page_title: Gilbert Stuart (writer)
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: Gilbert Stuart (writer) / Works
caption_attribution_description: English: Title page of Francis Stoughton Sullivan (1776) Lectures on the Constitution and Laws of England: With a Commentary on Magna Charta, and Illustrations of Many of the English Statutes. By the Late Francis Stoughton Sullivan, LL.D. Royal Professor of Common Law in the University of Dublin. The Second Edition. To which Authorities are Added, and a Discourse is Prefixed, Concerning the Laws and Government of England. By Gilbert Stuart, LL.D.&#32;(2nd ed.), London&#58; &#32;Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly in the Poultry; and Joseph Johnson in St. Paul's Church-yard OCLC&#58; 173651650.&#32;
context_page_description: Gilbert Stuart was a Scottish journalist and historian.
context_section_description: Stuart initially supplied corrections and amendments to the Gospel History (1765) of the Rev. Robert Wait. His first independent work was the anonymous Historical Dissertation on the Antiquity of the English Constitution (1768) in which he traced English institutions to a German source. The second edition, which came out in January 1770, with a dedication to Lord Mansfield, bore Stuart's name on the title-page, and it was republished in 1778 and 1790. For this work he received from Edinburgh University on 16 November 1769 the degree of doctor of law.
  While based in London Stuart supervised the manuscripts of Nathaniel Hooke. From them he finished the fourth volume of Hooke's Roman History. which was published in 1771. After this Stuart temporarily abandoned review-writing for the study of philosophy and history. He appended in 1776 to the second edition of Francis Stoughton Sullivan's Lectures on the Constitution and Laws of England the authorities for the statements and a discourse on the government and laws of our country, and dedicated the volume to Lord North; the whole work was reissued at Portland, Maine, in 1805.
  Stuart's major work, A View of Society in Europe, was published in 1778, and reprinted in 1782, 1783, 1792, and 1813, and a French translation by Antoine-Marie-Henri Boulard, came out in Paris in 1789, in two volumes. Letters from William Blackstone and Alexander Garden were added to the posthumous edition of 1792 by Stuart's father. In this dissertation Stuart followed Montesquieu. As a contributor to medievalism he is considered a pioneer, sharing with Thomas Hinton Burley Oldfield the conception of early Anglo-Saxon society as harbouring democratic habits.
  In 1779 Stuart brought out, with a dedication to Lord Mount Stuart, Observations on the Public Law and Constitutional History of Scotland; and in 1780 he published his History of the Establishment of the Reformation in Scotland (reissued in 1796 and 1805). It was followed in 1782 by The History of Scotland from the Establishment of the Reformation till the Death of Queen Mary, which had a second edition in 1784, when he added to it his Observations on the Public Law of Scotland. These works were written with a narrative in the "balancing style" adopted from Samuel Johnson and Edward Gibbon. Stuart trailed his coat for Robertson, whom he openly challenged to reply to his defence of Queen Mary. Robertson retorted with a charge of plagiarism. The anonymous pamphlet Critical Observations Concerning the Scottish Historians Hume, Stuart, and Robertson (1782), sometimes attributed to Stuart himself, was at least by a friend or ally. It was slapped down by William Enfield in the Monthly Review.
  Stuart did have a public ally in David Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan, who made a point of praising him in a speech at the founding of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, in 1780. Stuart's Whig views were not unacceptable to Buchan. Another historian on the Whig side, whom Stuart found tolerable, was Sir John Dalrymple of Cousland.
caption: To the second English edition of Francis Stoughton Sullivan's Lectures on the Constitution and Laws of England (1776), Stuart added authorities and a discourse on the laws and government of England
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