An Eighteenth-Century Secretary at War - The Papers of William, Viscount Barrington

Viscount Barrington served as Secretary at War under George II and George III from 1755 to 1778, with only a few years' interval during which he held other offices of state. The collection of documents presented in this volume is designed to show how the War Office worked during the incumbency of this unusually conscientious and effective minister, and throws a remarkable light on an important area of eighteenth-century history and on the way in which public policy and administration were connected. Why, for example, was the War Office organized and managed in the way it was? Why was its incumbent furnished with a brief in reality so important and yet technically so restricted in its public responsibility? Was he really (as he often claimed) without power? Or, if he did have power, of what sort was it? How successfully could any one man deal with a role which required him at times to perform as an official in a department, at others as a courtier and confidential secretary to a monarch, and at others as a spokesman in Parliament, as well as composing quarrels within the army, and between the army and the public? Although there can be no complete solution to these problems, either for an eighteenth-century Secretary of War or for a twentieth-century historian, this collection, divided up thematically to illustrate the varied responsibilites borne by the War Office, provides material for a better understanding of them...