Medicine and Society in Wakefield and Huddersfield, 1780-1870 by Hilary MarlandReview by: M. A. CrowtherThe American Historical Review, Vol. 94, No. 4 (Oct., 1989), pp. 1095-1096Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1906659 .

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Modern Europe 1095

pending simply on the concept of centralization (a concept whose definition the book's strategy also evades). Coleby begins by noting Stephen Rob- erts's observation that, in this era, central and local government were not regarded as clearly separate entities. Perhaps not. But Coleby's evidence indi- cates that, between the Interregnum and the Glo- rious Revolution, these entities were, in practice, becoming more distinct. Rarely after 1660 did the central government supervise the implementation of social policy in the localities. Only marginally, by 1688, was the collection of national taxes such as the excise dependent on action by the local authorities. Perhaps the concept of structural dif- ferentiation may prove more useful than central- ization for analysis of change in England's govern- ment. Clearly, Coleby has laid foundations for a new debate about seventeenth-century govern- ment-a debate about its administrative structure. It will be to his credit if his is not the last book on this subject.

NORMA LANDAU

University of California, Davis

CHARLES CARLTON. Archbishop William Laud. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1987. Pp. x, 272. $65.00.

Archbishop William Laud contributed to the po- larization of seventeenth-century religion and pol- itics and since his death has figured prominently in historians' explanations for the breakdown of con- sensus and the coming of civil war. To the Whig Thomas Babington Macaulay, he was a "ridiculous little bigot." Hugh Trevor-Roper's unrelentingly secular Archbishop Laud (1940) portrayed him as a practical administrator. Most of Laud's sympa- thetic biographers have been clerics. Thus, a sym- pathetic yet nonsectarian biography may be too much to hope for, since political clericalism was what Laud was all about. But in recent years new questions and new perspectives have made room for a fresh look at the archbishop. In his biogra- phy, Charles Carlton attempts to provide "a new portrait of him-perhaps of a less significant, although far more human man" (p. 2).

Well organized and engagingly written, Carl- ton's study is based on comprehensive research in printed and manuscript sources. No hagiography, it repeatedly depreciates the stature of its subject, "a short, red-faced little man" (p. 72). This por- trait is not only physical but also psychological. Occasionally invoking Sigmund Freud, Carlton concludes that Laud's dreams were evidence of "neurosis" and "paranoia" (pp. 144, 153, 112). Laud's diary reveals its author's fantasies clearly

enough, though it will be hard to prove or dis- prove what effect those fantasies may have had on the archbishop's behavior or views on theology and politics. The evidence is only circumstantial for Carlton's assertion that Laud and other bish- ops found comfort in the theory of divine-right episcopacy because they felt insecure about their social origins (p. 195).

Some of the diary entries will admit of explana- tions other than those presented. Laud recorded a dream in which his patron, the duke of Bucking- ham, came into his bed (p. 152). Carlton concludes that "perhaps there was a latent sexual attraction between them" (p. 73). In his Charles I: The Per- sonal Monarch (1983), Carlton reached similar con- clusions about that king's relations with Bucking- ham. Such claims say at least as much about our own age as they do about Laud's, and Carlton himself warns in another context that "posterity has attributed its own goals to seventeenth-century Englishmen" (p. 205). On this subject, Laud de- serves the last word: "I am not moved with dreams: yet I thought fit to remember this" (p. 185).

Laud's religion looms large in the recent debate over English Arminianism. Was the archbishop essentially a latitudinarian and an ecumenist or a full-fledged theological Arminian? Carlton consid- ers that Laud and his colleagues "may be defined in ideological terms as Arminians" (p. 27). Ideol- ogy-in the sense of a system of theories constitut- ing a social and political program-is a twentieth- century concept that suits Carlton's view that "Laud preferred to confine his theology to politi- cal matters" (p. 12).

In the final chapters, Carlton provides a sympa- thetic account of the archbishop's imprisonment, trial, and execution. He exposes the hollowness of the treason charges that Parliament brought against Laud, who, he allows, was "the perfect hate-figure, the ideal scapegoat upon whom the commonwealth's ills could be hung" (p. 208). As Carlton eloquently demonstrates, Laud as an ad- ministrator effectively deployed a small coterie of colleagues but failed to build a constituency for his program in church and state or to communicate his policies to the nation at large.

THOMAS A. MASON

Indiana Historical Society

HILARY MARLAND. Medicine and Society in Wakefield and Huddersfield, 1780-1870. (Cambridge History of Medicine.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 1987. Pp. xxiii, 503. $59.50.

