The Duel That Shook Stuart Society
Early on the morning of 15 November 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, and the effects of this fatal encounter were to last for several generations.
This fascinating book takes the duel as a focal point from which to recreate the violent, cynical world of the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth-century British aristocracy. It brings to life 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 an unforgettable 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.
