familiar ground of German, British and 

US history. 

Angus Gowland won one of this year’s 

prestigious Philip Leverhulme prizes, of 

which only five were awarded, to 

scholars under the age of 36 who have 

already made a particularly notable 

contribution to their field. His expertise 

is in early modern intellectual history, 

especially Burton’s Anatomy of 

Melancholy. 

Avi Lifschitz was offered a fellowship at 

the distinguished Wissenschaftskolleg in 

Berlin, to pursue his research on crosscultural 

transfer between the German 

states and France. 

Research from the Volterra Roman Law 

project hit the headlines when a Roman 

law code, previously believed to have 

been lost, was discovered and pieced 

together from 17 fragments by Benet 

Salway and Simon Corcoran. 

Our students have, as usual, produced 

some outstanding work, particularly for 

their dissertations. The new second-year 

long essay of 7,500 words also led to

“We remain firmly committed to giving 

individual attention to all students, 

to offering a wide range of research-driven 

courses and to widening participation” 

some very impressive work; it was 

designed partly to help with preparation 

for the final-year 10,000-word 

dissertation based on primary sources. 

At MA level, too, external examiners 

commended the in-depth research, 

analytical power and elegant writing of 

our students. 

A History student won the Dean’s medal 

for 2010: Jennifer Hicks, who took the 

Ancient History/Egyptology degree, 

which continues to attract a small but 

often highly distinguished cohort of 

students. 

It has been a good year in so many ways, 

then, but it would be foolish to pretend 

that the recent round of government 


spending cuts will not cause difficulties 

for us, just as they will for all arts, 

humanities and social science 

departments around the country that will 

soon see their teaching grant removed 

and their research income effectively cut 

by 10% over the next four years. 

Even so, we remain firmly committed to 

our policies of giving individual attention 

to all of our students, to offering a broad 

range of research-driven courses and to 

widening participation. By next year, the 

implications of recent decisions should 

be clearer, so I will report on them then, 

although it is likely to take several years 

before we fully understand their 

effects.� 

Top row (l to r): Caroline Waerzeggers, John Sabapathy, Sarah Snyder, Bernhard Rieger 

Second row: Angus Gowland, Afi Lifschitz, Benet Salway, Simon Corcoran 

For profiles of all academic staff and their teaching and research interests, see 

www.ucl.ac.uk/history/about_us/academic_staff

ALUMNUS 

OBITUARY 

We learnt with 

sadness of 

the death 

of Alan 

Baxendale, a 

long-term 

Alumnus 

Association 

Committee 

member. 

Professor 

Seán 

McConville, 

Professor of 

Law and 

Public Policy 

at Queen 

Mary, 

University of 

London, looks 

back at 

Alan’s life 

Alan Baxendale OBE: 

Notable reformer of prison education 

Alan Baxendale was Chief Education 

Officer at the Home Office from 1967 

to 1985 and brought about many 

positive and lasting changes in what 

had been an underdeveloped and 

sometimes woefully neglected part of 

the penal system. 

Baxendale was educated at Stockport’s 

Leys Preparatory School and at the 

town’s ancient and distinguished 

Grammar School. From the outset he was 

gripped by an commitment to education 

so intense and persistent it that defined 

his working life and the years beyond. 

He never doubted that it could transform 

even the most unpromising lives and 

difficult personalities and counter 

challenging environments. 

Entering University College London in 

1943 to read history, Alan intermitted 

after the first year to undertake military 

service in East Africa. He returned in 

1947 and took his degree in 1949. This 

was followed by a postgraduate 

qualification from the Institute of 

Education. The next eleven years were 

spent in educational administration in 

Uganda (then a British Protectorate). 

There he rapidly advanced to the rank of 

Higher Education Officer, playing a part 

in the foundation of Makerere and 

Nairobi Universities. At the same time he 

earned a research MA from Birmingham 

University for studies in East African 

history. 

As the ‘wind of change’ blew ever more 

strongly, issues of transition acquired 

urgency and Alan was closely involved 

in professional and civil service training 

in Uganda, in preparation for 

Africanisation. Friendships made at this 

time endured throughout his life and he 


was in correspondence with East African 

former colleagues and students until 

weeks before his death. 

Returning to Britain in 1961 Baxendale 

successively held senior posts in 

educational administration in Shropshire, 

East Sussex and Enfield. These were 

followed by his appointment to the Home 

Office. He was convinced that as long as 

education remained a Prison Department 

in-house service it would at best merely 

bump along. The times were ripe for a 

major shift. Drawing on his background 

and connections in local government he 

was able to negotiate a partnership 

arrangement whereby prison education 

became a responsibility of local 

education authorities whilst being funded 

by the Home Office. This allowed 

prisons to draw on a reservoir of 

experience and range of skills far beyond 

anything previously available; it also 

opened institutions to new ideas and 

attitudes. 

Alan was quick to understand and grasp 

the numerous opportunities of the Open 

University. His approach was to provide 

through education a ladder for prisoners 

and he realised that as they ascended the 

various rungs of attainment, skill and 

confidence, some would arrive at the 

point where higher education would be 

possible and a logical extension of their 

endeavours. 

It is impossible to calculate how many 

lives were and continue to be 

transformed by these innovations. They 

seem so obviously correct in retrospect, 

but were achieved only through stubborn 

and prolonged persuasion, hard work and 

complex negotiations, all driven by a 

constructive imagination.

“He embraced the traditional injunction 

always to serve to the best of one’s 

abilities and energies” 

In 1981 the Open University awarded 

Baxendale an honorary MA in 

recognition of his work for adult 

education. Retirement in 1985 was 

marked by the OBE. Over the following 

twenty-five years he energetically 

involved himself in many activities 

broadly relating to education. He 

registered for a research degree at Queen 

Mary, University of London, in 1997. 

This culminated in the MPhil, gained at 

the age of seventy-nine. He developed 

into a book his interesting and minutely 

researched dissertation on Churchill’s 

nineteen-month tenure as Home 

Secretary (Winston Leonard Spencer- 

Churchill: Penal Reformer, Oxford, 

Peter Lang). Churchill’s imperious, 

humane (and sometimes emotional) 

questioning of penal orthodoxies 

demanded the diligent exploration and 

nuanced exposition that Alan brought to 

it. This work well deserved its laudatory 


foreword from the great Churchill 

scholar, Sir Martin Gilbert. 

Alan Baxendale had an unvaryingly 

positive attitude to life and work and 

embraced the traditional injunction 

always to serve to the best of one’s 

abilities and energies. In his own 

education and that of others these 

fundamentals found apt and fruitful 

expression. His life’s work and 

significant achievements flowed from a 

reticent and understated compassion and 

a strong will to do the right thing in 

whichever arena he found himself.� 

Alan Stanley Baxendale, educator, 17 

April 1925 – 3 October 2010: unmarried 

This obituary was first published in 

The Independent, 16 November 2010. 

Photo courtesy of Mr and Mrs David 

Slater. 

DAVID JOHNSON OBE FSA FRHistS (1934-2008) left a sum of £7,500 to the 

Association, which was reported at the 2009 AGM. Since then, Dr Ann Saunders, a 

UCL alumna and Hon. Editor of the publications of the London Topographical Society, 

and Mr Arthur Impey - who studied at UCL with Mr Johnson - have kindly provided us 

with further information about his career. David Johnson was the longest-serving 

member of the London Topographical Society’s Council, and an active member of 

several other professional bodies. His name first appeared on the roll of LTS council 

members in 1972. David won a scholarship to University College London, where he 

graduated in 1955 with an Honours degree in History. After completing his national 

service in the RASC, he returned to London University and in 1957 was awarded the 

Goldsmiths’ Company’s postgraduate studentship in London history. He contributed a 

chapter on ‘Estates and Income, 1540-1714’ to a 2004 publication marking the 1400th 

anniversary of the foundation of St Paul’s; wrote Southwark and the City, tracing the 

relationship between London and its oldest suburb; and was Assistant Editor of the 

Victoria County History of Essex. For most of his professional life he worked in the 

Records of the House of Lords, becoming Clerk of the Records in 1991. 

At the 2010 AGM, it was agreed to spend Mr Johnson’s legacy as follows: new furniture 

for the undergraduate common room (£1,500); two bursaries for completing research 

students (£2,000, spread over two years); and study travel and language training 

bursaries for students (£4,000, spread over two years). Staff and students are 

extremely grateful for this contribution to the continuing success of the Department.

ACADEMIC 

ARTICLES 

David 

d’Avray 

takes a 

glimpse at 

how it used 

to be... 

Examinations in the 

early years of UCL 

In its earliest years UCL was of course 

simply 'the University of London'. This 

title was chivalrously yielded to the new 

federal university in 1836, after Kings 

College had been founded in a panicked 

reaction by the Establishment. There is 

still much to be discovered about these 

early years. 1 One apparently unexplored 

topic is the concept of 'examinations' in 

these formative years. The word did not 

mean quite the same thing as it does now. 

Look at the following passage: 

'As the efficacy of teaching by Lectures is 

greatly increased by the practice of 

examination, it is intended that, in every 

class in the University, the Professor shall 

devote a certain portion of the hours of 

instruction in each week to this important 

duty. 

The manner of conducting these 

examinations, and the frequency of their 

recurrence, must necessarily vary: in some 

branches they will form a part of the business 

of every day; in others, an examination on 

alternate days, or even at greater intervals, 

may be found sufficient. . . 

Persons who may be desirous of hearing the 

Lectures in the University, and yet may not 

wish to submit to examination, will not be 

excluded. No student, however, who wishes 

to obtain a Certificate can be exempted.' 2 

What were these 'examinations'? The 

passage quoted suggest that the word 

may mean something closer to 'seminar 

teaching' than to formal examinations in 

the modern sense. Was questioning of 

students about the contents of the 

lectures envisaged? In any case, that 

would have easily turned into discussion. 

One also wonders: were the students then 

all supposed to be taken together for 

these 'examinations' in one large class, 


the same size as the lecture audience, 

minus some who did not want to obtain a 

Certificate? Not necessarily. The same 

document states that 

'Should any of the classes become so 

numerous that the Professor alone cannot do 

justice to his pupils, assistants will be 

appointed, to be paid by the Professor, 

without any additional fee being paid by the 

pupil; and it may even happen that a second 

Professor in the same department may be 

found necessary.' 3 

This suggests that something like small 

group teaching was envisaged. 

'Examinations' in the above sense, then, 

probably meant something close to 

'teaching' as we understand it today: but 

there were also to be 'examinations' in 

the modern sense. The striking thing 

about the plan for these is that it is 

indeed very modern and rigorous. In the 

relevant document (wording printed 

opposite), the following should be noted: 

the exam paper was printed, students sit 

the exam in an exam hall, they are not 

allowed to bring in books, examination 

scripts are anonymous - note the 

ingenious system of mottos - and the 

scripts are classified. From the 

beginning, robust and rigorous 

assessment was the rule at UCL, or the 

real 'University of London'.� 

NOTES 

1 The starting point is N. Harte and J. North, The 

World of UCL. There is also the older and less 

readable Hale-Bellot 

2 Second Statemen by the Council of the 

University of London, explanatory of The Plan of 

Instruction (Private Proof for the Council; 

London, 1828), 23-4 

3 Ibid. 15.

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 

Explanation of the Method followed in awarding the 

Prizes and Certificates of Honours. 

THE Honours and Prizes have been awarded by the result of answers 

in writing to prepared questions. 

A series of Questions for the Students of each Professor was printed, of 

which a copy was delivered to the Student after he came into the 

Examination-Room. 

The Answers were written in the Examination-Room, and they were 

collected at one time. No Book was allowed to be brought into the 

Room. 

The paper containing the answers was not signed with the Student's 

own name, but with a mark or motto; and the name of the Student using 

it, inclosed in a sealed envelope, inscribed with the mark or motto, was 

left with the Warden, to be opened upon the day of the distribution of 

the Prizes. 

A Gold Medal and two Silver Medals are given in each Class, and 

Certificates of Honours to all who have attained a certain amount of 

excellence in their answers to the questions, as previously fixed. 

The Professor of each Class will, in succession, come to the table 

with a list of the successful competitors among his own pupils. He will 

read the Motto affixed to the paper of answers which have been found 

to possess the highest merit, and to which the Gold Medal has been 

awarded. The Warden will then open the sealed packet, and declare the 

name of the successful competitor, who will come forward and receive 

his Certificate and Prize from the Chairman. The Professor will next 

announce the Mottos to which the Silver Medals have been awarded, 

and will read the names of those who have obtained Certificates of 

Honours. 

The same Student may gain a Prize or Certificate in every Class. 

UCLHISTORY (Spring 2011) - page 9

TALKING 

WITH... 

Last year 

marked the 

retirement of 

distinguished 

Professor of 

Ancient Near 

East History 

Amélie 

Kuhrt. 

Now Amélie 

writes about 

becoming a 

historian, life 

as a German 

in post-war 

England and 

much else 

besides. 

Prepare to 

be surprised... 

Amélie Kuhrt: 

a pioneer reflects 

On becoming a historian, and coming 

(or not!) to UCL 

It all happened rather by chance – I 

rather avoided history at school, I found 

it (or perhaps the way it was taught?) 

dull. A further factor was that I come 

from a family of historians, so knowing 

historical facts was constantly being 

pushed at me, which I found irritating. 

My great-grandfather was archivist of the 

Hanseatic League in Cologne; my 

grandfather was a historian of modern 

Germany in Giessen; my brother, who 

lives and works in Germany, works on 

recent German history. 

I came to England when I was 11. My 

stepfather was in the air force, as a result 

of which we moved around a lot, and I 

went to several different schools. We 

moved to Norwich at the point that I was 

about to start A Levels, and I expected to 

study Greek, Latin and French. The one 

school where I could do A level Greek, 

insisted that the only combination they 

allowed with classical languages was 

Ancient History. So reluctantly, I was 

compelled to do ancient history. To my 

own surprise, I discovered that I liked the 

subject very much; it certainly diverged 

from the family tradition. 

