Scott’s Ivanhoe and the Saxon Question

Abstract

At first glance, Sir Walter Scott’s treatment of the Catholic Question resembled Wordsworth’s – both opposed the measure from a Tory standpoint, both saw Catholicism as incompatible with national identity, both feared potential chaos from an Irish insurrection and both saw aesthetic representations of national history and topography as central to the controversy. Yet, while Wordsworth and Southey steadfastly opposed Catholic Emancipation, Scott was among the Tories who switched positions. In 1829 Scott counselled J.G. Lockhart, then editor of the conservative Quarterly Review, not to publish Southey’s ‘purple article’ against Catholic Emancipation, which he argued would only enflame national prejudice and risk ‘public disturbance’ (LWS 11: 24–6). Scott thus parted company with Southey’s uncompromising opposition to Catholic Emancipation, a position he would label ‘Toryissimus’ (JWS 475). Amid the petitions on the Catholic Question inundating Parliament in 1829, Prime Minister Robert Peel singled out Scott’s signature in support of the Bill: ‘Your name was of the utmost value, and had more weight than any other single name. The mention of it, as attached to the Edinburgh petition, was received with loud cheers’ (Peel 100). This Tory migration, which also included Coleridge, enabled the Bill’s passage and broke a legislative deadlock that had persisted since 1791.