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Lieutenant Sandys (pp. 27-28), the fight with Hesilrige, and the account of a soldiers' squabble in Ghent (pp. 94-95) are instances of the vivid way in which the sidelights of soldiering, exaggerated or not, give real meaning to the nature of war as a whole. STUART CLARK Swansea COURT AND COUNTRY 1688-1702. By Dennis Rubini. Rupert Hart- Davis, London, 1968. Pp. 304. 63s. The study of British politics between 1688 and 1714 is becoming a lively historical battlefield. This book follows hard on the heels of the magisterial survey of Anne's reign by Geoffrey Holmes, who demonstrated with a wealth of persuasive detail that the party distinction of Whig and Tory was then the dominating fact of political life. As his title indicates, Dr. Rubini's study of William Ill's reign is founded on the alternative clash of 'court' and 'country', the other two points of the political compass invented by Professor Robert Walcott as a guide to the period. Thus, he shows that 'country Whig' successes in the general election of 1695 did not benefit the Whig Junto ministry. Is it possible to reconcile these contrasting interpretations of the two reigns ? Dr. Rubini's book is securely based on extensive and original research. The range of sources cited is most impressive: in Wales, for instance, he examined the manuscript holdings not only in the National Library and the University College Library at Bangor, but also in two private repositories. The mass of material is kept firmly under control. The treatment is topical within a broad chronological framework. Con- stitutional and political subjects are discussed in chapters or parts of chapters roughly in the order in which these matters received political attention during the reign. The tight organization means inevitably that this is selective history. The reader is not given the whole political story, even at Westminster level. The most obvious neglect is of the evolution during the period of reshaped Whig and Tory attitudes. An early reference is made to 'the increasingly Tory character of the opposition after 1693' (p. 123), but this development is not discussed. Even in 1701 a Junto attack on such country opponents as Robert Harley as 'the Tory Party' is mentioned merely to echo the contemporary rejoinder that the Junto had no exclusive right to the title of Whig: the Harleyites are referred to as 'old Whigs', without explanation (p. 242). That the antecedents of the political situation in Anne's reign depicted by Mr. Holmes can hardly be detected in this book is a matter the author may well ponder over in his study.