The university courses for which I 

applied were all in Classics, as the school 

(like so many still) was unaware that an 

independent ancient history degree 

existed. This is the place where I have to 

admit that I am a UCL reject. I was 

interviewed by two charming people in 

the Department of Greek and Latin, who 

asked me what I hoped to do after 

completing my BA, to which I idiotically 

replied that I wanted to be an actress. I 


hope that this stupid response was the 

only reason for my rejection... 

I was offered a place at King’s College. 

While waiting for the term to start, I 

discovered from the literature I was sent 

that I could do BA Honours Ancient 

History at London University. In my 

introductory meeting with the Professor 

of Latin I explained this to him. He told 

me that the degree consisted of Greek, 

Roman and either medieval or Near 

Eastern history. ‘Obviously,’ he said, 

looking up from the ‘white pamphlet’, 

‘You would not want to take the Near 

East option.’ Simple contrariness made 

me say that I had always longed to do 

Near Eastern history, although I had 

never thought of it and knew literally 

nothing about it! There was, and still is, a 

tendency for Near Eastern history to be 

classified as archaeology. In some 

respects this is understandable, given that 

virtually all the written documentation 

has been excavated, so the history has to 

be rather painfully reconstructed from 

fragmentary texts and archaeological 

remains. But the advances have been 

immense, so there is less and less 

justification for relegating the subject (as 

the TLS only too often still does) to a 

kind of uneasy ‘archaeological’ limbo. 

On life as an undergraduate, and a 

German in post-war England 

At the time I was an undergraduate, 

History was a University of London 

degree, so all courses were accessible to 

students at any London college. Near 

Eastern history was only taught at UCL, 

and – as it turned out – virtually all my 

Roman and Greek history courses were 

taught there, too, so that I ended up, after 

all, as an undergraduate here. I much

“These émigrés reminded me of what 

German culture is and had been...” 

preferred UCL to KCL: the building was 

much more beautiful, and KCL was – 

certainly at that time - dominated by a 

rather heavy Church of England 

presence, a sort of Barchester Towers/ 

Trollope-like atmosphere, which I found 

alienating. What was, and is, so 

somehow liberating at UCL is that it has 

no Theology Department; instead there is 

a Department of Hebrew and Jewish 

Studies. 

Another aspect I found very sympathetic 

was that quite a few members of the 

academic staff, particularly in the 

Departments of Greek and Latin and in 

History, were émigrés from Germany, 

Austria and other parts of Central 

Europe. Since coming to England, I had 

never quite felt at home; I had always 

been uncomfortable about being German, 

given its, still relatively recent, appalling 

history. Encountering these émigrés 

reminded me of what German culture is 

and had been, which had been so utterly 

ruined by the Nazi period when every 

attempt had been made to either destroy 

or pervert it. These people were 

somewhat like my grandmother – very 

cultured, well educated, widely read, 

interested in music, a bit stuffy as well, 

probably… And they were courteous, the 

opposite of the stereotypical German - 

goose-stepping camp guards, barking 

commands, thick, fat, humourless, rude, 

brutal. So this made me feel at ease in 

UCL. Having said that I never felt 

completely at home in UK, I must stress 

that English people on the whole were 

very kind to me; considering what 

England had been through in the war, 

they couldn’t have been kinder. 

I regretted my obstinacy for some time, 

as I hated Near Eastern history at first. It 


appeared to make no kind of sense; it 

struck me as a ghastly subject and I 

wished I had never insisted on doing it. 

But it was a two year course, I had made 

my bed and I had my pride. My first 

year essays were criticised heavily, pretty 

well shredded, and they deserved to be; 

they were simply bad. I was completely 

clueless about what to do: we were not 

given bibliographies at the time and there 

were virtually no guides to the history, so 

I had no idea where to start. 

Occasionally, there were references to 

books in the course of the lecture. I was 

the only person at UCL doing the ancient 

Near East. There were students from the 

Institute of Archaeology who had to 

study one of the ancient languages and 

the history of the Near East, as well as 

carry out fieldwork. They had the kind 

of background knowledge which I lacked 

so totally. At that time, the study of 

archaeology was a three year, 

postgraduate diploma, so these people 

were also quite a bit older than me, and I 

was rather cowed; I didn’t dare ask them 

for any help because I was afraid of 

sounding a fool. I was fumbling around, 

to put it mildly. 

Our teacher for Near Eastern history was 

Peggy Drower, enormously 

knowledgeable and an excellent critic, 

which I did not fully appreciate at the 

time – I was more used to receiving 

praise. She looked very motherly and 

kindly, but she was neither motherly nor 

kind to me at all, which annoyed me. I 

determined that I would force her to 

acknowledge that one of my essays was 

good, with the result that I started to 

work extremely hard in my second year 

and succeeded. So, her approach was 

very beneficial, as far as I was

“The library was quite well 

stocked - and there was nobody else 

using the books at all” 

concerned. One great advantage I had, 

and have, was my solid German, which 

meant I could easily read relevant 

literature in German and, as is so often 

the case (to the eternal frustration of 

students), there was rather more that was 

useful available in German than English. 

The library was quite well stocked – and 

there was nobody else using the books at 

all. I could just sit there until the library 

closed ploughing through the books (and 

saving on heating). 

I have since gathered that Peggy 

Drower’s treatment of me was deliberate, 

as she thought I had potential and she 

was acting strategically in order to keep 

me up to the mark. I feel very proud to 

have been her successor. She has (having 

just passed her 99th birthday) such 

unrivalled knowledge of the regions. And 

she is enormously generous; witness the 

fact that around twenty years ago, she set 

up a fund to enable students to travel in 

the Middle East in order to further their 

studies. She is now a very good friend. 

Let us hope she will be able to celebrate 

her 100th birthday. 

Another obstacle to my progress was that 

I got married in my second year and had 

a baby, in my final year. As we had no 

money at all, there was none for a 

babyminder. My husband had a half 

week teaching job at Portsmouth Art 

School: so he went down there for two 

and a half days, then came back to look 

after the baby, while I hared off to the 

library. Fortunately, there was relatively 

little teaching at that time in the third 

year. My mother organised someone to 

look after Natasha during my final 

examinations, thank heavens… there 

were ten exams in five consecutive days. 


After the degree, I didn’t go on 

immediately to research, I had another 

baby. But just after her birth, I decided 

that I wanted to continue. What I very 

much hoped to do was to study the 

Achaemenid Persian Empire from the 

inside, not from the Greek angle, as I had 

done when I took the special subject on 

fifth century Greek history. I borrowed 

the money to pay for a postgraduate 

course in Akkadian cuneiform (language 

and script of Mesopotamia) at SOAS, 

and was lucky enough to receive a 

postgraduate grant there to support 

subsequent research. This allowed me to 

look at the Persian Empire from the 

perspective of one of its provinces. 

On fostering a collaborative approach 

to History 

I was very lucky here at UCL. While I 

was a student, Professor Momigliano ran 

a regular seminar at the Warburg which 

brought all sorts of people together from 

different places and subjects and 

disciplines. It was an inspiration and 

opened my eyes to a variety of 

approaches to history, as well as the 

value of working together with others. 

Then, when I became a lecturer, there 

was a regular ancient history seminar set 

up by Fergus Millar (it still continues) 

and, through this network, I met a Dutch 

colleague who also worked on the 

Persian empire. Our interests and 

approaches were similar but our 

specialisms were different. She 

approached it critically from the Greek 

angle, while I had concentrated on 

Babylonia under Persian rule. We put 

ourselves together and ran a series of 

very intensive and focused workshops 

over some eight years which have had a

“The participants had 

very strict instructions...” 

noticeable impact on the way the Persian 

Empire is now considered and studied. 

The participants had very strict 

instructions. We prepared an 

introductory note for each annual theme, 

which we sent to scholars we thought 

were likely to make an interesting, 

relevant contribution. Of course, we also 

announced the forthcoming topic more 

broadly (at conferences etc) and invited 

anyone interested to get in touch. 

Participants could write papers as long as 

they liked (almost), which were 

circulated beforehand. Participation was 

restricted to no more than 30 people. 

Nobody was allowed to read his/her 

paper; each was given 10 minutes to 

cover the key points, which left 20 

minutes for questions and discussion. So 

it was imperative to read the papers in 

STUDENTS WIN PRIZES! 


advance. All participants were treated 

the same, and we made sure we had 

suitably strict chairpersons. We often 

had PhD students who could be rather 

shy – we had some rather grand names 

attending the workshops – but this format 

encouraged them to join in, as the 

meetings concentrated on discussion 

rather than paying attention to the status 

of the speaker. The organisation of these 

events, and the editing of the volumes 

was a lot of work, but it was worth it - 

we achieved a lot. And the series which 

began with the publication of these 

workshops, continues. It has published 

some important monographs, as well as a 

couple of essay collections. I learnt a 

huge amount through co-operating with 

my Dutch colleague; sadly, she died over 

ten years ago, but she has left a most 

valuable legacy.� 

The MA winners in 2009/10 are: Mikael Laidre (MA Ancient History), Ben Mechen (MA 

History) and Ben Pope (MA Medieval and Renaissance Studies). 

The undergraduate winners in 2009/10 are: 

Margaret Elizabeth Dale Cast Prize - Jennifer Hilder 

Joel Hurstfield Prize - Hannah Young 

Sir William Meyer Prize - Jennifer Hicks 

A J P Taylor Prize in 20th Century British History - Annabel Ka-Yee Bligh 

M A Thomson Prize - Isobel Symonds 

Ella Keeler Prize - Alexandra Ortolja-Baird 

History Department Alumni 1 st -year Core Courses Prizes - Katie Lines, Oliver Bond 

and Augustine Fung 

Sessional prizes: 

Alfred Cobban Prize - Ruth Turvey 

Dolley Prize - Nicola Lavey 

Pollard Prize - Kate Callaghan 

West Prize - Muthukumaran Sureshkumar 

Burns Prize - George White

PUBLICATIONS UPDATE 

A selection of books and articles published 

in 2010 by members of the Department 

· Arena, V. 'Ancestral Tradition' and ‘Assembly’ in M. Bevir (ed.), Encyclopaedia 

of Political Theory (Sage: Berkeley). 

· Collins, M. ‘Tagore, Gandhi and the National Question’ in Spiess, C., Fischer, A. 

(Eds.). State and Society in South Asia: Themes of Assertion and Recognition. 

Delhi: Samskriti. 

· Conway, S. ‘The British Army, 'Military Europe', and the American War of 

Independence’ in William and Mary Quarterly 67(1), 69-100 

· Conway, S. ‘War of American Independence, 1775-1783’ in Bradford, J. C. (Ed.). 

A Companion to American Military History, vol. 1 ( pp.22-38). Oxford: Wiley- 

Blackwell. 

· Corcoran, S. ‘Hidden from history: the legislation of Licinius’ in Harries, J., 

Wood, I. (Eds.). The Theodosian Code: Studies in the imperial law of late antiquity 

(2nd ed.), London: Bristol Classical Press. 

· Corcoran, S. ‘Murison and Theophilus’ in the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical 

Studies 53(2), 85-124, London 

· Corcoran, S. J. J., Salway, R. W. B. ‘A lost law-code rediscovered? The 

Fragmenta Londiniensia Anteiustiniana’ in Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für 

Rechtsgeschichte. Romanistische Abteilung 127, 677-678 Wien-Köln-Wiemar 

(Austria-Germany) 

· Hall, C. ‘Writing history, writing a nation: Harriet Martineau's History of the 

Peace’ in Kaplan, K., Dalzainis, E. (Eds.). Harriet Martineau. Manchester: 

Manchester University Press. 

· Hall, C. M., McClelland, K. Race, Nation and Empire. Manchester: Manchester 

University Press. 

· Kaplan, B. J. ‘Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and Its Reformation 

Opponents’ in J AM ACAD RELIG 78(2), 570-573 

· Kaplan, B. J. ‘The Founding of the Dutch Republic: War, Finance, and Politics in 

Holland, 1572-1588’ in Journal of Modern History 82(3), 733-734 

· Korner, A. ‘Nineteenth-Century Europe: A Cultural History’ in European History 

Quarterly 40(4), 733-735 

· Lifschitz, A. S. ‘The Enlightenment’s ‘Experimental Metaphysics’: Inquiries into 

the Origins and History of Language’ in Coignard, T., Davis, P., Montoya, A. 

(Eds.) Lumières et histoire – Enlightenment and History. Paris: Honoré Champion. 

· Lifschitz, A. S. ‘Translation in Theory and Practice: The Case of Johann David 

Michaelis’s Prize Essay on Language and Opinions (1759)’ in Stockhorst, S. (Ed.). 

Cultural Transfer through Translation: The Circulation of Enlightened Thought in 

Europe by Means of Translation. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 

· Radner, K. Assyrian and Non-Assyrian kingship in the first millennium BC’ in 

Lanfranchi, G. B., Rollinger, R. (Eds.) Concepts of kingship in antiquity ( Vol. 11 

pp.15-24). Padova: S.A.R.G.O.N. Editrice e Libreria. 


· Radner, K. Gatekeepers and lock masters: the control of access in the Neo- 

Assyrian palaces. In Baker, H. D., Robson, E., Zolyomi, G. (Eds.). Your praise is 

sweet: a memorial volume for Jeremy Black from students, colleagues and friends 

(1st ed. ed. pp.269-280). London: British Institute for the Study of Iraq. 

· Radner, K. Neue neuassyrische Texte aus Dur-Katlimmu: Eine Schülertafel mit 

einer sumerisch-akkadischen Königshymne und andere Keilschriftfunde aus den 

Jahren 2003-2009. In Kühne, H. (Ed.). Dur-Katlimmu 2008 and Beyond ( Vol. 1). 

Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 

· Radner, K. ‘The stele of Sargon II of Assyria at Kition: a focus for an emerging 

Cypriot identity?’ in Rollinger, R., Gufler, B., Lang, M., Madreiter, I. (Eds.). Interkulturalität 

in der Alten Welt: Vorderasien, Hellas, Ägypten und die vielfältigen 

Ebenen des Kontakts (1st ed. ed. Vol. 34 pp.429-449). 

· Salway, B. ‘Latin onomastics’, in Classical Review 60(2), 421-424 

· Salway, B. ‘Lorena Atzeri, Gesta senatus Romani de Theodosiano publicando: il 

codice teodosiano e la sua diffusione ufficiale in occidente’ in The Edinburgh Law 

Review 14(1), 172-173 Edinburgh, UK 

· Salway, B. ‘Mancipium rusticum sive urbanum: the slave chapter of Diocletian's 

edict on maximum prices’, in Roth, U. (Ed.) By the sweat of your brow: Roman 

slavery in its socio-economic setting ( Vol. 109 pp.1-20). London, UK: Institute of 

Classical Studies. 

· Salway, B. ‘Varia: R.D. Grasby, Processes in the Making of Roman Inscriptions’ 

in British Epigraphy Society Newsletter 21, 6-7 Oxford 

· Stokes, M. Gilda. London: British Film Institute/Palgrave Macmillan. 

· Stokes, M. ‘Race, Politics, and Censorship: D. W. Griffith's 'The Birth of a 

Nation'’, in France, 1916-1923’ in Cinema Journal 50(1), 19-38 

· Stokes, M., Costa De Beauregard, R. Die Rezeption amerikanischer Filme in 

Frankreich, 1910-20. In Schenk, I., Tröhler, M., Zimmermann, Y. (Eds.). Film - 

Kino - Zuschauer: Filmrezeption / Film - Cinema - Spectator: Film Reception. 

Marburg: Schüren. 

· Stokl, T. J. ‘Magic and Divination in the Old Testament’ in Journal of Theological 

Studies 61, 264-265 

For a fuller list of publications by members of the Department, 

in 2010 and in other years, see 

www.ucl.ac.uk/history 

Click ‘About Us’ and then ‘Publications’ 


TALKING 

WITH... 

Kate Crowe 

(1971) lifts the 

lid on life as a 

historian in 

government 

Kate Crowe: a life 

at the Foreign Office 

I wanted to go on and do research but 

it wasn’t clear initially whether it 

would be possible. I studied at UCL 

between 1968-71 and specialised in war 

studies at King’s - my particular period 

of interest is 1660-1820 - and in 1970 

was given a Sir William Meyer travel 

grant for a summer vacation walking tour 

of Wellington’s Peninsular War 

battlefields in Spain and Portugal. After 

graduating I did some MPhil research. In 

1976 I needed a job and saw an advert 

for a post in the Foreign and 

Commonwealth Office (FCO). Much to 

my surprise I became a research assistant 

in the Historical Branch of Library and 

Records department at the FCO and 

remained with the historians for nearly 

25 years. In 2001 I changed jobs to 

become the FCO’s Open Days 

Coordinator and after various internal 

reorganisations, became the non-Muslim 

faith groups and historical visits manager 

in 2008. I’m now back with historians 

and will be retiring in April after 34 and 

a half years in the FCO. 

Since the 1920s the FO has had an 

Historical Branch which was set up to 

explain British foreign policy by means 

of publishing volumes of documents. 

When I joined in 1976, independent 

historians, helped by research assistants 

who were civil servants, were bringing 

out two series - Documents on British 

Foreign Policy (which covered the 

interwar period) and Documents on 

British Policy Overseas (which aimed to 

cover the post-1945 period). I was 

attached to the team producing the postwar 

series and my duties included 

flagging up documents of interest in the 

FO files requisitioned from the Public 

Record Office (now called The National 

Archives) and, when a volume had been 


compiled, helping to see it through the 

press to publication. The manuscript 

consisted of photocopies of original 

documents in the PRO with typed 

headers and footers, and one of my jobs 

was to compare them with the page 

proofs after the latter had been produced 

by the Stationery Office and to mark any 

amendments. But it was interesting. The 

page proofs were very long and unwieldy 

and it was a collective endeavour to 

check the correction s had been made 

and to do the indexing and so on - very 

time consuming and expensive. The 

historians then decided to reduce costs by 

producing the manuscripts electronically 

and they were among the first to start 

using Apple Macs in the 1980s - 

computers in the Civil Service were in 

their infancy then. 

The historians also were responsible for 

responding to a great many historical 

enquiries from the Office and from 

outside. It could be anything. One of the 

first things I was thrown into was to help 

with an internal enquiry into the Katyn 

massacre – Polish officers killed by the 

Soviets during the Second World War. 

A few years ago we published a version 

of that enquiry. Last year after the 

accidental air crash on Russian soil in 

which many members of the Polish 

government died, part of the Russian 

response was to admit responsibility for 

the Katyn massacre. In 1976, the idea 

that the Soviet Union would ever do that 

would have seemed out of this world. 

It was Douglas Hurd (when Foreign 

Secretary) who said we should open up 

much more. During the 1990s we were 

keen to support the Code of Practice on 

Access to Government Information 

which later developed into the Freedom

“Queries could be very specific...” 

of Information (FoI) Act. We took care 

to try to respond to enquiries from the 

public within the set period of twenty 

working days and to answer as fully as 

we could, unless it was covered by one or 

more of a series of agreed exemptions. 

In 1996 I was asked to become desk 

officer within historians for the Code of 

Practice, and to produce or monitor the 

replies which went out. I got a very wide 

overview of the work of different 

departments in the FO which I wouldn’t 

otherwise have done. I was then a 

Home Civil Servant, in a specialist grade 

and not a member of the Diplomatic 

Service, so I didn’t go abroad on postings 

or move to political departments. 

Policies towards the arms trade, for 

example, was one area which generated 

enquiries. Somewhat later I was helping 

with the passage of the FoI Bill, working 

for my head of department, trying to see 

how this legislation would affect the 

Office and how things would happen in 

the future. I then had contact with the 

other government departments who were 

trying to deal with the same things 

efficiently 

There could also be very specific 

enquiries about policies, or people trying 

to trace their auntie who worked in the 

FO in 1945 and wondering if we could 

help them with some information. We 

couldn’t do full research for all of them, 

but we could point them in the right 

direction. I remember one gentleman 

who was a World War II PoW and was 

entitled to an allowance from the German 

Government if he could prove he was in 

a particular camp at a certain time and 

obtain confirmation from the UK 

government with an official seal. There 

were all sorts of files listing those who 


were in which PoW camps. I remember 

photocopying the relevant pages and 

sending him the copies, stamped with the 

FCO seal and he did get that allowance. 

He couldn’t have done it without us. In 

these situations you want to be helpful, 

though you know perfectly well that your 

resources are limited and you can’t do 

everything for everyone. 

In 1976 we had the Foreign Secretary’s 

Historical Adviser, and three other 

editors, each with a research assistant. 

Apart from a couple of clerical staff, plus 

a lady who did photocopying, that was it! 

We had access to the Reference Room 

and people who requisitioned files for us 

from the PRO but we were otherwise a 

very small team apart from being in 

touch with other Government historian 

teams. These included the Treasury, the 

Cabinet Office and MoD. 

One cross-Whitehall enquiry concerned 

a memorial set up in France for some 

airman who died there and the question 

was who was responsible for maintaining 

it. I did some research and passed on to 

the Air Historical Team that it was the 

French local authority who had given this 

space and was responsible for 

maintaining it afterwards. 

The FCO was very different in 1976. 

Before I joined I had to have my security 

clearance. They go back through every 

job you’ve ever done - Saturday jobs, 

holiday jobs etc - to establish your 

authenticity. Any contact we had with 

certain regimes had to be reported to the 

authorities. I had written an article for 

the English Historical Review and an 

academic in Russia asked me to send 

him a copy. So I had to get permission to 

do so. There was not a lot of contact

“We dragged this Victorian pile 

into the late 20th century” 

with people outside at that time. The 

historians were independent but at the 

same time there was an idea that you 

weren’t supposed to maintain much 

contact with the outside world. Now, 

although the security clearance process 

continues, we have a great deal of contact 

with academics and journalists and others 

including other historians. Recently 

we’ve been doing a series of seminars 

about how history can relate to foreign 

policy and inform today’s policy - on 

subjects such as piracy, or Simon 

Bolivar’s visit to London. All sorts of 

people across the spectrum came to the 

seminars and these were a great success. 

In the 1980s the Office was doing a 

major programme of restoration and 

refurbishment of the main building. The 

whole place had been very dilapidated - 

there had been plans to knock it down 

and build something new in the 1960s. 

But when some money became available, 

the more enlightened idea was to restore 

our historic fine rooms to the original 

Victorian splendour and to install the 

latest heating, lighting and 

communications systems to drag this 

Victorian pile into the late 20th century. 

It was a terrific success and got noticed 

in the architectural press etc. The FCO 

department in charge of the restoration 

needed someone who knew something 

about the history to deal with enquiries 

and they asked historians if they had 

anyone who might be willing to become 

a central reference point about this 

history of the buildings, do guided tours 

and train up other guides. They asked 

me and I absolutely jumped at the 

chance, which was far more me than 

analysing post-1945 foreign policy. It 

transformed my life. I was a tiny cog in 

a very big wheel, but I went out to do 


research in archives throughout the UK, 

did the tours, met a wide range of people 

and had the time of my life. The head of 

the department in charge of the 

restoration would, in a very enlightened 

way, contact me if something exciting 

was going so amongst other things I’ve 

been up on scaffolding in the central 

dome of the Grand Staircase looking at 

the painting and the remains of the 

original stencilling. 

Back in the 1980s we produced a very 

simple leaflet on the history of the 

restored areas of the FCO building to 

give to visitors, but in 1991 we branched 

out (with the collective help of our 

architects and contractors) with the first 

edition of a brochure illustrated with 

colour photographs of the Fine Rooms 

and published by the Stationery Office. 

Since then I have developed and seen 

through the press three further editions, 

plus foreign language versions. In 1997 

we started taking part in Open House 

London Weekend and we sold these 

brochures, plus other publications. 

At an OHL weekend, the public are 

completely free to turn up without a 

booking. They get a security check, a 

free printed guide, all sorts of displays, 

lots of seats where they can stay for a 

while to enjoy themselves. In the last 

two years we have had well over 11,000 

people on each weekend (over 15,000 

back in 1997 – the queues snaked all the 

way round the outside of the FO - but 

since then we have improved our route 

and apart from first thing in the morning 

we have a nice steady stream throughout 

both days). They come for the 

architecture and they love it. We’ve 

never had any nasty incidents and only a 

tiny number of complaints (maybe 2% of

“I’ve also worked with faith and belief 

groups, which have become increasingly 

important with regard to foreign policy” 

all responses or even less – about 98% 

call their visit good or excellent). We do 

respond to constructive suggestions, such 

as providing a temporary café in the 

quadrangle selling light refreshments. 

There was a request for audio guides but 

we couldn’t afford that. Last year, 

though, we did a podcast and put it on 

the FCO website so they could download 

and play it on their iPods etc as they went 

round. 

I hope to continue doing the guided tours 

and Open House London weekend – to 

keep my connection with the Foreign 

Office. 

We are still recruiting graduate 

faststreamers – details are on the FCO 

website – and of course it is very 

competitive. We’ve always had lots of 

people wanting to join. There is now 

more mobility within the FCO than in 

years gone by, and people who were in 

specialist grades like me are in the 

mainstream and can apply for a wide 

range of posts. I’ve found that I’ve 

worked with interesting and very 

pleasant people who have an amazing 

range of skills and backgrounds. You 

can be posted to a tiny place with almost 

no support staff or a big embassy like 

Paris where there are hundreds - so you 

have to be flexible. 

I’ve met some amazing people by being 

where I was at a particular time. I was 

even on Blue Peter, for a nanosecond! – 

and I met the Prince of Wales who came 

to see the results of our restoration. I 

was part of the team which showed him 

around. Right at the end he made an 

impromptu speech in which he 

remembered everybody’s names (without 

needing notes). He was highly 


professional in every way – and 

extremely interested in the architecture, 

of course. 

I’ve also worked with faith and belief 

groups which have become increasingly 

important with regard to foreign policy – 

particularly since 9/11. Liaising with 

these groups is very important, trying to 

find out their concerns and how we can 

work together in different ways. 

Contacts include individual meetings 

with representatives, or attending 

religious festivals in some cases, such as 

at the Manor near Watford which George 

Harrison gave to the Hare Krishnas. We 

try to explain what government is doing, 

for instance with regard to the arms trade 

or human rights issues. We’ve worked 

with other government departments to 

put together some larger events in regard 

to faith issues, such as Inter Faith Week. 

And we continue to work towards giving 

people a better understanding of what the 

FCO is really like. We’re not all 

‘Oxbridge, pale and male’! I went to the 

local Catholic primary and grammar 

school in Sunderland. We had no 

moneyed background but I had the 

privilege of parents who believed in the 

importance of education and that their 

children should benefit from the 

advantages they never had. We do have 

staff who have had exceptional 

advantages but for years we’ve been 

opening the FCO to a much wider 

intake. Certain skills, like IT or 

languages or economics, are advantages, 

but the great leveller is that our 

recruitment process is fair, open and 

only on merit, which should encourage 

people to try to join us.�

ALUMNI 

ARTICLES 

Katharine 

Housden 

on a recent 

Association 

visit to 

Bletchley 

Park 

The golden goose 

that never cackled 

‘My golden goose that never cackles,’ 

is how Winston Churchill famously 

described Bletchley Park. On 11 

September 2010, this beautiful and 

highly alluring historic site shared some 

of its war time secrets with 25 members 

of the UCL History Alumnus Association 

and guests. 