There are many historical generalizations about the changes in medical practice during the Indus-

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1096 Reviews of Books

trial Revolution, generalizations on the division between physician and surgeon, the separation of hospitals from general practice, the prestige and influence of the medical profession, and the growth of both charitable and rate-supported sys- tems of treatment. Hilary Marland scrutinizes these and other assumptions under a microscope focused in turn on two contrasting Yorkshire towns: Wakefield, a small, traditional market cen- ter, and Huddersfield, a "frontier town" of the Industrial Revolution.

Medical practice developed in response to the needs of the local population and varied in rela- tion to the ability to pay. Marland describes the medical systems supported by the two towns, stressing the ability of laymen to control the activ- ities of medical men, from the admissions policies of the new charity hospitals to the power exerted by the Poor Law guardians and numerous friendly societies. Even the poorer members of society exercised some choice over whether to apply for poor relief or resort to the cheap and less humil- iating services of the local druggists, herbalists, and itinerant quacks. At all levels, the physician was subject to the wishes of clients and paymasters.

The early chapters conscientiously relate the economic and political development of the two towns. The careful argument and lively detail of the succeeding chapters illuminate the wide vari- eties of medical practice and the close relation- ships between practitioners and the communities that supported them. The historical sources are luxuriant, and Marland has made excellent use of them. One suggestive argument is that the medical services of the New Poor Law, while ending the parishes' frequent use of unqualified practition- ers, nevertheless reduced the quality of medical services for the poor. The old parishes were more willing to pay for relatively costly treatment than were the new and economical guardians. Like Irving Loudon, Marland believes that the medical services of the old Poor Law have been dismissed as inadequate on little evidence. The quacks, how- ever, continued to flourish after 1834, in spite of the rising standards of the qualified practitioners. Alternative remedies were not only cheaper but sometimes less damaging than orthodox treat- ment, and they offered psychological consolations that still make them attractive to many.

The comparison between the two towns is clearly made in the earlier chapters but is less evident by the end of the book. Marland explains most interestingly the intricate relations between medicine and the community; there are sharp comments about the readiness of employers to subscribe to hospitals that increasingly treated the victims of accidents in the unregulated factories. She also examines the role of elite groups in

running medical charities and the way in which the medical profession fitted into the towns' reli- gious and political structures, which were inde- pendent and contumacious. Medicine in its social rather than its curative role is the theme, well sustained in a scholarly fashion. An advantage of the microscopic approach is that there is time to observe individual actors, medical and lay, re- spectable and disreputable. Since this is Yorkshire, there is a steady procession of Holdsworths, Rams- dens, and Crowthers, all opinionated and some very eccentric.

M. A. CROWTHER

University of Glasgow

ANGUS HAWKINS. Parliament, Party, and the Art of Politics in Britain, 1855-59. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1987. Pp. xiii, 415. $38.50.

The 1850s have not been a period much favored by political historians of Britain. Nor is it difficult to understand why. On the face of it, all appears a welter of chaos and confusion. The former Con- servative party was divided, the Peelites loyal to the memory of their dead leader. The Liberals were not in much better shape, the Whig leader- ship squabbling among themselves, the Liberal rank and file in disarray, and both fearing the Radicals. Had it been possible to decide on some- thing to be Liberal about, things might have been better, but it was not. Lord John Russell plumped for parliamentary reform, which he pursued fruit- lessly and with a persistence usually considered perverse. At least he wanted to do something. Lord Derby, the leader of the Conservative party, apparently wanted to do nothing, least of all be prime minister. The dominant figure for most of the period seemed to be the jaunty and pugna- cious Lord Palmerston, always ready to protect British interests abroad. He appeared little inter- ested in reform at home, but this seemed not to be essential. Prime minister from 1855 to 1858, he won a resounding vote of confidence at the polls in 1857. A misjudgment over the Orsini affair, which seemed to sacrifice British national pride to the French, forced him to give way to a minority Conservative government in 1858 and 1859. That government's most important measure was a par- liamentary reform bill that failed. Finally, in a meeting at Willis's Rooms on June 6, 1859, Whigs, Liberals, Peelites, and Radicals at last, seemingly almost miraculously, agreed on a reconciliation. Politics were once again on their normal two-party course.

Though admittedly oversimplified, this account is not an unfair version of the prevailing view of parliamentary politics in the 1850s. It is a view that

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