Bodies Politic
Bodies Politic
This chapter explores multiple agencies of virtue and welfare. An examination of welfare activity in the quarter-century from 1714 to 1740 brings into focus the subject of agency. Some of these institutions were agents of local government, from county quarter sessions down to the vestries of the civil parish. Some were corporations, while others were formally charitable trusts and less formal voluntary associations. They were all in a more general sense ‘political bodies’. These contending associations included many of the subsidiary bodies run by men of property which shaped the competitive public world of Hanoverian England. They also determined much of the quality and quantity of its welfare activity. When there was no single authority able to impose reformation in the name of a single public good, several lesser agents pursued improvement in a number of them.
Keywords: bodies politic, public good, Hanoverian England, charitable agency, welfare activity
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
