The importance of the House of Lords in early nineteenth-century British politics has long been recognized by historians but rarely explored. Apart from A. S. Turberville's The House of Lords in the Age of Reform, 1784–1837 (London, 1958), E. A. Smith's organizational and institutional history of The House of Lords in British Politics and Society, 1815–1911 (London, 1992), and the relevant chapter in Norman Gash's Reaction and Reconstruction in English Politics, 1832–1852 (Oxford, 1965), most scholarly work on the political impact of the Lords has been confined to (sometimes inaccessible) scholarly theses and journal articles, a fact underscored by the helpful collection of work republished in Clyve Jones and David Lewis Jones's Peers, Politics and Power: The House of Lords, 1603–1911 (London, 1986). The recent expansion of “The History of Parliament” to include the Lords suggests that scholars are no longer willing to indulge in “the enormous condescension of prosperity” (to recoin a phrase). After an unconscionably long period of neglect and decline—which critics might suggest is a metaphor for the Lords themselves—historians appear increasingly willing to engage in the study of a long misunderstood and shamefully understudied chamber.

Richard Davis has been a pioneer in seeking to rescue the Lords from this unmerited oblivion. A Political History of the House of Lords, 1811–1846 brings to fruition the results of well over a decade's patient work in the archives and printed materials of the leading political operators among the peers. Many of the themes worked out in the pages of this book will be familiar to readers of Davis's earlier work—not least his firm, patient, and sympathetic invocation of the Duke of Wellington's political skills in leading the Lords through successive crises (of their own making) and his equally severe strictures on Wellington's mishandling and misunderstanding of the “open” status of the Catholic Question, as it was understood by Liverpool, Canning, and Goderich. Nevertheless, the enlargement and expansion of Davis's work in book form is to be warmly welcomed.

Davis's history is structured in a straightforward narrative format, guiding readers through the successive political debates engaged in by the Lords between the establishment of the Regency in 1811 and the passage of Corn Law Repeal 35 years later. Davis usefully prefaces his study by an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the fall of the “Ministry of all the Talents” in 1807—necessarily so, given the increasingly predominant position that the issue of Catholic Relief assumed in the activities of the Lords for the next twenty-two years. As an abstract and commentary on the Lords' debates alone, this book would be commendable enough. However, it is a singular merit that the perspectives that Davis reveals add significant new insight into familiar themes—like emancipation, parliamentary reform, Maynooth, and Corn Law Repeal—that might have been considered well trodden by reference to their prominence in studies of the Commons. Moreover, Davis shows conclusively that the prevailing image of the Lords as a subservient creature of the Court (before the 1832 Reform Act) and the Commons (after it) belie reality. The credit for maintaining the independent spirit of the Lords before 1832 goes, in large measure, to the Whigs—first under the Grenville-Grey alliance of 1807–17 and then to Grey, Lansdowne, Holland, and (still to some extent) Grenville thereafter in maintaining pressure on the government with respect to the campaign to secure civil and religious liberty (relief to Dissenters, emancipation to Catholics) and in seeking peace abroad and economy at home. For his part, Liverpool was the best last minister that the ancien regime could have had in “holding things together for so long” (344). The meteor that was George Canning and his sympathetic liberal proclivities allowed for a closer convergence between Whigs and pro-Catholic Tories in the late 1820s—a circumstance that carried over into the Lords and was still being felt down to the Reform Bill debates in 1831–32. Thereafter, the Lords were anything but a busted flush, timid to exercise their remaining political potential for fear of being outflanked by an aggrandized House of Commons (backed by public opinion) and a mutilated monarchy. Rather, it was the careful husbanding of the Lords' not inconsiderable latent powers by Wellington (often in close and necessary cooperation with his Whig counterparts, Melbourne and Lansdowne) that offset some of the potentially destructive behavior of the ultra-Tories within his own party and the doctrinaires amid their opponents. In contrast with Peel's somewhat aloof conception of the responsibilities of political leaders toward their followers, Wellington never failed to frustrate, stamp, bluster, persuade, cajole, and soothe his parti conservateur in equal measure, bringing every last reserve of soldierly stratagem and an increasingly suprapolitical status to bear in preserving both the Lords and—so far as was within his power—the Conservative party from the rough, partisan, and occasionally doctrinaire threats of his followers. Davis perceptively concludes that Wellington “put a comparatively low value on his own opinions and consistency—in marked contrast to Peel. That is because he put the highest value on what he called necessity, which can roughly be translated as the national good” (258).

Davis's admiration for Wellington has advanced with the years. More surprisingly—and more welcome (to this reviewer)—is an increasing willingness to understand ultra-Tory mavericks like the fourth Duke of Newcastle, who is now credited as a “highly eccentric but much underestimated political player and observer” (vi). Davis is generally shrewd and fair-minded in his assessments of the human foibles and failings of his subjects. He has produced a book that defies the naysayers who dismiss the scholarly necessity for such histories as unduly “elitist”—rather, he has shown us how much is to be gained from such histories, at least when handled and pursued by a master practitioner.