HIGH LIFE LOW MORALS The Duel that Shook Stuart Society

Hardback. Early on the morning of November 15, 1712, two prominent members of the aristocracy, the Whig Lord Mohun and the Tory Duke of Hamilton, met in Hyde Park to fight a duel. In a flurry of brutal swordplay that lasted perhaps two minutes, both fell mortally wounded. For months afterwards Stuart society was in 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 at one another. The effects of this fatal encounter were to last for several generations. Though Mohun and Hamilton were at opposite ends of the political spectrum, it was not just political rivalry that sparked off the duel, but a disputed inheritance that had been grinding through the courts for several decades. Both men were desperate to maintain their political position, and such an inheritance was vital, conferring on its owner not only money but also status and respect. The author takes the duel as a focal point from which to recreate the violent, cynical world of the late-17th and early-18th-century British aristocracy. He brings alive the London of Pope and Swift and Defoe, a place of huge financial gains and catastrophic reverses, of street-crime and gambling dens and of the infamous Kit-Cat Club. The result is a picture of a society in upheaval verging on anarchy, and of two men driven by demons of their own making as well as by social forces beyond their control. Illus., English Monarchs and Family Trees, Notes, Bibliog. and Index. 332pp. lge. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F. in Vg+ dw. which has small mk. to fr. cover. A fairly heavy book which may require additional postage if shipped overseas.