Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

evealed to him increasingly his distance from history. Establishing the circumstances for
the events he described made him appreciate what could not be learned from the past.
Writing to Gage in 1830 as the aftermath of the July Revolution and the campaign for
electoral reform spread unrest throughout the country, he added ‘who can foresee the
denouement. It seems to me that we cannot form any judgment from past events because
we live in a state of society that never existed before’. 30 Not for Lingard the short step
from Thomas More’s England to William IV’s. His pages were not peopled with
colourful characters or rich in stirring moral lessons. ‘It is long since I disclaimed any
pretensions to that which has been called the philosophy of history, but might with more
propriety be termed the philosophy of romance’ he wrote in the Preface to the fifth
edition of the History, ‘writers of history know nothing more respecting motives than the
little which their authorities have disclosed, or the facts necessarily suggest.’ 31
When the History, which covers the period from the Roman invasion to 1688,
first appeared in parts from 1819-1830 it was this resistance to the tide of popular
romance as much as his Catholicism that caused Lingard to offend so many of his
readers. From Milner, who could not bear the History’s coolness towards Thomas
Becket, to Southey and the antiquary and philologist John Henry Todd (c1763-1845) who
were horrified by Lingard’s suggestion that Henry VIII broke from Rome in order to
marry Anne Boleyn when she was already pregnant, his opponents were drawn from all
shades of religious opinion. 32 Much might be, and has been, said of the individual points
on which Lingard was correct or otherwise. It is no part of this thesis to discuss the
rightness of its individual subjects in the light of modern scholarship, though it should in
justice be noted that on balance Lingard is now held to have been right more often than
wrong. A brief comparison, however, of Lingard with his most eminent opponent
Southey, shows what more was at stake than facts in the battle for English history.
Southey’s Book of the Church of 1824 denigrated Lingard by implication as a
showy pedant. ‘References have not been given’ Southey explained in his own work,
30
Lingard to Gage, December 21 1830, Hengrave mss 21/2/176.
31
Lingard, History of England, 1842, 1, p. xxv.
32
See Southey, The Book of the Church and Todd, A Vindication.
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