Bletchley Park would have been just 

another attractive and serene country 

house had it not been for a unique set of 

circumstances: namely the purchase of 

the house and land by a property 

developer, the rise of Hitler, the need for 

a safe place outside of London for 

intelligence work and the unique location 

of Bletchley in terms of good 

communication, transport and academic 

links. ‘Britain’s best kept secret’ came 

into being in 1939 when the first 100 

code-breakers arrived; at the height of its 

operation 9000 people were working at 

the Park in eight hour shifts. 

Bletchley Park is an estate of many 

layers and we began to unravel its secrets 

with a fantastic tour by Tenj Pheng who 

took us around the Park taking in the 

Victorian mansion with its varied 

architecture, and of course, the famous 

huts. Tenj told us how the huts worked in 

pairs to crack the codes, appraise what 

was revealed and communicate it to the 

field. It is amazing to think that so many 

people worked here who then went on to 

have post war lives and careers, families, 

lovers but never talked about the 

sensitive and important work that they 

did. It was in Huts 3, 6, 4 and 8 that the 

Enigma decrypt teams worked; for 

security reasons, the huts were known 

only by their numbers. 


Our tour took us the length and breadth 

of the Bletchley site including the cottage 

where, in January 1940, the British first 

broke Enigma, using just a pencil and 

paper. Nearby was a beautiful memorial 

in the form of an open book, to the work 

of the Polish mathematicians who were 

working on Enigma before Britain 

entered World War Two. The same 

memorial can be found in Warsaw and at 

the Polish Embassy in London. The 

Poles had broken Enigma ten years 

before the British. Marian Rejewski, 

Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Rózycki had 

the foresight to pass their work onto 

Britain just before Poland fell to the 

Nazis, thus saving the British valuable 

time in breaking the code. 

Our guide took us on to see the amazing 

wartime innovations which were the 

‘Bombe’ and ‘Colossus’. The ‘Bombe’ 

was developed by Alan Turing and 

Gordon Welchman out of the Polish 

‘Bomba’, a machine which the Poles 

developed to test Enigma rotor settings. 

‘Bomba’ had been made defunct due to 

subsequent changes in the German 

system. Turing and Welchman built on 

the Polish machine taking advantage of 

the fact that enciphered German 

messages often contained familiar 

phrases, such as weather reports and so 

were able to deduce parts of the original 

message. All the Bombe machines were 

destroyed at the end of the War. The one 

on display in Block B of Bletchley Park 

is a replica. 

‘Colossus’ (and indeed it is a huge 

machine!) was designed and built by 

Tommy Flowers, a Post Office 

Electronics Engineer, and it is known as 

one of the very early computers. The aim 

of Colossus was to crack the Lorenz

“This was a sad and unworthy end 

for a brilliant man” 

machine, the device that Hitler used to 

send out messages to his high command. 

The Bletchley Park code breakers called 

the machine ‘Tunny’ and the coded 

messages ‘Fish’. John Tiltman broke the 

first message from a Lorenz machine at 

Bletchley in 1941, using a manual 

system. By 1944, however, the Germans 

had changed the system and this made it 

nearly unfeasible to break the Lorenz 

code by hand alone, making the 

development of ‘Colossus’ essential. 

‘Colossus’ could read paper tape at 5,000 

characters per second and the paper tape 

in its wheels travelled at 30 miles per 

hour. This meant that the massive 

quantity of mathematical analysis that 

had to be completed could be done in 

hours, rather than weeks, thus saving 

valuable time and lives. This 

breakthrough was particularly important 

as it meant that the British could 

intercept and understand information 

about Hitler’s strategic war plans. The 

machine on display at Bletchley Park is a 

rebuilt version. 

Our guide was very good at explaining 

these complicated electronic devices in 

ways that we could grasp but, even now, 

it is very hard to convey all the detail we 

were told and to explain how they 

worked. It is astounding to reflect on the 

complex, intricate top secret work which 

was going on at Bletchley Park by people 

who ranged from chess masters to those 

who could complete the Daily Telegraph 

crossword in under 12 minutes. 

The afternoon was our own to look round 

the rest of the Bletchley Park site – and 

there is so much to see that you need 

more than one day. The range of Enigma 

machines on display makes it possible to 

understand how many countries had 


Enigma machines and the value placed 

on them. Personally it was seeing the 

Lorenz machine which was my ‘wow’ 

moment – to think that this actual 

machine sent the orders which directed 

the German war strategy was amazing. 

It was very poignant to see Stephen 

Kettle’s statue of Alan Turing (which is 

on display in Block B). This is a one and 

a half ton, life sized statue of the famous 

mathematician which is made out of 

stacked slate. The statue seemed to be 

very true to the photographs of Turing 

which were also on display. 

What made the statue even more 

poignant was that, when Turing died 

prematurely at the age of 41 in 1954, he 

had received no public recognition of his 

major contribution to the War effort, or 

indeed for his contribution to the 

development of the computer on which 

we all rely on so much. Today Alan 

Turing is universally known as the 

founding father of the modern computer. 

A tragic set of circumstances led to his 

death. In 1952 Turing was convicted of 

having a homosexual relationship. He 

was sentenced to ‘treatment’, which in 

reality meant chemical castration. His 

criminal conviction meant his security 

clearance for GCHQ was revoked. He 

was also kept under surveillance at the 

start of the Cold War. Turing died after 

eating an apple laced with cyanide. This 

was a sad and unworthy end for a 

brilliant man who, with his fellow code 

breakers, helped to shorten the War by at 

least two years. 

A far cry from the machine driven 

intelligence were the ‘Pigeons at War’ 

displays in Hut 8. These told us about the 

important role that these birds played in 

times of conflict, and in particular World

“The Dickin Medal was awarded 

to 32 pigeons” 

War Two. 200,000 carrier pigeons were 

used during the War and decisions about 

the uses of pigeons were made by the 

Pigeon Policy Committee. Birds were 

parachuted behind enemy lines and at 

times carried warnings which saved 

thousands of lives. Pigeons carried their 

messages either in special message 

containers on their legs or small pouches 

looped over their backs. The display 

showed the ingenious methods of 

transport for pigeons which included 

personal parachutes and the special water 

tight baskets. Pigeons were dropped by 

parachute in containers to Resistance 

workers in France, Belgium and Holland. 

If a Resistance worker was caught with a 

British pigeon, it almost certainly meant 

execution. It was heartening to read that 


the Dickin Medal, which is the highest 

possible animal decoration for valour, 

was awarded to 32 pigeons, far 

outnumbering dogs and horses. 

The Bletchley Park Trust has done 

valiant work to preserve this wonderful 

site whose full history is still cloaked in 

mystery. There is far more to see and do 

than I have mentioned, including the 

Churchill Collection, Maritime Displays 

and period Post Office. 

All to whom I spoke vastly enjoyed the 

UCL History Alumnus Association trip, 

and it is a credit to the meticulous hard 

work of Peter Dawe that it went so 

smoothly and that everyone had an 

insightful and stimulating day.� 

Enigma machines (left); Alumnus Association 

members in front of a ‘Bombe’ machine

Your chance to get involved 

We’d like to boost the activities of the Alumnus Association - for the 

benefit of you, our members, and UCL’s History Department. This special 

four page feature includes information on the Association and its purpose; 

forthcoming events; and ways in which you can become involved. 

About the Alumnus Association 

We are a non-profit making organisation run for the benefit of its members 

and the History Department of UCL, to maintain and promote contact 

amongst former students of UCL's History Department. It publishes an 

annual newsletter, UCLHISTORY, runs lecture parties and dinners and 

supports the History Department with a range of fundraising initiatives. It 

is your opportunity to renew friendships from your university days and to 

keep in touch with developments in the study of ancient and modern 

history. The Association is run by an elected committee:- 

Professor Nicola Miller (Chairman) 

Professor David d'Avray (Vice-Chairman and Alumnus Officer) 

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ACADEMIC 

ARTICLES 

Jurriaan van 

Santvoort 

examines the 

continuing 

importance of 

the code of 

honour for 

the British 

aristocracy 

Honour, politics and 

duelling, 1798-1822 

In 1798, Prime Minister William Pitt 

the Younger questioned the patriotism 

of George Tierney, a member of the 

Whig opposition, in a debate in the 

House of Commons. Tierney had 

wondered about the necessity of haste in 

the passage of a bill intended for the 

better manning of the Royal Navy. Pitt 

retorted: ‘how can the hon. Gentleman’s 

opposition to it be accounted for, but 

from a desire to obstruct the defence of 

the country?’ That such a, to modern 

eyes at least, innocuous political remark 

would be the cause of a duel between 

Tierney and Pitt is almost impossible to 

believe, for who now expects people, let 

alone leading politicians, to engage in 

such a violent practice at all? Yet they 

were by no means the only politicians to 

duel. The famous diarist John Croker, 

writing in 1841, noted that in the 

preceding century six current or future 

prime ministers had duelled. 

A highly regulated ritual, the duel 

throughout its history revolved around a 

similarly highly regulated, aristocratic 

concept of honour. In the Middle Ages 

this was a martial honour related to the 

feudal dues an aristocrat owed to his 

monarch, and it remained endowed with 

martial connotations. In later centuries 

honour came to dominate social 

interaction amongst aristocrats and, 

because of its martial character, could 

and had to be defended through the use 

of violence, but only in the regulated 

manner of the duel. Another 

characteristic of aristocratic honour is its 

exclusivity. The middle classes, by 

definition, had a different concept of 

honour from the aristocracy, or at least 

the upper classes believed this to be true. 


Besides the aristocratic concept of 

honour, a second factor that set the 

aristocracy and gentry apart from the 

middle classes in the early nineteenth 

century was their almost exclusive grasp 

on the political system. The relatively 

small British aristocracy, which in 1801 

made up just 0.0000857% of the total 

British population, controlled in 1807, in 

one way or another, at least 234 of the 

constituencies in the House of Commons, 

over a third of the total number of seats. 

Moreover, at the turn of the nineteenth 

century a quarter of MPs were married to 

a daughter of one of their colleagues and 

many others were married to daughters 

of peers, or themselves related to 

members of the peerage. 

Perhaps because it is so intricately 

intertwined with the aristocracy and their 

honour system, the duel in recent 

decades has become part of the 

historiographical debate on the role of 

the aristocracy in British society at the 

end of the eighteenth century and its 

relationship to the middle-class. Linda 

Colley saw the resurgent popularity of 

the duel as a symptom of a wider crisis 

of the aristocratic order, a ‘calling into 

question of the very legitimacy of the 

power elite.’ Part of the larger crisis was 

a radical assault on the aristocratic code 

of honour. In response, the aristocracy, 

so Colley argues, first succumbed to a 

certain variety of emotionalism, which 

manifested itself in duelling, bouts of 

insanity, excessive gambling and suicide, 

but eventually reformed itself and 

adopted middle-class values. Like 

Colley, Paul Langford argues that in 

Georgian society the middle-class came 

to dominate, politically and culturally, 

the aristocracy.

“The decline of the duel in Britain... has 

itself been interpreted as evidence of 

the rise of the middle classes” 

The decline of the duel in Britain in the 

first half of the nineteenth century has 

itself been interpreted as evidence of the 

rise of the middle class. In her article ‘the 

code of honour and its critics’ Donna T. 

Andrew comments that with the rise of 

the middle class, the aristocratic code of 

honour, and the duel that was necessary 

to defend it, came under increasing 

strain: ‘[The middle class] could and did 

reject the established norms of 

gentlemanliness, which the code of 

honour represented, and substitute its 

own redefinition of the term. Duelling 

ceased being described by its opponents 

as a practice indulged in by the man of 

honour or fashion.’ 

However, not all historians support this 

perceived rise of the middle class and its 

influence on the status of the aristocracy 

and its code of honour. John V. Beckett 

inverts the argument and instead sees the 

middle class as adopting the values of the 

aristocracy. He sees the aristocratic value 

system as persevering in Britain long into 

the Victorian Age. A few years earlier 

John Cannon had already remarked that 

the eighteenth century had been an 

aristocratic century and that, although the 

influence of the aristocracy diminished 

after 1815, it was by no means the case 

that they were supplanted entirely by the 

middle class. Rather, he argues, ‘[the 

aristocracy] fought a skilful and effective 

rearguard action, offering concessions 

and compromise, defusing potentially 

revolutionary situations and retaining 

some of its influence deep into the 

twentieth century.’ 

J. C. D. Clark argues perhaps most 

forcefully of all against any significant 

decline in aristocratic social influence 

and power, and a concomitant rise in 


middle class stature, until the Reform 

Bill of 1832 at the earliest. Up until that 

time the aristocracy survived in its 

traditional, ancien regime form, with its 

ethical code of honour intact. Clark 

argues that the social hierarchy as it 

existed in the early eighteenth century 

continued in place well into the 

nineteenth century: ‘The credibility of a 

hierarchical image of society, and the 

force of patriarchal ideologies of order 

that derived from it, obviously reflected 

the continuing existence of a lofty social 

hierarchy whose most conspicuous 

exemplars were the aristocracy and the 

gentry.’ 

This article aims to contribute to this 

debate on the role and status of the 

aristocracy and the effects of the rise of 

the middle class. It will do so by 

examining the roles of honour and 

politics in three duels between prominent 

politicians: the duel in 1798 between 

George Tierney and William Pitt the 

Younger; the duel in 1809 between Lord 

Castlereagh and George Canning; and 

the 1822 duel between the Duke of 

Buckingham and Chandos and the Duke 

of Bedford. To what extent were these 

political duels motivated by honour and 

what, if any, was the relationship 

between politics and honour in earlynineteenth-century 

Britain? 

