¹ Huntington Library, San Marino, California, HM 62593, diary of Thomas Parsons, 8 June 1769. The journal is not paginated but all entries are dated.

² Two basic sources are Beckett, J. V., The aristocracy in England, 1660–1914 (Oxford and New York, NY, 1986)Google Scholar, and Cannon, John, Aristocratic century: the peerage of eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Two current synthetic works are Berg, Maxine, Luxury and pleasure in eighteenth-century Britain (Oxford, 2005)Google Scholar, and de Vries, Jan, The industrious revolution: consumer behavior and the household economy, 1650 to the present (Cambridge, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Tinniswood, Adrian, A history of country house visiting (Oxford, 1989), pp. 88–108Google Scholar; Moir, Esther, The discovery of Britain: the English tourist (London, 1964), pp. 63–7Google Scholar; Ousby, Ian, The Englishman's England: taste, travel and the rise of tourism (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 61–74Google Scholar.

⁵ Jonathan Barry, ‘Introduction’ (pp. 3, 17–20), and Shani D'Cruze, ‘The middling sort in eighteenth-century Colchester: independence, social relations and the community broker’ (pp. 181–207), in Jonathan Barry and Christopher Brooks, eds., The middling sort of people: culture, society and politics in England, 1550–1800 (Basingstoke and London, 1994); Hunt, Margaret R., The middling sort: commerce, gender, and the family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley, CA, 1996), pp. 172–82Google Scholar; Langford, Paul, A polite and commercial people, England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 61–108Google Scholar.

⁶ The Parsons have been discussed by Sloman, Susan, ‘An eighteenth-century stone carver's diary identified’, British Art Journal, 7 (2007), pp. 4–13Google Scholar, and Davis, John P. S., Antique garden ornament (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 117–21Google Scholar. See also Klein, Lawrence E., ‘An artisan in polite culture: Thomas Parsons, stone carver, of Bath, 1744–1813’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 75(2012)Google Scholar.

⁷ Norris, John, Shelburne and reform (London, 1963), pp. 60–4Google Scholar.

⁸ Beckett, The aristocracy in England, pp. 295–302.

⁹ ‘An abstract of bills’ (drawn up by Richard Wall, one of Shelburne's stewards), 1768–70, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Shelburne papers (microfilm), Bowood muniments box 98, fo. 7, (hereafter cited as ‘Shelburne papers’).

¹⁰ Offer, Avner, ‘Between the gift and the market: the economy of regard’, Economic History Review, 50 (1997), pp. 450–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 451–2.

¹¹ Sloman, ‘An eighteenth-century stone carver's diary identified’, p. 4.

¹² Ikegami, Eiko, Bonds of civility: aesthetic networks and the political origins of Japanese culture (Cambridge, 2005), p. 14Google Scholar.

¹³ A manuscript catalogue of vase designs, ‘A collection of vases, terms &c by Thomas Parsons, carver, Bath’, with their sources, is in the collection of Bath Central Library.

¹⁴ A model of social interaction as a performance based on simultaneous information-seeking about other participants is given in Goffman, Erving, The presentation of self in everyday life (first published 1959; London, 1990), p. 13Google Scholar. Models of politeness in discourse draw to varying extents on Goffman: Watts, Richard, Politeness (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 49–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ Huntington Library, HM 62593, 16 Jan. 1769.

¹⁶ Langford, A polite and commercial people, pp. 59, 66–71.

¹⁷ Carter, Philip, Men and the emergence of polite society, Britain 1660–1800 (Harlow, 2001), pp. 163–208Google Scholar.

¹⁸ ‘Lord Shelburne, memorandum on his private affairs’, Shelburne papers, box 103, fos. 44–5, 83–5.

¹⁹ New scholarship is expected from David Hancock and appears in Nigel Aston and Clarissa Campbell Orr, eds., An Enlightenment statesman in whig Britain: Lord Shelburne in context, 1737–1805 (Woodbridge, 2011).

²⁰ Norris, Shelburne and reform, p. xi; Brown, Peter, The Chathamites (London, 1967), p. xivGoogle Scholar.

²¹ Chesterfield to his son, 27 May 1748 and 6 July 1749, Chesterfield to his godson, 11 Aug. 1762, in Dobrée, Bonamy, ed., The letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of Chesterfield (6 vols., London, 1932)Google Scholar, iii, p. 1154, iv, p. 1365, vi, p. 2409.

