Dissenting Histories: Religious Division and the Politics of Memory in Eighteenth-Century England 9780748629480

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Dissenting Histories Religious Division and the Politics of Memory in Eighteenth-Century England

John Seed

Edinburgh University Press

# John Seed, 2008 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh www.euppublishing.com Typeset in Linotype Sabon by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore, and printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 2151 4 (hardback) The right of John Seed to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Contents

List of Abbreviations

iv

Acknowledgements

v

Introduction: Remembering the Present

1

1 The Debt of Memory: Edmund Calamy and the Dissenters in Restoration England

13

2 Protestant Liberty: Daniel Neal and The History of the Puritans

41

3 Enthusiasts, Puritans and Politics: David Hume’s History of England

73

4 Enlightenment, Republicanism and Dissent: William Harris’s Histories

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5 Dissenting Histories in the 1770s and 1780s

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6 ‘The Fiction of Ancestry’: Burke, History and the Dissenters

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Conclusion

185

Select Bibliography

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Index

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Abbreviations

All works referred to in the endnotes and bibliography were published in London, unless otherwise specified. AR: Annual Register BL: The British Library, London Burke, Correspondence: Correspondence of Edmund Burke, ed. T. W. Copeland and others, 10 volumes, Cambridge, 1958–78 Burke, Speeches: The Speeches of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, in the House of Commons and in Westminster-Hall, 4 volumes, 1816 Calamy, Historical Account: Edmund Calamy, An Historical Account of My Own Life with Some Reflections on the Times I have Lived in, ed. J. T. Rutt, 2 volumes (1829) DWL: Dr Williams’s Library, Gordon Square, London GM: The Gentleman’s Magazine Hume, History of England: David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688. A New Edition with the Author’s Last Corrections and Improvements, 6 volumes (1848) Hume, Essays: David Hume, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. E. F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985) Lindsey, Letters: The letters of Theophilus Lindsey (1723–1808) I. 1747–1788 (Woodbridge: Church of England Record Society, Vol. 15, Boydell Press, 2007) MR: Monthly Review ODNB: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Price, Correspondence: The Correspondence of Richard Price, ed. D. O. Thomas and W. B. Peach, 3 volumes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press and Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1983–94) TUHS: Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society

Acknowledgements

Parts of chapters 1 and 2 appeared in earlier form as ‘History and narrative identity: religious dissent and the politics of memory in eighteenth-century England’, in the Journal of British Studies, Vol. 44, No. 1, (January 2005). An earlier version of chapter 3 was published as, ‘The spectre of Puritanism: forgetting the seventeenth century in David Hume’s ‘‘History of England’’ ’ in Social History, Vol. 30, No. 4 (November 2005). Other parts of the book have been aired in several seminar papers at the University of London’s Institute for Historical Research and at Roehampton University in London. My colleagues in the Centre for Research in Romanticism at Roehampton – Simon Edwards, Ian Haywood, Zach Leader, Susan Mathews and Martin Priestman – have provided a haven of intellectual seriousness for many years. I should also mention the Historiography Reading Group, convened by Raphael Samuel and Patrick Joyce, which gathered at the Institute of Historical Research in London for many Saturdays in the first half of the 1990s. I remember long and energetic discussions involving, as well as Pat and Raph, James Vernon, Carolyn Steedman, Patrick Curry, Barbara Taylor, John Tosh, Rohan McWilliam and others. I thank library staff in London who have lugged so many heavy and dusty volumes and papers to my table at the British Library, Lambeth Palace Library, the London Library, Dr Williams’s Library, the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research and the National Archive at Kew. I should thank, too, the School of Arts at Roehampton University for two semesters of study leave in recent years. Roda Morison and Esme´ Watson were patient and supportive editors at the University of Edinburgh Press. Peter Weston read drafts of every chapter. And I want to acknowledge those people, friends and colleagues, who along the way responded to seminar papers, read chapters or, in some other meaningful way, supported this book’s production: Antonio Cartolano, Grayson Ditchfield, the late Bill Griffiths, Simon Gunn, Tim Hitchcock, Jenny Iles, Keith Nield, Margaret Spufford and John Tosh. Some of them thought I should be working on something else, though I don’t think they’d

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have agreed on what that something else was, or is. The same could be said of my wife Kath, my son Greg and my ‘non-academic’ friends. I thank them all. I had to write it, but they’ll be relieved that they don’t have to read it. John Seed London, 30 January 2008

Introduction: Remembering the Present We are like the relict garment of a Saint, the same and not the same: for the careful Monks patch it and patch it: till there’s not a thread of the original garment left, and still they show it for St. Anthony’s shirt.1

This is a study of some eighteenth-century historical works. They are mostly by Dissenters, little known and less read: Edmund Calamy’s Abridgment of Mr Baxter’s History of his Life and Times, Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans, William Harris’s Historical and Critical Account of the Life of Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Palmer’s The Nonconformist’s Memorial and Joseph Cornish’s Brief and Impartial History of the Puritans, among others. Chapters are also devoted to David Hume’s History of England and Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. The object of study is not, however, a series of texts, canonical or otherwise, abstracted out of their specific historical contexts. Instead, this book investigates how works of history were articulated with a wider political culture and with mutually antagonistic political identities and organisations. In particular, I am interested in the ways in which the long shadow of ‘the Great Rebellion’ of the 1640s stretched across one of the central divisions of eighteenth-century English society: the division between Church and Dissent. So Dissenting Histories is concerned not just with history as a representation of the past but also with history as part of the bitterly divided collective memory of the present. And it is concerned, especially, with the relations between these – between the history that men and women experienced, imagined, remembered and the history that historians wrote. I want to suggest that the historical writings explored in each chapter stand at the unstable boundaries of history and memory.2 And here I want to introduce a concept – ‘narrative identity’ – which helps make sense of why it was precisely history that was so pivotal to eighteenthcentury Dissent. What, Paul Ricoeur asks in his great trilogy, Time and Narrative, is the basis for the permanence of the proper name that designates an individual or a group? The response to this question is, he argues, condemned to an antinomy with no solution. Either the subject

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has to possess some fundamental sameness through time, despite apparent change. Or – and here he cites Hume and Nietzsche – there is no such permanence: there is in reality no identical subject moving through time which the proper name designates.3 Ricoeur posits a different concept of identity: not as the same (idem) but as self-same (soi-meˆme or ipse). The difference between idem and ipse is nothing more than the difference between a substantial or formal identity and a narrative identity. Selfsameness, ‘self-constancy’, can escape the dilemma of the Same and the Other to the extent that its identity rests on a temporal structure that conforms to the model of dynamic identity arising from the poetic composition of a narrative text.4

In other words, to answer the question ‘Who?’ is to tell a story. In this way the permanence of the proper name as narrative identity includes change within continuity. And it is applicable not only to individuals but also to groups which similarly produce and reproduce their identities through the elaboration of narratives. Ricoeur points to biblical Israel as such a community: it was in telling these narratives taken to be testimony about the founding events of its history that biblical Israel became the historical community that bears this name. The relation is circular – the historical community called the Jewish people has drawn its identity from the reception of those texts that it had produced.5

This illuminates, I think, some of the ways in which religious Dissent in eighteenth-century England represented itself to itself (and to others) as a historical community. Hanoverian Dissent was not a coherent and autonomous entity, moving through time like an object through space, but a shifting constellation of groups and congregations – Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, Quakers – with histories as diverse as their theological tenets. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there were around 1,200 Dissenting congregations in England and perhaps 350,000 individual Dissenters.6 By the end of the century there may have been as many as 2,000 Dissenting congregations, many of them formed in the previous twenty or thirty years.7 Denominations were beginning to crystallise by 1800 and national organisations of various kinds were developing. Prior to that there was undoubtedly a distinction between the liberal Calvinism turning into rational Dissent which predominated among the old and often declining Presbyterian foundations and a more rigorously Calvinist and, after the 1750s, evangelical disposition among the growing Independents. This distinction ran through the divided

Introduction

3

Baptists. But denominational titles were often very cursorily endorsed by individual congregations during the eighteenth century. One Dissenting minister recalled that, when he came to Leeds in the 1770s, ‘there were four or five and twenty congregations within no very extended miles around this town, loosely united together under the name of Presbyterianism, with ministers attached to them of almost every diversity of common opinion, except High Calvinism’. Their only bond, he said was ‘a liberal attachment to the right and duty of private judgement’.8 Many congregations were internally as diverse, enforcing no doctrinal orthodoxy and refusing any denominational title. Ricoeur stressed that narrative identity is never a stable and seamless identity. Threatened by historical and generational change and by social distinctions, eighteenth-century Dissent was always insecure, condemned to remake boundaries and reaffirm continuities across time. It is this active process of building and rebuilding bridges to a receding past, constructing and reconstructing the narrative identity of what it meant to be a religious Dissenter, which is the focus of this book. It was a process which did not occur in a vacuum. Eighteenth-century Dissenters confronted a different story about themselves and about their historical origins – and here we can begin to see the shadowy outlines of a common identity among the proliferating and fissiparous forces of protestant heterodoxy. ‘Remember!’ was Charles I’s last word on the scaffold, moments before he was beheaded. And churchmen did remember. Across eighteenth-century England, Dissenters continued to carry the stigma of regicide ancestors. Memories of the Civil War, of Cromwell, of ‘the royal martyr’ to Presbyterian fanaticism, were summoned up in parliamentary speeches, in the sermons of Anglican clerics, in a thousand pamphlets and in the yells of church and king rioters. And that call to ‘Remember!’ was enshrined in English law. Measures passed in the aftermath of the ‘Great Rebellion’ remained on the statute book until well into the nineteenth century, giving the sanction of the state to the view that these people were, in some sense, the living representatives of seventeenth-century rebels and regicides. Since it was central to the shaping of eighteenth-century Dissent, it is worth sketching here the main outlines of anti-Dissenting legislation. First, in December 1660, an Act for Confirming and Restoring of Ministers set about restoring loyalist clergymen who had lost their church livings under the Commonwealth. In addition, any clergyman who had petitioned for the trial of Charles I, had opposed the restoration of Charles II or who had publicly pronounced against infant baptism was to be summarily ejected. An Act for the Uniformity of Public Prayers, &c., which received royal assent in July

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1662, required all clergy of the Church of England, all fellows of colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, all schoolmasters and private tutors, to sign a declaration renouncing resistance to the crown or its agents, refusing any obligations incurred under the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 and promising conformity to a revised and profoundly anti-puritan liturgy. Any minister failing to comply with these terms by St Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August 1662, was to be deprived of his living. If he was subsequently to preach, he would be liable to prosecution and imprisonment for three months.The effect of these two Acts was the resignation or expulsion of around 1,800 clergymen from their livings and of some 150 college fellows and schoolmasters from their positions. There were further hostile measures. The Corporation Act of 1661 laid down that nobody could be elected to a Corporation or serve in any office unless they took Communion according to the rites of the Church of England. The Conventicle Act of May 1664 prohibited any meeting for Dissenting worship of more than four persons. The Five Mile Act, a year later, prohibited any Dissenting minister from teaching or from coming within five miles of a city or corporate town or borough, unless he had sworn a specified oath of allegiance. The Test Act of 1672 required anyone taking up any kind of civil or military office to receive within three months the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. These sanctions affected families in every part of England during the reigns of Charles II and James II. Thousands of Dissenters suffered spells of imprisonment. Several contemporaries suggested that as many as 5,000 Dissenters died in prison in the Restoration period; Defoe proposed 8,000. A recent estimate has given 1,000 as a more accurate total of Dissenting deaths in custody.9 Many thousands more suffered serious fines, the confiscation of goods and legal harassment – and many of these were financially ruined as a result. As the great Dissenting minister John Howe, a former chaplain to Cromwell, put it in 1689, by these laws against Dissenters ‘our Magna Charta was torn in Pieces’: Penalties inflicted; Goods rifled; Estates seiz’d and imbezzled; Houses broken up; Families disturb’d, often at most unseasonable Hours of the Night, without any Cause, or Shadow of a Cause, if only a malicious Villain would pretend to suspect a Meeting there. No Law in any other Case like this; as if to worship God without those Additions, which were confessed unnecessary, were a greater crime than Theft, Felony, Murder, or Treason!10

In practice, enforcement of anti-Dissenting laws in Restoration England was inconsistent and on occasion effectively resisted. There were periods of intense repression and there were considerable local variations.

Introduction

5

Some bishops were active in pursuing Dissenters, others were indifferent, some even gave practical support to persecuted Dissenters. In some places magistrates refused to accept the evidence of informers and juries refused to convict.11 Despite official hostility during these years, Dissenters sometimes remained active and respected members of their local community.12 Nevertheless, as a legally determined enemy of the state, every Dissenter knew considerable insecurity. Vulnerable to intimidation and discrimination in every aspect of daily life, the emotional trauma could mark a Dissenter for life. In the England of George I there were many Dissenters who could still remember the terrors of their childhood forty or fifty years before – a terror revived during the Sacheverell riots of 1710, again in 1715 during the Jacobite uprisings, and sporadically in the casual violence to which Dissenters were always exposed. Edmund Calamy, born in London in 1671, recalled two occasions during his childhood when private meetings for worship were violently disrupted by magistrates with constables and soldiers – ‘they were fierce and noisy, and made great havoc’.13 Another Dissenting minister, James Peirce, living in the 1680s in the Stepney household of the minister Matthew Mead, recalled houses being broken into at night by violent men: I forbear to mention the rudeness used towards women upon such occasions, and how they purposely frighted children, tho’ I shall not easily forget, how I was myself, being very young and in a Minister’s house when it was broke open, put in great fear of my life by them, which together with what then I saw, begat in me such an aversion to their cruel and persecuting practices, as I hope shall never wear off.14

The Revolution of 1688 delivered Dissenters from the worst consequences of this regime. The so-called ‘Act of Toleration’ of 1689 did not repeal previous legislation, and Dissenters continued to suffer from a range of disabilities. Religious worship could take place only in a building which was registered with a local bishop or magistrate. At the same time they were liable to church rates and tithes for the maintenance of the parish church. Ministers were required to subscribe to all but five of the thirty-nine Articles and were required to swear an oath of allegiance. The Test and Corporation Acts remained in force. Nevertheless, the Act of Toleration did mark a recognition, grudging on the part of many churchmen, that a single, uniform, national church could not be imposed on the whole population. Dissenters had at least achieved some kind of official recognition of their right to practise their religious faith. After 1702, the resurgence of the High Church Tories under Queen Anne threatened a return to the dark days preceding the Act of

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Toleration. The Occasional Conformity Act (1711) and the Schism Act (1714) struck at core freedoms of Dissenters. The queen’s fortuitous death in 1714 and the Hanoverian succession prevented the realisation of their worst fears, and punitive legislation against Dissenters passed in her reign was repealed. Nevertheless the main planks of anti-Dissenting legislation remained on the statute books. Despite three extended campaigns – in 1717–18, throughout the 1730s and between 1787 and 1790 – the Test and Corporations Acts, passed into law under Charles II, were finally repealed only in 1828. Regular Acts of Indemnity softened their impact and, in the second half of the century, there were not just the occasional Dissenting town councillor or alderman but even Corporations – at Portsmouth, Bristol, Nottingham and Bridport – dominated by Dissenters for a period. In addition, many of the new local bodies and commissions set up to manage local affairs were not subject to the Test and Corporation Acts. Nevertheless, as long as antiDissenting laws remained on the statute book they could be utilised by hostile governments or organisations. And they legitimised the petty insults and exclusions Dissenters occasionally experienced in everyday life. Dissenters, as one of them put it, ‘feel themselves injured by those acts’: ‘Those statutes hold us up, as persons not worthy of confidence, as not deserving any share in the revenues or honours of the state, which we contribute to support.’15 As early as 1667 John Locke had warned that, though numerous, the Dissenters were ‘yet crumbled into different parties, and are at as much distance from one another as from you’. But, he went on, ‘if you persecute them, you make them all of one party and interest against you, tempt them to shake off your yoke, and venture for a new government’.16 The English revolution of the 1640s had splintered the Puritans into Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists and Quakers, as well as numerous smaller sects. It was the ecclesiastical legislation of the 1660s and ’70s which began to create, out of this confusing collection of groups, the common identity of ‘Nonconformist’ or ‘Dissenter’. Eighteenth-century Dissenters continued to disagree on many issues, but they shared a common experience of an injustice which the Glorious Revolution and Act of Toleration had not remedied. And, as Locke had warned, this generated a degree of political disaffection for an established order which continued to maintain that historical injustice. As Joseph Priestley told the assembled Dissenters of Birmingham in 1789: This is a business in which all Dissenters are alike concerned. For all of us, whether classed with Presbyterians, Independants, or Baptists, or whether

Introduction

7

coming under no particular denomination at all; whether we be Calvinists or Arminians; Trinitarians, Arians, or Unitarians, we are equally men, and Englishmen, and therefore equally entitled to all the natural and just rights of men and Englishmen . . .17

‘It is you, who by considering us as Aliens, make us so’, Anna Barbauld told those who had opposed attempts to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts in 1787, 1789 and 1790: You have refused us; and by so doing, you keep us under the eye of the public, in the interesting point of view of men who suffer under a deprivation of their rights. You have set a mark of separation upon us, and it is not in our power to take it off . . .18

Religious Dissent was both a religious and a political formation and it is the argument of this book that it can be seen from new and useful perspectives if we address it as an effect of dominant discourses about the recent past, crystallised especially in the form of legislation, and, at the same time, as an active self-making and remaking, through history and memory. In the most important study of the long-term impact of the English civil wars, Blair Worden has suggested: ‘For Dissenters, the memory of the civil wars was a cross to be borne . . . If there is a single force behind Dissenting treatments of the civil wars before Victoria, it is the desire to be free of the memory of them’. And he goes on to suggest that they ‘concentrated on the spiritual, not the political achievements of their Puritan ancestors’, though he does detect some ‘hints of an underground Cromwellianism’ in Dissenting circles.19 There was certainly caution and defensiveness among eighteenth-century Dissenters about the puritan past and, in some ways, a depoliticisation of their Puritan forebears. It is also true to say that, for Dissenters, events after the death of Cromwell and the collapse of the Commonwealth regime often overshadowed the civil wars. In the pages that follow, however, I want to take up where Worden leaves off, investigating some of the ways in which eighteenthcentury Dissenters did actively engage with memories and histories of the civil war, the execution of Charles I, the rule of Cromwell, the Restoration and all that followed. To be a Dissenter was to belong to an embattled minority, representatives of the incompleteness of the sixteenth-century English reformation and of the revolution of 1688. As long as the Test and Corporations Acts remained on the statute book, Dissenters were subjected to the posthumous authority of a papist Stuart dynasty. And to contest that

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posthumous authority was to maintain lines of communication with the dead generations. Belonging to a meeting house or chapel which traced its history back to the aftermath of the great ejection, and which honoured its ancestors and founders, reinforced this Dissenting identity rooted in narratives of persecution, of resistance to popery and arbitrary power, and of unflinching commitment to religious and civil liberty. The strong family roots of Dissent gave history a powerful emotional charge. ‘The first foundations of all history’, Voltaire commented, ‘are the tales fathers tell to their children and which are then handed down from one generation to another.’20 For the Dissenter, genealogy and family lore intersected with the political history of the nation. Fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers had suffered for the cause of truth. In numberless forms the memory of the Restoration betrayal, of ‘the Great Ejection’ and ‘Black Bartholomew Day’, of the persecutions of the 1670s and 1680s, were transmitted down the generations in a collective and familial resentment, reconnecting the present to the heroic sufferings of a previous generation. History, then, was not merely one preoccupation of eighteenth-century Dissenters, it was a central and shaping force, or, perhaps more accurately, a set of sometimes contending forces. It was through the narratives it told about itself that a fluid and unstable historical community called ‘the Dissenters’ was produced and reproduced during the eighteenth century. But these narratives were also locked in dispute with other narratives that were told about ‘the Dissenters’. In advancing this argument I will begin, unavoidably, with the work of the two greatest Dissenting historians of the eighteenth century. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on Edmund Calamy’s various publications on Restoration Dissenters, published between 1702 and 1727, and on Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans, first published in four large volumes in the 1730s. These are not only significant and largely neglected works of historical interpretation, introducing perspectives on the national past not to be found in the great canonical histories of the period. They were also articulated with the Dissenting community’s sense of its own historical legitimacy. Their importance is signalled by their republication in new editions throughout the century. Chapter 3 turns away from Dissenting histories to David Hume’s History of England (1754–63) and its hostile account of the role of the Puritans in England’s seventeenth-century crisis. Histories and memories of the seventeenth century, and in particular of the wickedness of Puritan fanatics, was reproduced by the most powerful cultural institution of Hanoverian England – the Church of England. The chapter goes

Introduction

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on to consider ways in which the Church, with the imprimatur of the State, diffused a particular version of the seventeenth century to a wider population. There are convergences between this ‘official’ perspective and that of Hume’s History of England. Both contribute to a political narrative of the nation in which the Puritan tradition is dismissed as pathological or anathematised as subversive. Chapter 4 examines the work of a contemporary Dissenting historian, William Harris, which was sharply critical of Hume’s History. Almost entirely forgotten since the early nineteenth century, his histories indicate the persistence of an old Whig and old Commonwealthman disposition among at least some sections of Dissent in the middle years of the century – one that pointed forward to Wilkite radicalism. The final chapters bring us towards the climacteric of the 1790s. Chapter 5 looks at some of the ways in which history suffused the political concerns of Dissenters during the 1770s and 1780s. It examines several Dissenting historical works and demonstrates their affinities to Dissenting campaigns and to bodies such as the Revolution Society. It also discusses Richard Price’s notorious sermon to this latter body in 1789. Reflections on the Revolution in France is the primary focus of Chapter 6. It explores how Burke exploited the immovable weight of conservative memories and histories of the seventeenth century in English political culture. As Dissenters once more confronted church and king rioters and the repressive powers of the State, it was the unfinished histories of the seventeenth century – the ghosts of Archbishop Laud, Charles I, Cromwell and James II – which continued to shape political debate and the identities of all kinds of groups and factions. ‘The tradition of the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living,’ Marx wrote half a century later in a political situation similarly haunted by ghosts of the past.21

NOTES 1 John Keats: the Major Works, ed. Elizabeth Cook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 512. 2 There is a vast literature on memory. There are three books I’d particularly like to mention: Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul. Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Robert Pogue Harrison, The Dominion of the Dead (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003).

