Historians have, by and large, remained uninterested in the idea of loyalism after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. In contrast to the now rich literature on loyalism during the 1790s, which has been fruitful of a number of debates, the period after 1815 is still seen in more binary terms, with a heroic mass radicalism pitted against the government-directed forces of reaction. There are, of course, some obvious reasons as to why this should be the case. First, just as the shift from war to peace profoundly altered the terrain on which radicals operated, so too it shifted the available languages and strategies of would-be loyalists. Crudely, if the end of the war opened up to radicals (or at least expanded) the possibility of a plausible, patriotic and constitutionalist mass appeal, it closed opportunities for the expression of loyalist politics. Powerful rhetorical resources – in particular, the claims that all reformers were tainted by ‘French’ ideology and that an existential military conflict was not the time to be discussing reform questions – were simply not available or would ring hollow after 1815. This has contributed to a second reason for the lack of historical interest: the loyalism that did emerge after 1815 was not marked by the same dynamic mix of activism and ideas that had characterized organized anti-radicalism during the 1790s.