²² Chesterfield to his son, 9 Oct. 1746, 15 Oct. 1747, 15 May 1749, Chesterfield to his godson, 11 Aug. 1762, in Dobrée, ed., The letters of Chesterfield, iii, pp. 783, 1035, iv, p. 1346, vi, p. 2409.

²³ Chesterfield to his son, 17 May 1748, Chesterfield to his godson, undated, in Dobrée, ed., The letters of Chesterfield, iii, p. 1151, vi, p. 2641.

²⁴ Shellabarger, Samuel, Lord Chesterfield (London, 1935), p. 59Google Scholar.

²⁵ Ibid., pp. 124–8, 159–63.

²⁶ Ibid., pp. 225–37.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 66.

²⁸ Cannon, Aristocratic century, p. 172; Langford, Paul, Public life and the propertied Englishman, 1689–1798 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 511, 542Google Scholar; Langford, Paul, The first Rockingham administration, 1765–1766 (Oxford, 1973), pp. 16–20Google Scholar; Thomas, George, Memoirs of the marquis of Rockingham and his contemporaries (2 vols., London, 1852)Google Scholar, i, pp. 140, 340, ii, pp. 69–72; Turberville, A. S., The House of Lords in the eighteenth century (Oxford, 1927), p. 290Google Scholar.

²⁹ Humphrey Repton, ‘Memoirs: the second part of the memoirs of Humphrey Repton, landscape architect; circa 1814’, London, British Library, Additional Manuscripts 62112, pp. 10–12; Wilkinson, David, The duke of Portland: politics and party in the age of George III (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 2–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ Andrew, Donna, ‘The code of honour and its critics: the opposition to duelling in England, 1700–1850’, Social History, 5 (1980), pp. 409–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 426–34; Andrew, Donna, ‘“Adultery à-la-mode”: privilege, the law and attitudes to adultery, 1770–1809’, History, 82 (1997), pp. 5–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 7; Gatrell, Vic, City of laughter: sex and satire in eighteenth-century London (London, 2006), pp. 53–70Google Scholar; Goodrich, Amanda, Debating England's aristocracy in the 1790s: pamphlets, polemics and political ideas (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 5–8, 56–84Google Scholar.

³¹ Wahrman, Dror, Imagining the middle class: the political representation of class in Britain, c. 1780–1840 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar (James Mackintosh), 47ff (Vicesimus Knox), 78 (George Dyer), among many examples.

³² Goodrich, Debating England's aristocracy in the 1790s, pp. 9–12, 85–112.

³³ Langford, Public life and the propertied Englishman, pp. 510–81.

³⁴ McCahill, Michael W., The House of Lords in the age of George III (Chichester, 2009), pp. 38, 42Google Scholar. This article fits with the model that ‘politeness was an idiom with uses for a wide range of people’: Klein, Lawrence E., ‘Politeness and the interpretation of the British eighteenth century’, Historical Journal, 45 (2002), pp. 869–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 873.

³⁵ Felton, Henry, A dissertation on reading the classics (London, 1713), p. 69Google Scholar.

³⁶ For overviews of eighteenth-century politeness, see Carter, Men and the emergence of polite society, pp. 15–52; Cohen, Michèle, Fashioning masculinity: national identity and language in the eighteenth century (London, 1996), pp. 42–53Google Scholar; Klein, ‘Politeness and the British eighteenth century’, pp. 869–98; and Langford, A polite and commercial people, pp. 59ff.

³⁷ This aspect of eighteenth-century Britain is explored throughout Clark, J. C. D., English society, 1688–1832: religion, ideology and politics during the ancien regime (2nd edn, Cambridge, 2000)Google Scholar; one summary discussion appears on pp. 164–86.

³⁸ Thompson, E. P., Customs in common (New York, NY, 1991), p. 43Google Scholar.

