The History of England, During the Reigns of King William, Queen Anne, and King George I is a two-volume survey of late-Stuart and early-Hanoverian politics by the journalist James Ralph. Issued by subscription in 1744 and 1746, it narrates events from the Glorious Revolution (1688) to the death of George I (1727), prefaced by a substantial review of the reigns of Charles II and James II. The book appeared amid a spate of rival, politically sponsored histories in the 1740s. The work advances a constitutionalist opposition stance associated with the circle around Frederick, Prince of Wales, coupling arguments about liberty and the integrity of the British constitution with an unusual emphasis on public finance as a driver of political change. It criticises measures such as the Occasional Conformity legislation and peacetime standing armies, and affirms monarchy limited by law. Methodologically it makes systematic use of state papers, manuscript collections (notably the Somers and Halifax papers), and fiscal returns—customs and excise ledgers, national-debt tables, and army/militia musters—to test and correct partisan narratives. It also engages closely with earlier general histories, especially Burnet’s History of His Own Time. Reception at the time was limited and mixed, and the project was commercially unsuccessful; later readers, however, praised its diligence and detail. Nineteenth-century figures such as Henry Hallam and Charles James Fox rated it highly, and modern scholars have highlighted its breadth, documentary method, and treatment of the Glorious Revolution. The book circulated in Britain and North America, where its constitutional arguments were echoed in revolutionary-era pamphleteering.
Publication The work was issued by subscription at one guinea a set, in two folio volumes—vol. I in March 1744 and vol. II in May 1746—and it appeared serially across those years. Volume I is dedicated to Horatio Walpole. The book appeared during a crowded decade for English histories, alongside Nicholas Tindal’s continuation of Rapin and large general histories by Thomas Carte and William Guthrie, aided by newly printed collections of state papers such as the Ormonde Papers (1739), Thomas Birch’s seven-volume Thurloe State Papers (1742), the Strafford Letters (1739), and the Sidney Papers (1746). It formed part of competing partisan enterprises of the 1740s: a Country-Whig project pairing Guthrie’s General History (to 1688), backed by Chesterfield, with Ralph’s post-Revolution History, backed by George Bubb Dodington, set against the continuation of Rapin backed by Lord Hardwicke. The coordinated plan is documented by early-1744 correspondence describing Ralph’s book as a “counterpart” to the Hardwicke undertaking. Rooted in opposition journalism, the scheme drew on the Country-Whig papers Common Sense and Old England and extended their anti-ministerial programme in a more scholarly register. The History itself appeared serially between 1744 and 1746. During this period, when Dodington entered the Broad Bottom ministry (1744), Ralph received a Treasury pension of £200 per year. Guthrie’s companion General History began appearing in early 1744 and was completed in 1751; the Pelham ministry then pensioned him at £200 a year to silence opposition writing.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
