Woe to Thee, O Land! The Introduction

Abstract

Within the manuscript collection at the British Library in London is a curious document entitled “Notes concerning the minority of a king and the administration of government during a king’s minority.”1 The anonymous author, who probably composed this work early in the year 1751, consulted a significant body of primary and secondary sources to fashion a narrative that unmistakably identified the significance of minority reigns in English history. Indeed, the author duly recounted the major historical developments of England’s six minority reigns: the successive confirmations of Magna Carta by Henry III, the growth of councils and parliaments as consultative and administrative bodies under Richard II and Henry VI, the historical evolution of the office of Lord Protector of England, and the recognition of kingship as an abstract entity in political theory. This history of English royal minorities was compiled to serve an immediate political purpose. Frederick, Prince of Wales and heir apparent to the British throne, had recently died ( 31 March 1751), leaving his thirteen-year-old son, the future George III, as the elderly George II’s heir apparent. Quite suddenly, the dusty precedents of England’s medieval and early modern past became all too relevant to the possible contingency of a mid-eighteenth-century royal minority.2