³⁹ Ibid., pp. 43–7; on houses and gardens, Williamson, Tom, Polite landscapes: gardens and society in eighteenth-century England (Stroud, 1995), pp. 18, 100–18Google Scholar; on changing relations with localities, Rosenheim, James, The emergence of a ruling order: English landed society, 1650–1750 (London and New York, NY, 1998), pp. 174–214Google Scholar, Landau, Norma, The justices of the peace, 1679–1760 (Berkeley, CA, 1984), p. 15Google Scholar, and Stone, Lawrence and Fawtier Stone, Jeanne C., An open elite? England, 1540–1880 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 323–8Google Scholar; on leisure and metropolitan life, Hannah Greig, ‘The beau monde and fashionable life in eighteenth-century London, c. 1688–1800’ (Ph.D. dissertation, London, 2003), and Clarissa Campbell Orr, ‘Introduction: court studies, gender and women's history, 1660–1837’, in Clarissa Campbell Orr, ed., Queenship in Britain, 1660–1837 (Manchester and New York, NY, 2002), pp. 1–52, esp. pp. 24–32. While the first edition of Clark's, J. C. D.English society, 1688–1832: ideology, social structure and political practice during the ancien regime (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar was Thompsonian in its account of the aristocracy (pp. 95, 100, 102, 103, 109–16), the second edition downplayed the ‘autonomy’ and ‘inwardness’ of the aristocracy (pp. 200–31).

⁴⁰ A summary of the social and linguistic literature on roles and codes appears in the introduction to Pahta, Päive, Nevala, Minna, Nurmi, Arju, and Palander-Collin, Minna, eds., Social roles and language practices in late modern English (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA, 2010), pp. 1–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴¹ Beckett, The aristocracy in England, pp. 341–59, for this point and the rest of the paragraph.

⁴² Itzkowitz, David C., Peculiar privilege: a social history of English foxhunting, 1753–1880 (Hassocks, 1977), pp. 31–49Google Scholar, 99–134; Underdown, David, Start of play: cricket and culture in eighteenth-century England (London, 2000)Google Scholar, chs. 2–4 ; Middleton, Iris and Vamplew, Wray, ‘Horse-racing and the Yorkshire leisure calendar in the early eighteenth century’, Northern History, 40 (2003), pp. 259–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ O'Gorman, Frank, Voters, patrons and parties: the unreformed electorate of Hanoverian England, 1734–1832 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 7–11Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ G. M. Ditchfield, ‘The House of Lords in the age of the American revolution’, in Clyve Jones, ed., A pillar of the constitution: the House of Lords in British politics, 1640–1784 (London, 1989), pp. 202–3; McCahill, Michael W., ‘Peers, patronage and the industrial revolution, 1760–1800’, Journal of British Studies, 16 (1976), pp. 84–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCahill, The House of Lords, ch. 16.

⁴⁵ Beckett, The aristocracy in England, pp. 248–56.

⁴⁶ Borsay, Peter, The English urban renaissance (Oxford, 1989), pp. 267–308Google Scholar; Greig, ‘The beau monde’, pp. 123–54.

⁴⁷ Johnson, Samuel, A dictionary of the English language (2 vols., London, 1755–6)Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ This summary is drawn from: Norris, Shelburne and reform; Brown, The Chathamites; Petty-Fitzmaurice, Edmond George, Fitzmaurice, baron, Life of William, earl of Shelburne (2 vols., London, 1912)Google Scholar; Cannon, John, ‘Petty, William, second earl of Shelburne and first marquess of Lansdowne (1737–1805)’, ODNBGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁹ The author thanks Clarissa Campbell Orr for permission to read her essay, ‘Wives, aunts, courtiers: the ladies of Bowood’, which has now been published in Aston and Orr, eds., An Enlightenment statesman in whig Britain.