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3 This is also the import of Foucault’s Nietzschean rhapsody, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’ in The Foucault Reader, ed. P. Rabinow (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986). 4 P. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, trans. K. Blamey and D. Pellauer, 3 vols (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988), 3, p. 246. 5 Ibid., 248. See also his essay ‘Narrative Identity’, Philosophy Today (spring 1991), 73–81. I also found particularly helpful on this question of narrative and social identity Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: a study in moral theory (Duckworth, 1984), especially chapter 15. 6 John Evans List of Dissenting Congregations and Ministers, 1715–1729, DWL Mss 34.4. For a succinct summary see Michael Watts, The Dissenters: Vol. 1. From The Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 268–70n. 7 D. Bogue and J. Bennett, A History of Dissenters, 1688–1808, 4 vols (1808– 12), 2, pp. 98–9; 3, p. 330; 4, pp. 327–8. 8 Joseph Bowden to Thomas Belsham, 6 xii 1811, DWL Mss 24.107 (16a & b). 9 John Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture. Religious Intolerance and Arguments for Religious Toleration in Early Modern and ‘Early Enlightened’ Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 95n. 10 [John Howe] The Case of the Protestant Dissenters, Represented and Argued (1689), p. 2. 11 On the complexity of political relations in Restoration towns and the unpredictable fate of Dissenters see, for instance, Paul Halliday, Dismembering the Body Politic. Partisan Politics in England’s Towns, 1650–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 12 See, for instance, Donald Spaeth, The Church in an Age of Danger. Parsons and Parishioners, 1660–1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 162–3, 169, 171. 13 Calamy, Historical Account, 1, p. 89. 14 James Peirce, A Vindication of the Dissenters: in Answer to Dr. William Nichol’s Defence of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England . . ., 2nd ed. (1718), p. 252. 15 A Letter to the Bishops on the Application of the Protestant Dissenters, to Parliament . . . (1789), pp. 22–3. 16 John Locke, ‘An Essay on Toleration’ in John Locke: Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 156–7. 17 Joseph Priestley, The Conduct to be Observed by Dissenters in order to procure the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, recommended in a Sermon . . . (Birmingham, 1789), p. 14. 18 [Anna Barbauld] An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, 3rd ed. (1790), pp. 17–19.

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19 Worden, B., Roundhead Reputations. The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001), p. 217. 20 ‘History’, from the Philosophical Dictionary in Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV and other selected writings, ed. J. H. Brumfitt (New York: New English Library, 1966), pp. 312–13. 21 Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in Karl Marx, Surveys from Exile. Political Writings, 2, ed. D. Fernbach (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), pp. 146–7.

1 The Debt of Memory: Edmund Calamy and the Dissenters in Restoration England

ABRIDGING RICHARD BAXTER, 1702

Edmund Calamy’s An Abridgment of Mr Baxter’s History of his Life and Times, published in 1702, was the first published history by a Dissenter to begin to recover the national Dissenting experience of ‘the great ejection’ of 1662 and its aftermath. A second, much-expanded two-volume edition, in which the entire second volume was devoted to detailing the ejected ministers, was published in 1713.1 And in 1727 Calamy published, in two substantial volumes, A Continuation of the Account of the Ministers, Lecturers, Masters and fellows of Colleges and Schoolmasters, who were Ejected and Silenced after the Restoration in 1660. Together these books constituted a major historical resource for Dissenters. They provided detailed records of the experiences of hundreds of ejected ministers, many of them founders of fugitive congregations which had become by the early eighteenth century substantial communities of Dissenters. These books were also controversial interventions in political debates about the nature of the Restoration regime, the character of the Glorious Revolution and the relations between church and state in England in the past and in the present. Edmund Calamy (1671–1732) was the son and grandson of ejected ministers, and experienced as a child the frightening oppressive world of the 1670s and 1680s. He remembered how he was sent to Newgate prison with small presents of money for imprisoned Dissenting ministers. His own father escaped imprisonment but he had several warrants out against him and, he recalled, ‘was forced to disguise himself, and skulk in private holes and corners, and frequently change his lodgings’.2 He studied at various schools in London and at an academy in Suffolk where his tutor was Samuel Cradock, ejected from his Cambridge Fellowship in 1662. From 1688 to 1691 Calamy studied at the University of Utrecht. In 1692 Calamy began his forty-year career as a Dissenting minister in London, becoming assistant to Matthew Sylvester (1636?–1708), at his

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Blackfriars meeting house. Here he became involved in editing the writings of perhaps the greatest representative of Restoration Dissent, Richard Baxter (1615–91). Sylvester was Baxter’s literary executor and in possession of his unpublished manuscripts. These included pages and pages of memoirs of his long life and his involvement in public affairs. As Calamy later recalled, Sylvester was ‘chary of it in the last degree, and not very forward to let it be seen’, confining himself to transcribing sections of these manuscripts.3 Sylvester’s procrastination was reinforced by the delicate political situation and the deep divisions among Dissenters in the 1690s. Presbyterians had publicly stated at the Restoration that, in principle, they were enemies neither to episcopacy nor to a liturgy. Excluded in 1662 by the Act of Uniformity, many kept alive hopes of an eventual return to the Church. The Independents and Baptists, on the other hand, were opposed to a State church and to episcopacy in any form. They wanted toleration, not comprehension.4 In 1689 Presbyterians and Independents joined to present an address of congratulations to William and Mary in 1689 – the first record of any concerted public action by Dissenters of the different denominations. But if there was a degree of political consensus among different groups of Dissenters, there were disagreements on other issues. In 1691, the year of Baxter’s death, the Dissenting ministers of London had drawn up an agreement to minimise their differences. ‘The wiser part of the Dissenters had long wished to see a closer union established among themselves, in order to better support the Revolution.’ Such a union, Calamy recalled, ‘would have defeated all the hopes of the Jacobites’. And yet, ‘doctrinal differences remained and were warmly agitated, both in the pulpits and in conversation’.5 Coming into Sylvester’s hands as bitter disputes flared up among Dissenters between 1692 and 1695, Baxter’s manuscripts were something of a hot potato, liable to exacerbate these disputes, not least because of personal remarks about people who were still living. These writings also had dangerous political implications. But if Sylvester was reluctant to publish the autobiography, he was equally unhappy about editing it. As Calamy recalled: ‘I found the good man counted it a sort of sacred thing, to have any hand in making alterations of any sort . . . and was cramped by a sort of superstition.’6 Calamy, too, looked up to Baxter as the authoritative leader of the Presbyterians, but he had no such inhibitions about editing and publishing. He exerted pressure on an anxious Sylvester and worked through the text with him, suggesting various cuts and amendments. Anything liable to exacerbate tensions among Dissenters was censored. Thus, some of

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Baxter’s criticisms of the leading Independent John Owen, who had died in 1683, were prudently removed, though others remained. The editors also kept an eye open for politically sensitive material. For instance, some remarks about the Charles’s licentiousness while in exile in the 1650s were prudently cut.7 Finally, in 1696 Baxter’s tangled manuscripts were published as a hefty folio volume of over 800 pages: Reliquiae Baxterianae; or Mr Richard Baxter’s Narrative of the Most Memorable Passages of his Life and Times, Faithfully Publish’d from his own Original Manuscript. Calamy drew up a detailed summary of the contents and added an index. Baxter’s autobiographical writings were an ideal place to begin the work of historical retrieval for Dissenters at the close of the seventeenth century. One of the central figures in the whole history of English Presbyterianism from the 1640s, he had also kept a detailed record of events and discussions in which he had been a privileged witness or a participant. Baxter had always been aware of the eyes of posterity on him and on the cause he represented. He justified his persistence in seeking a peaceful accommodation with Churchmen after the Restoration in these terms: I looked to the end of all these actions, and the chief things that moved me next the pleasing of God and Conscience, is that when we are silenced and persecuted, and the history of these things shall be delivered to posterity, it will be a just blot upon us if we suffer as refusing to sue for peace, and it will be our just vindication when it shall appear, that we humbly petitioned for it and earnestly pursued after peace . . .8

Despite its importance, Reliquiae Baxteriana was, in several ways, an almost unreadable book. It was far too heavy and unwieldy as a physical object for comfortable reading and it was much too expensive for most Dissenters. It was also very difficult to navigate through this complex and disjointed text.9 Calamy clearly wished to make better use of Baxter’s autobiographical writings. Appearing in 1702, An Abridgment of Mr Baxter’s History of his Life and Times was more than an abridgement. Calamy changed it from a first- to a third-person narrative, made extensive cuts and rewrote sections.10 As he explained in the Preface: ‘Personal Reflections, and little Privacys I have dropt, and things which are out of Date I have pass’d over lightly. Sometimes I have kept pretty much to his language, and sometimes I have taken the freedom to use my own.’11 This made it more accessible to a wider readership. Calamy’s care and discretion also minimised controversy within the ranks of his Dissenting

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readers. Baxter’s own narrative had stopped at the end of 1684. Calamy continued it to the time of Baxter’s death and provided additional material on the state of Dissent to the end of William’s reign. The most important addition, signalled in the second half of the book’s title, is the massive Chapter 9: ‘A Particular Account of the Ministers, Lecturers, Fellows of Colleges, &c who were Silenced and Ejected by the Act for Uniformity: With the Characters of many of them’. This chapter, pages 184 to 497 – 313 pages out of the Abridgment’s total of 700 – presented the beginnings of a collective biography of the founding fathers of religious Dissent. Baxter himself had laid the basis of this in his autobiography where he had stressed again the duty of memory: The Death of some, the worthy Labours, and great Sufferings of others, maketh me remember that the just characterizing of some of the Ministers of Christ, that now suffered for not swearing, subscribing, declaring, conforming, and for refusing Re-ordination, is a duty which I owe to the honour of God’s Graces in them.12

Baxter had provided brief sketches of forty or so ejected ministers he had known in the West Midlands, and listed names, with few or no comments, of another 150 or so. Calamy added to this. He explained how he ‘sought out everywhere for Assistance’ and was able to utilise the researches of several contemporaries among the Dissenters, such as William Taylor, Roger Morrice, Henry Sampson, Oliver Heywood, and Ralph Thoresby.13 He used printed memoirs and funeral sermons as valuable sources of information. Where there were gaps or contradictions he consulted people in person and corresponded with others. He numbered several ejected ministers among his family and his teachers and thus had personal information and, of course, he had a range of useful contacts in Dissenting circles in London. In many respects the Abridgment of Mr Baxter’s History of his Life and Times was a collective effort of Dissenters. DISSENTING MARTYRS

The Abridgment was a valuable work of historical retrieval, but it also had a critical purpose. Calamy aimed to rebut charges, for instance from Samuel Parker, James II’s Bishop of Oxford, that the figure of 2,000 ejected ministers was a vast overestimate. This, Calamy says, ‘cannot but blacken their Memory hereafter, if they should not be clear’d by a just representation’. Though he acknowledges that calculations based on

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sketchy sources can never claim absolute accuracy, he lists over 2,400 ejected ministers.14 Calamy also challenged the hostile portraits that Churchmen had drawn of many of the ejected ministers. Wood (1632–95), ‘the Oxford historiographer’, had taken particular delight in ‘bespattering’ the reputations of a number of the ejected ministers. His writings had provoked controversy within the Church itself and had earned sharp criticisms from Tillotson and Burnet. No one had come forward to vindicate the reputations of the ejected ministers, however: What must those who come after us think of our supine Neglect, should such malignant Insinuations as his, which so blacken the whole Body of our Ministers, and the most leading Men among them, (very few only excepted) be suffer’d to pass uncontradicted.15

Calamy provided evidence of the educational qualifications and scholarship of ejected ministers. Over 1,200 of them had received university education at Oxford or Cambridge and there were thirty-six college fellows from the former and sixty-eight from the latter. Publications could be listed for around 150 of them. The Abridgment also provided testimonies of their religious and charitable work. Calamy’s critical purpose inevitably had political ramifications. Descriptions of the harsh treatment of Baxter and other ejected ministers reflected badly on the authorities and undercut the kind of history which would serve High Tory and High Church interests. The Abridgment included an account of Baxter’s notorious trial before Judge Jeffreys – an emblematic moment in the confrontation of Dissent and the regime of James II. On one side there was the foul-mouthed and drunken Judge Jeffreys, abusing the defence lawyers and directing the jury.16 Facing him was the aged Richard Baxter, dragged from his sickbed for publishing a ‘scandalous and seditious book’ called A Paraphrase on the New Testament and behaving with quiet dignity. The jury found him guilty without any need for discussion. ‘Nothing more honourable than when the Rev. Baxter stood at bay, berogued, abused, despised’, Archbishop Tillotson later enthused; ‘ never more great than then’.17 For generations of Dissenters and Whigs this trial starkly dramatised the brutal lawlessness of James II’s administration, which in 1688 met its nemesis.18 The Abridgment’s Chapter 9 drew a vivid picture of the illegalities, the violence and the injustices of the Restoration regime. Some ejected ministers lived on quietly during these years. Others were subjected to official harassment, troublesome court appearances, fines and confiscation of property. Perhaps two hundred of them experienced

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imprisonment, some on several occasions, and at least seven died in prison. They also endured violent threats and intimidation, official and unofficial. They were abused in the street. Their private meetings and meeting houses were broken into during religious worship, and ministers and congregations were threatened and abused. Ministers – such as Calamy’s own father – were forced into hiding, living as fugitives separated from their families for weeks and months. Calamy provided names not just of Dissenting victims but also of authorities who persecuted them. Chapter 9 began the work of preserving the evidence of the brutal character of the Stuart regime and its local servants, some of them, of course, still living. The ejected ministers, by contrast, become heroic figures and, in some cases, martyrs. His character sketches were, Calamy says, ‘but a just Debt to the Memory of so many deserving Persons, who suffer’d so bravely to maintain their Integrity, and rather expos’d themselves and their Families to no small Hardship, than they would strain their Consciences’.19 Far from being dangerous incendiaries plotting the subversion of Crown and Church, this first generation of Dissenting ministers, a few of them still living in 1702, were portrayed as mild, pious and scholarly men, punished for nothing more than being principled Protestants. The story of John Thompson, a student at Christ Church, Oxford, at the time of the Restoration, was emblematic of the cruelty of secular and Church authorities. Finding that he could not in conscience comply with the Act of Uniformity, Thompson left Oxford and all his hopes of a career in the church. As minister to a Dissenting congregation in Bristol, according to Calamy, ‘he laid out himself in the Discharge of his Ministerial Work, Preaching statedly thrice a Week; and was Harmless and Unblameable in his Conversation; none being able to lay anything to his Charge but his Nonconformity’.20 Nevertheless in 1675 Thompson was arrested and thrown into gaol where he was, Calamy says, ‘annoyed by a nasty Jakes, besides other Inconveniences’. After several weeks he became ill with a fever. Despite appeals to the authorities, including the Bishop, permission to move him to a healthier part of the gaol was refused. Within a matter of weeks he was dead. According to Calamy: ‘He declared, That he from his heart forgave his Enemies; and that he should rejoyce to meet those in Heaven, who had treated him as if he were not fit to live on Earth.’21 Another example of Dissenting martyrdom is provided by Joseph Allein, an Oxford graduate, ejected from his living at Taunton in 1662. He continued to preach and to catechise in and around the town until, in May 1663, he was brought before the magistrates – ‘by whom, after some rude Affronts, he was committed to Ilchester Gaol’. Found

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guilty of seditious assembly he was fined 100 marks and confined until payment. Released after a year, in poor health, he was rearrested a year later with seven other local ministers and forty Dissenting laymen. He died in prison three years later, still in his thirties. Calamy’s writing is sometimes awkward but his vindication of Joseph Allein is eloquent: Some that have observ’d how long and often he lay in the Common Gaol, have tho’t, sure this must be a violent unpeacable Zealot: But with little Ground, for his Zeal was really for Peace and Quietness, for Love and all manner of good Works. He was not us’d to inflame Men against Parties, nor backbite those from whom he differ’d, nor make those odious, who were willing eno’ to have made him so . . . He spake not evil of Dignities, nor kindled seditious Principles or Passions in the People’s Minds, nor disaffected them against Authority, nor aggravated his own Sufferings to exasperate their Minds against such as he suffer’d by, tho’ they were very considerable: But in patience he possess’d his Soul, rejoic’d in the Honour conferr’d upon him, and in the Good others receiv’d, by his Suffering as well as his Preaching.22

These are two of many such narratives of Christian patience under persecution in Calamy’s Abridgment. They fit into an English tradition of martyrology pointing back to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563) – with its account of the Protestant victims of the Marian persecutions of the 1550s; a founding text of English Protestantism, reprinted throughout the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries. Not only did Foxe provide a template for some aspects of Calamy’s history, it also provided a model for the ejected ministers themselves, as did other historical precedents. Baxter, as we have seen, was conscious of the historical significance of his own and other’s actions. He acted before an audience of later generations. So too did other ejected ministers. Many of their farewell sermons on St Bartholomew’s Day 1662 were collected and printed, addressing posterity and providing texts for a future history. For instance, Thomas Bladon, assured his Staffordshire congregation: The dismal transactions that have befallen the Church of God this day, deserve to be engraved in deep and in indelible characters, on Pillars of the blackest Marble, that the Ages and Generations to come, may reade, and may weep showers of tears, to quench Jerusalem’s Flames . . .23

The events of that day, repeated in hundreds of other churches, were to be remembered and inserted in a long history of persecution. Parallels were drawn with St Paul, with early Christian martyrs in the Roman Empire and with the victims of Queen Mary. Matthew Newcomen told his Essex congregation to read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs – ‘a book that hath formerly been more prized, than of late in England’ – in order to study the grounds

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of their Protestantism and to strengthen their courage: ‘the reading how cheerfully they went to Prison and to the stake will embolden you against the feares of sufferings, and death . . .’24 There is some kind of bitter irony in Restoration Dissenters passively accepting their brutal treatment at the hands of Churchmen as the price they paid for not signing up to the passive obedience enforced by the Act of Uniformity. While Churchmen preached passive obedience, Dissenters practised it. But in Calamy’s accounts, these religious Dissenters expose all the more clearly the persecutory character of Church and State in Restoration England. Far from being a defence of an embattled national Church, anti-Dissenting legislation of the 1660s and 1670s was demonstrably an aggressive assault on law-abiding Protestants by a cryptopapist and proto-absolutist Court and Church hierarchy. The political implications were clear if muted in Calamy’s account. SINS OF THE FATHERS

