| dc.description.abstract | This thesis provides the first full-length examination of the life and work of Walter Moyle (1672-1721) a noted Member of Parliament, political theorist, historian, and man of science. Moyle has been largely forgotten in the last two hundred years: this study seeks to renew interest in his writings and deepen scholarship around his works. It analyses the significant events of his life, his political and intellectual writings and contextualises them within the social and political history of the period. It argues that the focus of his thought was a spirit of liberty, in politics and in his intellectual life. It includes an exploration of the difficulties faced by the compilers of his posthumous works; the fragility as Moyle saw it of the constitution of 1688; the threats posed to liberty by self-interest and corruption; and the solutions he thought available to address this vulnerability through the legal guarantees of freedom, the duty of independent men to uphold hard-won liberties and the idea of virtue as a dedication to common welfare. In addition, it assesses the influences of past writers such as Machiavelli and Locke on him; the campaign Moyle waged for a resurgence of ancient prudence and civic virtue against a standing army; the commercial and imperial rewards Moyle envisaged flowing from a free constitution; and, after his retirement, his scholarly interests in church history, antiquarian investigation, ornithology, meteorology, and botany. It reveals him not only as a classical republican figure, rooted in a Renaissance humanist ideal of civic duty with an ambiguous relation to religion, but also as a scholar of great gifts, endowed in his mature years, with integrity, learning and judgment. | en_GB |
