A Theatrical Prelude to Empire

The scene opens on a wild, mythic landscape—a hermit’s cave shrouded by ancient woods, a humble shepherd’s cottage, and grazing flocks in the distance. Onto this stage steps a weary, armor-clad Alfred the Great, lamenting the Danish invasions ravaging Anglo-Saxon England. This 1740 masque, Alfred, was no ordinary theatrical performance. Commissioned by Frederick, Prince of Wales, with music by Thomas Arne and libretto by Scottish poets James Thomson and David Mallet, it was a calculated political spectacle disguised as private entertainment.

Staged at Cliveden House on August 1—the anniversary of Frederick’s grandfather George I’s accession—the production weaponized history to position the prince as a “Patriot King” destined to restore Britain’s ancient liberties. The audience, filled with Frederick’s anti-Walpole faction (including disaffected Whigs like William Pitt and Viscount Cobham), witnessed a propaganda piece disguised as art. At its climax, the masque’s fictional bard unveiled a rousing anthem that would become Britain’s unofficial naval hymn: Rule, Britannia!

The Making of a Patriot Mythology

The 18th-century cult of Alfred the Great was no accident. Viscount Bolingbroke’s 1738 treatise The Patriot King had already cast Frederick as a future ruler who would transcend partisan politics, modeled on the 9th-century Saxon king. Alfred—erroneously credited with inventing trial by jury—was refashioned as a proto-imperialist. Frederick underscored this by installing a Rysbrack statue of Alfred in his Pall Mall garden, visually claiming the mantle of a Hanoverian Alfred.

The masque’s narrative arc reinforced this mythos: a despairing Alfred, hiding from Vikings, is visited by three royal specters (the Black Prince, Elizabeth I, and William III) who reveal Britain’s destiny to rule the waves. The climax, with Arne’s thunderous orchestration, tied naval supremacy to national identity:

“Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves,
Britons never will be slaves.”

Stowe: A Landscape of Liberty

The political subtext extended beyond theater. Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham—a Marlborough veteran and Frederick ally—transformed his Stowe estate into a physical manifesto of British liberty. His gardens, designed by William Kent, featured temples honoring “British Worthies” like Alfred, Elizabeth I, Drake, and Milton. The juxtaposition of a Temple of Ancient Virtue with a Gothic Temple of Liberty (inscribed “Thank God I am not a Roman”) rejected Roman decadence while celebrating Britain’s unique blend of freedom and maritime power.

Stowe became a pilgrimage site for Patriot Whigs, its guidebooks framing empire as a moral project. Yet this vision was steeped in contradictions: the same men who lionized Hampden’s stand against tyranny profited from Caribbean slavery. The 1736 execution of 77 Antiguan rebels—burned alive during George II’s coronation celebrations—went unmentioned beside paeans to liberty.

The Ironies of Imperial Freedom

The Patriots’ rhetoric masked hard realities. Bolingbroke’s “empire of the sea” ideal gave way to territorial conquests in India and slave-based plantation economies. By century’s end, Britain found itself governing millions in Bengal while losing its American colonies to revolutionaries quoting Patriot Whig slogans.

Tobacco exemplified this paradox. James I had condemned smoking as a “vile barbarous” Native American habit, yet Virginia’s survival depended on the crop. The consumer revolution—tea, sugar, tobacco—fueled empire while obscuring its coercive foundations. As the masque’s chorus faded, the gap between myth and reality widened: the “free-born Briton” depended on enslaved labor; maritime trade enabled territorial dominion; Alfred’s heirs became Rome.

Legacy: From Masque to Modernity

Alfred’s afterlife outlived its patrons. Frederick died in 1751, but Rule, Britannia! became an imperial anthem. Stowe’s monuments later honored Wolfe and Cook, reframing conquest as benevolent expansion. The Patriots’ vision—flawed, contradictory, but enduring—shaped British identity long after their Hanoverian “Patriot King” faded into history.

Today, as Britain reckons with its imperial past, the 1740 masque remains a window into how empire was imagined before it was built—a story of liberty sung, ironically, to the rhythm of chains.