The first Abridgment appeared shortly after the death of William III – a political moment when the outcomes of the Revolution of 1688 were beginning to look uncertain. It was finished in great haste. As Calamy told the historian Thoresby in June 1702, he had been ‘forced to labour night and day, to get it finished by the rising of Parliament . . . you will find it drawn up in a hurry and that I shall much need your candour’.25 Within days the Whigs were crushed in the general election. In her speech to the outgoing parliament, also in May 1702, the new Queen, Anne, had promised to maintain the Act of Toleration. But she had rather weakened these assurances when she added that her own principles were entirely those of the Church of England ‘and will incline me to countenance those who have the truest zeal to support it’.26 This was a signal to High Churchmen to mobilise against Dissent. Anathemas poured from the press. From hundreds of pulpits Dissenters were denounced as the children, cursed ‘unto the third and fourth generation’, of those who had rebelled against king and church in the 1640s. As Calamy noted in his journal, ‘such a violent Temper discover’d itself on a sudden, and such an inclination to Heat and Fury, as plainly shew’d that some men had been before kept under an unnatural sort of restraint . . .’27 In this context, Calamy’s Abridgment generated controversy. In the tenth chapter Calamy had laid out in clear terms the ground of continuing separation from the Church of England. This had provoked responses from Churchmen, notably Thomas Ollyffe’s Defence of Ministerial Conformity published in three parts between 1703 and 1706 and

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Benjamin Hoadly’s The Reasonableness of Conformity to the Church of England which went through several editions.28 Calamy had responded in turn with three volumes of A Defence of Moderate Nonconformity.29 These texts provide, William Orme said in 1830, ‘by far the fullest view of the points in debate between the Church of England and the Nonconformists in our language’.30 Much of the response to the Abridgment, however, was less constructive. Pamphlets, tracts, sermons attacked Calamy and with him, Baxter, the Dissenters as a body and the Puritans of an earlier generation.31 ‘I have indeed had my share of reproach’, Calamy commented: ‘For some years there was scarce a pamphlet came out on the Church side in which I had not the honour of being referred to in the invective part of it.’32 Another history overshadowed that of Baxter and Calamy. The publication of successive volumes of Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion from 1702 reinforced the legitimacy of historical parallel between regicides, Puritans and Dissenters. The ‘Dedication’ of the second volume to the queen made the customary reference to the value of historical examples to any ruler. In this instance, of course, the history concerned was written by one grandfather, Clarendon, about the overthrow and execution of her other grandfather, Charles I! The dedication emphasised how the fate of the king was brought about by men who were equally enemies to crown and mitre: as it was the method of these Men to take exception first to the Ceremonies and outward Order of the Church, that they might attack her more surely in her very Being and Foundation, so they could not destroy the State, which they chiefly designed, ‘till they had first overturn’d the Church.33

Rochester’s finger was pointed at their Dissenting heirs. Now, as then, opposition to the established Church was inescapably opposition also to the Crown. What, he goes on to warn, can be the purpose of several ‘seminaries’ set up in various parts of the country, contrary to law, ‘where the Youth is bred up in Principles directly contrary to Monarchical and Episcopal Government’. The term ‘seminary’ cleverly evoked subversive and secret organisations of Roman Catholics, even Jesuits, in Elizabeth’s England with all the paraphernalia of plots and assassination attempts. Dissenters of course never used the word ‘seminary’, preferring ‘academy’ for their colleges. Rochester’s dedication of the third volume to the queen in 1704 reasserted the presence within the state of a subversive Dissenting faction dedicated to a repetition of the events of the 1640s.34 Clarendon’s History was a strategic political intervention. The Whig historian John Oldmixon even thought it fomented anti-Dissenting disturbances: ‘The

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History of the Rebellion, its Dedication and Prefaces, and the preachments that were made upon it, in a great measure raised that wicked spirit, which threw the kingdom into distraction and confusion at the time of Sacheverell.’35 This is perhaps to overestimate the influence of a book, even one as portentous as Clarendon’s History. Still, there is no doubt that the timing of the publication of the three volumes of the History of the Rebellion, and the content of their prefaces and dedications, were very carefully calculated by Rochester to cause maximum political damage to the Dissenters. At several points in the 1702 Abridgment Calamy had said that his work was provisional and he requested further information from his readers, promising a more complete account of individual ejected ministers. A second and much expanded edition was published in 1713.36 Instead of the long chapter 9, the collective biography of the ejected ministers was expanded into an entire second volume of nearly 850 pages. Calamy was now able to produce a fairly full and detailed list of ejected ministers and to contribute detailed biographical information on more than 500 of them, around a quarter of the total. He was able to correct errors and omissions; to expand considerably the biographical information on specific ministers; and to provide much more documentation of the illegalities and injustices suffered by those who Dissented from the Stuart Church of England. The material is arranged by county and in alphabetical order, making it much more accessible as a work of reference. The political context in 1713 when this second edition of the Abridgment appeared was even more forbidding. After the Sacheverell riots of 1710, which left a number of London’s Dissenting chapels as smoking ruins, and the huge Tory victory at the subsequent election, the situation of Dissenters looked bleak. The Occasional Conformity Act of 1711 punished with heavy fines anyone who took the sacrament to qualify for any office and continued to attend a Dissenting meeting. And the Schism Act of 1714 was to prohibit Dissenters from educating their children outside of a school officially sanctioned by the Church of England. No one was permitted to teach at any level, even as a private tutor, without obtaining a licence from his bishop subsequent to declaring conformity to the Church of England. Calamy had preached in desperate tones to several gatherings of Dissenters in London about the crisis in which the Dissenters again found themselves. He presented a brief narrative of a people imprisoned, tortured and excluded throughout the reigns of each of the four Stuart kings. And once again, under a Stuart queen, the Dissenters found

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themselves threatened with fines and prison. He counselled his fellow Dissenters not to despair. They must scrupulously avoid ‘exasperation’ with the government and with their deadly enemies, now noisily in the ascendant. Their only resort was to confront power with charity and humility. But there is more than a hint of exasperation in one of the questions Calamy posed to ‘brethren’ within the Church. Why are protestant Dissenters to be treated as enemies while ‘our common Enemies the Papists are so big with Expectations of succeeding in those Designs against us, which they have so long been forming’.37 ‘THE SUFFERINGS OF THE CLERGY’

It was at this critical juncture that the long-promised historical riposte to Calamy finally appeared. John Walker’s The Sufferings of the Clergy was a massive sprawling incoherent volume of over 700 pages and at least half a million words, the product of over ten years of labour.38 It had two main parts. First, there was a history of the Church during the 1640s and 1650s. Second, there was an indexed catalogue of the deprived clergy of those years, with biographical material and some details of what they had suffered. Walker wanted to prove that those loyal clergymen who had lost their livings and/or experienced harassment during the ascendancy of the Puritans outnumbered the ejected ministers of 1660–2 – perhaps by as many as four or five to one. Second, he wanted to prove that the oppression Churchmen suffered in those years was far greater – ‘a thousand times greater’, he ventures at one point – than anything experienced by the ejected clergy after 1662. The ejection of the Puritans by the Act of Uniformity was a just reprisal for their own actions when they were in power. The title-page promised a third part – a critical examination of Calamy’s work – but this was deferred and never appeared. The Sufferings of the Clergy was framed by another history, as the three volumes of Clarendon’s History had been a decade before. Walker’s fifty-page ‘Preface’ sketched out a historical narrative of Dissenting politics, especially since the Revolution, which made his study of the clergy in the 1640s a direct political intervention in the present. How far had the Dissenters under Queen Anne, Walker asked, fundamentally changed from their bloody Puritan ‘fathers’ of the 1640s: surely their bare Word is a very slender Security; especially since those Fathers themselves came nothing short of their Successors, in these very Pretenses to Peace and Moderation; and their own Conduct ever since the Nation Emerg’d from those very Miseries, hath been one continu’d Attempt upon the Constitution.39

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Since 1689, Walker charges, the Constitution had been threatened by a shadowy Dissenting faction: ‘a Faction who were ever Insatiable in their Demands, Implacable under Disappointments, always Tyrants in Power and Rebels out’.40 There are, Walker warns, frightening parallels between the combative language of recent years and that which led to the execution of Charles I: ‘let any one Judge, whether the same Principles will not produce the same Practices’.41 All the principles of 1641, and even those of 1648, were being voiced in Dissenting pulpits and industriously circulated by ‘their Weekly Scribblers’ and by the republication of writings by Milton, Harrington, Ludlow and Sydney. The political lesson of these parallel histories – of the 1640s and the period since 1689 – was clear. Further punitive sanctions against Dissenters were necessary to avert a second overthrow of State and Church. The project to delegitimise Calamy and Dissenting histories of the Restoration by producing a counter-history of the Civil War and the interregnum – a counter-history which would also legitimise the Act of Uniformity, the Clarendon Code and the contemporary extension of antiDissenting legislation under Queen Anne – received strong support from within the Church of England. Just as Calamy’s Abridgment was in many ways a collective effort of Dissenters, so Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy was a collective effort of Churchmen. It was initiated by an old enemy of Baxter’s. ‘Owne old Mr Long put me on ye work’, Walker had scribbled on some rough notes headed ‘Matter for a Preface’.42 Old Mr Long was Thomas Long, Prebendary at Exeter Cathedral and himself sequestrated in 1652. He had made something of a specialism of contesting Richard Baxter’s writings, producing a series of polemics in the 1670s and 1680s.43 And in 1697 he had published a book-length critique of Reliquiae Baxteriana.44 Here, Long said, ‘is a Fund provided for a perpetual Schism’: ‘for though Mr Baxter be dead, he hath done what he could to raise up, and arm a Succession of such a Generation of Dissenters, as shall still eat into the Bowels of the Church, and he hath provided a Magazine of ammunition for them.’45 Baxter was attacked for his justification of the sequestration, during the reign of Parliament, of ‘near Eight thousand ministers’ who were, he says, ‘forced to forsake their Families and Relations, and to wander up and down, and seek their Bread in unknown Places and Foreign Countries’.46 Measures taken from 1660 to 1662 to restore the Church excluded ‘none but such as excluded themselves’. According to Long, a ‘great number’ of these ejected ministers had possessed themselves of other men’s rights. ‘As for those that had lawful Titles, some of them were altogether unqualified, as to Learning or good Lives; the rest ejected themselves for not

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obeying the Laws.’47 Long scoffs at Baxter’s ‘hyperbolical Commendations’ of the ejected ministers: ‘if they deserved the Titles which he gives them, he might have Canonized them as Saints in Heaven . . .’48 By 1702 when Calamy’s Abridgment was published, Long was over eighty years old. This did not prevent him from publishing A Rebuke to Mr Edmund Calamy, which reasserted at some length contrasts between the ejected ministers of 1662 and the Churchmen who were ejected from their livings in the 1640s. The former chose to give up their ministry rather than to conform to a law passed by both houses of parliament and with the authority of the Crown. The latter – numbering, he says, at least ten thousand – were forcibly removed from their livings by ad hoc committees possessing no proper legal authority. Nor were the sufferings of the two groups commensurate. The dispossessed Churchmen were barred from preaching and teaching for up to seventeen years. The Dissenting clergy, Long says, ‘from the years between Forty Three and Sixty, lived plentifully on Sequestered Estates, and at this day abound in Wealth, having great Patrons, plentiful Contributions, rich Fortunes with Wives, and Liberty of Preaching, to the affront of the established Clergy and the Law’.49 Long handed over the task of continuing to harass Baxter and his Dissenting disciples to others. He not only encouraged Walker to take up the task of challenging Calamy’s Abridgment, but was also in correspondence with Charles Goodall. A former physician at the Charterhouse and occasional author, Goodall progressed rapidly with the task of answering Calamy with a history of the sequestered clergy in the 1640s and 1650s. An advertisement was printed in the London Gazette as early as March 1704: There is now preparing (and in a great forwardness) for the Press, An account of the clergy of the Church of England who suffered by Sequestration, Imprisonment, Banishment, Death etc. in Defence of the Religion, Laws and Liberties of their Country, and for loyalty to their Martyr’d Sovereign King Charles the First, with Characters of many who were most eminent among these pious Sufferers: and a faithful account of their persecutions: In answer to the Ninth Chapter of Mr Calamy’s Abridgment of Mr Baxter’s Life.50

These announcements attracted attention. Daniel Defoe responded with a public challenge. Within a fortnight of the publication of this ‘Black List’, he would provide material, additional to that of Calamy’s Abridgment, about the sufferings of the Dissenters, including accounts of damages amounting to £500,000 and ‘a Tun of Dissenters Blood’. In this way,

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Defoe said, ‘a fair Account of persecution’ of Dissenters and Churchmen could be publicly stated – ‘and the whole cause shall turn upon the Balance’.51 Goodall’s 1704 announcement was premature. In his mid-sixties and in uncertain health, he handed over his materials to Walker. Though several other churchmen also provided practical support for Walker’s project, it was to be another decade before it was complete and neither Long nor Goodall lived to see it. Walker had a difficult task. Sequestration had occurred over an extended period – mostly between 1642 and 1648 but continuing haphazardly through the 1650s. It had been enforced by local bodies, often acting independently of parliament. They often left no records or their records had been lost. Few survivors remained to provide personal testimony, though no doubt Thomas Long did. And finally, such records as did exist were scattered across England. Walker was a clergyman in Exeter, a long way from potentially useful manuscript sources. All these factors slowed Walker’s progress but eventually, in 1714, The Sufferings of the Clergy did appear. The investment of the political establishment in this defence of the Church against Calamy’s history of the sufferings of the Dissenters is indicated by the weighty list of 1,300 subscribers – ‘the like of which could never be produc’d by a Dissenter’, Calamy ruefully commented. Among them were dukes and duchesses, earls and lords, masters and fellows of Oxford and Cambridge colleges and a parade of dignitaries of the Church of England. The Examiner in February 1715 said that The Sufferings of the Clergy should be ‘chained up in all churches, with Fox his martyrs, that the cruelty of each party may be understood, and the better avoided and abhorr’d’.52 Its publication procured Walker a doctorate of divinity from the University of Oxford and appointment by his bishop to one of the prebendary stalls at Exeter Cathedral. The Sufferings of the Clergy was not, however, a great success. The book was a literary disaster. The long preface is prolix and repetitive and goes to surprising lengths to justify the whole project. It is nervously defensive, shifting from arrogant assertion to diffidence, by turns cringingly respectful and grossly insulting to Calamy. Walker himself disarmingly noted the imperfections of his style which is, he says, ‘in many places so very flat and mean, and so perplex’d throughout with Parentheses and tedious Periods, that I am quite asham’d of it’.53 To pull together scraps of information and repetitive sources required, he admits, ‘a more Masterly Hand’ than his own. In a number of embarrassing sections of the preface he laments his ten years of incessant labour, interrupted by periods of serious illness and problems with his eyesight,

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‘than which nothing could more contribute to Dull and Pall the Appetite, to Jade and Dispirit every Faculty of the Understanding, and, in short, to render any one Sick of the Undertaking . . .’54 He also blames others. Parts of the work were dictated ad hoc from his source materials to an amenuensis. He had hoped the whole text would be revised and corrected by ‘a very Learned Hand’. This unnamed person had checked the proofs as they were printed but had attended primarily to printer’s errors and not to the style: ‘the Papers do now at least appear in Publick, with all those Marks of Hurry and negligence, that I so much wish’d, and had so good Reason to think, would have been Stopt and Prevented’.55 Walker also confessed to errors and gaps in his account, detailed at tedious length. Appearing just as the hopes of High Church Tories were dashed to the ground by the death of Anne and the subsequent Jacobite debacle, the political rationale of The Sufferings of the Clergy was soon redundant. Walker expressed some dismay that he had met with disapproval from within the Church of England prior to publication: ‘it was a Matter of some Surprise to me, that a certain Right Reverend Prelate should, with Angry Looks, and Rough Words, drive me from his Presence, and tell me in plain Terms, he did not like my Undertaking.’56 What was worse, this very bishop – Thomas Burnet of Sarum – had entertained Calamy at his palace and thanked him for his Abridgment.57 But many Churchmen were discomforted by Walker’s impetuous attacks on the Revolution and on William III and by his undisguised commitment to the ecclesiastical politics of Sacheverell. In a series of letters one of his contemporaries at Exeter College in the 1690s, Reverend John Lewis of Margate, reprimanded him for the political fireworks of his Preface: I own very freely I was much scandalised at yt part of your preface. I have hitherto met with none but who were so as well as myself. Nay, if my information be not ill-grounded (as I believe it is not, since I had it from Booksellers, some of whom are your friends) that part of your preface has spoild the sale of ye book.58

The Sufferings of the Clergy marked the beginning and end of Walker’s literary career. According to Calamy, copies remained unsold in 1719. He questioned whether Walker would procure many subscribers for a threatened second volume in which his own 1713 Abridgement would be subjected to examination. Walker did continue to collect materials.59 He lived out the rest of his days as a clergyman in his home town of Exeter, however, and mercifully, apart from an Assize Sermon of 1723, nothing else came from his pen.

