“ Bold in the Senate House and Brave at War ” : Naval Officers in the House of Commons 1715 - 1815

Abstract

Between 1715 and 1815, 182 British naval officers sat in the House of Commons, a group hitherto unstudied in a systematic way. This thesis draws upon the work of the History of Parliament Trust to examine naval MPs’ backgrounds, means of entering and leaving Parliament, activities in the House and the interrelationship between their professional and parliamentary obligations and patronage. By critically engaging with contemporary scholarship, naval MPs are placed within an eighteenth century context of nascent patriotism and national identity fuelled by popular culture and print media, indicating further avenues of inquiry.