⁵⁰ Cornforth, John, ‘Bowood revisited’, Country Life, 151 (1972), pp. 1448–51Google Scholar, 1546–50, 1610–13; Pevsner, Nikolaus and Cherry, Bridget, Wiltshire (2nd edn, New Haven, CT, and London, 2002), pp. 121–3Google Scholar; Fox, Charles, ‘A great London house reconstructed’, Country Life, 77 (1935), pp. 490–5Google Scholar; Hiesinger, Kathryn Bloom, ‘The drawing room: a documentary survey’, Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, 82 (1986), pp. 4–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sykes, Christopher Simon, Private palaces: life in the great London houses (London, 1985), pp. 201–7Google Scholar; Vickery, Amanda, Behind closed doors: at home in Georgian England (New Haven, CT, and London, 2009), pp. 145–56Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Bibliotheca manuscripta Lansdowniana. A catalogue of the entire collection of manuscripts … of the late most noble William marquis of Lansdowne (London, 1807), pp. i–iv; Hayes, John, The landscape paintings of Thomas Gainsborough: a critical text and catalogue raisonée (London, 1982), pp. 430–2Google Scholar; Miller, James, The catalogue of paintings at Bowood House (London, 1982) pp. 3–7Google Scholar, 12–13, 17; Sloman, Susan, Gainsborough in Bath (New Haven, CT, and London, 2002), pp. 117, 122–3, 133Google Scholar; Michaelis, Adolf, Ancient marbles in Great Britain (Cambridge, 1882), pp. 104–5, 435–71Google Scholar; Smith, A. H., A catalogue of the ancient marbles at Lansdowne House based upon the work of Adolf Michaelis (London, 1889)Google Scholar; Bignamini, Ilaria and Hornsby, Clare, Digging and dealing in eighteenth-century Rome (New Haven, CT, and London, 2010), pp. 321–2Google Scholar.

⁵² Bush, M. L., The English aristocracy: a comparative synthesis (Manchester, 1984), pp. 48–9Google Scholar, 55, 71, 75, 212; Ayres, Philip, Classical culture and the idea of Rome in eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1977), pp. xiii–xvGoogle Scholar; Eglin, John, Venice transfigured: the myth of Venice in British culture, 1660–1797 (New York, NY, 2001), pp. 27–43Google Scholar.

⁵³ Cruickshanks, Eveline, Handley, Stuart, and Hayton, D. W., eds., The House of Commons, 1690–1715 (5 vols., Cambridge, 2002), ii, pp. 38–9Google Scholar; Sedgwick, Romney, ed., The House of Commons, 1715–1754 (2 vols., London, 1970), ii, p. 342Google Scholar; Namier, Lewis, The structure of politics at the accession of George III (2nd edn, London, 1957), pp. 137, 146–8Google Scholar; Davis, Richard, Political change and continuity, 1760–1885: a Buckinghamshire study (Newton Abbot, 1972), pp. 23–4Google Scholar, 41–2.

⁵⁴ Norris, Shelburne and reform, p. xi. Brown (The Chathamites, p. xiv) assigns Shelburne, with the elder Pitt, ‘an important place in the British democratic tradition’. Earlier, Elie Halévy had labelled Shelburne ‘a democratic Tory’ and identified Shelburne's circle as an inspiration of Bentham's utilitarian justification for democracy: The growth of philosophic radicalism (London, 1928), p. 147.

⁵⁵ Dickinson, H. T., Liberty and property: political ideology in eighteenth-century Britain (London, 1977), pp. 142–59Google Scholar, 272–90; Innes, Joanna, responding to J. C. D. Clark, in ‘Jonathan Clark, social history and England's “ancien regime”’, Past and Present 115 (1987), pp. 165–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 191.

⁵⁶ Brown, The Chathamites, pp. 231–321, especially pp. 304ff.

⁵⁷ Ibid., pp. 187–321.

⁵⁸ Norris, Shelburne and reform, pp. 55–60.

⁵⁹ Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, i, pp. 216–21, 270–71, ii, pp. 309, 431–7.

⁶⁰ Katritzky, Linde, ‘Johnson and the earl of Shelburne's circle’, Age of Johnson, 17 (2006), pp. 101–18Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Goodison, Nicholas, ‘Matthew Boulton's ormolu door furniture’, Burlington Magazine, 111 (1969), pp. 685–8Google Scholar; Money, John, Experience and identity: Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1800 (Manchester, 1977), pp. 252–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶² The dimensions of Shelburne's correspondence is evident in a ‘Catalogue of the papers of William Petty, 2nd earl of Shelburne, later 1st marquis of Lansdowne (1737–1805) held on microfilm in the Bodleian Library’, Bodleian Library, Oxford, typescript.

⁶³ Bentham's letters during his 1781 stay illustrate the female presence at Bowood, including not just the countess and her sisters but enduring acquaintances of the earl's, such as Lady Pembroke and the duchess of Bedford: Bowring, John, ed., The works of Jeremy Bentham (11 vols., Edinburgh, 1843), x, pp. 89–114Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ André Morellet to Shelburne, 13 Dec. 1774, in Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, ed., Lettres de l'abbé Morellet de l'Académie Française à Lord Shelburne, depuis marquis de Lansdowne, 1772–1803 (Paris, 1898), p. 55.