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DISSENT AND THE HANOVERIAN SUCCESSION, 1714–18

Calamy’s response to Walker was delayed by political events. The death of Queen Anne, on the very day that the Schism Bill became law, was seen as providential by Dissenters. As Calamy observed: ‘her loss was the less regretted, because the Court was so disposed as to be bent upon further rigours and severities, had things continued much longer in the posture they were in’.60 The promise of safety under the Hanoverians was threatened by the Jacobite rising. Calamy had been in Bath at the end of May 1715 and had witnessed a mob attacking the property and threatening the safety of those who did not illuminate their windows to commemorate Oak Apple Day; ‘the magistrates rather encouraged than checked it’, he commented. Travelling through Oxford a few days later Calamy saw the damage done to the Presbyterian, Baptist and Quaker meeting houses in the town.61 At the same time serious damage was done to Dissenting chapels by what he called ‘Popish Jacobite and High Church Mobbs’ in Lancashire and in several parts of the West Midlands during the summer of 1715.62 In the aftermath, Dissenters watched prominent Jacobites, including two bishops, go unpunished after actively supporting a violent rebellion. For their own loyal support of the government and the new king they received nothing, not even compensation for the destruction of their chapels. On the official thanksgiving day for the failure of the Jacobite rebellion in June 1716, the Dissenters were studiously silent. And in contrast to their public declarations of loyalty to the king at the beginning of the rebellion, the embittered Dissenters forwarded no addresses of congratulations on its end. Only after a great deal of pressure were steps eventually taken by government to provide compensation for the damage done to dozens of Dissenting chapels. And this pressure turned into a campaign for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts.63 Calamy’s contribution to this campaign challenged the terms of the State’s compromise with Jacobitism in politics and with ‘the high fliers’ and papists in religion. There were High-Church Tories and papists in the magistracy, in town corporations and in other positions of power, Calamy charged, who were no friends of the Hanoverian succession. In the event of a Jacobite invasion their loyalty was uncertain, to say the least.64 And yet one of the most committed sources of support for the regime, the Dissenters, continued to be excluded from such positions – and by laws passed under the Stuarts. To refuse satisfaction to the Dissenters for fear of giving offence to the Church of England is to betray the friends of the government and the constitution in order to

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placate its enemies. Calamy concludes with a blistering attack on the Church: But if things are come to that pass, that the Church can never be safe and out of danger, till King George is dethron’d, and we have a new Revolution, I’ll venture to say (be the Consequence what it will) ’tis no Church of God’s appointing; it is a Church, for which no true Protestant can have any affection . . .65

Dissenting loyalty to the Hanoverian succession during the crisis of 1715 eventually received some kind of reward in 1718 when the Occasional Conformity Act and the Schism Act were repealed. But government moves to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, even with the king’s support, were repulsed by vehement opposition.66 ‘It is very surprising, to hear the Merit of the Dissenters so highly extoll’d within these Walls’; Landsdowne told the Lords in December 1718, ‘for who is he among us, who cannot tell of some Ancestor either sequestered or murthered by them? Tis notoriously known that they brought the Royal Martyr to the Block . . .’67 He spoke of their ‘indecent arrogant Provocations’ which, it was implied, pretty much justified any violence against them. Many even of the highest of High Churchmen were willing to accept the legitimacy of George’s claim to the throne. What they would not accept were further concessions to the Dissenters. The Whigs had little choice but to conciliate them. Walpole went some way towards conciliating the Dissenters, too. First in 1723 they were granted the Regium Donum, an annual gift of £1,000 to be distributed to the widows of Dissenting ministers. Four years later annual Indemnity Acts were introduced, which softened the force of the Corporation Act. Nevertheless, as far as Dissenters were concerned, the Revolution remained incomplete. HISTORICAL POLEMICS, 1718–19

As the dust settled and the Hanoverian succession began to look secure, Calamy returned to historical polemics. First, in 1718 he engaged with the clergyman Laurence Echard and his History of England, published in three volumes between 1707 and 1718. The first volume, published under Queen Anne, had been dedicated to the Jacobite Duke of Ormande. But the second and third volumes, published after the Hanoverian succession, were dedicated to George I. Calamy noted the opportunism here, but he noted also how this was a symptom of a profounder discrepancy. Echard praised the Revolution of 1688. And yet he defended the policies of

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Charles II and James II and was severely critical of those who led the opposition to the last two Stuarts and made the Revolution possible. It was a blatant contradiction, Calamy says, to defend, as Echard did, the principles of passive resistance and at the same time to justify, post facto, the ejection of James II from the throne. Several points follow from this. First, the Revolution was brought about when Churchmen finally abandoned in 1688 the principles of passive obedience and non-resistance.68 Following on from this, Calamy asks, how could Echard, like many Churchmen, oppose the Whigs and Dissenters for the stand they took on a range of issues under Charles II and James II? Immediately after the Revolution a bill was passed making it illegal for a Roman Catholic to succeed to the throne. Whigs and Dissenters were arguing for precisely this during the Exclusion crisis. Why not, Calamy asks, acknowledge that the Whigs and their Dissenting supporters had been right all along to press for an Exclusion Bill to block James’s accession to the throne? Echard was consistent at least in his opposition to the Dissenters. He had graciously acknowledged that the Presbyterians had played a pivotal role in restoring Charles II to the throne in 1660; ‘In owning of which’, Calamy remarks, ‘you have done them a piece of justice, which some others have deny’d them.’69 But Echard subsequently undercuts this by defending the severe measures against Dissenters of the Clarendon Code, stating: ‘whatever hardships the Dissenting party met or felt from the laws, they arose more from the seditious practices of some of them, than the religious exercises of any of them.’ Every restrictive law was founded, he said, ‘upon the reality, or the certain belief, of some plot or conspiracy against the nation’s peace, which they had promoted and encouraged .’70 Calamy patiently rebuts this and a whole series of further anti-Dissenting jibes and asides, observing that it was in fact the hierarchy of the Church of England which was systematically subverting the ancient constitution and preparing the way for absolute government. Clarendon was at least open and explicit about his History being intended to vindicate the memory of Charles I, Calamy says. And even so, he did not hesitate to be critical of his royal master on specific matters. Whatever his predisposition to defend the royal prerogative, Clarendon had some concern for liberty and property and some commitment to historical truth. In Echard, by contrast, there is no such criticism of his own side: The great grievances of the reign of King Charles II, were the growth of popery; the being sway’d by the counsels of the French, who were visibly aspiring after an universal monarchy, and arbitrary power. And I cannot perceive that you, Sir, declare against any one of them, in such a manner as would have become a friend of your country, and our legal constitution.71

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Calamy clearly touched a raw nerve. Two responses to his critique of Echard were, he commented, ‘so invenomed, that I could not perceive my attempting to reply to either could answer any end; nor did any of my friends advise it’.72 In 1719 Calamy turned his attention to John Walker’s The Sufferings of the Clergy. He makes it clear that this was something of a penance. Others had dealt effectively with Walker’s political preface.73 Calamy concentrated on the history and, in particular, on Walker’s contention that the numbers and the sufferings of the loyal Churchmen in the 1640s and 1650s had greatly exceeded those of the Dissenters after 1662. Calamy remarks: ‘The Church was most certainly at Liberty to preserve the History of her sufferings: Nay, it was but fit she should do it.’74 However, is Walker’s account fair and accurate? In terms of numbers Calamy says the figure of 10,000 suffering Churchmen – even the 8,000 which Walker mentions at one point as a conservative estimate – is wholly unproven and quite clearly mistaken.75 Walker himself had admitted that in the absence of hard information he had frequently made guesses. He had provided evidence for no more than 2,400 parishes. Yet even in these parishes there were many clergy with more than one living and a large majority who were untouched by any kind of sequestration. Probably no more than 20 per cent of parishes were subjected to the ejection of their minister, so that, taking a national total of 9,284 parishes, it is impossible to come to a figure much beyond 2,000. Universities and cathedral churches might add a few more, but here many of Walker’s assumed victims cannot even be named. He merely assumes that canons, prebendaries and other clerics within the cathedral churches somehow suffered by loss of their offices. But were all these positions actually filled at the time, Calamy asks? Were several of them not sometimes filled by a single person and/or by someone who also had another parochial living? There were certainly cases where the same person was counted again and again among the number of Walker’s victims. After a careful reading of The Sufferings of the Clergy, and other sources, Calamy concludes that it is difficult to identify more than 2,000 clergy as having been ejected from their livings – a figure less than that of the clergy ejected by the State after 1660.76 Calamy is happy to acknowledge that the oppressions and injustices visited upon the Dissenters after 1662 do not in any way justify the proceedings of the Commonwealth against Churchmen: ‘I am free to declare against anything that looks like Persecution, whoever are the parties concerned. I am far from thinking they that are now call’d Dissenters, have been free from Blame.’77 Thus, in the case of the cathedral clergy Calamy concedes:

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I readily acknowledge many of his Sufferers mention’d here, to have been Men of great Worth and Eminence. I’m sincerely sorry they met with such Usage; and can as heartily as any Man lament the rigorous Treatment of such excellent Persons as Bishop Morton, Bishop Hall, Bishop Prideaux, Bishop Brownrigg, &c. I han’t the least Word to say in Vindication of it.78

Bishop Hall’s own account of his experiences, Calamy says, ‘would make any Man’s Heart bleed that reads it’.79 He is also willing to concede that there was suffering among the parochial clergy across England and Wales. Having conceded this much, however, Calamy is critical of Walker’s account because of the ways in which its narrative focus distorts historical understanding. By concentrating its attention narrowly on the 1640s and 1650s The Sufferings of the Clergy omits the preceding decades of Church persecution of the Puritans, culminating in the policies of Laud. ‘The Nonconformists were all along miserably harrass’d, ejected, and silenc’d, and met with such hard Usage as was often complain’d of in Parliament . . .’80 Their severity on gaining the political ascendancy from the time of the Long Parliament, however unjustifiable in principle, can at least be understood as a reaction to their own harsh experience of the Church hierarchy. These events prior to 1641 must be part of any judgement of Puritan policies during their short-lived dominance. Calamy also questions whether, on the basis of a close and careful reading of the evidence, many of these names really were innocent victims of Parliament. Punitive measures were taken against Churchmen at a time of bitter civil war, social disorder and political crisis. Such measures were in some cases unplanned and uncoordinated, and the effect of local political animosities or even the illegitimate actions of soldiers. In other cases these clergymen were penalised not on religious grounds but because they preached against the government and, in a situation of civil war, gave practical assistance to its enemies: ‘They were plundered not because they were Conformists but Cavaliers of the King’s party.’81 ‘Malignancy’, active opposition to the government, was only one of the stated grounds for ejection of clergymen. They were also ejected for ‘delinquency’, meaning abandonment of their parishes, or for ‘scandalousness’, meaning incompetence or dissolute and immoral behaviour. Some clerics were ejected because of the problem of plural livings. This was an appropriate measure to solve real abuses within the Church of England. A man with four livings cannot be represented as really suffering severe deprivation because he has three of them taken away from him. There is also evidence of misconduct which clearly justifies the measures

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taken against some of the ejected clergy. Even two important Church historians – Heylin and Fuller – were willing to admit that among the ejected clerics were numbers of ministers who, for various reasons, were unfit for their office. And finally, some of Walker’s suffering clergy were in reality papists who soon after ejection abandoned the Church of England for Rome. Here Calamy does not miss the opportunity to remark on how pervasive papist principles have been in the Church of England and how supportive the Church was of two papist monarchs.82 In this critique of Walker, Calamy works to reduce the scale of the sufferings of the clergy, to dispute that these were greater than those experienced by Dissenters after the Restoration, and to justify the measures taken against some of them. The Sufferings of the Clergy was full of speculation, repetition, unfounded anecdotes as well as deliberate distortion of facts and blatant errors. Calamy nevertheless took seriously the main sections of Walker’s book as at least the beginnings of a legitimate history of the fate of episcopalian clergy during the 1640s and 1650s. And he continued to worry at The Sufferings and its threatened sequel.83 POLEMICS, HISTORIES AND IDENTITIES

These historical disputes between Calamy and Walker, and between other Churchmen and Dissenters at this time, have not attracted much attention from students of eighteenth-century historiography.84 This is hardly surprising. Calamy’s two editions of the Abridg[e]ment plus The Continuation, or Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy, do not point forward to a recognisably modern form of historical writing. They are awkward, and in some ways unreadable, combinations of chronicle, historical gazetteer, biographical dictionary, political tract, religious sermon. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that they did go some way towards achieving one of their aims as historical works: to preserve a record of specific events based upon a diversity of sources, some of them oral. Some of this evidence would have been lost for ever without their assiduous researches. Voltaire had remarked in 1733, ‘in England there are polemics and not history’.85 But here polemics stimulated historical research. The accuracy of scholarship and thoroughness in finding and exploiting authoritative sources were weapons in the intellectual war between Churchmen and Dissenters. More importantly, these disputes demonstrate the interconnections of religious identity, history and politics. The history of the Church of England and the fate of the Puritans, inside and outside its terms, remained an unfinished and politically sensitive history in early

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eighteenth-century England. It wasn’t just that history was political. Politics – the very existence and antagonism of Church and Dissent in eighteenth-century England – was also historical. In his 1703 defence of the Abridgment Calamy noted how the issues which continued to divide Churchmen and Dissenters were fundamentally historical: ‘in a controversy which depends so much upon History as this, we should not take History and Argument apart, but consider them together, as having mutual dependence, and reflecting a mutual Light’.86 As more than one Churchman noted, from the very beginning of the Reformation in England there had been clergymen who had had scruples on several points of worship and doctrine. They felt it their duty to conform, however. How then could Dissenters claim legitimate descent from these conforming Tudor and early Stuart Puritans? Calamy’s reply stressed how the situation of such churchmen had changed over time. Many of ‘‘us’’, he says, might well have been ‘‘Conforming puritans’’, opposed to separation, at various times during the last two centuries. Conversely many of those conforming Puritans under Elizabeth or James I would have separated from the Church after 1662 and would have remained Dissenters at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Under what Calamy drily calls ‘the Pontificate of Bishop Laud’ the exaction of conformity by brutal punishments reached such a peak that many ministers were suspended and many more were driven into exile in America. It was, however, only after the restoration of Charles II with a vengeful Church hierarchy and a royalist parliament, and with papist influence working behind the scenes, that the terms of conformity to the Church were drawn so narrowly as to force out some 2,000 clergymen. In examining the nature of conformity to the Church of England, Calamy argues, it is pointless to look at particular individuals or particular arguments outside their precise historical context. It is essential to focus on ‘the Stream of the Proceedings about Ecclesiastical Affairs, ever since the full Settlement of the Present constitution, in the Days of Queen Elizabeth’.87 The current generation of Dissenters in the 1720s could legitimately claim some identity with Puritans within the Church of England prior to the impositions of Laud in the 1630s. And the case against submission to the terms of the Act of Uniformity of 1662 remained the same. There was, he said in 1703, ‘the same need of Amendments now as formerly; and even less likelihood of obtaining any, according to the Posture we are in, since another happy Opportunity after the Late Glorious Revolution has been wilfully lost . . .’88 Nearly a quarter of a century later, in the preface to the Continuation, Calamy is arguing the same case. The Reformation in England was

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incomplete and each generation, Calamy says, had a duty to continue to represent the principles of liberty of conscience against all who wanted to impose a single human authority. The Dissenters of the 1720s hold to the same principles as their Puritan predecessors, whether inside or outside the Church of England, as they in their turn had been loyal to the principles of their own antecedents. English history had been a series of missed opportunities and the Dissenters stood witness, generation after generation, to the path not taken: For besides the Opportunity of an happy Settlement among us at the Restoration, another has been lost at the Revolution, and so that farther Reformation that has been so earnestly fought for from one Reign to another would be altogether desperate, should all now yield to rigorous Imposers, and their groundless Pretences to Church Power . . .89

If Dissenters were grateful for their protection under the Hanoverian regime and were loyal supporters of the government, they remained uncompromising in their opposition to one of the pivotal structures of the Hanoverian state: the Church of England. Their continuing Dissent was a refusal of human authority in matters of religion, a denial of ‘unscriptural impositions’ and a commitment to the right of private judgement and liberty of conscience: ‘These were the chief Principles of the old Puritans. They were the principles of our Fathers; and they are also ours.’90 The qualified liberty of contemporary Dissenters was not, Calamy stresses, a gift of their rulers. It was hard earned through long and painful resistance to the popish councils of Charles II and James II and their allies within the Church hierarchy: ‘it comes to us as the Fruit of the Prayers and Tears, the Sufferings and Hardships, the Conflicts and Views of our Fathers before us’.91 Many Churchmen had expected that Dissent would fade rapidly away ‘when they that were ejected out of the publick churches were once laid in their graves’.92 It was the task of Calamy, and other Dissenting voices, to keep alive a history that was fading from living memory and to reassert its significance for a new generation of Dissenters in a changing political situation. ‘We’ hold to the same principles and are committed to the same project of reformation though in different circumstances: ‘we’ are essentially and fundamentally the same as our Puritan forebears. Calamy’s counsel is to forgive and remember, not to forgive and forget. But if his work was a memorial for the victims and martyrs of religious intolerance, of Stuart duplicity and of High Church bigotry, it also pointed forward. ‘To let the Memory of these Men Dye is injurious to Posterity’, he emphasised. The historical record of the victims of religious intolerance

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provided a caution for similar policies of exclusion by Churchmen in the future: ‘They that would have past Faults on their side forgotten, and cannot forbear being angry when they are told of them, are likely to continue in them.’93 This memorial cast a long shadow into the future. NOTES 1 Note that the first edition of 1702 is spelled ‘Abridgment’ and the second edition of 1713 as ‘Abridgement’. These works will be subsequently cited simply as Abridgment (1702) or Abridgement (1713). 2 Calamy, Historical Account, 1, p. 88. 3 Calamy, Historical Account, 1, pp. 376–7. 4 This is explored in Norman Sykes, From Sheldon to Secker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), pp. 60–104. 5 Calamy, Historical Account, 1, pp. 374–5, 323n. 6 Ibid., 1, p. 377. 7 Powicke carefully compared Reliquiae Baxterianae to the manuscript and found a variety of editorial cuts. Some he thinks were Baxter’s own; others were at the behest of Calamy; and still others were Sylvester’s. F. J. Powicke, Life of Richard Baxter, 1924, 2, pp. 9–11. See also N. H. Keeble, Richard Baxter, Puritan Man of Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 145–6. 8 Reliquiae Baxterianae, or Mr Richard Baxter’s Narrative of the most Memorable Passages of his Life and Times. Faithfully Publish’d from his own Original Manuscripts by Matthew Sylvester (1696) part 1, p. 249. 9 One of his modern editors has commented: ‘Baxter’s personal story, often of intense interest and value, was interrupted by arid wastes of those casuistic subtleties which were the great divine’s disastrous foible.’ N. H. Keeble, ‘Preface’ to The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, ed. J. M. Lloyd Thomas (London: Everyman, revised ed. 1974), p. v. 10 Keeble, Richard Baxter, p. 147; David L.Wykes, ‘ ‘‘To let the memory of these men dye is injurious to posterity’’: Edmund Calamy’s Account of the Ejected Ministers’, in The Church Retrospective, ed. R. N. Swanson (Woodbridge: Ecclesiastical History Society, Boydell Press 1997), pp. 383–4. 11 Edmund Calamy, Abridgment (1702), n.p. 12 Reliquiae Baxterianae, Part 3, p. 90. 13 See for one of these Dissenting historians: Mark Goldie, ‘Roger Morrice and the History of Puritanism’, in Religious Identities in Britain, 1660–1832, ed. W. Gibson and R. G. Ingram (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 9–26. 14 The most careful modern scrutiny of the sources has revised the figure downwards to just over 1,900, though this excludes Wales which would return the figure to around 2,000. A. G. Matthews, Calamy Revised. Being a Revision of Edmund Calamy’s Account of the Ministers and Others Ejected and Silenced, 1660–62 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934).

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15 Calamy, Abridgment (1702), n.p. 16 Quoted in Calamy, Abridgment (1702), p. 620. 17 Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter, Vol. II, eds N. H. Keeble and G. F. Nuttall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 330. 18 See Lord Macaulay’s account in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, 10th ed. (1854), 1, pp. 487–91. 19 Calamy, Abridgment (1702), n.p. 20 Ibid., pp. 234–5. 21 Ibid., p. 235. 22 Ibid, p. 312. 23 England’s Remembrancer: Being a Collection of Farewel-Sermons, Preached by divers Non-conformists in the Country (1663), pp. 301–2. 24 The Second and Last Collection of the late London Ministers Farewell Sermons . . . (1663), p. 165. 25 Letters of Eminent Men, Addressed to Ralph Thoresby (1832), 1, p. 417. 26 Quoted [Daniel Defoe] The Present State of the Parties in Great Britain . . . (1712), p. 14. 27 Edmund Calamy, ‘Notes and Diary, 1713–27’, Bodleian Library Oxford, Eng. History d. 90. 28 John Ollyffe, A Defence of Ministerial Conformity to the Church of England in answer to the misrepresentations of . . . Mr Calamy in . . . his Abridgement of the history of Mr Baxter’s life and times (1702); A Second Defence of Ministerial Conformity to the Church of England: in answer to Mr. Calamy’s objections against the first; in his pretended vindication of the 10th chapter of his Abridgment of Mr. Baxter’s life and times (1705); A Third Defence of Ministerial Conformity to the Church of England. In answer to Mr. Calamy’s objections against the first; in a letter annext to his third part of Moderate Conformity (1706). 29 Edmund Calamy, A Defence of Moderate Nonconformity. In answer to the reflections of Mr. Ollyffe and Mr. Hoadly, on the tenth chapter of the Abridgment of the Life of the Reverend Mr. Rich. Baxter. . . ., 3 vols (1703–5). 30 William Orme, ‘A Life of the Author and a Critical Examination of his Writings’, in The Practical Works of the Rev Richard Baxter (1830), 1, p. 733. 31 See for instance: Anon., Seditious Preachers, Ungodly Teachers. Exemplified in the case of the ministers, ejected by the Act of Uniformity 1662 . . . (1709). 32 Calamy, Abridgement (1713), p. 18. 33 Edward, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England Begun in the Year 1641 . . ., 2 (1703), ‘Dedication’, no page numbers. 34 Ibid., 3 (1704), n.p. 35 John Oldmixon, The History of England during the Reigns of the Royal House of Stuarts. Wherein the Errors of Late Histories are Discover’d and Corrected . . . (1730), p. ix.

