What is it about?
How two men from different backgrounds came together through high politics to form an enduring close friendship, that is of interest both for its impact on Lord North's government and as an instance of how two respectable, conventional men interacted.
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Why is it important?
(1) It's integral to my revision (based on previously unused sources) of the narrative of the end of North's ministry, the ovehrow of the Fox-North Coalition and the rise of the Younger Pitt. (2) It's a study of the mechanics of a durable masculine friendship in the context of Late Hanoverian politics.
Perspectives
John Robinson grew up in the town where I've spent most of my life, went to the school at which I've taught most of my career, and was mayor of the same body in the same building where I'm mayor. I'm not sure we'd have been close friends, but I have got to know him pretty well, and I don't think we'd have quarrelled.
Mr Andrew Nicholas Connell
Appleby Grammar School
Although 18th C masculinities have been much discussed, the anatomy of middle aged male friendship between tow men of moment has attracted little or no attention
Andrew Connell
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘Believe Me Ever Most Truly and Affectly Yours’: John Robinson and Charles Jenkinson: Friendship and Sentiment within and without the Corridors of Power, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, July 2014, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/1754-0208.12189.
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