“Patterns sanctified by great historiographic traditions,” wrote J. H. Hexter, “tend to become fixed. Frequently these patterns are neither logical nor coherent, but the sanction of use and wont behind them is so powerful that researchers tend to force new materials into the time-honored model.” This contention is nowhere more manifest than in the historiography of the Puritan Revolution, where studies of religious developments and struggles during the English Civil War indeed reveal a “time honored model” and tend to convey an almost univocal argument concerning the Independents and the rise of the idea of religious toleration. “As early as 1643,” wrote one expert on the issue of toleration, “when the English Parliament was obliged to ally with the Scots in the Solemn League and Covenant … the issue of toleration came to the fore.” Consequently, because “the Presbyterian Scots wished to impose their Calvinist order on England, against the opposition on the parliamentary side of a core of Independents led by Oliver Cromwell and Sir Henry Vane the Younger,” the Independents “became the leading opponents of Presbyterianism and supporters of a general toleration.”

The effects of the intense personal and political relationship between the young George III and his “dearest friend,” the earl of Bute, are well known to scholars of eighteenth-century Britain. The prince's affection and respect raised Bute, an obscure though well-connected Scottish nobleman, to the highest offices of state and to the absolute pinnacle of power. The earl's instruction and advice governed George's reactions to men and measures from 1755 until 1763. Even after Bute's influence waned following his resignation as First Lord of the Treasury, the lingering suspicions at Whitehall and Westminster that the king still listened to him in preference to others complicated relations between George III, his ministers, and Parliament.

This article examines the origins of the friendship between the king and the earl, and the features of it that strengthened and preserved their attachment during the 1750s. These are questions that have not engaged the attention of many students of the period. The long shadow the relationship cast over politics during the 1760s has intrigued far more historians than its beginnings. They have been content to leave efforts to understand that subject to Sir Lewis Namier, who was inclined toward making psychological judgments of eighteenth-century politicians, and John Brooke, who was compelled to do so by the demands of writing a biography of George III. Both of these men asserted that the personal and affectionate aspects of the connection between the prince and Bute far outweighed the political and ideological during its early years. Their arguments have evidently convinced historians of politics to pass over what made Bute “my dearest friend” and press on to matters they assumed to be more relevant to their interests. The concern of this essay is to demonstrate that this assumption is incorrect. It will show that political and ideological considerations were in fact utterly crucial to this friendship at its inception and throughout its development during the 1750s, with consequences which profoundly affected the political history of the first decade of George III's reign. A mistaken reliance on works by Namier and Brooke has prevented scholars from perceiving these realities. Thus it is necessary to begin by pointing out the serious flaws in their interpretations.

William Cobbett is a problem figure in English history. Among his several stage credits are his performances as the soldier's friend, the champion of the rural laborers and the parliamentary leader of the common people. During the 1810s and 1820s he took his celebrated rural rides for the purpose of discovering first-hand the wants and needs of the country laborers. He voiced their “cottage charter” in the Political Register, he composed hundreds of tracts disseminating their reform program, and in 1830 he led them in the Captain Swing disturbances—the laborers' militant campaign for improved wages, full employment, and the return to the cottage of bacon, beer, and wheaten bread.

Cobbett's sympathies for the farm workers have long been a subject of observation among historians and literary critics. Matthew Arnold suggested that Cobbett's politics were regulated by the condition of country workers, while Hugh Egerton described Cobbett as “the one eminent author whom the farm labourers of England can claim as their own.” For Leslie Stephen, Cobbett was “the voice of the English peasant,” for J. B. Morton he was “the peasant articulate,” and for G. K. Chesterton he “spoke for those innumerable who are also inarticulate.” The great biographer of Cobbett, G. D. H. Cole, agreed: Cobbett was a politicized peasant “at one in nature and sentiment with the mass which he aspired to lead.” Unlike the previous commentators, Cole developed his argument at some length, but his primary understanding of Cobbett was as a rustic-minded critic of industrialism and high finance—a valid assessment certainly, but one neglectful of Cobbett's self-professed ignorance of industrial labor and of market economy.