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36 In 1707 Calamy had also published a massive four-volume edition of works by Baxter: The Practical Works of the late Reverend and Pious Mr Richard Baxter, In Four Volumes, With A Preface; Giving some Account of the Author, and of this Edition of his Practical Works (1707). 37 Edmund Calamy, Comfort and Counsel to Protestant Dissenters. With Some Serious Queries To such as Hate and Cast them out; And a Friendly Admonition to such as Desert them. In Two Sermons . . . (1712), np. 38 The Sufferings of the Clergy was how the book was generally known. Its full title is: An Attempt towards recovering an Account of the Numbers and Sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England, Heads of Colleges, Fellows, Scholars, &c who were sequester’d, Harass’d, &c in the late Times of the Grand Rebellion: occasion’d by the Ninth Chapter (now the Second Volume) of Dr Calamy’s Abridgment of the Life of Mr Baxter. Together with an Examination of That Chapter (1714). 39 Walker, Sufferings, p. vii. 40 Ibid., p. x. 41 Ibid., p. xi. 42 G. B. Tatham, Dr John Walker and ‘The Sufferings of the Clergy’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), p. 7n. 43 Thomas Long, The non-conformists plea for peace impleaded in answer to several late writings of Mr. Baxter and others . . . (1680); A continuation and vindication of the Defence of Dr. Stillingfleet’s Unreasonableness of separation in answer to Mr. Baxter, Mr. Lob, &c. (1682); The unreasonableness of separation, the second part . . . continued from 1640 to 1681, with special remarks on the life and actions of Mr. Richard Baxter (1682); The letter for toleration decipher’d and the absurdity and impiety of an absolute toleration demonstrated by the judgment of Presbyterians, Independents, and by Mr. Calvin, Mr. Baxter, and the Parliament, 1662 (1689). 44 A Review of Mr. Richard Baxter’s life wherein many mistakes are rectified, some false relations detected, some omissions supplyed out of his other books, with remarks on several material passages . . . (1697). 45 Ibid., ‘The epistle dedicatory’, no page numbers. 46 Ibid., p. 37. 47 Ibid., p. 259. 48 Ibid., pp. 214–15. 49 Thomas Long, A Rebuke to Mr Calamy, Author of the Abridgment of Mr Baxter’s Life (Exeter, 1704), p. 34. 50 Quoted Tatham, Dr John Walker and ‘The Sufferings of the Clergy’, p. 11. 51 Daniel Defoe, ‘More Short Ways with the Dissenters’ in A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of The True-Born Englishman . . . (1705), p. 295. 52 Quoted Tatham, Dr John Walker and ‘The Sufferings of the Clergy’, p. 48. 53 Walker, Sufferings, p. xxxvi. 54 Ibid., p. xxxvii.

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55 Ibid., p. xxxviii. 56 Ibid, p. xiii. 57 Memoirs of the life of the late Revd. Mr. John Howe. Collected by Edmund Calamy D.D. (1724), pp. 128–9. 58 Quoted Tatham, Dr John Walker and ‘The Sufferings of the Clergy’, p. 54. 59 See John Walker, ‘Working Papers for ‘‘Sufferings of the Clergy’’ ’, Bodleian Library Oxford, Special Collections and Western Mss: Mss J.Walker C1–7. 60 Edmund Calamy, ‘Notes and Diary, 1713–27’, p. 36, Bodleian Library Oxford, Eng. History d90. 61 Ibid. p. 37. 62 See Paul Kleber Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 185–94. 63 The following is a small sample: Reasons for Enabling Protestant Dissenters to Bear Public Offices (1717); An Equal Capacity In the Subjects of Great Britain for Civil Employment, the Best Security to the Government, and the Protestant Religion . . . (1717); James Peirce, Some Reflections upon Dean Sherlock’s Vindication of the Corporation and Test Acts (1718); James Gray, Reasons for Abrogating the Corporation and Test Acts (1718); Moses Lowman, A Defence of the Protestant Dissenters . . . (1718). 64 [Edmund Calamy] The Repeal of the Act Against Occasional Conformity, Considered. In a Letter to a Member of the Honourable House of Commons (1717), p. 10. 65 Ibid., p. 30. 66 See G. M. Townend, ‘Religious Radicalism and Conservatism in the whig party under George I: The Repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts’, Parliamentary History, 7 (1988), 24–44. 67 Reprinted from an original handbill: GM, 11 (July 1741) p. 373. 68 A Letter to Archdeacon Echard, Upon Occasion of his History of England: wherein the True Principles of the Revolution are Defended; The Whigs and Dissenters Vindicated, Several persons of Distinction clear’d from Aspersions; and a Number of Historical Mistakes Rectify’d (1718), pp. 32–3. 69 Ibid, p. 68. 70 Laurence Echard. The History of England . . . 3 (1718), p. 150. 71 Calamy, A Letter to Archdeacon Echard, p. 61. 72 Calamy, Historical Account, I, p. 396. Calamy gives no further details but the following three are all ‘invenomed’: Anonymous Londinensis, A Letter to Dr Calamy, shewing that Mr Archdeacon Echard has done the part of a faithful Historian . . . (c. 1718); Philalethes, An Answer to Dr E. Calamy’s letter to . . . Archdeacon Echard upon occasion of his history of England (1718); Anonymous Lincolniensis, A letter to Dr. Calamy: in vindication of Mr. Archdeacon Echard’s History of England . . . (1719). 73 See John Withers, Remarks on Dr. Walker’s Late Preface to his Attempt, &c. (1716).

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74 Edmund Calamy, The Church and the Dissenters Compar’d, as to Persecution, In Some remarks on Dr Walker’s Attempt to recover the names of the Clergy that were Sequestrated, &c, between 1640, and 1660 (1719), p. 14 75 David Hume cites Walker’s exaggerations as ‘the most moderate computation’ of the figures! History of Great Britain, ed. D. Forbes (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), pp. 635–6. 76 A rare modern examination of Walker’s figures has suggested that perhaps 3,600 is a fair estimate of the overall figure of episcopalian clergy who suffered loss of their church livings in these years. A. G. Matthews, Walker Revised. Being a Revision of John Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy during the Grand Rebellion 1642–60 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), pp. 13–15. I should add that I find Matthews’ introductory essay remarkably generous in tone and substance to Walker and correspondingly ungenerous to Calamy in particular and to Dissenters in general. 77 Calamy, The Church and the Dissenters Compar’d, p. 23. 78 Ibid., p. 65. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid., p. 24. 81 Ibid., p. 24. 82 Ibid., p. 82. 83 The Continuation of 1727 is full of critical remarks on Walker and corrections of his errors. For some cases taken from Walker’s home county of Devon, see the entries in Continuation, Vol. I, for Lewis Stukeley (pp. 242–4), James Burdwood (pp. 248–9), George Hughes (pp. 254–5), Theophilus Polwheil (pp. 260–5) and William Bartlett (pp. 266–71). 84 Though see the brief discussion in R. C. Richardson, The Debate on the English Revolution Revisited (2nd ed., London: 1988), pp. 39–40. 85 Voltaire, Letters on England, trans. L. Tancock (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980) p. 109. 86 Edmund Calamy, A Defence of Moderate Nonconformity . . . Part 1 (1703), p. 16. 87 Ibid., 31. 88 Ibid., p. vii. 89 Calamy, Continuation, p. xx. 90 Ibid., p. xv. 91 Ibid., p. xxxviii. 92 So Bishop Burnet had told Calamy; see Memoirs of the life of the late Revd. Mr. John Howe (1724), p. 129. 93 Calamy, Abridgement (1713), 2, p. xxvii.

2 Protestant Liberty: Daniel Neal and The History of the Puritans

The most influential Dissenting history of the eighteenth century was The History of the Puritans by Daniel Neal; or to give its full title: The History of the Puritans; or, Protestant Nonconformists; from the Reformation in 1517. To the Revolution in 1688: comprising an account of their principles; their attempts for a further reformation in the Church; their sufferings; and the lives and characters of their most considerable divines. Caroline Robbins called it ‘probably the most interesting revelation of Dissenting ideas in a secular work in the second quarter of the eighteenth century’.1 Calamy’s historical writing was a sometimes awkward combination of genres – biographical dictionary, historical gazetteer, political tract, religious sermon and so on. And it was often organised around a polemical occasion. Much the same could be said of important historical works by other contemporary Dissenters, such as James Peirce and Benjamin Bennet. Neal acknowledged the value of Calamy’s work. Brief biographies of leading Puritan and Dissenting ministers added to the close of each of his chapters, were taken, he said, ‘partly from the Historians of those Times, but chiefly from the Writings of the late Reverend Doctor Calamy, whose Integrity, Moderation, and Industry, deserve a peculiar Commendation’. [IV, vi]2 But, in contrast to Calamy’s historical writings, The History of the Puritans was a polished and coherent chronological narrative, in four uniform volumes, from the beginning of the sixteenth century through to the end of the seventeenth. Conforming to the protocols of historical writing, which enjoined a tone of dignified impartiality and an avoidance equally of unseemly polemic and dry scholarship, Neal’s History aspired to the status of polite literature. Dr Johnson said of the Dissenting minister and poet Isaac Watts: He was one of the first authors that taught the Dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. Whatever they had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarseness and inelegance of style. He showed them that zeal and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished diction.3

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Neal’s History of the Puritans can be placed alongside the hymns of his close friend Isaac Watts in its aspiration towards ‘the graces of language’ and ‘polished diction’. The great German historian Mosheim commended its ‘ample and elegant manner’.4 It remained the great founding history of English Dissenters throughout the eighteenth century. There were two new editions in the 1750s and a substantial new edition in five volumes was published between 1793 and 1797. Further editions continued to appear both in Britain and in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. The first half of this chapter is an attempt to provide an outline of Neal’s main argument. The History of the Puritans was also, inevitably, a politically contentious history, both in terms of the implications of its historical interpretations and because of the political contests of the 1730s which shaped its writing and its reception. This is the focus of the second half of the chapter. PURITANS IN TUDOR ENGLAND

Volume 1 of The History of the Puritans begins not with Henry VIII’s break from Rome, but with the Norman Conquest and the policies of King John through which, Neal says, ‘the rights and privileges of the English clergy were delivered up into the hands of the pope’. [I, 1] John Wycliffe – ‘the morning star of the Reformation’ – figures as an early Puritan but the times in which he lived were ‘overspread with the thickest darkness of antichristian idolatry’. The first three chapters then rapidly sketch out the fate of the Reformation in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary. More then three-quarters of the first volume, chapters 4 to 8, provide a relentless catalogue of injunctions and interrogations, exclusions and suspensions, fines and imprisonments suffered by the Puritans under Elizabeth. Year after year, decade after decade, as Neal patiently records, Puritan clergymen lost their positions, spent periods in exile or in jail, even in some cases sacrificed their lives. There was a slow but steady erosion of Protestant principles within the Church as the bishops, with the uncompromising support of the queen, increased their powers and separated themselves more and more from the rest of the clergy. At the same time the Puritans were pushed further and further into resistance to the Church hierarchy and, increasingly though unwillingly, to the Crown itself. Initially the point at issue was the insistence on clergymen performing particular ceremonies and wearing habits which Puritans regarded as popish. Neither the hierarchy nor the Puritan clergy would compromise.

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The division intensified as questions about the authority of the bishops and the nature of Church discipline began to be raised. Eventually there was division over doctrine. On the one side, in Neal’s account, there were devout and committed Protestants. On the other, there was a Church hierarchy contaminated by the survivals of popery and superstition. From these stemmed its brutality and its submission to arbitrary principles in government. Matthew Parker, one of Elizabeth’s archbishops of Canterbury, is described as: a severe churchman; of a rough and uncourtly temper, and of high and arbitrary principles in both church and state; a slave to the prerogative and the supremacy; and a bitter enemy to the Puritans, whom he persecuted to the length of his power, and beyond the limits of the law. [I, 341]

Other prominent Churchmen are represented in similar terms. Neal grants that Elizabeth was ‘a great and successful princess at home’ and gave essential support to the Protestant interest in Europe. She steered the nation out of the crisis she inherited at her accession and established England as arbiter of the balance of power in Europe. But Neal is uncompromising in his criticisms of her ecclesiastical policies: She understood not the rights of conscience in matters of religion; and is therefore justly chargeable with persecuting principles. More sanguinary laws were made in her reign, than in any of her predecessors: her hands were stained with the blood of Papists and Puritans . . . [I, 601]

His political judgements are equally hostile. For a long line of Whig historians the revolution and civil war of the 1630s and 1640s were the particular responsibility of the Stuarts who in significant ways, broke with the constitutional precedents established by the Tudors. Elizabeth especially is represented as a defender of English liberties and Protestantism. The first volume of The History of the Puritans counters this narrative and shows that the arbitrary principles of Charles and his father merely followed the example of Elizabeth: She had high notions of the sovereign authority of princes, and of her own absolute supremacy in church-affairs: and being of opinion that methods of severity were lawful to bring her subjects to an outward uniformity, she countenanced all the engines of persecution, such as spiritual courts, highcommission, and star-chamber, and stretched her prerogative to support them beyond the laws, and against the sense of the nation. [I, 602]

Neal detailed actions on the part of the queen which, as he pointedly remarks, ‘cost one of her successors his crown and life’. It was Elizabeth’s active persecution of the puritans that began the divisions that were to

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culminate on a scaffold outside Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House on Whitehall in 1649. As Neal puts it, in an image which Hume was later to appropriate into his History of England: The breach might easily have been made up at first, but it widened by degrees; the passions of the contending parties increased, till the fire, which for some years was burning under ground, broke out into a civil war, and with unspeakable fury destroyed the constitution both of church and state. [I, 231]

Neal was not alone among Dissenters in rejecting contemporary adulation of ‘Good Queen Bess’ and ‘an Elizabethan Golden Age’. Peirce’s influential Vindication of the Dissenters of 1718 had similarly documented the brutal treatment of Puritan clergy under Elizabeth and had provided a parallel account of the shortcomings of her reign: ‘The great and extravagant authority Queen Elizabeth assume’d, in matters of religion, was one chief cause why the Reformation made no greater advances in her reign.’5 The first volume of The History of the Puritans was, however, a weighty intervention and questioned some of the core values of the eighteenth-century establishment, religious and political. The Church of England, as we will see, was stung into making several defences of Elizabeth and her Church. PURITANS UNDER JAMES I

The second volume of The History of the Puritans opens in a conventional Whiggish manner: ‘The royal house of the Stuarts has not been more calamitous to the English church and nation, in the male descendants, than successful and glorious in the female.’ [II, 1] He was not, of course, referring to the last of the Stuart line, Queen Anne – who is pointedly ignored – but to Mary, eldest daughter of Charles I and the mother of William of Orange, and Elizabeth, daughter of James I and grandmother of George I. These women were firm Protestants. The four Stuart kings, by contrast, were either keen on reconciling the Church of England to Rome (James I and Charles I) or were outright papists themselves (Charles II and James II). In politics all four were, Neal says, ‘declared enemies of our civil constitution’: ‘they governed without law, levied taxes by the prerogative, and endeavoured to put an end to the very being of parliaments’. [II, 1] The two chapters devoted to the reign of James I resume the story of the State’s persecution of those principled Protestants the Puritans and a growing rapprochement with what Neal thought of as popery. At the same time there was a steady erosion of the constitution and growth of

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arbitrary power. James’s first speech to Parliament included, Neal comments, ‘many strokes in favour of tyranny and arbitrary power’ [27]. The new king also expressed his wish for a reconciliation between the Church of England and Rome and voiced his deep antipathy to the Puritans. The Gunpowder Plot was turned by James and his courtiers against Protestantism. Reading closely the the king’s speech to Parliament a few days after, Neal comments: But what was all this to the plot? Except it was to turn off the indignation of the people from the Papists, whom the king both feared and loved, to the Puritans, who in a course of forty years’ sufferings had never moved the least sedition against the state, but who would not be the advocates or dupes of an unbounded prerogative! [II, 53–4]

Here is a specimen of Neal’s central political narrative: the Puritans were not actively subversive of the State, but their principled commitment to Protestantism and the (related) liberties of the subject made them the object of persecution by Church and State. They were forced, unwillingly, into political opposition. Neal’s summation of James’s regime is uncompromising. His reputed ‘kingcraft’ was ‘nothing else but deep hypocrisy and dissimulation in every character of life’. Throughout the course of his twenty-two year reign ‘he never did a great or generous action’ and prostituted the honour of the English nation. He stood by while Protestants were suppressed in France and across Germany and was outmanoeuvred by the Dutch. Sharing responsibility for the disastrous character of James I’s reign were leading members of the Church hierarchy. As in the reign of Elizabeth, the episcopal bench, infected by papist principles, played a key role in supporting and encouraging the arbitrary power of the Crown. Thus began ‘that mischief’, Neal says, ‘which, when it came to full ripeness, made such a bloody tincture in both kingdoms as never will be got out of the bishops’ lawn sleeves’. [II, 87] And again, it was the Puritans who represented an alternative set of Protestant principles aligned with English liberties and the constitution. PURITANS AND CIVIL WAR

One of the central tasks of The History of the Puritans was to rebut charges that Puritans and their Dissenting successors were subversive of the State. Neal had laboured hard in his first volume to demonstrate that under Elizabeth persecution of the Puritans was not based on legitimate political grounds. This was particularly urgent as his History moved into

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its longest and most difficult period: the reign of Charles I, culminating in civil war, the execution of the king and the rule of Cromwell. To legitimise their call for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in the 1730s, Dissenters needed to question the dominant historical picture of these events. The Bishop of London, Gibson, had commented to Zachary Grey with some complacency: ‘surely neither he nor his friends can hope to gain credit to their cause, by a History of the State of Religion, and particularly the conduct of the Puritans, from 1642 to 1660’.6 Neal moves into this period with some circumspection, but this is precisely his aim: to justify the conduct of the Puritans in the civil war and under Cromwell. No period of English history has been more closely examined, or generated more controversy, Neal notes: ‘writers on both sides have blown up their passions into a flame, and instead of history, have given us little else but panegyric or satire’. His aim, he says, is ‘to avoid extremes’ and to represent what happened ‘with modesty, and without personal reflections’.[II,vi] Having said that, Neal pitches into an account of Charles I’s rule as compromised from the very beginning by the king’s own hypocrisy. Making one set of undertakings in his marriage articles, he made a quite contrary set of promises to his parliament only a few months later. ‘But’, Neal remarks, ‘it seems to have been a maxim in this and the last reign, that no faith is to be kept with parliaments.’ [II, 103] Aspirations towards arbitrary power were fully exposed after the dissolution of Charles I’s third parliament: Here was an end of the old English Constitution, for twelve years. England was now an absolute monarchy; the king’s proclamations and orders of council were the law of the land; the ministers of state sported themselves in the most wanton acts of power; and the religion, laws and liberties of this country lay prostrate and overwhelmed by an inundation of popery and oppression. [II, 199]

Clarendon had rhapsodised about the 1630s as a period when Britain ‘enjoyed the greatest calm, and the fullest measure of felicity, that any people, in any age, for so long time together, have been blessed with, to the wonder and envy of all other parts of Christendom’. [Quoted II, 308] Neal briskly responds: ‘Not a line of this panegyric will bear examination.’ Chapters 4 and 5 of The History of the Puritans paint a very different picture – of religious persecution and political tyranny, of a population crushed by illegal imposts and emigrating in growing numbers, of a state racked by internal divisions while it veered into bankruptcy. ‘Upon the whole,’ Neal says in response to Clarendon, ‘the people of England were so far from enjoying a full measure of felicity, that they

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groaned under a yoke of the heaviest oppression and were prepared to lay hold of any opportunity to assert their liberties.’ [II, 311] Neal is careful to stress over and over again that the civil war was not the result of any active project of the Puritans, either inside or outside parliament. The actions of the Puritans were defensive. How then can Neal explain the radical transformation of the Church once it fell into the hands of the parliamentary forces? The Long Parliament was Puritan but not anti-episcopalian, much less Presbyterian. Neither among the Puritan clergy nor inside parliament in 1641 was there any plan ‘to subvert the hierarchy, and erect the presbyterian government on its ruins’. [II, 472] Only when the parliament was forced to rely on Scottish military support and thus to defer to their ecclesiastical principles, Neal emphasises, was there any support for Presbyterian forms of church government within England. Parliament never accepted it without reservations and qualifications. Once the Scots had gone, Presbyterianism dwindled and was overshadowed in the 1650s by Independency. At the Restoration even Presbyterian divines were generally willing to abandon it altogether for some form of episcopacy. Similarly, in political terms, the parliament is shown by Neal to be responding to the actions of the king and the court. The danger to the constitution originated not, as royalists claimed, with a malignant party inside parliament. It was the actions of the king that brought about the collapse of his rule: first his governing without parliament and outside of the law; and then his threats of force against parliament in 1641 and 1642. If by 1642 the parliament had gone beyond defensive resistance to royal incursions on its privileges and had begun to invade the prerogative, this was, Neal argues, justifiable in the circumstances. Had they dissolved themselves or merely stood by, inactive, and meekly petitioned the king while he got possession of all the arms and artillery of the nation, of the fleet and of major garrisoned fortresses, and while Irish and foreign troops were brought in, then, Neal says, ‘both they and we must in all probability have been buried in the ruins of the liberties of our country’ [608]. By deserting parliament, refusing to discharge his duties and setting up his standard in the north, Charles had in a sense already abdicated. Neal shrewdly draws the parallel with 1688 when, in a similar crisis of authority, a parliament convened without the king’s writ had assumed the authority to rule. Previous concessions had been revoked and promises broken by the king, not least the Petition of Right in 1628. What guarantee was there that more recent concessions would not be revoked and Parliament dismissed sine die, as soon as the king had retrieved the power to do

