For Burke, this is not a self-interested figure who defends the queen (and, by extension, the state) because he expects some personal reward or because he is a salaried member of the court or the military. The example he elaborates here is one of the noble courtier who, setting his own safety at naught, would stake all in the courageous defense of his queen. Perhaps the most famous line in the Reflections is Burke's claim that the French Revolution is evidence of an irreversible sea-change in modern cultural history: 'The age of chivalry is gone.' What exactly is this 'age of chivalry'? Well, for Burke the phrase stands as a sort of short-hand for a social order founded on mutual respect and obedience to one's duty as defined by gender and social rank. In a way, though, it is possible to see much of the political analysis as a reaction to the claims of Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Among these are Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Thomas Paine, and later Wordsworth, Shelley, and a whole host of romantic-era writers and thinkers. Within the din of self-interested political rhetoric, however, several voices stand out as examples of thoughtful cultural and political analysis. Much of the controversy fell along predictably self-interested party lines-those who supported the traditional hierarchies of the English aristocracy claimed their traditional 'right' to power and authority those from the disenfranchised 'lower orders' pointed to the structural inequities in the traditional hierarchy that undermined their 'right' to better their own lot (let alone influence the government of their own country).

The months and years following the French Revolution in 1789 saw an intense political debate in England. Never, never more shall we behold the generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.