Create Your First Project
Start adding your projects to your portfolio. Click on "Manage Projects" to get started
Doctoral Research
Location
University of Oxford
Date
October 2020 to February 2025
Conferences and Seminar Papers
'The Royal Tour of 1789: Travelling Bodies at the Court of George III', British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Annual Conference, Pembroke College, Oxford, 8 January 2025.
'"All of us are most desirous to do our best for the good & comfort of our Dear King": Ideas of (Dis)comfort and the Nature of Courtiers’ Attendance during the Regency Crisis in Britain, 1788-89', Society for Court Studies Conference: Courtly Experiences in the Premodern World, Palacký University Olomouc, Czechia, 23 August 2024.
'Queen Charlotte's Household: The Consort's Family of Aristocratic Courtiers', Society for Court Studies Seminar, online, 12 February 2024.
'Rules of Attendance: Working in the Royal Household Under George III', British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Annual Conference, St Hugh's College, Oxford, 4 January 2024.
'Holding Court at Windsor: Spatial Features and Social Structures in the Royal Household Under George III', Castle Studies Symposium, University of Winchester, 10 June 2023.
'The Dignity of the Crown: George III and the Success of His Royal Household', Kings & Queens 12 Conference, University of Uppsala, Sweden, 29 June 2023.
'The Dignity of the Crown and Public OEconomy: the Royal Household under George III and Burke's Economical Reform of 1782', Monarchy and Money Seminar (Oxford), online, 5 June 2023.
'The Dignity of the Crown: The Court and Royal Household Under George III', Oxford Graduate Seminar in History, 1680-1850, Lincoln College, Oxford, 7 March 2023.
'The Dignity of the Crown and Public OEconomy: The Royal Household Under George III and Burke's Economical Reform of 1782', Court Studies Seminar, Jesus College, Oxford, 16 January 2023.
Holding Court at Windsor: Spatial Features and Social Structures in the Royal Household Under George III', Society for Court Studies Conference: The Embodied Court, University of Helsinki, Finland, 3 September 2022.
'Courtly Precedent and Transnational Connections in Royal Country House Visiting', Historic Houses in a European Context: a Workshop Series, online, hosted by the Universities of Durham, Oxford and Tübingen, 10 June 2021.
'The Court of George III and Country Houses: Hosting the "Royal Excursioners" at Nuneham Courtenay in Oxfordshire', Oxford Graduate Seminar in History, 1680-1850, Lincoln College, Oxford, 11 May 2021.
My thesis explores the nature of kingship in late eighteenth-century Britain and its relationship to the court as a social body combining institutional and interpersonal relationships centered on the monarch. The court under George III encompassed a select group of loyal attendants and office-holders who worked to uphold the conservative moral and political values that accompanied the king’s status, or dignity, as a sovereign ruler in Britain as well as in Europe. Scholarship of this period, however, has placed a greater emphasis on the expanding public sphere, where increased commercial and political activity outgrew the boundaries of early modern courts throughout Europe. This, alongside the political upheaval in Britain in the 1780s and George’s illness at the end of the decade, have contributed to notions of courtly decline. A better understanding of late Georgian monarchy involves a reevaluation of the court’s structure and culture, as well as the style of kingship that it prioritized. The approach of this thesis challenges the notion of decline in this period and rejects the king’s resulting associations with bourgeois domestic comfort. The court circle that he cultivated instead supported royal ritual and formality beyond the drawing rooms at St. James’s Palace. The role of George’s consort, Queen Charlotte, also significantly impacted his expression of kingship following the Regency Crisis. The aristocratic families employed within the queen’s household helped to dictate court sociability, participating in the king’s wider moral program and promoting the chivalric values that he cultivated at Windsor Castle. These courtiers also facilitated the king’s connections to a wider European princehood. George III was thus enabled to express a particular style of kingship at a transformative time in his reign, marked not by decline, but by a persistent exercise of conservative, monarchical practice and a growing dependence on a select court circle.