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so? And then, of course, there was the queen. Charles was unreliable because of another power behind the throne. From the very beginning of Charles’s reign she and her inner circle of foreign Roman Catholics had contrived to raise the royal prerogative above the laws, setting the king up as an absolutist monarch on French lines and restoring Roman Catholicism: the fate of three kingdoms was at her disposal; no place at court or in the army must be disposed of without her approbation; no peace must be made but upon her terms; the Oxford mongrel Parliament, as his majesty calls it, must be dismissed with disgrace, because they voted for peace; the Irish protestants must be abandoned to destruction; and a civil war permitted to continue its ravages throughout England and Scotland, that a popish religion and arbitrary government might be encouraged and upheld. [II, 609]

THE EXECUTION OF CHARLES I

One of the most contentious issues that Neal had to deal with in his third volume was the trial and execution of Charles I. He insists that neither Puritanism itself nor the tenets of any group among the Puritans was responsible for the king’s death. His capture by the army and the subsequent purging of Parliament, Neal says, ‘blew up the whole constitution, and buried king, parliament, and presbytery in its ruins’: This was not their original intention, nor the result of any set of religious principles they embraced, . . . but was a violence resulting from despair, to which they had been driven by a series of disappointments, and a train of mistaken conduct in the royalists and Presbyterians. [III, 396]

Note that Neal is not unsympathetic to the position of the army here. After years of civil war, no settlement seemed in sight. It seemed less and less likely that the king’s policies would change. Whatever concessions he made under duress would be revoked at a later date. The army officers were therefore vulnerable to retaliation. At the same time they had lost faith in Parliament and in the Presbyterians. There was nothing left but the desperate remedy of somehow removing the king. After days of fasting and prayer at their St Albans headquarters, a new course of action was begun: in a kind of despair, and under the influence of a religious frenzy, they entered upon the most desperate measures, resolving to assume the sovereign power into their own hands, to bring the king to justice; to set aside the covenant; and change the government into a commonwealth. [III, 527]

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Neal says nothing to call into question the accuracy of the officers’ perception of the situation. But he is critical of ‘these monstrous resolutions, which were founded, as they alleged, upon self-preservation, though prosecuted by measures subversive not only of the rights of parliament, but of the fundamental laws of society . . .’ [III, 527] The Westminster Assembly of Puritan divines refused to concur in these measures and unanimously called for the release of the king. Refusing an invitation to a conference with a group of leading army officers, they drafted a statement, signed by forty-seven Presbyterian ministers, protesting against recent measures of the army in usurping the privileges of parliament. They declared their equal opposition to the arbitrary and illegal actions of the king and the army. Episcopal divines, Neal says, ‘in order to throw off the king’s misfortunes from themselves, who by their obstinate behaviour had in reality reduced him to the last extremity’, diverted blame on to the Puritan clergy – as their successors continued to do, he adds. Neal has no difficulty in providing further statements, petitions and letters from ministers in London and throughout the country protesting against the trial of the king and subsequently against his sentence and his execution. According to Neal, only two ministers – Hugh Peter and John Goodwin – actively supported the trial and execution of the king. King Charles therefore died by the hands of violence, or by the military sword, assumed and managed in an arbitrary manner by a few desperate officers of the army and their dependants, of sundry denominations as to religion, without any regard to the ancient constitution of their country, or the fundamental laws of society . . . [III, 547]

And he protests against the continuing accusations of Churchmen against Presbyterians in the face of all evidence to the contrary: when the storm was ready to burst on their heads I do not see what men could do more in their circumstances to divert it, than the Presbyterians did; they preached and prayed, and protested against it in the most public manner; many of them resigned their preferments because they would not take the engagement to the new commonwealth; they groaned under all the preceding changes of government, and had a principal share in the restoration of the royal family in the year 1660, without which these anniversary declaimers would never have had an opportunity of pelting them with their ecclesiastical artillery, in the unwarrantable manner they have done. [III, 549]

Nor were the Independents responsible for the execution of Charles. Clarendon and Echard had nothing good to say about the Independents,

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representing them as violent republicans and fanatics. Even Rapin, though he confessed to knowing little of their history, stated that they were ferocious republicans. ‘It is surprising so accurate an historian should take such liberties with men whose principles he was so little acquainted with, as to say, the Independents abhorred monarchy and approved of none but a republican government,’ Neal comments, noting ‘a train of mistakes’ in his History of England on this issue. [III, 147] Rapin, he says, confounds the Independents with the army. No doubt there were Independents in the army who did come to espouse republicanism but there were such men of all religious persuasions. Independent ministers joined with the Presbyterians in publicly protesting against the king’s trial and his death sentence. Independents among the officers of the army were seeking some accommodation with the king until the execution itself. There was nothing in the principles of Independency, Neal repeats, incompatible with monarchy and the ancient constitution. CROMWELL

In his account of Cromwell and the interregnum Neal treads carefully. He is, of course, critical of the unconstitutional nature of the regime: ‘Upon the death of the late king, the legal constitution was dissolved, and all that followed till the restoration of king Charles II was no better than a usurpation under different shapes . . .’ [IV, 1] The House of Commons, purged of one-third of its members, hardly deserved that name, Neal remarks. The new form of government ‘had neither the consent of the people of England, nor of their representatives in a free parliament’. And yet, having insisted on this, Neal had high praise for Cromwell and for many of the policies of successive governments between 1649 and 1658. Though it was unsupported by any other power than that of the army, government was, he says, ‘carried on with the most consummate wisdom, resolution and success’. [IV, 2] This sharp juxtaposing of positive and negative aspects of the regime continues throughout Neal’s account of the interregnum. The Rump Parliament and the Council of State had, he says, ‘raised the credit of the nation to a very high pitch of glory and renown’ and he calls it ‘an assembly famous through all the world for its undertakings, actions and successes’. [IV, 65] Its enemies had been defeated at home and abroad. The country was flourishing economically. At the behest of Cromwell, religious liberty had been permitted and even the recalcitrant Presbyterians had helped moralise the population, establishing public order and public morality. On the one hand ‘the administration was in the hands of

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the ablest men England had beheld for many years’. [IV, 60] But on the other, this Parliament was unconstitutional and illegal. Its eventual dissolution in 1654 was, we are assured, justified. And yet no free elections followed. Neal is restrained in his criticisms of Cromwell, showing the impossible position in which he was placed. There were irreconcilable antagonisms between republicans wanting a commonwealth, Presbyterians seeking a return to 1648 and some form of constitutional monarchy, and cavaliers demanding a restoration of the old regime. The alternatives facing Cromwell were a slide back into civil war or the resumption of authority by the army under his control. In these circumstances, then, Neal cautiously justifies Cromwell’s nominating a new council of state and his own subsequent rise to become Lord Protector: Thus did this wonderful man, by surprising management, supported only by the sword, advance himself to the supreme government of three kingdoms, without consent of parliament or people . . . how he brought the officers into his measures, and supported his sovereignty by an army of enthusiasts, Anabaptists, fifth monarchy men, and republicans, will be the admiration of all posterity. [IV, 75–6]

Much of Neal’s account of the 1650s concerns the Puritans and ecclesiastical affairs, but the wise and liberal religious policies of Cromwell – his commitment to toleration for all Christians sects, his sympathy for Jews, his support for learning and the universities, – are acknowledged. The energy and success of his foreign policy are applauded, especially the ascendancy over such hostile Roman Catholic powers as France and Spain. And Neal praises the general character of the Protectorate: The judges executed their duty according to equity, without partiality or bribery; the laws had their full and free course without impediment or delay; men’s manners were wonderfully reformed, and the protector’s court kept under an exact discipline. Trade flourished, and the arts of peace were cultivated throughout the whole nation; the public money was managed with frugality, and to the best advantage; the army and navy were well paid, and served accordingly. [IV, 171–2]

Cromwell was, Neal says, ‘generous and bountiful’ to all who submitted to his authority and tolerant of all religious groups, including episcopalians, as long as they did not actively plot against the State. But he was ‘a strong enthusiast’ whose religion was not based on ‘rational or solid principles’. Cromwell’s conviction that through prayer he would be able to discover God’s will – that what he felt strongly in prayer was God’s direct communication – is dismissed by Neal as unfounded. So, too, is his

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belief that the common rules of justice did not apply in extraordinary circumstances and that the goodness of a cause can be judged by its success – that in an appeal to the sword the victor is judged by God as in the right. Neal dismisses the charge that Cromwell was a hypocrite. Having to manage several contending parties, a degree of duplicity was sometimes necessary and, says Neal, ‘nothing greatly blameworthy’: ‘Queen Elizabeth’s dissimulation has been extolled, for the very same reason that the protector’s is condemned.’ [IV, 203] As for the argument that he was ambitious and rose to prominence for selfish reasons, Neal suggests that it was circumstances that forced him into the successive positions through which he unwillingly rose to supreme power. Other eighteenth-century commentators were impressed by Cromwell’s meteoric rise, his military successes and his diplomatic prestige. But assessments, Whig and Tory alike, were generally hostile. In Cato’s Letters (1721) Trenchard and Gordon had commented that Cromwell ‘is scarce ever mentioned but with detestation, or thought of but as a monster’.7 Neal was not unique in his positive acclaim for the Lord Protector – though it is significant that among the few positive biographies of the eighteenth century that Blair Worden can point to, two were written by Dissenting ministers: Isaac Kimber and William Harris.8 To write, as Neal did, that while the Lord Protector did wield power ‘no man ever used it to greater public advantage’, was a courageous statement of a minority position. And Neal’s summary remarks are a vindication of Cromwell: he was at the helm in the most stormy and tempestuous season that England ever saw; but by his consummate wisdom and valour, he disconcerted the measures and designs of his enemies, and preserved both himself and the commonwealth from shipwreck. [IV, 204–5]

The confusion that followed the Lord Protector’s death only strengthens the point. The remainder of The History of the Puritans, to the revolution of 1688, is a grim narrative of political repression and political disintegration which makes the interregnum look even more attractive. Neal is dismissive of Richard Cromwell. He is also critical of the army leaders who deposed him and then, by their own disputes and indecision, created the conditions for their own destruction: Thus a few giddy politicians at the head of an army, through ambition, envy, lust of power, or because they knew not what to carve out for themselves, threw the whole kingdom back into confusion, and made way for that restoration they were most afraid of, and which, without their own quarrels,

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and insulting every form of government that had been set up, could not have been accomplished. [IV, 221]

More than the divisions within the army leadership were required, however, to lead from the position of Puritan political ascendancy at the end of the 1650s to their complete defeat and brutal persecution within a few years. General Monck is the anti-hero. Represented by Neal as a cynic and a fool, his intervention was decisive. Without any clear policy or direction, he was manipulated by royalists, with his own consent and to his own material benefit. Charles and his advisers systematically lied in all negotiations leading to the Restoration. And the Presbyterians, pursuing their own selfish interests and refusing to co-operate with the Independents, sacrificed their own power to the royalists until they were finally left defenceless. Thus in 1660 and 1661 in the negotiations around the Savoy Conference ‘the well-meaning Presbyterians’ were, Neal says, ‘making interest with a set of men who were now laughing in their sleeves at the abject condition to which their egregious credulity had reduced them’. Neal’s comment on the self-destruction of the most powerful section of Puritanism balances responsibility between the naivety of the Presbyterians and the cynicism of the royalists: The reader will judge hereafter who were most to blame, the Episcopal party, for breaking through so many solemn vows and protestations; or the Presbyterians, for bringing in the king without a previous treaty, and trusting a set of men whom they knew to be their implacable enemies. I can think of no decent excuse for the former; and the best apology that can be made for the latter is, that most of them lived long enough to see their error and heartily repent it. [IV, 252]

RESTORATION ENGLAND

In the last part of the History of the Puritans, Neal recounts the long travail of the Dissenters in Restoration England – the succession of punitive measures against them passed by the Cavalier parliament in the 1660s, the cynical manipulation of public fears, the imprisonments and massive fines, and the stready erosions of English liberties. The Puritans confronted not one but two enemies. First there was a majority of the bishops and the clergy, supported by the royalist gentry, inside and outside parliament. Bent on revenge, they betrayed every promise they had made at the Restoration: ‘when they were lifted into the saddle, the haste they made to show how little they meant by their promises exceeded the rules of decency as well as honour’, Neal bitterly comments. [IV, iv]

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The Restoration bishops were, by and large, Neal says, ‘old and exasperated, fond of their persecuting principles’. A majority of the clergy were ‘of an angry superstitious spirit’, committed to ‘the slavish doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance’, energetic in enacting every punitive sanction against the Dissenters. A minority within the Church were of a different disposition. But they were largely silent and powerless, until their last-minute intervention in the late 1680s. The Dissenters confronted another, much more insidious enemy: the king, his brother the Duke of York and the papists within their inner circle; in a word, the Court. These concurred with punitive measures against the Puritans, but for a different purpose, Neal argues. Behind Charles II’s apparently erratic swings in policy – on occasion calling for religious toleration and at others actively supporting the most rigorous enactment of penal laws against religious nonconformity – there was a coherent strategy: to maintain and intensify the divisions within the ranks of English Protestantism. For this reason the sword was put into the hands of such magistrates as would inflame the differences, and exasperate their spirits one against the other. Nor were there wanting some hot-headed young clergymen, who ran greedily into the snare, and became the tools of Popery and arbitrary power, till the Protestant religion was expiring . . . [IV, 381]

Behind the Court was an even more insidious political power: the absolutist state of France. ‘The king himself was a known pensioner of Lewis XIV’ [472], Neal states, and refers to a secret treaty with France. French money reinforced moves towards arbitrary government and the restoration of Catholicism and enabled the king to be less dependent on parliament. The fall of Clarendon and his replacement as the king’s favourite by the Duke of Buckingham eased the pressure on Dissenters, who now met more openly, but increasingly found themselves in a dilemma. Charles II’s 1672 Declaration of Indulgence promised to remove some of the worst effects of a decade of hostile legislation and brutal persecution. And yet for Dissenters to accept it was to accede to the legitimacy of the king using the prerogative to overrule Parliament. The price of relief was abandonment of core political values. It was also tying the future of nonconformists to the whims of the Crown rather than to the laws of the land. As Neal comments: ‘The Protestant Nonconformists had no opinion of the dispensing power, and were not forward to accept of liberty in this way; they were sensible the indulgence was not granted out of love for them, nor would continue any longer than it would serve the interest of Popery.’

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[IV, 445] There was much debate in Dissenting circles over the proper response. Many ministers did take out a licence and what Neal calls ‘a cautious and moderate address of thanks’ was forwarded to the king: ‘but all were afraid of the consequences’. [IV, 446] In fact when Parliament was finally reconvened in 1673 the Nonconformists supported, against the Court, the passing of the Test Act. This included themselves as well as Roman Catholics within its terms, but it seemed a price worth paying in the short term to develop an alliance with Parliament against the king. By the late 1670s Parliament’s attitude to the Dissenters had softened. Their situation was no easier, however, because of the enmity of the Court and its acolytes. When in 1680–1 Parliament moved to repeal an obsolete bill from the 1590s which threatened Puritans with banishment or life imprisonment and which some Tories had suggested might be tested in the courts, the king stooped to a trick to avoid giving the bill the royal assent. As Neal wearily comments: Thus the Nonconformists were sawn to pieces between the king, the bishops, and the parliament; when one party was willing to give them relief, the other always stood in the way. The parliament was their enemy for about twelve years, and now they are softened, the king and the court-bishops are inflexible; and his majesty will rather sacrifice the constitution to his despotic will, than exempt them from an old law, which subjected them to banishment and death. [IV, 498]

Again under James II the Dissenters experienced a phase of ferocious persecution. And again they were placed in a dilemma with James II’s sudden change of policy and his Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, published in April 1687. Whatever deep suspicions of James’s intentions the Dissenters had, formal addresses of thanks were sent in to the king from all sections of religious Dissent. Some of these ‘addressed his majesty in higher strains than some of their elder and more cautious ministers approved’ and Churchmen subsequently used these addresses as a stick with which to beat the Dissenters. Neal attempts to minimise the significance of these addresses and to remove any suspicion that Dissenters abandoned their political principles at this juncture. The Glorious Revolution was, Neal says, ‘a wonderful revolution’ not least because it was ‘effected with little or no effusion of blood’. But The History of the Puritans focuses especially on the divisive role of the High Church clergy and their friends. They played, he says, an ‘inconsistent and dishonourable part’ in the whole business. They drew James into the crisis. But their devotion to the divine right of kings lasted only until this particular king began to invade their own ecclesiastical power and

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privileges. It was their threats to separate in large numbers from a reformed Church of England that led to the abandonment of former promises of a comprehension and an unrestricted toleration for Dissenters. Betrayed by the Latitudinarians within the Church in order to conciliate their shared High-Church enemies, the Dissenters were, Neal protests, ‘sold to the Jacobites, by the timidity of their real friends . . .’ An Act of Toleration was passed which removed some of the legislation against them but they remained unexcepted from the Test and Corporation Acts and excluded from the universities. Indeed, had it been left to the High Church Tories, there would have been no Act of Toleration and a rapid return to the severities of the Stuart regime. All the promises of two or three years before were broken: such was the ungrateful return that these stubborn churchmen made to those who assisted them in their distress! For it ought to stand upon record, that the church of England had been twice rescued from the most imminent danger, by men for whose satisfaction they would not move a pin or abate a ceremony; first in the year 1660, when the Presbyterians restored the king and constitution without making any terms for themselves; and now again at the Revolution, when the church fled for succour to a Presbyterian prince, and was delivered by an army of fourteen thousand Hollanders, of the same principles with the English Dissenters . . . [IV, 620]

On this bitter, disappointed note The History of the Puritans draws to a close. There are no great fanfares for the wonders of the Revolution settlement, merely a jaundiced recognition that 1688 had resolved nothing. The Tories and the High-Church clergy shared in political power under William while conspiring against him. They benefited from the Glorious Revolution while seeking to undermine it and they remained bitter enemies of the Dissenters. ‘Nor have these gentlemen ceased to discover their enmity to the Dissenters since that time, as often as the power has been in their hands.’ [IV, 624] After the accession of Anne the Act of Toleration was ‘farther straitened’. These measures were subsequently repealed by George I who was, Neal says, ‘fully satisfied that these hardships were brought upon the Dissenters for their steady adherence to the Protestant succession in his illustrious house, against a tory and jacobite ministry, who were paving the way for a Popish pretender . . .’ [IV, 625] And, with a brief reference to the continuing activities of many of the ejected ministers under William and Mary, over 800,000 words of The History of the Puritans ends.

