Letters on a Regicide Peace

: Edmund Burke and the Anglican tradition

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to explicate the relationship between Edmund Burke’s religious and political thought; with particular emphasis on his pamphlets ‘Letters on a Regicide Peace’, written at the close of his life. There have been a few dedicated articles to this topic previously. However, they have typically restricted themselves to exploding some myth about Burke’s churchmanship, before concluding that he was a ‘latitudinarian. In consequence, the first half of this thesis is an exploration of what it meant to be a latitudinarian in the Anglican church of the eighteenth-century, and an exposition of Burke’s contribution to those debates.

The second half of the thesis is an account of Burke’s evolving analysis of the French Revolution. It is my argument that this can only be fully explained if Burke’s religious commitments have already been satisfactorily presented and accounted for.

The Introduction deals primarily with recent historiography on the relationship of religious thought to intellectual history, and with scholarship on Burke in this sphere. It contains an assessment of the most recent major contribution to Burke studies: Richard Bourke’s Empire and Revolution, in which I explain how my treatment of this subject differs from Bourke’s. Chapters 1-2 constitute the first half of this thesis. Chapter 1 is an analysis of the emergence of latitude theology, and of Burke’s influence by and relationship to it. It then applies this analysis to Burke’s specific contribution to ecclesiological debates about the relationship between church and state in the eighteenth-century. Chapter 2 deals with Burke’s reaction to and engagement with dissenting thought, with particular reference to America. This provides scope for a deeper assessment of Burke’s attitude toward Establishment, which leads to a treatment of Burke as a product of the Irish Enlightenment as presented by Michael Brown. Chapter 3 argues that Burke came to see the French Revolutionary wars in terms of a religious crusade; and Chapter 4 applies the analysis of Chapter 3 to the particular problems of Ireland in the 1790s.

Date of Award	30 Jul 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Richard Whatmore (Supervisor)