Electing Bath’s Arbiter Elegantiarum

The Master of the Ceremonies ruled Bath’s Assembly Rooms, policing the politeness of the company gathered therein. He not only ensured that they behaved according to the dictates of politeness, but also that the space they inhabited embodied this civic virtue. The position of Master of Ceremonies was an elected office, with the power and duty to vote held by the subscribers to the rooms. Through holding elections, subscribers intimated that the power the Master of Ceremonies possessed stemmed from the people. Elections occurred on the death or resignation of a Master of Ceremonies. It was only on account of the rare electoral contest for the role of Master of Ceremonies that the rules surrounding these elections were debated and revealed. Using newspaper accounts, speeches, assembly room rules, literature, and caricatures, this paper will explore the heated contest between Major William Brereton and Mr Plomer in 1769, which was formative for consolidating the rules for electing Bath’s ‘Kings’. In the institution of the assembly room, politeness and impoliteness battled for supremacy. 

Hillary Burlock is a Visiting Researcher at Newcastle University, having worked on the Eighteenth-Century Political Participation and Electoral Culture (ECPPEC) project. She was awarded her PhD in History at Queen Mary University of London in 2022 where her thesis explored intersections between Georgian political culture and social dance from 1760 to 1832. During her PhD, she held fellowships at the Huntington Library and Royal Archives, and the Lewis Walpole Library. Hillary Burlock has recently published in the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies and London Journal and is currently co-editing a collection of essays with Robin Eagles and Tatjana Le Boff on the cultural influence of Bath’s Assembly Rooms with Routledge, and is also working on another edited collection on dance and sociability with Bloomsbury.