The Rage of Party with George Owers

February 15, 2026·49 min·4 clips

Sarah Churchill's explosive accusation against Queen Anne reshaped the course of European history.

1. The History of England presents a special episode with George Owers, whose book 'The Rage of Party' covers the origins of the Whig and Tory parties from 1678 to 1714. 2. George Owers holds a PhD in 18th-century politics and wrote the book after concluding that the Queen Anne era had been almost entirely neglected in both popular and academic history since the 1960s or 70s. 3. The episode's organising question is what drove the emergence of the first recognisable British political parties, Whig and Tory, and what they actually stood for. 4. Owers frames the Queen Anne era as combining melodrama with ancient Greek tragedy, arguing that personal relationships — including Sarah Churchill accusing Queen Anne of being a lesbian — had direct consequences for European geopolitical outcomes including the peace with France. 5. Anti-Catholicism in the 1670s-80s was primarily political: England's chief enemies France and Spain were Catholic powers, and being Catholic was considered tantamount to being a traitor loyal to a foreign sovereign — the Pope — and a supporter of absolute monarchy in the French model. 6. Titus Oates, described by Owers as a 'notorious pederast and well-known liar' expelled from Catholic circles, fabricated a Jesuit conspiracy to murder Charles II in 1678; the mysterious murder of the lawyer who took his deposition lent the story apparent credibility. 7. The Exclusion Crisis — Parliament's attempt to bar Catholic James Duke of York from the throne — crystallised the first Whig-Tory division: Tories backed hereditary succession and divine right, Whigs claimed Parliament had the right to alter the succession. 8. Owers maps a social and religious dimension to the split: Tories were the party of the Anglican landed gentry, Whigs an unusual alliance between rising commercial middle classes in towns and a surprisingly Whig-dominant aristocracy. 9. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 did not formally change constitutional arrangements much, but in practice made Parliament a permanent annual institution — because war with France required continuous supply that only Parliament could grant. 10. Monarchs retained significant prerogative powers after 1688 — appointing ministers, setting foreign policy — but could no longer simply not call Parliament as Charles II had done in his final four years. 11. Jacobitism — support for the exiled Stuart line — was a persistent complication for the Tories, who had ambivalent feelings about the Glorious Revolution they had acquiesced in rather than driven. 12. Owers quotes the phrase 'the English drank to Jacobitism, the Scots fought for it, and the Irish died for it,' capturing the differentiated weight of Stuart loyalism across the three kingdoms. 13. The Whigs used the Jacobite threat as a political weapon, accusing Tories of secretly wanting a Stuart and Catholic restoration — an accusation Owers says was mostly false but had enough truth to be damaging. 14. By Queen Anne's reign, the key political issue was whether to continue the War of the Spanish Succession; Whigs were the war party partly because defeating France reduced Jacobite prospects, while Tories were the peace party. 15. The Tories' drive for peace by 1710 was primarily fiscal: the land tax, paid almost entirely by the landed gentry who were the Tory base, accounted for over 50% of all British tax revenue, and Britain had been almost continuously at war since 1689 at scales not seen since the Hundred Years War. 16. The Tories won a massive election landslide in 1710 partly because the Church of England was said to be in danger, showing that roughly 25% of adult men who could vote did generate genuine swings in public opinion. 17. Defoe wrote 'The Shortest Way with the Dissenters,' a satirical pamphlet mocking High Church calls to exterminate dissent, which reportedly was read approvingly by Tory dons at Oxford who missed the joke; the Earl of Nottingham tried to have Defoe arrested when the satire was understood. 18. The political press of the era — with Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, and others as leading figures — was vicious, with pamphlets calling opponents names, demanding they be sent to the Tower, and elections occasionally featuring voters beaten by medieval weapons outside polling stations. 19. The episode is conversational and discursive, with the host drawing out Owers's analysis through questions; both participants share a love of the period's combination of high intellectual history and operatic personal drama. 20. Listeners interested in the origins of the British party system, the Queen Anne period, or the political uses of religious fear will find the episode engaging; those wanting a focused single-episode narrative arc may find the conversational format and compressed chronology demanding.

As heard by us

A sharp look at the politics of Anne's reign.

George Owers and The History of England spend the episode on the mechanics of power after the Glorious Revolution, where Anne still matters, Parliament matters more, and the Lords are not just scenery.

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Why you'd press play

You want the constitutional knot behind Anne, the Lords, and Jacobitism.

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