Arthur Burns is Professor of Modern British History at King’s College London where he teaches 18th and 19th-century British political and social History. He is also Vice-Dean (Education) in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. He chief research interests lie in the later 18th and early 19th centuries, and in particular in the history of the Church of England both as an institution and as a profession. He is a director of the important online historical resource, The Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540-1835 (www.theclergydatabase.org.uk) and has written widely on the intersection of the church and the wider political culture in later Hanoverian Britain. He was one of the editors of the award-winning St Paul’s: The Cathedral Church of London 604-2004 (Yale, 2004), and is currently working on a study of the Christian Socialist tradition at Thaxted in Essex. Arthur Burns is currently Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society with particular responsibility for Education.
Frederick John Robinson was the younger son of the 2nd Baron Grantham, and was raised mainly by his mother, the daughter of the 2nd Earl of Hardwicke, after his father died when he was three years old. He was educated …
Spencer Perceval was born in Audley Square, London on 1 November 1762, the second son of the second marriage of the second Earl of Egmont (and so a man of comparatively slender means). He attended Harrow School and then Trinity …
William Wyndham Grenville was born on 24 October 1759 in Buckinghamshire, the youngest son of an earlier Prime Minister, George Grenville, and cousin of a future one, William Pitt. He studied at Eton, Christ Church Oxford and Lincoln’s Inn, but …
Henry Addington, born on 30 May 1757, was eldest son of a successful London physician, Dr Anthony Addington. He passed through Winchester College and other schools on his path to Brasenose College, Oxford, and then Lincoln’s Inn, becoming a barrister …
William Pitt (the younger) was born on 28 May 1759 at Hayes Place, Kent, the second son of William Pitt (the elder), later 1st Earl of Chatham and himself Prime Minister. He matriculated at Pembroke College, Cambridge at the age …
William Bentinck was the youngest son of the second Duke of Portland, and was born on 14 April 1738. He attended Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford (where he informally added ‘Cavendish’ to his surname) before undertaking a 'Grand Tour' …
William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, and from 1784 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, was born in Dublin on 2 May 1737 to a Kerry landed family, the Fitzmaurices (his father changed the family name to Petty in 1751 on …
Lord North was born in London on 13 April 1732, the son of the future first earl of Guildford, Francis North, then 3rd baron, and the godson – some believed (probably erroneously) in fact the son – of the Prince …