Lord Salisbury's World: Conservative Environments in Late-Victorian Britain

Church History, Sept, 2003 by Stewart J. Brown

Lord Salisbury's World: Conservative Environments in Late-Victorian Britain. By Michael Bentley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. viii 334 pp. $45.00 cloth.

The third Marquis of Salisbury (1830-1903), three times Conservative prime minister, dominated British politics between 1886 and 1902--with only a brief Liberal interlude in 1892-95. This was the noontide of the British Empire, when British global influence was paramount. In this carefully researched and beautifully constructed book, Professor Michael Bentley of the University of St. Andrews recreates the environment of late Victorian conservatism with thematic chapters exploring such issues as society, property, thought, party, and empire. Salisbury's world, as Bentley rightly observes, has been neglected by a dominant historiography that has focused on Gladstonian liberalism and the rise of labor, while viewing Salisbury's ascendancy as the swan song of a dying aristocratic order. Bentley's work provides a broad reassessment of the assumptions governing Salisbury's conservative order and, in so doing, contributes to a more balanced picture of late Victorian Britain.

One of Bentley's most engaging chapters explores Salisbury's religious world. Salisbury was a devout High Anglican, who in his youth was deeply influenced by the Oxford Movement. As a mature politician he embraced the idea of an Established Church that would define national aspirations and unite inhabitants in shared spiritual values. He resisted disestablishment movements, fought to maintain a predominant influence of established religion over education, and endeavored to keep the ritualist controversies from tearing the Church of England apart. He was, Bentley suggests, the last British prime minister to govern with "the mind-set of a senior Anglican Churchman" (219); indeed, Salisbury's world is inexplicable apart from the Church of England.

Stewart J. Brown University of Edinburgh