The latest blog for the Georgian Lords considers the topical issue of quarantine. In the 1720s the government was forced to update its quarantine legislation, but as Dr Charles Littleton of our Lords 1715-1790 project shows, it received spirited opposition from members of the House of Lords...
In the face of pressure from opposition parties and its own back-benchers, the Johnson government substantially amended the recently-passed Coronavirus Act (2020) enabling Parliament to scrutinize and renew the bill every six months. This was not the first time Parliament has tried to modify the power of the executive in the face of a national emergency. In earlier centuries the great fear was an even more indiscriminate killer, bubonic plague. London in particular had suffered from outbreaks of ‘the plague’ throughout the 17th century, the most famous being the Great Plague of 1665. The question of quarantine, of enforcing an involuntary 40-day…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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