⁶⁵ Goodman, Dena, The republic of letters: a cultural history of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1994), pp. 90–135Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Elizabeth Eger, ‘The bluestocking circle: friendship, patronage and learning’, in Elizabeth Eger and Lucy Peltz, eds., Brilliant women: eighteenth-century bluestockings (London, 2008), pp. 20–55, esp. 21ff, concerning space and the orchestration of conversation.

⁶⁷ Wraxall, Nathaniel, Historical memoirs of my own time (2 vols., London, 1904)Google Scholar, i, pp. 373–4.

⁶⁸ Boswell, James, The life of Samuel Johnson (originally published 1791; New York, NY, 1992), p. 1059Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Autobiographical memorandum (‘Autobiography to 1754 & historical narrative’), Shelburne papers, box 102, fos. 7, 9, 61.

⁷⁰ John Cannon draws attention to Shelburne's propensity for ‘lurid and melodramatic language’ and ‘penchant for threatening severe punishment’ in the context of ‘frequently informed and impressive’ parliamentary speeches: Cannon, ‘Petty, William, second earl of Shelburne and first marquess of Lansdowne (1737–1805)’, ODNB.

⁷¹ The liabilities of politeness are discussed in Carter, Men and the emergence of polite society, pp. 124–44. However, Shelburne's successful if brief military career and other aspects of his demeanour spared his being charged with one deformation of politeness, namely, effeminacy.

⁷² Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, i, pp. 149–67, 387–8, ii, pp. 5–6; Norris, Shelburne and reform, pp. 83, 134; Wraxall, Historical memoirs of my own time, i, p. 374; earl of Ilchester, Henry Fox, First Lord Holland, his family and relations (2 vols., London, 1920), ii, pp. 238–61.

⁷³ George Rose, The diaries and correspondence of the Right Hon. George Rose, ed. L. V. V. Harcourt (2 vols., London, 1860), i, pp. 25, 27.

⁷⁴ Boswell, Life of Johnson, p. 1059. In a related way, Horace Walpole once wondered whether ‘Lord Lansdown would be content with being master of ceremonies at Bath?’: W. S. Lewis, ed., The Yale edition of Horace Walpole's correspondence (48 vols., New Haven, CT, 1937–83), xxxiii, p. 468.

⁷⁵ Lady Rockingham to Shelburne, no date: Shelburne papers, box 28, fos. 95–6.

⁷⁶ Bowring, ed., The works of Jeremy Bentham, x, pp. 90, 92, 115. For the origins of Bentham's relationship with Shelburne, Norris, Shelburne and reform, pp. 141–3.

⁷⁷ Joseph Priestley, ‘Memoirs of Dr Priestley’, in John Towill Rutt, ed., The theological and miscellaneous works of Joseph Priestley (25 vols., London, 1817–32), i, pp. 205–6.

⁷⁸ Canovan, Margaret, ‘Paternalistic liberalism: Joseph Priestley on rank and inequality’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 2 (1983), pp. 23–37Google Scholar, offers an account of Priestley's complex and not entirely ‘modern’ ideas about social distinction: she says, of this passage, that Priestley had ‘some unknown model aristocrat [rather than Shelburne] in mind’ (p. 25).

⁷⁹ Norris, Shelburne and reform, p. 5.

⁸⁰ ‘Lord Shelburne's account of Lord George Sackville’, Shelburne papers, box 103, fo. 14. Versions of Irishness, positive and negative, from the English or British standpoint in the eighteenth century are discussed in: Kumar, Krishnan, The making of English national identity (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 140–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pittock, Murray G. H., Inventing and resisting Britain: cultural identities in Britain and Ireland, 1685–1789 (Basingstoke, 1997), pp. 23–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 54–6; Pittock, Murray G. H., Celtic identity and the British image (Manchester, 1999), pp. 24–6Google Scholar, 29, 45–54.

⁸¹ Autobiographical memorandum (‘Autobiography to 1754 & Historical Narrative’), Shelburne papers, box 102, fo. 9, and the separately foliated untitled autobiographical memorandum, fos. 2–4.

⁸² Autobiographical memorandum (‘Autobiography to 1754 & historical narrative’), Shelburne papers, box 102, fos. 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and the separately foliated untitled autobiographical memorandum, Shelburne papers, box 102, fos. 4–5.

