Rethinking Loyalty' in Eighteenth-Century Britain

This article explores the meanings and applications of the term loyalty in Britain between 1688 and 1815. Political historians today employ the term in an instrumental way to connote obedience, nationalism, conservatism and monarchism: this finds its expression in the phenomenon of loyalism. This article instead argues that loyalism was not a current term in the eighteenth century, and that loyalty had specific meanings for different political groups. It could connote a religious, a legal or an emotional tie: as such, the changing concept of loyalty is indicative of the shifting relationship between the individual and the state.