11 June 2024 - 11 June 2024
1:00PM - 2:00PM
In person -IAS Seminar Room - please note in person places are limited Online via Zoom
FREE
The Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies is delighted to host this year’s Durham Residential Library fellows as part of the 'Catholicism in the Long Nineteenth Century' lunchtime seminar series at the IAS Seminar Room, Cosins Hall, Palace Green. Join us for our fifth seminar with Ugo Bruschi on 11 June at 1pm and download the full programme to see what's coming next.
Image credit : The Crucifixion of Our Lord with the Virgin Mary, St John and Mary Magdalene (1854), Franz von Rohden (1817-1903)
The conventional image of the first Duke of Wellington as a politician depicts him as a staunch supporter of a conservative regime if ever there was one, and as an implacable enemy of reform. One would expect such a character to side with the Established Church and fight against Catholic Emancipation and yet it was the duke as prime minister who forced the passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act in 1829. The outrage and sense of betrayal at his conduct can explain why, in the months leading to emancipation, Wellington was often branded as a secret supporter of Catholicism. However, it was not exclusively the passing of the Relief Act to be seen in this light. Also Wellington’s role in the foundation of King’s College came, at times, to be perceived as a contrivance to foster the Catholic cause. Even at a later date, such as when, in 1834, the duke took briefly charge of government after Melbourne’s fall, some political opponents read his actions as the prologue to the transformation of Britain into a ‘popish’ country.
It would be easy to dismiss the idea of Wellington as a crypto-Catholic as the result of mixed resentment and paranoia, but the picture is more complex. This leitmotif is strictly connected with the fear for an attack at the balance of the constitution; to make matters worse, constitutional change happened at a moment when a soldier was leading the king’s government, and under his direction. In these exceptional circumstances, Catholicism could be once more a byword for absolute rule, or dictatorship: the ghost of a centuries-old polemic was not yet ready to be laid to rest.
Ugo Bruschi, University of Bologna
Ugo Bruschi PhD FRHistS is an historian who works at the University of Bologna; he is a member of various learned societies in the UK, France, Italy and the USA. He began his career as an archivist and then joined academia, publishing widely on the relationship between Church and State in post-Tridentine Italy. British constitutional and political history in the long 18th century has long been his main area of research.
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