Today I’m writing to share my new piece in The Atlantic, “Secrets of a Radical Duke.” It’s an adapted excerpt from a biography I’ve written about Charles Lennox, the 3rd Duke of Richmond, a radical politician in 18th century Britain. The biography is called Radical Duke: how one aristocrat— and the American Revolution— transformed Britain, and it comes out next June from Liveright/Norton. (It can be pre-ordered, though!)
Radical Duke is the fruition of what was a thrilling journey of detective work as I sought to figure out how a large, ceremonial parchment Declaration of Independence had ended up in southern England.
The answer turns out to be the Third Duke of Richmond. He was Thomas Paine’s first political patron. Working with the Duke and Benjamin Franklin, Paine published a book of radical political thought in England five years before he published Common Sense. Together, Richmond and Paine drove a movement for change in Britain that led to the Duke of Richmond bringing forth a bill in the House of Lords for universal manhood suffrage in Britain in 1780— during the middle of the American Revolution. The story of just how close Britain itself came to revolution during those years has never been told. This excerpt will start to give you a bit of a glimpse into that history.
Journeying with the Radical Duke for this last period of years has been incredibly helpful to me. He sought to check the excesses of an unbound monarch and to establish legislative supremacy in the British constitutional order. His work helped give us the constitutional monarchy that Britain now enjoys.
Imagine my surprise and delight when in the final phase of my research— well after I had started using the phrase “democracy renovation” for my own scholarly and citizenship agenda; well after I had started arguing for an increase to the size of the House of Representatives to right the ship of our political order— I read this in one of his letters defending his commitment to universal manhood suffrage:
the experience of 26 years,. . .whether in or out of Government, has equally convinced me that the Restoration of a genuine House of Commons by a Renovation of the Rights of the People is the only effectual Remedy against that system of corruption which has brought the Nation to Disgrace and Poverty and threatens it with the Loss of Liberty.
Democracy Renovators across the ages, unite!
Here’s a link to the Atlantic article: Secrets of a Radical Duke. The whole issue is about the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, and there are lots of other great pieces too. Enjoy!
The Atlantic article on the Duke is really a fascinating piece of history.