Duke Hamilton is dead!
Subtitle: a story of aristocratic life and death in Stuart Britain
By: Victor Stater.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 332
Subjects: Hamilton, James Douglas, Duke of, 1658-1712 -- Death and burial.; Mohun, Charles Mohun, Baron, 1677-1712 -- Death and burial.; Inheritance and succession -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century.; Aristocracy (Social class) -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century.; Aristocracy (Social class) -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century.; Dueling -- England -- London -- History -- 18th century.; Nobility -- Great Britain -- Biography.; Nobility -- Scotland -- Biography.; London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 18th century.; Great Britain -- History -- Stuarts, 1603-1714 -- Biography.; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1702-1714.
Description: On the morning of November 15, 1712, two of Britain's most important peers, the fourth Baron Mohun and the fourth Duke of Hamilton, met in Hyde Park. In a flurry of brutal swordplay that lasted perhaps two minutes, both fell mortally wounded. For months afterward, the kingdom was in an uproar, for the duel occurred at a moment of grave political crisis.

Whigs and Tories, increasingly desperate over the future as Queen Anne neared death, hurled charges of political murder and treasonous plotting against one another. Charge and countercharge filled the press as the social and moral crises mounted.

Using the famous Mohun-Hamilton duel as a focal point, Victor Stater re-creates the desperate aristocratic world of late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century Britain. Mohun and Hamilton stood at opposite ends of a bitterly divided political spectrum, but politics was not the only cause of their quarrel. A decades-long battle over a disputed inheritance was a crucial element, and Stater shows how, amid luxury and ostentation, something very like moral anarchy reigned.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [310]-320) and index.