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LIBERTY, MORALITY AND POPERY

The central narrative of The History of the Puritans is of an epic war across the centuries: a war between Roman Catholics and Puritans for the soul of the Church of England and thus for the soul of the English State. Under successive Stuart monarchs the outcome remained uncertain and, despite the Revolution and the Hanoverian succession, the decision still remained open in the 1730s. In his preface to the first volume Neal acknowledged, in terms that could be construed as faintly ironic, that the Church of England was ‘as free from persecuting principles as any establishment in Europe’. But he subjects to critical scrutiny some recent pronouncements by Richard Smalbroke, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, about ‘the just and reasonable bounds’ of civil and religious liberty. Smalbroke had proposed in fairly standard terms that since government could not subsist without the support of religion, and since religion in the form of an established church is part of the state, therefore any attack on the church is a threat to political order and will ‘naturally tend to the subversion of the whole constitution’. Here the bishop seems to suppose that only one kind of church supports government. In fact, Neal says, all churches do so, and it is the duty of the civil magistrate to protect all loyal subjects in the peaceful exercise of their religion. But the bishop sanctioned the right of government to penalise anyone who did not conform to a single legitimate state church as an enemy of the state. This was in effect, Neal says, to oppose the Protestant Reformation and to justify contemporary popery across Europe: For by this reasoning our first reformers must be condemned; and if a subject of France, or the ecclesiastical state, should at this time write against the usurped power of the pope; or expose the absurdities of transubstantiation, adoration of the host, worshipping of images, &c. it would be laudable for the powers of those countries to send the writer to the galleys, or shut him up in a dungeon, as a disturber of the peace, because Popery is supported by law, and is a very considerable part of their constitution. [I, xii]

Neal draws the ‘just and reasonable bounds’ of civil and religious liberty considerably wider than the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, but there were bounds nevertheless. Popery remained outside the limits of religious and civil liberty. For Neal the elective affinities of popery to absolute monarchy in the political sphere continued to threaten English and Protestant liberties. The Romish Communion, he said in a sermon at Salter’s Hall in January 1735, deprives the individual of liberty and demands a blind and implicit obedience to the sovereign will of the pope.

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It was through the Reformation that the liberties of England grew up, and the survival of these liberties depends upon Protestant ascendancy. James II’s brief reign was, he says, an example of what inevitably occurs when a Roman Catholic occupies the throne of England: ‘Our laws were presently suspended, our charters taken from us, and our whole constitution subverted: the knife was then at our throats, and the only choice that seemed left, was to turn or burn.’ The conclusion Neal drew from this was that ‘an open toleration of the Popish religion is inconsistent with the safety of a free people and a Protestant government’.9 Far be it from Protestant Dissenters to plead for persecution or sanguinary laws, or even negative discouragements for religious principles not subversive of the foundations of society and civil government. Every faithful subject ought to be protected in his religious as well as civil rights, but if men’s religion teaches them rebellion; and every convert to popery is by principle an enemy to the constitution of his country, and a friend to the Pretender to his Majesty’s crown and dignity; surely the government may preserve itself.10

The anti-constitutional nature of Roman Catholicism was, as we have seen, repeatedly emphasised throughout The History of the Puritans. Nevertheless, the question of penal laws against any religious grouping, even the Catholics, is a troubling one for Neal. For a new generation of Dissenters hostile to any form of doctrinal subscription, the original sin of the Puritans was intolerance. They were at times as hostile to liberty of conscience as the Churchmen they opposed. In their contests under Elizabeth, Neal says: ‘Neither Party were for admitting that Liberty of Conscience, and Freedom of profession, which is every Man’s Right, as far as he is consistent with the peace of Government.’ [I, 147] Or again, he says of the Elizabethan Puritans: ‘Their notions of the civil and religious rights of mankind were narrow and confused, and derived too much from the theocracy of the Jews, which was now at an end.’ [I, 467] It was the tragic failure of the Presbyterians to accept liberty of conscience in the 1640s which led to the failure of the moderate parliamentary cause and to army rule, to the execution of the king, to the unconstitutional governments of the interregnum and, ultimately, to the unravelling of ‘the Good Old Cause’ by the end of the 1650s. CORRUPTION VERSUS VIRTUE

The dialectic of Roman Catholic versus Protestant, absolutism versus the liberty of the individual and the rule of law in The History of the Puritans was also a moral dialectic of corruption versus virtue which was, in turn,

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rooted in contending social groups. Puritanism was not just allied with political liberty but also with a strict social morality. On the one side there were was the corruption and luxury of courts, on the other the godly Puritan family with its commitment to the Protestant virtues. The Elizabethan Puritans were, Neal says, ‘the most pious and devout people in the land’. They attended church twice each Sunday and had family devotions each weekday, too: They were circumspect as to all the excesses of eating, drinking, apparel, and lawful diversions, being frugal in housekeeping, industrious in their particular callings, honest and exact in their dealings, and solicitous to give to every one his own. These were the people who were branded with the name of Precisians, Puritans, Schismatics, enemies to God and their country, and throughout the course of this reign underwent cruel mockings, bonds, and imprisonment. [I, 467–8]

The depravity of the Stuart Court is set against the severe morals of the Puritans. Neal emphasises the profound corruption of James I who gave himself up ‘to luxury and ease and all kinds of licentiousness’. He was frequently drunk. ‘His language was obscene, and his actions very often lewd and indecent.’ (II, 129) It was the profuseness of his gifts to beautiful youths and needy courtiers, his ‘indolent and voluptuous life’, that forced the king into using arbitrary and illegal forms of taxation to maintain his bloated retinue. And this was a crucial factor in the disintegration of the regime his son inherited: By these means he lost the hearts of his people, which all his kingcraft could never recover, and laid the foundation of those calamities, that in the next reign threw church and state into such convulsions, as threatened their final ruin. [II, 86]

By contrast, in the Puritan-dominated City of London at the opening of the Civil War the Sabbath was so strictly maintained, Neal says, that you could walk its streets on a Sunday evening ‘without seeing an idle person, or hearing any thing but the voice of prayer or praise from churches and private houses’. [II, 505] What he terms ‘the reformation of manners’ was no less remarkable. Gaming houses and brothels were not to be found on the streets of the City nor was drunkenness, swearing or other kinds of debauchery. Most of the officers and many of the soldiers in the parliamentary army were godly men, conscious that they were fighting in the cause of Protestantism. Disorder of any kind was rigorously punished and the men were regularly paid. It was the commitment and discipline of the

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Puritan army which made them a more formidable fighting force than its Royalist enemy: While the royal army was little better than a company of banditti, or public robbers, the parliament’s were kept under the strictest discipline, and grew up, for the most part, into great diligence and sobriety, which says Lord Clarendon, begot courage and resolution in them, and notable dexterity in achievements and exercises. [III, 92]

Here God’s providence, political liberty, and Protestant religion are aligned around the respectable propertied middle class of seventeenthcentury England: ‘the nobility and gentry, with their dependants, being chiefly with the king; the merchants, tradesmen, substantial farmers, and in general the middle ranks of people, siding with the parliament.’ [II, 515] The brief reign of the Saints in the 1650s has, Neal protests, been distorted by prejudiced historians. Puritan preachers have been portrayed as ignorant fanatics and enemies to learning. Puritan laity have been stigmatised as hypocrites and ‘their looks, their dress and their behaviour, have been represented in the most odious colours’. They may at times have been too strict and too precise in unimportant matters, but Neal challenges these historians ‘to produce any period of time since the Reformation, wherein there was less open profaneness and impiety, and more of the spirit as well as appearance of religion’. Though the constitution was destroyed and the government was illegal, ‘better laws were never made against vice or more vigorously executed’: The dress and conversation of people were sober and virtuous, and their manner of living remarkably frugal: there was hardly a single bankruptcy to be heard of in a year; and in such a case the bankrupt had a mark of infamy upon him that he could never wipe off. Drunkenness, fornication, profane swearing, and every kind of debauchery, were justly deemed infamous, and universally discountenanced. [IV, 246]

Puritan clergymen were active in preaching and in catechising youth. Magistrates were energetic in suppressing all kinds of games, stage plays and abuses in public houses. The Lord’s Day was rigorously observed. Neal comments: ‘if such a reformation of manners had obtained under a legal administration, they would have deserved the character of the best of times’. [IV, 246]11 The Restoration was the moral and social reverse of this Puritan order. As Neal pointedly notes, ‘when the legal constitution was restored, there returned with it a torrent of debauchery and wickedness’. The laws

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against vice were declared null and void. Godly magistrates were replaced. And licentiousness expanded downwards from the apex of the social order where the king devoted himself to ‘his pleasures’ and ‘an avowed course of lewdness’: Nothing was to be seen at court but feasting, hard drinking, revelling, and amorous intrigues, which engendered the most enormous vices. From court the contagion spread like wildfire among the people, insomuch that men threw off the very profession of virtue and piety, under colour of drinking the king’s health; all kinds of old cavalier rioting and debauchery revived . . . [IV, 247]

To appear serious and religious in Restoration England was to attract accusations of being a fanatic, hence a Puritan, and hence a rebel. In one sharp juxtaposition, Neal observes that the Conventicle Acts made even family prayers dangerous because it could be construed by a hostile magistrate as a ‘conventicle’ and lead to imprisonment: ‘And while conscientious people were thus oppressed, the common people gave themselves up to drunkenness, profane swearing, gaming, lewdness, and all kinds of debauchery, which brought down the judgments of heaven upon the nation.’ [IV, 360] NEAL, MADDOX AND THE TUDOR CHURCH

Inevitably any history of the English Puritans and their Dissenting successors had immediate political ramifications. It was political because it challenged dominant historical narratives which themselves served to legitimate the existing establishment in Church and State. Neal was aware of the dangers of a certain kind of political reading of The History of the Puritans. He did not, he says, intend to exacerbate differences among Protestants in England. He recommended to Dissenting readers instead the principles of the New Testament: while they are reading the heavy and grievous sufferings of their ancestors from ecclesiastical commissions, spiritual courts, and penal laws, for conscience’s sake, they may be excited to an humble adoration of Divine Providence, which has delivered them so far from the yoke of oppression; to a detestation of all persecuting principles; and to a loyal and dutiful behaviour to the best of kings, under whose mild and just government they are secure of their civil and religious liberties. [I, xv]

But this was wishful thinking. It was surely impossible for any contemporary reader to extricate The History of the Puritans from the political disputes which raged around it throughout the 1730s. Each of its four

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volumes was published in a context of intense controversy. The first volume appeared in the spring of 1732 as the Dissenters were preparing for an application to Parliament for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. There were several meetings of Dissenters in London in November 1732, one of them said to number between 1,000 and 1,200 and described as ‘by far the greatest that had ever been held by the Dissenters.’12 Neal’s second volume was published in the spring of 1733 in the middle of a turbulent public debate about the Test and Corporation Acts – a debate which involved not just the legal status of Dissenters but the political and religious history of the previous century. Sermons, pamphlets and newspaper articles poured from the press as dignitaries of the Church, Dissenting ministers and political hacks provided arguments for and against the retention of these seventeenth-century statutes. In deference to Walpole’s government, the Dissenters did not push their demands in the run-up to the general election of 1734, otherwise the very stability of the Hanoverian state would have been threatened. But, in 1735, despite further discouragement from Walpole, they did, and the third volume of The History of the Puritans was published at the end of the year. A motion for repeal was defeated in the Commons in March 1736, after a debate ‘of considerable length’, by 251 votes to 123. Neal’s final volume appeared in the spring of 1738 during a renewed Dissenting campaign. A further motion for repeal of anti-Dissenting legislation was defeated in March 1739 – this time by 188 votes to 89. In this political context each of Neal’s volumes was an intervention in a wider debate. In his first volume Neal had traduced the Tudor Church, its head – Queen Elizabeth – and some of its leading dignitaries. It had been represented as a semi-papist institution which had persecuted genuine Protestants. Past and present were joined: similar mistaken principles in ecclesiastical policy characterised the treatment of the Puritans under Elizabeth and of the Dissenters under George II. In the context of a resurgent Dissenting challenge, and in the run-up to a general election, the Church of England needed to defend itself. One anonymous Churchman provided a brief and measured critique of Neal’s first volume: ‘partly to hinder the Impressions, which the Reading of your Book might make, to the Disadvantage of our Ecclesiastical Constitution and the Framers and Maintainers of it’.13 Another dignitary of the Church, Thomas Sherlock, defended the Test Act, disputing not just Dissenting claims generally but quite specific points in Neal’s ‘Preface’ to the first volume of The History of the Puritans. Inevitably, he concluded by summoning up the ghosts of the interregnum. Behind the mask of liberality and tolerance of the

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Dissenters of the 1730s Sherlock detected the autocratic faces of their grandfathers: Our Histories will not suffer us to forget the Conduct of the Presbyterians in the Reign of King Charles the First (whom we find under Power, complaining loudly of Persecution on Account of Religion, and, in Power, exerting the utmost Zeal against granting so much as a Toleration to any Sect or Persuasion); nor the Conduct of the Independents in the same Reign, who fled from Persecution in Old England, and became the most rigid Persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists, as well as those of the Episcopal Persuasion, in New England.14

Church authorities encouraged a more detailed refutation of Neal’s first volume. In 1733 there appeared A Vindication of the Government, Doctrine and Worship of the Church of England, by Isaac Maddox, a former Dissenter and an acolyte of Gibson.15 It was the product of a concerted effort by Churchmen. One of the most energetic anti-Dissenting polemicists of the period, Zachary Grey, made a contribution through some notes and through the loan of books. The Bishop of London wrote thanking him: It is a point in which the honour of our Established Church is nearly concerned, and I heartily thank you for the assistance you so readily give, towards the removing that reproach which he has brought upon it.16

Maddox’s book which, at over 360 pages, was almost as long as the first volume of The History of the Puritans, challenged Neal on several grounds: the book was ill-timed and unnecessarily dredged up a past that was better forgotten; it presented a distorted picture of the Church of England under Elizabeth; it exemplified the intolerance and political fanaticism of the Puritans and, by implication, their Dissenting posterity of the 1730s; and finally, as a work of historical scholarship it was full of errors. ‘ ’Tis natural for a Protestant to wish a Veil drawn over such a Scene as this, so warm and hurtful a Contestation for so small a matter.’17 For Maddox, Neal’s history of the conflicts within the sixteenth-century Church could only divide contemporary English Protestants and give comfort to their Catholic enemies. Moreover, he claims, Neal’s account was distorted. Maddox argues that Elizabeth came to the throne in very difficult circumstances. Success in maintaining her regime, and the growth of a Protestant Church of England, required very gradual change and a degree of tactical compromise. Retention of the habits and of certain rituals and ceremonies were, Maddox argues, ‘prudent measures’.

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They kept many papists inside the Church of England so that they could be re-educated to abandon idolatrous forms of worship and false ideas. Any attempt to impose a strict Calvinism in public worship would have been a political disaster. It would have alienated large swathes of the population who were willing to accept slow and limited moves towards Protestantism, and would have risked provoking a major revolt. Any Church policy will inevitably alienate and exclude some individuals because men think differently. A government can be criticised only for failing to set up the most catholic and comprehensive scheme possible in that place at that particular time. Maddox draws a contrast between the ‘narrow spirit’ of puritan discipline and ‘the charitable Catholick Temper’ of the Elizabethan Church which enabled it to absorb ‘the moderate men of all Persuasions’.[110] The next question follows: how were the excluded treated by the authorities? Anyone who closely examines Elizabeth’s policy towards the Puritans will, he says: find a further confirmation that the Penal laws were not intended against conscientious and quiet Men, but were thought a necessary Means to secure the publick Welfare, and restrain those violent Proceedings, which threatened both the Ecclesiastical and Civil Parts of the Constitution. [149]

According to Neal, the Puritans acted entirely on grounds of conscience and principle, and always peacefully. ‘We hear of none but pious, worthy, painful, faithful, eminent, godly Men who engaged on that side . . .,’ Maddox comments. [194] The government turned a blind eye, whenever possible, to Puritan activities and Maddox shows the various strategies used by government to avoid their direct suppression. When faced by noisy refusals and public defiance which provoked divisions in the nation, however, the authorities were unwillingly compelled to enforce uniformity. But, he argues, Puritans were tried and punished only insofar as their words and their actions threatened the peace and safety of the State. Maddox questioned Neal’s credentials as a historian. Much of the latter’s claims for the innocence of these Puritan preachers was based on unexplained manuscript sources, rather than on Council Books, Examinations and Depositions of Witnesses before the Star Chamber, the High Commission and other public courts, and other properly authorised official sources. Here and elsewhere Neal exploits petitions, representations and complaints made out of court, often in private, and often after the trial was over. In other words, he is charged with using the self-serving testimony of offenders, often after they have been found guilty in a court of law. ‘Great abatements must be made when such Papers as these,

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especially at this Distance of Time, are brought in evidence against the publick justice of the Nation,’ Maddox warns. [191–2] To undermine further Neal’s authority as a historian and to weaken the force of The History of the Puritans, errors of fact and misquotations were listed in an appendix of no less than sixty-five pages. Neal’s readers will be more sceptical, Maddox says, when they note that ‘his chief Mistakes are in one strain, viz to blacken the Establishment, and to heighten the Character of those who opposed it’. [297] It was not difficult to see the implications of Maddox’s historical account of the Elizabethan Church and its Puritan critics for contemporary disputes about the Test and Corporation Acts. If the Establishment was founded, as we have seen upon a Catholic and comprehensive Bottom; if it took in the greatest Number of English Subjects; and was the best Medium between foreign Protestants of various Persuasions; those that would not comply with such a Scheme, should only blame themselves if they lost the Advantages of it. [150]

Maddox was talking about sixteenth-century Puritans. No reader in the 1730s would have missed the direct correlation with eighteenth-century Dissenters, here and throughout his Vindication of the Government, Doctrine and Worship of the Church of England. The terms of Communion within the Church of England under the Hanoverians, as under Elizabeth, were wide enough to incorporate any but the most bloodyminded Dissenter. Then, as now, such laws existed only to exclude those who refused to accept these generous terms. Far from being persecutory, they were a prudent safeguard for civil and political peace. In 1733 the first volume of The History of the Puritans had become one focus in the noisy controversies surrounding repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. Neal was therefore compelled to reply to his anonymous critic. His response to Maddox’s questioning of his credentials as a historian was to note that errors were inevitable in any substantial work of history. Wharton had filled three sheets with the errors in one of Strype’s historical works without questioning the value of the work or the credit of the historian. Neal says he would have been happy to receive from his clerical critics details of specific errors in the first volume of The History of the Puritans and to correct them in any subsequent edition. But, of course, his critics are not interested in contributing to a broadening of historical knowledge. Their intent was to damn the work as a whole, root and branch, by any means available. Mistakes of detail, Neal claims, are of minor significance. ‘The principal Facts are uncontested, and must be so as long as there are any Records of those Times

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remaining’. 18 In a lengthy appendix Neal endorsed some errors that Maddox had pointed out and added further corrections of his own. He also defended other points where his account had been challenged. And he went further, catching out Maddox himself in a number of errors of fact and limited or inadequate use of sixteenth-century sources: ‘for surely no man ever set up for a censor and critick upon a more slender bottom’. [68] On the larger issues Neal reaffirmed his positions. He responded to the charge that it was better to leave this history ‘buried in Oblivion’. The Catholics had their histories recounting their suffering under the Reformation. The established Church had its histories – Heylin, Fuller, Burnet, Collier, Strype – recounting the sufferings of Protestant Churchmen. Why then should the Puritans not be able to tell their story? ‘Let all Parties be heard, and the World judge how far each have contributed to those wounds of the Church which are still bleeding . . .’ [4] Neal is particularly irritated by Maddox’s insinuations that he, like the sixteenth-century Puritans, supported the imposition of a single Genevastyle ecclesiastical polity. He can demonstrate that in the pages of his History he did not justify all of the principles or the practices of Tudor Puritans. In some respects their views were as intolerant as those of Elizabeth and her Church hierarchy, as he had made explicit. In fact he quotes himself: ‘Neither Party were for admitting that Liberty of Conscience, and Freedom of Profession, which is every Man’s Right, as far as is consistent with the Peace of the Government.’ [38] That the Puritans had limited views of religious liberty does not justify their repression when they were guilty neither of sedition nor of rebellion. And Neal disputes Maddox’s claims for the tolerance of Elizabeth’s regime. Admittedly a minority of Puritans did lose patience after twenty or thirty years of frustrated campaigning for reformation of the Church. They attacked the Court and the bishops in a manner which was, Neal grants, ‘rude and disrespectful’. Far from being representative, this minority was condemned by a majority of the Puritans. And even this minority never conspired against the queen or her government: In a word, the Puritans were a pious, zealous, and well-meaning People, sound Protestants, and faithful Subjects to the Queen and State, though of narrow and mistaken Principles in some Things. [67]

Finally, Neal reasserts his criticisms of Elizabeth despite her canonical status in which she ‘stands so very high in the English annals’: he apprehends that he has shewn, that though her Majesty was a Protestant, she inclined more to Popery than Puritanism; that she countenanced the

