Protestantism and liberty: Catharine Macaulay's politics of religion as a response to David Hume
Catharine Macaulay's History of England from the Accession of James I (1763-1783) was intended by its author and received by its audience as, in part, a response to David Hume's History of England. Macaulay's writing has been read as a Whig counter to Hume's Tory interpretation o...
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| Published in: | Intellectual history review 2020-04, Vol.30 (2), p.233-252 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Catharine Macaulay's History of England from the Accession of James I (1763-1783) was intended by its author and received by its audience as, in part, a response to David Hume's History of England. Macaulay's writing has been read as a Whig counter to Hume's Tory interpretation of England's seventeenth-century history; more recent work has explored whether Macaulay or Hume has a better claim to be considered an "enlightenment historian". This article will suggest that Macaulay's views on the role of England's Protestant belief and practice in the development and maintenance of the nation's liberties contained, in the earlier volumes of her History, some of her substantive and important refutations of Hume's arguments, and, further, that Macaulay's well-argued claim that Protestantism was instrumental in the formation of England's national character and potential enjoyment of political liberties was received by her readers as a particularly valuable part of her historical argument. Her accounts of Roman Catholic violence against Protestant victims at the Siege of La Rochelle and in the Irish Massacre of 1641 became some of the most quoted parts of her historical writing. |
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| ISSN: | 1749-6977 1749-6985 |