Title: Duke Hamilton is dead!
First published: 1999
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.
Subjects: History, Biography, Death and burial, Aristocracy (Social class), Nobility, Social life and customs, Politics and government, Inheritance and succession, Dueling, Great britain, politics and government, 1603-1714, Great britain, social conditions, Nobility, great britain, Great britain, history, stuarts, 1603-1714, Great britain, social life and customs
Places: Great Britain, London, Scotland, England, London (England)
People: Charles Mohun Mohun Baron (1677-1712), James Douglas Hamilton Duke of (1658-1712)
Time periods: 18th century, Stuarts, 1603-1714, 17th century, 1702-1714
LC classification: DA483.H315 S73 1999