By looking at the political duel and its 

relation to actual politics and aristocratic, 

upper class honour, this article builds on 

the examples set by two historians. The 

first is Joanne B. Freeman, whose 1996 

article on the duel in the United States 

between Aaron Burr and Alexander 

Hamilton explored ‘the interplay 

between culture and politics.’ She used 

this single duel to view ‘early national

“To a British politician at the beginning 

of the eighteenth century, honour would 

have been an important part of his identity” 

politics in a new light, disclosing the 

influence of honor on the period’s 

political events and personalities.’ The 

second is James N. McCord, Jr’s 1999 

article on the duel between the Duke of 

Buckingham and Chandos and the Duke 

of Bedford which intended to draw 

similar conclusions to those drawn by 

Freeman. McCord, however, went farther 

and also examined the manner by which 

politicians used matters of honour to 

buttress the aristocratic ruling class in 

early-nineteenth-century Britain. 

The aim of this article is similar, but by 

examining a trio of duels spanning a 

period of 24 years it hopes to be able, in 

the end, to draw firmer conclusions about 

the relationship between honour and 

politics than would be possible on the 

basis of a single duel alone. Preceding 

the investigation of the three duels, the 

first section will look at the role of 

honour and the duel in Britain in the 

period in general. This is, because as the 

anthropologists J. G. Peristiany and 

Julian Pitt-Rivers have remarked: ‘It is 

[…] an error to regard honor as a single 

constant concept rather than a conceptual 

field within which people find the means 

to express their self-esteem or their 

esteem for others.’ It is therefore 

imperative to establish first what the 

general view of honour was before 

plunging into the more individual 

conceptualization of honour held by the 

various duelling politicians. 

The subsequent sections will each cover 

one of the three duels starting with the 

duel between the two Dukes in 1822. 

This duel is placed outside the 

chronological order as it will be based on 

McCord’s analysis and will be used to 

show the established method of 


investigating nineteenth-century affairs 

of honour. The third section will examine 

the Tierney-Pitt duel and the fourth the 

Castlereagh-Canning duel. Of the three 

duels the final one will be covered most 

extensively as it is by some measure the 

most famous and politically significant 

of the three affairs. 

The duel and honour in Britain 

In the early nineteenth century honour 

was a powerful concept in British society 

and a gentleman was justified in 

defending it through force in the 

ritualized setting of the duel. Victor 

Kiernan, in his history of the European 

duel, comments how honour and duelling 

elevated politicians above the rather 

sordid political practices of the day. If a 

politician was accused of lying ‘in the 

golden days of ‘Old Corruption’ – rotten 

boroughs, bribes, sinecures, and 

“honour” – a duel would have been 

inescapable.’ Kiernan puts the word 

‘honour’ between inverted commas, but 

to a British politician at the beginning of 

the nineteenth century, honour would 

have been anything but a debatable 

concept. For him, honour would have 

been an important part of his identity and 

the measure by which he judged the 

actions of others. 

Although honour is at heart different for 

every individual, for no one would for a 

moment have believed that his own set of 

mores, values, and ideas made him in 

any way dishonourable, there are certain 

traits that span the wider, cultural 

concept of honour in early-nineteenthcentury 

Britain. The most important of 

these is that honour is highly stratified: 

different sections of society adhere to 

different honour systems, or may in fact

“No matter how forcefully the criticisms 

were voiced, honour did not change, 

nor did duelling disappear” 

adhere to none at all. According to 

William Paley, the code of honour was ‘a 

system of rules constructed by people of 

fashion and calculated to facilitate their 

intercourse with one another and for no 

other purpose.’ Contemporaries saw the 

aristocratic concept of honour as the only 

honour worth mentioning and while 

some, like Paley, were highly critical of 

aristocratic honour, they implicitly 

recognized its importance in British 

society. 

Those writers who criticized the twin 

concepts of aristocratic honour and 

duelling did so on the basis of its 

exclusivity and non-religiosity in the case 

of the former and extra-legality in the 

case of the latter. The exclusive, 

aristocratic nature of the concept of 

honour came under fire for implying that 

the upper-class gentleman was inherently 

superior to the socially lower classes, 

even though the former were no better 

than the latter. Indeed, aristocrats might 

even be worse off for believing in such a 

code of honour. According to Charles 

Pigot, honour meant nothing more than 

‘debauching your neighbour’s wife or 

daughter, killing your man, and being a 

member of the Jockey club, and Brooks’s 

gaming house.’ The non-religious, 

perhaps even un-Christian, nature of the 

aristocratic code of honour had also long 

been a target for critics. The pride that 

men derived from their honour stood, 

many evangelicals argued, in opposition 

to the Christian virtues of humility and 

charity. The already mentioned need to 

defend one’s honour through violence is 

a second trait of the wider honour 

system. Duelling had been criticised 

almost since its beginnings in the 

fifteenth century and it had been illegal 

for almost as long. But even its critics 


acknowledged that duelling was unlikely 

to disappear until the notion of honour 

changed so that the law may better 

encompass it. 

Yet, no matter how forcefully the 

criticisms were voiced, honour did not 

change, nor did duelling disappear. In 

fact, during the final decades of the 

eighteenth century, duelling increased. 

This relationship between honour and 

violence in the duel seems to be an 

exclusively male concept, related to 

masculinity. Women in the eighteenth 

and early nineteenth century were not 

expected to engage in violence, and if 

they did, they were judged to be no 

longer feminine, but masculine. 

Masculinity, like the honour that is based 

on it, ‘is never fully possessed, but must 

perpetually be achieved, asserted, and 

renegotiated.’ It, therefore, requires a 

man to show he is masculine by 

demanding an active defence of his 

masculinity. Robert Shoemaker has 

noted that during the eighteenth century 

violence and male honour were often 

related and that ‘the violence was 

prompted by perceived threats to male 

honour.’ 

In the upper classes the violent aspect of 

the defence of honour was channelled 

into the duel, which although still violent 

at its core, became as the eighteenth 

century progressed increasingly less 

deadly. However, duelling always 

entailed a measure of risk, but this was 

part of the attractiveness of the practice. 

To duel was to put one’s life on the line 

for the vindication of what one believed 

to be just and served as an indication that 

honour was a central facet of the 

aristocrat’s existence. To be honourable 

was to be aristocratic and vice versa, and

“If challenged, an officer could not 

refuse or apologize without 

being branded a coward” 

as such, to defend one was to defend the 

other. The need to defend, through 

duelling, one’s honour became so 

prevalent that one commentator wrote 

that, if challenged to a fight, it was 

necessary to accept. To refuse or 

apologize was seen as cowardly and 

dishonourable. 

Duelling being a violent act, it is not 

surprising that the section of British 

society in which aristocratic notions of 

honour and a penchant for duelling 

flourished most highly was the army. In 

the early nineteenth century, the British 

army was, amongst the officer ranks at 

least, still an upper class stronghold. This 

had been the case throughout the 

preceding century, at the beginning of 

which Bernard Mandeville had written 

that ‘as soon as the notions of honour and 

shame are received among a Society, it is 

not difficult to make men fight.’ 

Mandeville later opined that, once 

inspired by honour, it would be 

demoralising for the military to take the 

notion away: ‘take away pride, and you 

spoil the soldier.’ Throughout the 

eighteenth century the code of honour 

was so influential in the army that the 

Court Martial regularly functioned as a 

court of honour. 

The code of honour being an integral part 

of military custom, duelling occurred 

frequently amongst army officers. While 

it was officially illegal, Stephen Banks 

has estimated that, between 1795 and 

1799, 63 percent of all duels fought in 

Britain involved military officers, either 

from the army or the navy. While the 

relative frequency of duelling in the 

military declines after that, between 1820 

and 1824, it was still 52 percent. 

Throughout the early nineteenth century, 


then, duelling was still very much part of 

military life. An officer was required to 

defend his honour in the eyes of his peers 

and when he suffered an insult, whether 

that was directed at his person or his unit, 

the officer in question was honour bound 

to defend himself. Moreover, in line with 

aristocratic honour in wider British 

society, if challenged, an officer could 

not refuse or apologize without being 

branded a coward. 

The other group within Britain during the 

late eighteenth and early nineteenth 

century in which aristocrats and upper 

class gentlemen were over-represented 

was politicians. Unlike the military, 

politics was supposed to be a peaceful 

endeavour, but this did not stop 

politicians from duelling. Kiernan 

ascribes this to the influences of the 

wartime atmosphere in much of the 

period, during which ‘ministers and other 

politicians might feel that to keep the 

esteem of the men in uniform it was for 

them to show they were as intrepid as 

any.’ Nonetheless, because not all the 

duels took place in time of war, this 

cannot be of influence in every duel. 

Rather, the reason behind the many 

instances of duelling amongst politicians 

can be found in the aristocratic code of 

honour itself. 

To Edmund Burke honour regulated an 

aristocrat’s relationship to his fellows, as 

well as to individuals of lower social 

standing. He was a strong proponent of 

the idea that it was honour that made the 

aristocrat what he was and consequently 

made him fit to govern. Thus the nonaristocratic 

legislators of Revolutionary 

France had no right to govern: ‘in 

asserting, that any thing is honourable, 

we imply some distinction in its favour.

“The people would only obey 

men of honour, Jeffrey argued” 

The occupation of the hair-dresser, or of 

a working tallow-chandler, cannot be a 

matter of honour to any person – to say 

nothing of other more servile 

employments. … the state suffers 

oppression, if such as they, either 

individually or collectively, are permitted 

to rule.’ Instead, honour is associated 

with rank and only ‘to be found in the 

men the best born, and the best bred[.]’ 

This Burkean conceptual relationship 

between honour and the right to govern 

could be found throughout the British 

political establishment. Most Whigs, and 

almost all politicians at the end of the 

eighteenth and beginning of the 

nineteenth century, saw themselves as 

political descendants of the Whigs, were 

sensitive about their reputation, valued 

their honour and judged these as being 

instrumental to their political self-worth. 

If they had no honour, these politicians 

could not govern, because, as Francis 

Jeffrey wrote, only laws passed by 

venerated men could be upheld. The 

people would only obey men of honour, 

so Jeffrey argued. Politicians, as 

aristocrats, needed to be perceived to be 

the people’s ‘natural superiors, and by 

whose influence as individuals, the same 

measures might have been enforced over 

the greater part of the kingdom.’ 

During the late eighteenth and early 

nineteenth century, honour was still a 

very real and highly relevant concept for 

the upper classes in Britain. Despite 

concerted attempts by critics to discredit 

it, the upper classes maintained their 

belief in their own honour as exclusive, 

masculine and worthy of defence in the 

duel. To them their honour meant that the 

aristocracy and gentry had the right to 

govern their fellow Britons. There 


existed a strong sense that any 

diminishing of his honour would mean 

that the aristocrat lost status as a political 

figure. A similar belief about the 

importance of maintaining ones honour 

existed in the military. In the following 

chapters the role, and the question of its 

continued importance, of this particular 

code of honour in British politics will be 

examined, by analyzing three political 

duels spanning a period of roughly 24 

years. In each case the political 

background will be set as well as an 

inquiry into the particular honour-related 

motivations of each duellist. 

The Buckingham-Bedford duel, 1822 

In 1998, James N. McCord Jr. published 

an article examining the duel between 

Richard, first Duke of Buckingham and 

Chandos and John, sixth Duke of 

Bedford. McCord attempted to prove that 

the matter of which this duel was the 

outcome was primarily the result of 

political differences between the two 

Dukes and the factions they represented. 

At the same time, he wished to show 

how the ideas about the definition and 

role of honour particular to the two 

duellists influenced their decision to take 

aim at each other and how honour in this 

case interacted with political struggles. 

His method to accomplish these twin 

goals was to look first into the broader 

political circumstances before examining 

in more detail the motives of the two 

Dukes. The aim of this section is to 

analyze the duel between Buckingham 

and Bedford based on McCord’s study, 

thereby showing the methodology that 

will be employed in the two subsequent 

sections. However, in the end, the 

conclusions drawn about the role of

“Buckingham was looking 

for a confrontation” 

honour in the duel in this case will differ 

greatly from those of McCord. 

Both the Duke of Buckingham and the 

Duke of Bedford were nominally 

members of the Whig party, but political 

manoeuvring by the Tory government of 

Lord Liverpool had caused the wings of 

the Whig party that Buckingham and 

Bedford represented to drift apart. In 

early 1822, in an attempt to shore up 

support for his government, Liverpool 

had managed to persuade the 

Grenvillites, as the followers of 

Buckingham were known, to join his 

government, causing an irreparable rift in 

the Whig opposition. That is not to say 

that before 1822 the Grenvillites and 

Bedford’s faction, heirs to the Foxite 

wing of the Whig party, had presented a 

single, unified political message. The 

Foxites, now led by Bedford and Earl 

Grey, had adopted Parliamentary reform 

as their most important issue, taking 

umbrage at the existence of rotten 

boroughs and sinecures, which attracted 

large numbers of ‘place-hunters’, men 

wholly dependent on their political 

masters. Buckingham, on the other hand, 

was fully immersed in the practices of 

‘Old Corruption’, with the Duke 

controlling seven seats in the Commons. 

The Grenvillites joining the Liverpool 

government magnified the differences 

characterising the two wings of the Whig 

party. The then Marquess of Buckingham 

was rewarded for his support of the 

government by his elevation to the 

Dukedom, and some of his followers 

with posts and places in government. 

Coming at the time that opposition to 

‘Old Corruption’ was at its peak, this 

sudden elevation in the peerage for 

Buckingham seemed to his opponents, 


the reformists amongst the Whigs, to be 

nothing more than a corrupt back room 

deal. Buckingham’s habitual money 

problems and reputation for jobbing only 

strengthened this belief in the Duke’s 

corruption. On 22 April 1822 the Duke 

of Bedford gave his views of 

Buckingham’s dealings, calling him ‘a 

great borough-proprietor, now a noble 

duke, late an honorable marquis, whose 

services, and the services of whose 

adherents in Parliament, had been 

purchased by Government – had been 

purchased by conferring high offices on 

those adherents.’ 