⁸³ Autobiographical memorandum (‘Autobiography to 1754 & historical narrative’), Shelburne papers, box 102, fo. 11.

⁸⁴ Untitled autobiographical memorandum, Shelburne papers, box 102, fo. 8; Pemberton, W. Baring, Carteret: the brilliant failure of the eighteenth century (London, 1936), pp. 3, 8, 275–8Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Cannon, ‘Petty, William, second earl of Shelburne and first marquess of Lansdowne (1737–1805)’, ODNB.

⁸⁶ Untitled autobiographical memorandum, Shelburne papers, box 102, fo. 8.

⁸⁷ An account of Richmond's behaviour appears in a memoir by Henry Fox in countess of Ilchester and Lord Stavordale, eds., The life and letters of Lady Sarah Lennox (2 vols., London, 1901), i, pp. 20ff. Richmond was again antagonized when Shelburne succeeded him as secretary of state in July 1766: Lewis, ed., Horace Walpole's correspondence, xxx, p. 229.

⁸⁸ George Grenville to the earl of Bute, 25 Mar. 1763, in William James Smith, ed., The Grenville papers: being the correspondence of Richard Grenville Earl Temple, K. G., and the Right Hon: George Grenville, their friends and contemporaries (4 vols., London, 1852), ii, p. 35. Two decades later, in 1782, the recent nature of Shelburne's Irish title, and the even more recent nature of his English title, were still the object of comment in the correspondence of Horace Walpole and Horace Mann: Lewis, ed., Horace Walpole's correspondence, xxv, p. 273.

⁸⁹ Shelburne to Henry Fox, 20 May 1762, quoted in Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, i, p. 112.

⁹⁰ Cobbett, William, The parliamentary history of England from the earliest period to the year 1803 (36 vols., London, 1806–20)Google Scholar, xxii, cols. 1003–5, in a debate in the Lords on the advancement of Lord George Sackville Germain to the peerage, 7 Feb. 1782; also, xviii, col. 281 (7 Feb. 1775), xix, cols. 1036, 1045–6, 1049–50 (8 Apr. 1778), xxiii, col. 809 (5 May 1783), xxx, col. 191 (27 Mar. 1797).

⁹¹ ‘Lord Shelburne, memorandum on his private affairs’, Shelburne papers, box 103, fos. 1–3; Cobbett, Parliamentary history, xviii, col. 959 (15 Nov. 1775).

⁹² Autobiographical memorandum (‘Autobiography to 1758’), Shelburne papers, box 102, fo. 47.

⁹³ Cobbett, Parliamentary history, xxv, col. 857, in a debate in the Lords on Irish commercial legislation, 8 July 1785.

⁹⁴ Ibid., xix, col. 347 (28 May 1777).

⁹⁵ Ibid., xix, col. 183 (16 Apr. 1777).

⁹⁶ ‘Lord Shelburne, memorandum on his private affairs’, Shelburne papers, box 103, fo. 55.

⁹⁷ Ibid., fo. 65.

⁹⁸ Ibid., fos. 59, 80.

⁹⁹ Ibid., fo. 65; italics added.

¹⁰⁰ A model of conversational interchange as polishing, crystallized by the third earl of Shaftesbury, had been incorporated, by Shelburne's time, into accounts of human development. James Millar, almost exactly Shelburne's contemporary, assigned sociability and conversational interaction key roles in the enhancement of mutual responsibility, first in Observations concerning the distinction of ranks in society (London, 1771), pp. 63–6, 74–5, and, more fully, in A historical view of the English government (first published 1787, 4 vols., London, 1803), iv, pp. 185–6, 228–9, 246–7.

¹⁰¹ Wraxall, Historical memoirs of my own time, i, p. 373.

¹⁰² Britton, John, The autobiography of John Britton (London, 1850), p. 354Google Scholar.

¹⁰³ Ibid., pp. 39, 59–67, 127, 135.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., p. 354.

¹⁰⁵ Bowood was discussed in Britton, The beauties of Wiltshire (3 vols., London, 1801), ii, pp. 213–27.

¹⁰⁶ For instance, Warner, Richard, Excursions from Bath (Bath, 1801), pp. 209–26Google Scholar.