In the opening pages of Radcliffe's Gaston de Blondeville Willoughton's nostalgic ‘vision’ of the past glories of Kenilworth Castle contrasts with Simpson's harder-headed scepticism. While Willoughton declares that ‘Antiquity is one of the favourite regions of poetry’, Simpson replies: ‘Who ever thought of looking for a muse in an old castle?’ Having already seen the castle ‘by sun-light, and almost by no light at all’, Simpson has no desire to see it ‘by moonlight’ as well. Willoughton's aesthetic sense and Simpson's practicality together contain a faint echo of the discussion between ‘Arbuthnot’ and ‘Addison’ in Richard Hurd's Moral and Political Dialogues (1759). In the third dialogue, the Tory, ‘Arbuthnot’ experiences pleasurable ‘melancholy’ on exploring the remains of Kenilworth, but ‘Addison’ contradicts him roundly. He feels ‘sincere’ pleasure in ‘triumph[ing]’ over the ‘shattered ruins’. Kenilworth ‘awakens an indignation against the prosperous tyranny of those wretched times, and creates a generous pleasure in reflecting on the happiness we enjoy under a juster and more equal government’. Confronted with ‘so uncommon’ a vehemence, Arbuthnot argues crossly that Addison's position is ‘not so much of the moral, as political kind’.

Hurd's dialogue intervenes in a battle over the meaning of history. In his Remarks on the History of England Bolingbroke (who in his youth had supported the Jacobite cause) did not praise Stuart rule. Instead, he exploited the narrative of ancient liberties, arguing that such liberties were at their height under Queen Elizabeth. This allowed him to distance himself from his Jacobite past, to appeal to Protestant nationalism and to attack Sir Robert Walpole. Admiration for the past had strategic use. Hurd's account acknowledges this flexibility. The nostalgia sometimes associated with Jacobitism is collapsed together with both antiquarianism and the narrative of ancient liberties. Hurd's ‘Addison’ objects to this nostalgic (perhaps Jacobite) attitude. He implies that the liberties of the past are non-existent when weighed with those of the present. Moreover, by setting the dialogue a year after the failed Jacobite uprising of 1715, Hurd implies that the victory of the Whiggish narrative of history as progress was swift.

Nonetheless, when Hurd wrote his dialogues, the battle between the narrative of ancient liberties and the discourse of history as progress was still ongoing.