While comments like those made by 

Bedford were relatively commonplace in 

British political life, the Grenvillites 

were convinced that the Whigs were 

determined to render the support of the 

former for Liverpool’s government as 

useless as possible. In the words of one 

Grenvillite MP, William Fremantle, the 

Whigs were ‘moving heaven and earth to 

lower you [Buckingham] and your 

friends.’ Instead of ignoring it, 

Buckingham took the accusation 

personally and demanded an explanation 

from Bedford. The former saw the 

latter’s accusation as a slander of his 

personal character: ‘when expressions 

such as these, tending to slander my 

character both as an individual and as a 

public man… are supported by the 

weight of an authority and name so much 

respected as your own, an importance 

attaches to them which in other respects 

they would not merit.’ 

Buckingham was looking for a 

confrontation, even though he gave 

Bedford the opportunity to explain away 

his remarks either by stating that they 

had not been intended to apply to

“Bedford’s distinction between a person’s 

private and public character was not 

shared by many of the upper-class” 

Buckingham, or that they had been 

misreported. It was not the first time that 

Buckingham sought satisfaction over 

perceived insults to his honour. In 1816, 

he had duelled with Sir Thomas Hardy, 

who had accused him of writing 

anonymous letters impugning Lady 

Hardy’s character. Bedford, hoping to 

avoid violence, replied that while his 

words were certainly intended to apply to 

Buckingham, he could not ascertain 

whether they had been reported correctly. 

In any case, Bedford wrote, he had not 

meant any offence: ‘I never intentionally 

gave personal offence to any man in my 

whole life.’ 

At first, this explanation assuaged 

Buckingham’s feelings somewhat. The 

Whigs, however, continued their attacks 

on ‘Old Corruption’ and Buckingham 

and his fellow Grenvillites’ role in 

sustaining the system. Bedford’s 

youngest son Lord John Russell wanted 

Parliament to pass a bill aimed at 

disenfranchising one hundred smaller 

boroughs, including those controlled by 

Buckingham. The Whig peer Lord 

Milton had analyzed that MPs 

representing smaller boroughs supported 

the Tory government disproportionally 

and, that without abolishing these, the 

Whigs would be doomed to permanent 

opposition. Besides these political 

manoeuvrings to minimize the impact of 

the Grenvillite shift to the Government 

benches, Whigs like Russell continued to 

pillory Buckingham’s conduct and his 

deals with the Liverpool government. 

After witnessing these further attempts to 

discredit him, Buckingham on 27 April 

charged that Bedford was not ‘justified in 

putting corrupt motives or dishonest 

conduct to any Man especially behind his 


back and when he cannot defend 

himself.’ The Duke further would ‘call 

upon any individual who made it [the 

assertion] either to disavow it or make 

me reparation for it.’ Bedford again 

replied that he had not meant to offend 

Buckingham personally, but had 

intended merely to reproach his political 

character. He was, in fact, very careful to 

draw this distinction, but even as he was 

writing the letter Bedford realized that 

Buckingham would find it unsatisfactory 

as an explanation. Spurred on by 

supporters like Fremantle, who wrote 

that Bedford’s last letter left Buckingham 

no choice ‘but to come to town’, 

Buckingham became more agitated and 

on 30 April, he challenged Bedford to a 

duel. 

That Buckingham did not accept 

Bedford’s statement is unsurprising. 

Bedford’s distinction between a person’s 

private and public character, each with 

their distinctive honour, was not one that 

was shared by many upper-class 

gentlemen in the period. To Buckingham 

the two were one and the same, and he 

said after the duel that ‘a public man’s 

life is not worth preserving unless with 

honour.’ This is perfectly in line with the 

long held Whiggish and Burkean sense 

of honour that made honour the buttress 

of the aristocracy and the role of the 

upper-class gentleman in public life. 

After the duel, Buckingham’s uncle 

Thomas Grenville commented that he 

had ‘always considered the aristocracy as 

the great pillar of monarchy, and that 

aristocracy cannot be degraded and 

vilified without endangering the throne 

that it supports.’ Therefore, Buckingham 

had to defend his honour, not only for the 

sake of his own political career, but also

“The Duke had to defend his own honour 

to remain in his position as a leading 

political figure” 

for the very survival of the British 

constitutional system. 

The Duke of Bedford, for his part, could 

hardly have refused the challenge 

without surrendering his leadership of his 

party. Bedford, as a political heir of the 

Foxites, had established a sense of party 

among the Whigs that was not simply a 

‘faction’, but a ‘honourable connection’. 

The Duke had to defend his own honour 

to remain in his position as a leading 

political figure. Bedford remarked to his 

son Lord William Russell that he ‘was 

under the necessity (not an agreeable 

one)’ to accept Buckingham’s challenge 

‘in consequence of the censure I cast 

upon [Buckingham’s] political apostasy 

at the County Meeting at Bedford.’ Had 

Bedford not met Buckingham for the 

duel in Kensington Gardens, it would 

have strengthened the Grenvillites, while 

diminishing the political clout of the 

Whigs. 

McCord argues that Bedford’s 

conceptualization of honour was 

markedly different from that of 

Buckingham and that by attempting to 

draw a distinction between public and 

private honour, Bedford was prone to 

confusing the two. McCord goes on to 

comment that it was exactly this 

confusion that ‘helped to perpetuate the 

duel as an institution.’ However, McCord 

is placing too much emphasis on this 

distinction. While it is true that 

Buckingham saw his public and private 

honour as being the same and Bedford 

saw them as two separate entities, in the 

case of the latter public and private 

honour are still closely connected. 

Bedford, like Buckingham, believed that 

by defending his personal honour in the 

duel between the two he was also 


defending his public honour. As 

contemporaries noted, and McCord 

echoes, Bedford’s definition of honour as 

having two components was a recent 

innovation. But if it was, Bedford had 

not yet gone so far as to completely sever 

the links between the two. Rather, he was 

still harking back to the established code 

of honour that Buckingham still fully 

espoused. 

Like the method used by McCord, this 

article will employ a detailed analysis of 

the political circumstances surrounding 

the duel with an examination of the 

individual duellist’s concepts of honour 

and how these are related to the wider 

aristocratic code of honour in 

contemporary British society. In the case 

of the duel between the Duke of 

Buckingham and the Duke of Bedford, 

McCord sees a difference between the 

concepts of honour held by each of the 

two. This difference, however, is not 

nearly as marked as McCord would like 

it to be. Rather, as Bedford came to 

realize belatedly, his own concept of 

honour, which drew a distinction 

between a man’s public and private 

character, was in practice untenable and 

Bedford could not refuse a challenge on 

this ground without looking 

dishonourable. 

Buckingham had always held to the idea 

that public and private honour are two 

sides of the same coin. This had been the 

established, conventional concept of 

aristocratic honour. Bedford’s own 

concept of honour came to resemble that 

very closely. Having shown that in 1822 

this older concept of honour was current, 

it is now time to move back to the 

chronologically first duel, between 

George Tierney and William Pitt the

“Only Sheridan and Tierney could be 

regarded in any sense as being capable 

of leading the opposition” 

Younger, to see whether this is a new 

development, or whether this is also true 

in 1798. 

The Tierney-Pitt duel, 1798 

During the latter half of the 1790s, 

William Pitt the Younger, Prime Minister 

since 1783, was a man torn between two 

extremes. On the one hand he was 

perhaps at the height of his political 

power. He had the unqualified support of 

the King and a large enough majority 

supporting him in both Houses of 

Parliament that he could push through 

almost any bill he wanted. With Britain 

at war with revolutionary France, Pitt did 

not hesitate to use his power to enact 

such legislation as he thought necessary 

to help the country continue the struggle. 

Besides acts in support of the military 

and naval effort, this legislation took the 

form of suspensions of civil liberties, 

including the Seditious Meetings Act in 

1795 and the Suspension of Habeas 

Corpus Acts in 1794 and 1798. On the 

other hand, by 1797 Britain was in dire 

straits, financially with a run on the Bank 

of England in that year, and militarily 

with mutinies in the fleet and the collapse 

of the First Coalition. These difficulties 

strained Pitt’s health and popularity. 

That the setbacks suffered by Britain in 

1797 did not blunt Pitt’s political 

standing in Parliament had much to do 

with the problems being suffered by the 

Whig opposition. A number of Whigs 

had moved over to the government 

benches and what remained of the 

opposition consisted mainly of the 

followers of Charles James Fox. Fox saw 

the measures taken by Pitt to curtail the 

liberties of British subjects as oppressive 

and akin to the worst actions of any 


tyrant. However, lack of supporters 

meant that Fox could hardly mount an 

effective opposition. Faced with this 

reality, Fox opted to secede from 

Parliament altogether rather than give 

cover to policies he vehemently 

disagreed with. He thus led his followers 

out of the House to show ‘that no service 

any individual can render by his 

attendance, can counterbalance the 

mischiefs which must arise from giving 

countenance to an opinion, that the 

decisions of this House are always the 

result of full debate.’ 

Although most Foxites, as Fox’ followers 

were known, seceded with their leader, a 

handful remained to oppose the 

government from inside Parliament. 

Most of these were minor figures, and in 

the resulting leadership vacuum only 

Richard Sheridan and George Tierney 

could be regarded in any sense as being 

capable of leading the opposition. With 

Sheridan but an infrequent attendee of 

House debates, this left Tierney as the 

only MP likely to assume the mantle of 

leader of the opposition in one form or 

another. 

It was, however, far from certain that 

Tierney would naturally assume such a 

position. Fox himself, though ensconced 

in his house at St. Anne’s Hill, 

continued, as one biographer put it, to 

‘[exercise] un pouvoir occulte through 

[Lord] Holland and [Charles] Grey,’ 

blocking any overt ambition on Tierney’s 

part. Moreover, within the Whig party 

there were many politicians who felt that 

he was grossly unsuited to lead a 

parliamentary faction. The Marquess of 

Buckingham believed Tierney to be an 

inconsequential figure, and Lady Holland 

records that Sheridan hated Tierney with

“Such an accusation... could easily be 

construed as a charge of treason” 

a passion. Sheridan said of him, she 

writes, that Tierney lacked the ‘strong 

intellect to command, and great virtues’ 

necessary ‘for a man to become the 

leader of a party, and great humility and 

sense to fall as a subaltern into the ranks 

of party.’ 

Tierney, although not the undisputed 

leader of the opposition in the Commons, 

saw himself as the only man capable of 

fighting against the oppressive policies of 

the government. Still, in 1798, he 

supported the bill to suspend the right of 

habeas corpus. He, however, regretted 

his vote soon after as ‘it was a vote 

which greatly impaired the confidence 

which had been placed in him by those 

who were opposed to oppressive 

measures.’ The mistake of supporting the 

bill led him to oppose with increased 

hostility every measure and law proposed 

by the Government. This fervent 

opposition soon began to grate with 

government supporters and even Pitt 

himself became irritated by Tierney’s 

actions and speeches in the House. 

The Prime Minister’s patience finally 

gave way in May 1798 in the debate on 

an emergency bill he had introduced for 

the better manning of the Navy which, 

with the collapse of the First Coalition on 

the continent a year earlier, had become 

Britain’s main, if not sole, line of 

defence. Given ‘the present alarming 

situation of the country’ Pitt believed 

speedy passage of the Bill to be so 

important that he asked the House to pass 

the bill through all its stages within a 

day. Tierney rose in response and, while 

he did not dispute the necessity of the 

matter under consideration, condemned 

‘the precipitate manner’ in which the 

House was asked to consider it. Perhaps 


recalling the suspension of habeas 

corpus, he said: ‘he must view all the 

measures of Ministers as hostile to the 

liberty of the subject; and the present 

measure he must regard with peculiar 

jealousy, as it went directly to rob them 

of the few remaining privileges they 

were still permitted to enjoy.’ 

Pitt replied angrily that if Tierney 

recognised that the bill was necessary 

and good in itself, why, then, did he 

oppose its speedy passage, especially if a 

delay would blunt the effectiveness of 

the measure? The Prime Minister 

demanded: ‘how can the hon. 

Gentleman’s opposition to it be 

accounted for, but from a desire to 

obstruct the defence of the country?’ 

Such an accusation was serious indeed, 

and could easily be construed as a charge 

of treason. Tierney was on his feet 

immediately and called Pitt to order, 

describing the language as 

unparliamentary and demanding 

protection from the chair. The Speaker, 

Henry Addington, half-heartedly 

supported Tierney and said: ‘that 

whatever tended to cast a personal 

imputation upon any hon. Gentleman for 

words spoken, was certainly disorderly 

and unparliamentary.’ It was for Pitt to 

explain himself. Pitt would not retract 

nor explain his accusation, but added that 

‘he had no right to impute motives to the 

language used by the hon. gentleman.’ 

Had the matter ended here, Tierney 

would have been satisfied. He would 

write in his challenge to Pitt that 

‘considering the latitude usually allowed 

in explaining expressions made use of in 

the course of parliamentary discussions, I 

might have been persuaded to have been 

satisfied.’ But after Pitt’s initial

“It is highly likely that Tierney sought... to 

advance his own political career through... 

use of the defence of his honour” 

reconciliatory remarks, another MP, 

Edmund Wigley, an independent 

opponent of Pitt, called on the Prime 

Minister to explain himself again, 

something Pitt refused, adding, ‘I gave 

no explanation because I wished to abide 

by the words I had used.’ Upon hearing 

this, Tierney withdrew from the 

Commons and the following day asked 

George Walpole to wait upon Pitt to 

deliver his challenge. The duel took place 

on Sunday 27 May on Putney Heath. 

Both duellists shot twice, with Pitt firing 

his second round in the air. The affair 

ended with the two seconds, Walpole for 

Tierney and Dudley Ryder for Pitt, 

agreeing that it was ‘their decided 

opinion that sufficient satisfaction had 

been given, and that the business was 

ended with perfect honour to both 

parties.’ 

