Law, Politics and the Church of England

Stephen Lushington's long career as judge, Privy Councillor, political reformer and anti-slavery campaigner involved him in many of the great political and legal controversies of the nineteenth century. He was adviser to Lady Byron during her separation from Lord Byron and defended Queen Caroline during her trial for adultery. In Law, Politics and the Church of England Stephen Waddams considers both cases afresh, as well as examining the records of the Consistory Court of the Diocese of London, to shed important new light on matrimonial and family law during the era immediately preceding the modern era of divorce courts. As Admiralty Judge, Lushington dealt with such central political issues as the control of neutral shipping by the British navy during the Crimean War. He also played a crucial part in the ecclesiastical controversies that agitated the Church of England in the mid-ninteenth century. He was required to make decisions on the most controversial political and theological questions of his time in an era of radical change. Law, Politics and the Church of England considers afresh the relations between these three fundamental aspects of nineteenth-century life, and makes a major contribution not only to the legal history of the period but to the study of Regency and Victorian England in general.