The entire affair was over almost before 

it had well and truly begun. The insult 

had been given on Friday; the challenge 

sent on Saturday; and the duel fought on 

Sunday. This left little time for the 

participants to put to paper their 

motivations on the matter. Even 

afterwards, Tierney and Pitt did not make 

much mention of the duel. In fact, 

Tierney does not allude to the duel, or his 

reasons for challenging Pitt, other than 

the insult in the Commons, in any of his 

correspondence. However, given 

Tierney’s ambition to become de facto 

leader of the opposition in Parliament, it 

is not implausible to conjecture that he 

did it to make a name for himself. Until 

he duelled with Pitt, Tierney was not 

seen as an obvious candidate for this 

position, and he did his best to oppose 

the government at every turn. Physically 

opposing the Prime Minister on, as Lord 

Holland admits, not the strongest of 


pretexts, was unlikely to do his standing 

in the eyes of his fellow Whigs any 

harm. This is certainly the opinion of 

historian J. Holland Rose, who in his 

biography of Pitt, states: ‘Thus ended the 

duel, to the great satisfaction of all 

present. Pitt had behaved with spirit, and 

Tierney had achieved immortal fame.’ 

At the same time, it is unlikely that 

Tierney had other than honourable 

intentions. He could not realistically have 

wished for a moment to injure, let alone 

kill Pitt. Such an action would have 

spelled the end of his life, as killing him 

would have made Pitt more popular than 

he had ever been. Furthermore, killing 

the Prime Minister in wartime would 

have led to Tierney’s execution, either 

through the courts, or by the fury of the 

mob. Writes Lord Holland: ‘The danger 

to Mr. Tierney had indeed been great, 

had Mr. Pitt fallen, the fury of the times 

would probably have condemned him to 

exile or death, without reference to the 

provocation which he had received, and 

to the sanction which custom had given 

to the redress he sought.’ Because of this, 

it is highly likely that Tierney sought, not 

to harm Pitt, but to advance his own 

political career through the precise use of 

the defence of his honour to show that he 

was a worthy leader of the opposition. 

Whereas Tierney cloaked himself in 

silence after the duel, Pitt did make some 

cursory, light-hearted comments in 

letters to Henry Dundas and his mother 

Lady Chatham. To Dundas he wrote: ‘I 

had occasion to visit your neighbourhood 

this morning, in order to meet Mr. 

Tierney.’ To his mother Pitt wrote a few 

words of comfort, but nothing much 

beyond that: ‘I have nothing to tell that is 

not perfectly agreeable. The newspapers

“To Pitt it was clear that he could only 

function effectively as Prime Minister 

if his honour was clear and intact” 

of the day contain a short but correct 

Account of a meeting which I found it 

necessary to have with Mr. Tierney… 

The business terminated without any 

thing unpleasant to either party.’ These, 

however, are the extent of his written 

remarks on the duel. 

Since Pitt, like Tierney, provided no 

information on his reasons and motives 

for the duel, some conjecture is again 

called for. Pitt, as Prime Minister, was in 

a difficult position. Because of his 

political role, it was considered 

somewhat unseemly to engage in a 

practice that might result in his death. 

Yet he could not decline the challenge 

and apologize to Tierney. To admit one 

was in the wrong without firing at least 

one shot was seen as dishonourable and 

as a Prime Minister in time of war, Pitt 

could not be seen as anything but willing 

to defend his honour, and indeed he 

accepted the challenge immediately and 

insisted on fighting the very next day. 

Because of the lingering popularity of 

duelling in military circles, whose 

support and trust Pitt could not afford to 

lose, the Prime Minister had to take the 

field. 

That Pitt saw his personal honour and his 

public character to be closely related is 

also shown by an event in the aftermath 

of the duel. William Wilberforce, 

appalled by the recent duel, on May 30 

decided to introduce a motion 

condemning in no uncertain terms the 

practice of duelling in all its aspects. 

When he informed Pitt of his intentions, 

Pitt wrote back that if Wilberforce 

persisted, he would resign as Prime 

Minister. He regarded such a motion as 

censuring him and clearly felt that it was 

a personal attack on his defending his 


honour: ‘If any step on the subject is 

proposed in Parliament and agreed to, I 

shall feel from that moment that I can be 

of more use out of office than in it; for in 

it, according to the feelings I entertain, I 

could be of none.’ To Pitt it was clear 

that he could only function effectively as 

Prime Minister if his honour was clear 

and intact. Wilberforce withdrew the 

motion, but not before lamenting: 

‘Strange the length to which he carries 

the point of honour.’ 

Pitt and Tierney both realized that by 

defending their private honour they 

would also be defending their political 

stature and in the case of Tierney, giving 

him more status than he had had prior to 

the duel. Had either of them failed to 

uphold the tenets of the code of honour 

then they would have suffered the 

political consequences. This especially 

true with regard to Pitt, who as a wartime 

Prime Minister, could hardly have 

afforded to be perceived as a coward. 

The idea that the defence of one’s honour 

is a defence of ones political status 

reflects the opinion of Burke on this 

matter. Pitt and Tierney both seem to 

have understood that, by being seen as 

honourable, they would at the same time 

be more effective politicians. 

Pitt and Tierney had been political 

opponents but, 11 years after their duel, 

two politicians of the same faction took 

the field. In doing so, George Canning 

and Lord Castlereagh emulated their 

political mentor, Pitt, who had felt that 

his honour had been at stake in his duel. 

In the next section, an examination of the 

duel between Castlereagh and Canning 

will show whether that was the case for 

them as well.

“The Pittites had been united by their 

admiration and support for Pitt, but 

otherwise envy and suspicion existed” 

The Castlereagh-Canning duel, 1809 

After Pitt died in 1806, his supporters 

and followers at first were at a loss on 

how to proceed politically. Their 

hesitation and inability to form a 

government without their late leader led 

to the formation of the Ministry of All 

the Talents under Lord Grenville and 

made up mostly of Whigs, both Foxites 

and Grenvillites. That the Pittites were 

unable to form a government stemmed 

from two causes. The first was that Pitt 

had neglected to build any party 

structure, whether formal or informal. 

Instead he had been content to rely on his 

personal power and the individual 

connections between him and his 

followers to hold his political support 

together. The second was the mistrust 

prevalent among the Pittites themselves. 

They had been united by their admiration 

and support for Pitt, but otherwise envy 

and suspicion existed among them. 

Their existence was especially true for 

George Canning and Robert Stewart, 

Viscount Castlereagh, who were seen as 

the most promising of the young Pittites. 

Canning had long regarded himself as 

Pitt’s confidant and even as his natural 

successor as leader of the Pittite faction. 

But in the last years of Pitt’s life, 

Canning’s mentor began to favour 

Castlereagh as his closest young 

supporter. Already in 1802, Canning had 

said of Castlereagh: ‘he has taken exactly 

that line in Parliament which P[itt] laid 

down for me.’ After Castlereagh had 

accepted a ministerial post in Henry 

Addington’s government, Canning had 

jealously hoped for his rival’s fall from 

Pitt’s graces. 


Nevertheless, a little over a year after 

Pitt’s death, the Ministry of All the 

Talents collapsed and the King called on 

the Duke of Portland to form a Pittite 

government, with Canning becoming 

Foreign Secretary and Castlereagh 

Secretary for War. The most important 

issue facing the Portland government 

was the war against Napoleonic France. 

In the Peninsular theatre, Sir Arthur 

Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington 

had been unable to exploit his victory at 

the Battle of Vimeiro in August 1808 and 

he and General Hew Dalrymple signed 

the Convention of Cintra on 30 August 

1808, which stipulated that English ships 

were to transport the French troops in 

Spain back to France with all their spoils. 

When news of the Convention reached 

London, the response was one of shock 

and outrage. Castlereagh refused to 

believe anyone would sign such a treaty: 

‘In short it is a base forgery somewhere, 

and nothing can induce me to believe it 

genuine.’ Canning would later assert that 

the Convention and the outrage that 

followed were ‘the beginning of the 

ministry’s loss of credit with the public’ 

and one of the causes which ‘led to 

Canning’s alienation from his 

colleagues.’ Further embarrassment for 

the government followed after Sir John 

Moore died retreating with his army 

towards Corunna while being chased by 

Napoleon. Castlereagh publicly defended 

Moore, calling him ‘a great and 

invaluable officer’ and saying ‘that the 

failure [of the Corunna expedition] was 

not at all attributable to sir John Moore.’ 

Canning, however, believed that the 

Government should attempt to place 

blame for the failure entirely on the 

shoulders of the dead general.

“Canning would now remain in the Cabinet 

as long as Castlereagh was removed 

from the War Office” 

By March 1809 Canning had lost 

patience with the failures in the 

Peninsular War being blamed on the 

Government. On 24 March he wrote a 

letter to the Duke of Portland, outlining 

his intentions to resign as Foreign 

Secretary unless changes were made to 

the make-up of the Government. Canning 

felt it was ‘his duty to your Grace, as 

well as to myself, fairly to avow to your 

Grace that the Government, as at present 

constituted, does not appear to me equal 

to the great task which it has to perform.’ 

He resented being forced to acquiesce to 

the Cabinet’s decisions to accept the 

Convention of Cintra and to send Sir 

John Moore to Spain. These two matters 

had had such an effect on the 

Government’s popularity that ‘[n]o man, 

I apprehend, can shut his eyes to the 

plain fact that the Government has sunk 

in public opinion since the end of the last 

session of Parliament.’ 

In response to Canning’s letter, the Duke 

of Portland invited the Foreign Secretary 

to visit him at his country home of 

Bulstrode to discuss his concerns and 

threat of resignation. Portland agreed 

with much of what Canning said. So 

much in fact that he offered his own 

resignation to the King, who firmly 

rejected the very suggestion of it. During 

the following months it became clear 

that, as far as Canning was concerned, 

there was no possible manner in which 

both he and Castlereagh could remain in 

their respective places. Canning retreated 

slightly from his earlier ultimatum and 

would now remain in the Cabinet as long 

as Castlereagh was removed from the 

War Office. Portland desperately sought 

a way out of his predicament and 

informed his friend and the President of 


the Board of Trade, Lord Bathurst, about 

the matter. 

While these discussions were taking 

place without his knowledge, 

Castlereagh was busy preparing the next 

phase of the military campaign against 

France. Although Canning had doubts 

about the need to open a northern front 

by invading either Northern Germany or 

the Low Countries, by May 1809 the 

Cabinet had decided to support 

Castlereagh’s plans for an invasion of the 

Scheldt to destroy the French naval 

complex and perhaps even capture 

Antwerp in what came to be known as 

the Walcheren Expedition. The Cabinet 

also had to deal with some minor 

controversy resulting from Castlereagh 

being accused of corruption while he had 

been President of the Board of Control. 

Although the motion to censure the 

Secretary for War was substantively 

weakened before the House of Commons 

passed it, it did give Canning new 

reasons to insist on Castlereagh’s 

removal from the ministry. Canning 

believed that Castlereagh was now 

perceived publicly as incompetent and 

that he should have resigned after the 

censure motion had been passed. 

However, Portland had still not come to a 

decision on how to proceed. He had, as 

yet, hope of retaining both Canning and 

Castlereagh as ministers and he tried to 

find a way out of his predicament by 

informing more and more of 

Castlereagh’s Cabinet colleagues of the 

matter. Almost the entire Cabinet now 

knew of Canning’s threat to resign and, 

by May, even the King was helping 

Portland find a solution. He suggested 

handing control of the war effort to 

Canning, leaving Castlereagh with

“Castlereagh determined that Canning 

had been the instigator of his downfall” 

responsibility for the colonies as well as 

making him President of the Board of 

Control. Lord Camden, Castlereagh’s 

uncle-in-law and the Lord President of 

the Council, was tasked with delivering 

the news to his nephew. 

Some of Castlereagh’s colleagues felt 

that to inform him of his fate while the 

Walcheren Expedition, which 

Castlereagh had been preparing for 

months, was yet to sail and might still be 

a success was, in the words of Lord 

Liverpool, ‘an act of manifest cruelty and 

injustice.’ Camden was reluctant to tell 

Castlereagh at all at this point, but 

Canning continued to push for 

Castlereagh being told as soon as 

possible. He now began to fear that he 

would be blamed for the entire issue 

being dragged out for months behind 

Castlereagh’s back: ‘whenever hereafter 

this concealment shall be alleged (as I 

doubt not it will) against me, as an act of 

injustice towards Lord Castlereagh, that 

it did not originate in my suggestion.’ 

Lord Harrowby, the President of the 

Board of Control, worried that by waiting 

longer still to tell Castlereagh, they 

would run the risk of him finding out 

what they had been doing, with all the 

ramifications that entailed for 

Castlereagh’s personal relationships with 

some of his fellow Cabinet members. 

In early August Portland resolved to 

inform Castlereagh of his future himself, 

but before he had the opportunity to do 

so, he suffered a stroke, casting the entire 

plan into doubt. Although the Duke made 

a swift recovery, George III now realized 

he could no longer continue as Prime 

Minister. The question of removing 

Castlereagh from the War Department 

now became caught up in the larger 


Cabinet reshuffle that must follow the 

appointment of a new Prime Minister. 

For the time being Portland remained in 

office until a successor, for which likely 

candidates included Bathurst, Harrowby, 

Spencer Perceval, the Chancellor of the 

Exchequer, and Canning, could be found. 

Canning, in particular, was regarded as 

being after the post and had a substantial 

number of supporters behind him. 

Castlereagh’s position still wasn’t secure, 

however, as Canning was still pushing 

for his removal from the War 

Department. On 2 September he 

reiterated once more his intention to 

resign unless Castlereagh was moved 

from the War Department and on 7 

September he did not attend the Cabinet 

meeting. Castlereagh finally realized 

something was wrong and, upon pressing 

Camden to tell him, was informed of the 

months-long discussion about his ouster. 

Ironically, Castlereagh discovered the 

plot against him, in the words of Canning 

biographer Peter Dixon, ‘at the moment 

when it had become unnecessary that he 

ever learn.’ 

Camden thought that his nephew reacted 

‘firmly and reasonably’ to the shocking 

news, but the next day Castlereagh 

handed his resignation to the King. 

Although he continued to run his 

department, he withdrew from active 

policymaking and over the next few 

weeks learned most of what he had been 

left ignorant about for so long. Perceval 

showed him most of the correspondence 

he had kept up about the matter and, 

through him, Castlereagh determined that 

Canning had been the instigator of his 

downfall. On 16 September he wrote to 

his friend Edward Cooke that he felt 

highly offended by the way in which he

“’The tone and purport [of your letter] 

precludes any other answer... I will 

give you the satisfaction that you require’” 

had been treated: ‘I have been sacrificed 

to a colleague, both unjustly and 

ungenerously, and under circumstances 

of concealment the most unjustifiable.’ 

He continued by writing that he wanted 

only ‘the privilege of being allowed to 

defend out of office my own public 

character and conduct.’ 

Armed with the knowledge of Canning’s 

role, Castlereagh sent on the 19th a 

remarkably strongly worded letter to 

Canning challenging him to a duel. In it 

he left Canning no room to apologize for 

his actions. Castlereagh was convinced 

that Canning had set into motion the plot 

for his removal from the War 

Department and that had he been told of 

this earlier ‘I could not have submitted to 

remain one moment in Office without the 

entire abandonment of my private Honor 

and publick Duty – you knew I was 

deceived and you continued to deceive 

me.’ Castlereagh could not allow, he 

writes, for his political future to be under 

the complete control of anyone else, ‘for 

were I to admit such a Principle, my 

Honor and Character would be from that 

moment at the Discretion of Persons 

wholly unauthorized … it is impossible 

for me to acquiesce in being placed in a 

situation by you, which no Man of Honor 

could knowingly submit to, without 

forfeiting that Character.’ To Castlereagh 

the campaign against his public character 

was at the same time a campaign against 

his private honour, and the first could not 

be damaged without suffering similar 

damage to the second. Castlereagh 

admitted that Canning had the right to 

demand ‘upon publick grounds my 

removal from the particular office I have 

held.’ But the deceitful way in which the 

removal was orchestrated came ‘at the 

expense of my Honor and Reputation.’ 


Castlereagh felt that in this situation he 

had every ground to seek satisfaction 

from Canning and duly challenged him 

to a duel. In reply Canning sent back a 

curt note stating that ‘the tone and 

purport’ of Castlereagh’s letter 

‘precludes any other answer… than that I 

will cheerfully give to your Lordship the 

satisfaction that you require.’ 

The duel took place the next day on 

Putney Heath, the same place where Pitt 

and Tierney had duelled 11 years earlier. 

Each of the duellists took aim twice, with 

Canning possibly putting a bullet through 

Castlereagh’s buttonhole with his first 

shot, and Castlereagh wounding his 

opponent in the thigh on his second 

attempt. With that, Castlereagh felt his 

honour had been satisfied and he helped 

Canning to a doctor waiting nearby and 

returned to his home in St. James’s 

Square. Canning recovered swiftly from 

his wound, and almost immediately 

began defending himself about his role in 

the affair. 

In November Canning published a letter 

he had sent to Camden, rejecting all the 

accusations Castlereagh and others had 

made concerning his part in the affair. He 

denied that the idea to remove 

Castlereagh as Secretary for War had 

originated with him. It was Portland, he 

argued, who had proposed the move as a 

bargain to keep Canning on as Foreign 

Secretary. Neither, Canning argued, did 

he have any role in concealing from 

Castlereagh the entire matter as it was 

being discussed from April onwards. He 

believed that Castlereagh was mistaken 

in whom to blame and that his ire was 

better directed at ‘his supposed friends’, 

meaning Camden, Portland, and other 

members of the Cabinet. Many others

“Castlereagh felt that the only way 

to salvage his political career 

was to defend his personal honour” 

held similar views. Perceval, even though 

he might have desired to damage 

Canning in the context of the Prime 

Ministerial succession, believed that 

‘Castlereagh misconceived the case very 

much.’ 

Yet if he had done nothing to offend 

Castlereagh, why then did Canning 

accept his former colleague’s challenge? 

Although he does not mention his own 

honour in relation to the duel, he must 

have been well aware that under the 

contemporary views on honour and 

duelling it was a signal of cowardice and 

dishonour to decline a challenge. This 

was especially true with regard to such 

an unambiguous challenge as 

Castlereagh’s. Canning must have known 

he could not decline to duel without his 

honour suffering the consequences. An 

ambitious politician like Canning could 

hardly afford to lose his honour at the 

time when he was one of the main 

candidates to become Prime Minister. If 

he allowed anyone else to become Prime 

Minister at that time, Canning felt that he 

‘would give up the lead in administration 

almost for ever.’ Not everyone believed 

that Canning was altogether suited to 

lead a Cabinet. Lord Chancellor Lord 

Eldon thought that Canning was ‘[v]anity 

in human form. Nothing will serve him 

but being what he will never be permitted 

to be.’ With his colleagues entertaining 

such opinions of him, Canning had to 

retain at least his private honour for him 

to have any chance of a public future. 

Whereas Canning said little about his 

honour, Castlereagh felt otherwise. The 

concealed campaign against his position 

as Secretary for War had damaged his 

public character and, in doing so, had 

also had wounded his private honour. In 


a letter to his father, the Marquess of 

Londonderry, he reiterated this belief: ‘I 

hope my publick and private character 

will survive the perils to which it has 

been exposed.’ He was angered by his 

supposed friends in the Cabinet treating 

him in such a manner, calling it ‘a 

shabby act … to place him in a situation 

so full of danger and so full of 

dishonour.’ But in Castlereagh’s eyes it 

was Canning who was the main culprit 

for orchestrating the plot to remove him 

‘unless Mr. Canning in his mercy should 

be disposed to spare his victim, being 

made absolute master of his fate.’ The 

concealment of the plot had caused him 

‘political injury’ and he resented strongly 

‘the danger to which my character and 

my honour had been exposed by the 

delusions practised upon me.’ Believing 

that Canning was central to the plot, 

whether this was mistaken or not, 

Castlereagh felt that the only way to 

salvage his political career was to defend 

his personal honour by challenging 

Canning. 

Some historians feel that, in the light of 

the two weeks separating Castlereagh’s 

discovery of the plot and his challenge to 

Canning, he was perhaps out for nothing 

more than simple vengeance. In this they 

echo the sentiment of Wilberforce who, 

shocked at the news of the duel, 

described it as ‘a cold-blooded measure 

of deliberate revenge.’ Other 

contemporaries supported Castlereagh, 

however. Lord Wellington, for instance, 

thought that Castlereagh’s ‘feelings 

could not have been otherwise satisfied,’ 

and Earl Grey wrote: ‘it is impossible to 

defend Canning’s conduct either in a 

public or a private view.’ It is not at all 

clear if Castlereagh was out for 

vengeance or not. From his

“These three duels serve to refute the 

view of Colley, Langford and Andrew of 

the decline of aristocratic influence” 

correspondence on the duel, honour 

seems to be a more powerful motivation 

than revenge. Nevertheless, even if 

revenge was what Castlereagh was after, 

it is still significant that he chose to use 

references to honour to mask this desire. 

Honour, it seems, was regarded as a 

powerful enough motive to use in 

political rivalries. 

Conclusion 

From the 1770s onwards, critics of 

duelling ‘attempted to construct […] a 

code of behaviour which would make the 

duel… a mode of conduct belonging to 

past ages, vaguely romantic but 

definitely old-fashioned.’ However, far 

from what these critics of the duel and 

the aristocratic code of honour hoped 

would happen, the duel did not disappear 

towards the end of the eighteenth century 

or during the first decades of the 

subsequent century. Rather, this 

exclusive, aristocratic and masculine 

code of honour, and the duels it so often 

caused, remained facets of British upper 

class social life. Given the important role 

played by the aristocracy and the gentry 

in British politics it is not surprising that 

politics and honour were strongly 

intertwined. 

In the first two decades of the nineteenth 

century, then, honour and politics 

remained closely connected. Moreover, 

the aristocratic nature of honour does not 

undergo any change towards a concept of 

honour based on middle class ideals and 

sensitivities. Historians like Linda 

Colley, Paul Langford and Donna 

Andrew all argued that during this period 

the aristocracy, due to societal pressures, 

reformed themselves into resembling 

more closely the emerging middle 


classes. This involved replacing their 

traditional reliance on honour with a new 

system that was influenced by the ideals 

of the middle classes. 

The three duels examined in this article, 

however, all serve to refute this view of a 

decline of aristocratic influence. When 

George Tierney and William Pitt the 

Younger took the field in May 1798, 

both might well have believed that, to 

preserve or increase their political status, 

they had no choice but to turn a political 

disagreement into a matter of honour. 

Tierney hoped to become the leader of 

the opposition and Pitt, as Prime 

Minister, could not afford to lose face by 

declining Tierney’s challenge. In 1809 

Lord Castlereagh felt that his personal 

character and honour had been brought 

into disrepute through the concealed 

effort to damage his political standing. 

By challenging George Canning, he 

could simultaneously show that his 

honour was intact and that he therefore 

deserved a political future. Canning, 

meanwhile, hoped to become Prime 

Minister and had to accept the challenge 

to stand any chance of doing so. To 

decline was the coward’s way out, and 

no potential Prime Minister could be 

seen as a coward or dishonourable in any 

other way. Finally, in 1822 when the 

Duke of Buckingham challenged the 

Duke of Bedford, he was protecting his 

honour in order to show that the 

accusations of corruption were 

unfounded. Bedford, too, understood that 

he had insulted Buckingham in such a 

manner as to require a duel and that he 

could not decline the challenge without 

losing his political position. 

In all three cases, then, the duellists were 

aware that by defending their personal,

“The aristocracy managed to resist 

middle class encroachment on their 

social and political status” 

aristocratic honour, they were supporting 

or increasing their political stature. A 

gentleman’s personal honour and public 

or political character were not, as James 

McCord claimed the Duke of Bedford 

believed, two separate and distinct 

entities. They were two sides of the same 

coin and could not be separated from 

each other. This attitude is perhaps best 

exemplified by Buckingham’s remark 

that ‘a public man’s life is not worth 

preserving unless with honour.’ To be 

effective as a politician, it was necessary 

to be perceived as being honourable. 

Therefore, the defence of one’s honour 

meant the defence of one’s political 

career. All six duellists held to this 

Burkean or Whiggish sense of honour 

where the act of duelling was not merely 

a honourable, but also a political act. 

This continued importance of the 

aristocratic code of honour in British 

political life supports the position held by 

historians such as John V. Beckett, John 

Cannon, and most importantly, J. C. D. 

Clark. They all argue that the aristocracy 

remained pre-eminent and that it 

managed to resist middle class 

encroachment on their social and 

political status. During the early decades 

of the nineteenth century, almost all 

politicians of all ideological colours, 

continued to believe that their personal 

honour was an integral part of their 

public character and instrumental to their 

political careers. As aristocrats they 

were, in a sense, born to govern, but this 

remained their right only so long as they 

retained their honour. This in turn 

required any politically motivated insult, 

like Pitt questioning Tierney’s patriotism, 

to be met with a challenge to duel. This 

challenge, then, could not be rejected 


without subsequent loss of honour, and, 

therefore, political power. 

Given that politics and the aristocratic 

code of honour were so intertwined in 

early-nineteenth-century Britain, 

historians should take care to take into 

account the continued importance of the 

upper classes, and their sensibilities, 

when looking at British politics and 

society in the period. This is true not 

only for the immediate context of the 

political duel, but for perhaps many other 

situations involving politics and 

politicians, who remained convinced of 

their aristocratic and upper class status. 

At the same time, it is imperative to take 

notice of the individuality of early 

nineteenth-century British politics. While 

all six politicians involved in the duels 

examined here stood in a wider political 

and social system involving a shared 

concept of honour, they were all, in the 

end, the sole judges of their own honour. 

Each of them made their own 

considerations about the best manner to 

defend their honour and they were all 

aware that their public character was 

linked to their own, unique personal 

character.� 

An annotated version of this article, with 

full references and bibliography, was 

submitted as a dissertation in partial 

fulfilment of the requirements for UCL’s 

MA in History in 2010. It is reproduced 

by permission of the author and of the 

Chair of the Board of Examiners for the 

MA in History.

In memoriam: 

Martin Welch 

We received this message from 

Malcolm Grant, Provost: 

It is with great sadness that I report the death at the weekend 

[6 Feb 2011]of Dr Martin Welch, who until his retirement 

last year held the post of Faculty Tutor in Social and 

Historical Sciences. 

Martin was appointed to a Lectureship in Medieval Archaeology in 1978, at that time a 

subject based in the History Department. He transferred to the UCL Institute of 

Archaeology in 1991. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London 

in 1984 and promoted to Senior Lecturer at UCL in 1990. His courses on ‘Anglo-Saxon 

Burial Customs’, ‘Sources for Medieval Archaeology’ and ‘Early Medieval 

Archaeology of Britain’ were always popular, while his extensive knowledge of 

European medieval archaeology was reflected in his courses on ‘The Franks’ and 

‘Goths, Huns and Lombards’: he also contributed to the Institute’s multi-teacher core 

courses on ‘Past Societies’ and ‘Texts in Archaeology’. 

His early retirement, prompted by the failure of treatment for his cancer, came after 

many years of committed and much appreciated service to both the SHS Faculty and 

the university as a whole. He embodied every good aspect of UCL, especially in 

relation to students. He was renowned for his sense of fairness and his “steely 

compassion”. He was caring about individuals but at the same time kept up standards of 

personal behaviour and academic aspiration. We have lost an excellent colleague and a 

true citizen of the UCL community. 


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