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Persecution of good Men throughout the greater Part of her long Reign, and had a much greater Regard for the external Pomp and Ceremony of Worship, than for the Propagation of true Piety and Christian knowledge. [13]

Henry Hallam, the most important Whig historian of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, was even-handed in his assessment of these exchanges between Neal and Maddox. The latter is a ‘useful corrective’ to The History of the Puritans, but Neal responded with ‘tolerable success’: Both, however, were like most controversialists, prejudiced men, loving the interests of their respective factions better than truth, and not very scrupulous about misrepresenting an adversary. But Neal had got rid of the intolerant spirit of the puritans, while Maddox labours to justify every act of Whitgift and Parker.19

The History of the Puritans was not intended merely as a short-term intervention in this political dispute of the 1730s. It was inevitably shaped by these noisy public disputes, however, not least because they raised very specific historical questions: about why the Test and Corporation Acts were passed in the first place, about why they were not repealed at the Revolution, and about the legitimacy of contemporary justifications for their retention. These questions necessarily gravitated to bigger historical questions about Puritan responsibility for the Civil War and the execution of Charles I, about who could claim credit for the Restoration and the Revolution, about the correct interpretation of the Act of Toleration, and about the historical record of the Church in terms of civil and political liberties. The debate about the Test Acts in the 1730s was about contending interpretations of Tudor and Stuart history. On the one side, Churchmen conjured up fears of ‘enthusiasm’ and images of fanatics overturning Church and State again. In an anonymous pamphlet, Edmund Gibson, Whig Bishop of London and confidant to Walpole, charged that many of those behind the Dissenting campaign aimed at the very existence of the Church of England. And he did not scruple to insinuate that nothing less than civil war would follow from any attempt to unravel what was settled at the Revolution in 1688: We have had long Experience of the good Effects of what was then settled; and one may venture to foretell, without the Spirit of Prophecy, that whenever that Foundation is altered, . . . the Peace of this Country is at an end.20

Subsequent volumes of the History of the Puritans were each subjected to lengthy replies by Zachary Grey, a Churchman who made a career out of prolix polemics against Dissenters. His four volumes of

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criticisms of Neal’s History consisted of hundreds of pages of quotations from various primary and secondary sources, rebutting particular points.21 Neal never replied. This could be ascribed to years of ill health until his death in 1743. His silence, however, may have come from a sensible recognition that an endless debate with Grey over minutiae served no useful purpose. CONCLUSION

The Dissenters remained in the early eighteenth century a complex and disconnected set of groups and congregations. Their histories were as diverse as their theological tenets. Calamy’s Continuation of 1727 had been alert to the problems of bridging generational differences within Dissent and rebuilding links between the very different worlds of Restoration and Hanoverian Dissent. His general perspective was inclusive of Dissent as a whole but his focus as a historian was largely restricted to those Dissenters who traced their origins back to the Presbyterians and to the Great Ejection of 1662. Neal’s History of the Puritans has to be alert to a different set of problems, concerned with inclusions and exclusions. Acknowledging the diversity of Hanoverian Dissent, his volumes needed to avoid divisive issues among a Dissenting readership unable to find a common identity on theological grounds or, for that matter, on political grounds. Theological differences, especially the bitter divisions within the ranks of late seventeenth-century Dissent, had to be minimised. Political differences, especially perhaps the subversive political character of at least some sections of Restoration Dissent, had to be forgotten. These help to explain the attenuation of the political in The History of the Puritans. Throughout its pages, insofar as the Puritans and the Dissenters were political, it was defensive. Puritans were not campaigning for change. It was the enemies of liberty who were the innovators. From Elizabeth, through each of the Stuarts, it was the Crown, the Court and the Church hierarchy which were actively creating new forms of oppressive power. For instance, while the Puritans under James I did resist arbitrary power in Church and State, they were not in any way, Neal insists, actively subversive: the Puritans were the king’s faithful subjects; that they complied to the utmost limit of their consciences, and that when they could not obey, they were content to suffer. Here are no principles inconsistent with the public safety; no marks of heresy, impiety, or sedition . . . [II, 62]

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For Neal the Puritan and the post-Restoration Nonconformist had to be depoliticised, becoming a shadowy and rather idealised figure, a victim and a martyr but never an active political agent. Even so, Neal does draw some lines demarcating legitimate from illegitimate forms of Dissent. The ‘we’ of legitimate Dissent in the 1730s has theological, political and social boundaries. Some refugees from Germany during the 1540s are described as anabaptists ‘who, besides the principle of adult baptism, held several wild opinions about the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, and the person of Christ’. [I, 48–9] Neal is generally more conciliatory in commenting on the Baptists. Nevertheless his anxieties about radical sectaries disturbing social order and challenging the intellectual authority of their superiors run through his account of the seventeenth century, with its clear implications for artisan Baptists in Hanoverian England. One of them, the Baptists’ own historian, Thomas Crosby, grouched about Neal’s misrepresentations: many, even of the learned, and so late an author as Mr Neal, from whom we might have looked for more Christian treatment, have made it their business to represent the Anabaptists, as they are pleased in contempt to stile them, in odious colours, and to write many bitter things, even notorious falsehoods concerning them, nay, to fasten doctrines upon them which they never approved . . .22

In his account of the more radical Puritan sects which began to emerge out of the divisions and uncertainties of the Parliamentary forces from the mid-1640s, Neal’s patrician distaste is explicit: Now learning, good sense and the rational interpretation of Scripture, began to be cried down, and every bold pretender to divine inspiration was preferred to the most grave and sober divines of the age; some advanced themselves into the rank of prophets, and others uttered all such crude and undigested absurdities as came first into their minds, calling them the dictates of the Spirit within them; by which the public peace was frequently disturbed, and great numbers of ignorant people led into the belief of the most dangerous errors. [III, 310]

Neal’s account in The History of the Puritans of the origin and early history of the Quakers is unfriendly. ‘It cannot be expected that such an unsettled People should have an uniform System of rational Principles,’ Neal haughtily pronounces and represents the early Quakers as uneducated, devoid of coherent principles, antisocial in their public behaviour and inculcating no secure set of moral values. Neal’s concluding remarks even endorse the punitive measures of the authorities against these fellow Dissenters:

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the Disturbances they gave to the publick Religion for a Course of many Years was so insufferable, that the Magistrates could not avoid punishing them as Disturbers of the Peace; though of late Years they are become a more sober and inoffensive People; and by the Wisdom of their Managers, have formed themselves into a Sort of Body politick. [IV, 41]

If the histories of Neal, and Calamy before him, were not inclusive of every sector of religious Dissent in eighteenth-century England, they nevertheless represented a common experience which crossed all sections of religious Dissent. Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists and Quakers experienced the appalling repression of the Restoration period and shared a common distrust of sections of the Church of England and of the State which legalised its authority. Neal’s History of the Puritans provided a strong defence of the political record of their Puritan forebears throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It also provided a clear political target – popery, which infected the Church of England with its superstitions and infected the State with its despotic controls over liberty of conscience. NOTES 1 C. Robbins, The English Commonwealthman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 240. 2 Daniel Neal, The History of the Puritans; or, Protestant Nonconformists . . ., 1 (1732), 2 (1733), 3 (1736), 4 (1738). Subsequent references to volume and page are given in parentheses within the text. 3 Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets (Everyman, n. d.) 2, p. 296. 4 J. L. Mosheim, An Ecclesiastical History, Antient and Modern, from the Birth of Christ to the Beginning of the Present Century . . ., trans. Archibald Maclaine, 4 (1768), p. 90. 5 James Peirce, A Vindication of the Dissenters: in Answer to Dr William Nichol’s Defence of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England . . . (2nd ed., 1718), p. 43. 6 John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century . . . 6 vols (1812) 2, p. 540n. 7 J. Trenchard and T. Gordon, Cato’s Letters: or, Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, And Other Important Subjects [1755], ed. R. Hamowy (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1995) 1, p. 330. 8 B. Worden, Roundhead Reputations, p. 224. 9 Daniel Neal, The Supremacy of St. Peter and the Bishops of Rome his Successors: Consider’d in a Sermon preached at Salters Hall, January 23rd, 1734–5 in Sermons Against Popery Preached at Salter’s Hall in the Year 1735, 2 vols (1735) 1, p. 36.

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10 Ibid., p. 37. 11 Neal’s picture is somewhat idealised, of course. See Derek Hirst, ‘The Failure of Godly Rule in the English Republic’, Past & Present, 132 (August 1991). 12 A Narrative of the Procedings of the Protestant Dissenters of the Three Denominations, Relating to the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, From the Year 1731, to the present Time. Addressed to the Dissenters (1734) p. 16. 13 A. B., An Expostulatory Letter to Mr Daniel Neal, Upon Occasion of his Publishing the History of the Puritans or Non-Conformists (1732), p. 29. 14 [Thomas Sherlock], The History of the Test Act: In which the Mistakes in some late Writings against it are rectified and the importance of it to the Church explain’d (1732), pp. 25–6. 15 Maddox (b. 1697) was orphaned young, educated at a charity school in London and apprenticed to a pastry cook before being sent to college at Edinburgh by the Dissenters’ Fund. He subsequently conformed and through the patronage of Gibson was educated at Queen’s College, Cambridge. He was, at the time of writing, domestic chaplain to Waddington, Bishop of Chichester, whose niece he married. His attack on Neal helped Maddox’s rapid rise up the church hierarchy. Within three years he was made Bishop of St Asaph and in 1743 became Bishop of Worcester. See ODNB. 16 John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, 2, p. 540n. The date given at the end of this reprinted letter, 9 September 1736, is clearly an error. Gibson is referring here to Maddox’s reply to Neal’s first volume of The History of the Puritans. This latter was published in the spring of 1732. The second volume, which Gibson in this letter has heard is in progress and expects to be published ‘in the winter’, in fact appeared in the spring of 1733. Thus, 9 September 1732 is a plausible date for this letter. 17 [Isaac Maddox] A Vindication of the Government, Doctrine and Worship of the Church of England, Established in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth: Against the Injurious Reflections of Mr Neale, in his late History of the Puritans (1733), p.6. Subsequent references to this book are given in parentheses within the text. 18 Daniel Neal, A Review of the Principal Facts Objected to in the First Volume of the History of the Puritans, By the Author of the Vindication of the Government, Doctrine and Worship, of the Church of England, established in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (1734), p. 7. Again, subsequent references are given in parentheses within the text. 19 Henry Hallam, The Constitutional History of England . . ., 3 vols (1862) 1, p. 209n. 20 [Edmund Gibson] The Dispute Adjusted, About the Proper Time of Applying for a Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts: By Shewing, That No Time is Proper (1732), p. 18. 21 Zachary Grey, An impartial examination of the second volume of Mr. Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans . . . (1736); An impartial examination of the

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third volume of Mr. Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans . . . (1737); An impartial examination of the fourth volume of Mr. Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans . . . (1739); A review of Mr. Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans. With a postscript . . . (Cambridge, 1744). 22 T. Crosby, The History of the English Baptists, from the reformation to the beginning of the reign of King George I, 4 vols (London, 1738) 1, n.p.

3 Enthusiasts, Puritans and Politics: David Hume’s History of England

David Hume’s History of England was the most important and widely read history of the English polity published in the eighteenth century.1 One of its aims was to challenge the kinds of political memory that circulated everywhere in Hanoverian England – in other words, to exorcise Stuart and Cromwellian ghosts, to delegitimise the political memories of Whigs, Tories and Jacobites, of Churchmen and Dissenters, finally to bury the dead. The agenda for The History of England was sketched out in a number of Hume’s essays of the 1740s. Imagine, Hume says, a Member of Parliament in the reign of William or Queen Anne reflecting on the disposition of the political parties towards the succession to the throne, ‘weighing, with impartiality, the advantages and disadvantages on each side’.2 These pros and cons are succinctly rehearsed over the next few pages of this 1748 essay ‘Of the Protestant Succession’. And the conclusion? ‘What party an impartial patriot, in the reign of King William or Queen Anne, would have chosen amidst these opposite views, may perhaps to some appear hard to determine.’3 Both parties had some right on their side. Neither of them was entirely right. Hume summarily cuts the knot. The fact is that the House of Hanover was called to the succession almost fifty years ago: They have, since their accession, displayed, in all their actions, the utmost mildness, equity, and regard to the laws of the constitution. Our own ministers, our own parliaments, ourselves, have governed us; and if aught ill has befallen us, we can only blame fortune or ourselves.4

Whatever choice was made by an ‘impartial patriot’ in 1714 – whether to support the accession of George I or of James III – was made on the basis of fallible judgements in a particular and confusing set of circumstances. Through an act of sympathetic imagination it is possible to understand why an ‘impartial patriot’ might have given his cautious support to a restoration of the Stuarts after the death of either William or Anne. But the crucial point is that, a half century later, these complex and confusing circumstances no longer exist. The past is now more

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or less irrelevant. What matters in terms of any political practice is the present. In this, and in other essays, we can see Hume developing a critical approach to the writing of recent history. In particular, he was intent on disrupting the narrative identitites of the present by dissolving too direct an identification with the past. We can, he is arguing, understand and even sympathise with an honest Jacobite in 1702 or 1714 while remaining uncompromising in our support for the Hanoverians in the present. And yet parties in Hanoverian England, and Scotland, continued to argue over the past, to refight old battles, to adhere to outmoded political doctrines and to align themselves uncritically with political positions inherited from the previous century. History and contemporary political perceptions were equally distorted by this failure to separate past and present. ‘I have the impudence to pretend that I am of no party, and have no bias,’ Hume told one correspondent in February 1754, as he was about to send the manuscript of the first part of the History to the publisher. And he was later delighted to report that one of his friends had called him ‘a moderate Whig’ and another ‘a candid Tory’.5 Hume was, however, aware that this even-handed approach would confuse some readers used to straightforward judgements in history. In a letter of June 1753 he wrote: I may be liable to the reproach of ignorance, but I am certain of escaping that of partiality: The truth is, there is so much reason to blame and praise alternately King and Parliament, that I am afraid the mixture of both in my composition, being so equal, may pass sometimes for an affectation, and not the result of judgement and evidence.6

There was an important exception to this impartiality: the Puritans.7 HUME AND THE REFORMATION

From the very beginning of the first edition of The History of Great Britain, Hume was uncompromising in his criticisms of the political effects of organised religion. The first two chapters contained comments on the Reformation and on the sixteenth-century Church of Rome which were shocking to Protestant sensibilities. First, his portrayal of the first Protestant reformers in Europe was acerbic though, of course, mixed with some recognition of their strengths: The first reformers, who made such furious and successful attacks on the Romish SUPERSTITION, and shook it to its lowest foundations, may safely be pronounced to have been universaly [sic] inflamed with the highest ENTHUSIASM. These two species of religion, the superstitious and fanatical, stand in

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diametrical opposition to each other; and a large portion of the latter must necessarily fall to his share, who is so couragious [sic] as to control authority, and so assuming as to obtrude his own innovations upon the world. Hence that rage of dispute, which every where seized the new religionists; that disdain of ecclesiastical subjection; that contempt of ceremonies, and of all the exterior pomp and splendor of worship. And hence too, that inflexible intrepidity, with which they braved dangers, torments, and even death itself; while they preached the doctrine of peace, and carried the tumults of war, thro’ every part of Christendom.8

Note the negative terms which accumulate around the reformers – ‘furious’, ‘inflamed’, ‘fanatical’, ‘rage’, ‘disdain’, ‘contempt’, ‘inflexible’. The final sentence recognises their courage and strength but immediately undermines them by pointing up their hypocrisy: these Protestant refomers were fanatics who preached Christianity, ‘the doctrine of peace’, while their actions spread violence and war across Europe. Where the monarch adopted the reformed religion and the State retained some measure of authority – in some parts of Germany, in Denmark, and in Sweden – its fanaticism was restrained: ‘as the spirit of enthusiasm was somewhat tempered by a sense of order, episcopal jurisdiction, along with a few decent ceremonies, was preserved in the new establishment’. Where the reformed religion had achieved power in the form of popular government (Geneva) or where it was in opposition to the Crown (Scotland, the Netherlands, France), there were no such restraints: the genius of fanaticism displayed itself in its full extent, and affected every circumstance of discipline and worship. A perfect equality was established among the ecclesiastics; and their inflamed imagination, unconfined by any forms of liturgy, had full liberty to pour out itself, in wild, unpremeditated addresses to the Divinity. [72]

This is provocative writing in eighteenth-century England, and more so still in Presbyterian Scotland. Its impact was exacerbated a few pages later by the account of Roman Catholicism. Hume never disguises his disdain for the intellectual absurdities of superstition. But the political and social effects of unreformed Catholicism are represented in favourable terms. Its superstitious doctrines and practices were rather casually and superficially adhered to: ‘like the antient pagan idolatry, the popular religion consisted more of exterior practices and observances, than of any principles, which either took possession of the heart, or influenced the conduct’. If the Church of Rome warranted some reform, this could have been achieved gradually through intellectual influences. Hume detects promising signs of change

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under Leo X. But the zeal of Protestant reformers transformed Rome into a brutal spiritual despotism and gave rise to the massacres, assassinations and inquisitions which disturbed Europe for generations. So the burden of responsibility, in Hume’s account, rests with the Protestant reformers: ‘when the enraged and fanatical reformers took arms against the papal hierarchy, and threatened to rend from the church at once all her riches and authority; no wonder she was animated with equal zeal and ardor, in defence of such antient and invaluable possessions’. [97] Hume’s account of the alliance of ‘the Romish system’ with crowns and courts was equally provocative. Its discouragement of private judgement and free inquiry was, he says, ‘very advantageous to civil as well as ecclesiastical authority’. And the pomp and splendour of its churches and services were agreeable to the tastes of the great, who preferred their senses to be pampered. But far from moving into a diatribe against this corrupted regime, Hume draws a sunny picture of the world of preReformation Rome: That delicious country, where the Roman pontiff resides, was the source of all modern art and refinement, and diffused on its superstition an air of politeness, which distinguishes it from the gross rusticity of the other sects. And tho’ policy made it assume, in some of its monastic orders, that austere mien, which is acceptable to the vulgar; all authority still resided in its prelates and spiritual princes, whose temper, more cultivated and humanized, inclined them to every decent pleasure and indulgence. [98–9]

The pre-Reformation Church is represented as insouciant, worldly, even tolerant, forced to defend itself against the fanaticism, rage and zeal of the reformers. It was these passages on enthusiasm and superstition, placed at the beginning of Hume’s History of England, that drew the hostile attention of some of his first readers. In the Monthly Review in 1755, a fairly commendatory notice voiced its displeasure at the ‘indecent reflections on the Protestant religion, as if it were rather the casual effect of enthusiasm and fanaticism, than the amiable offspring of free inquiry, and rational conviction’. Hume’s various remarks and censures, the reviewer went on, ‘seem calculated, not so much to expose and deride the Puritans, as to fix deep marks upon the Protestant religion itself’.9 These two passages similarly provoked the first book-length consideration of Hume’s History by the Edinburgh Presbyterian minister Daniel MacQueen.10 And they were again quoted as the key to Hume’s interpretation of religion in seventeenth-century England in a review of MacQueen by William Rose, a Scottish Presbyterian turned English Dissenter. Few of his readers will

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be convinced of Hume’s impartiality, he comments, ‘nor will what he has advanced in regard to Religion, the Genius of the Protestant Faith, and the character of the First Reformers, be accounted we presume, any recommendation of his History’.11 MONKISH VIRTUES

Why was Hume so negative about Protestant reformers and so muted in his criticisms of Catholicism or of the conservative wing of the seventeenth-century Church of England? For Hume, the unworldly virtues inculcated by an intense Christian commitment are profoundly antisocial: Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man’s fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; neither qualify him for the entertainment of company, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment? We observe on the contrary, that they cross all these desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper.12

The term ‘monkish virtues’ seems to suggest that the target here is the Church of Rome, or Christianity in general. In the next sentence, however, Hume refers to ‘a gloomy, hair-brain’d enthusiast’, a Puritan. Hume’s History represented Rome as ‘the source of all modern art and refinement’. Under its aegis ‘the admiration of antient literature’ and ‘the inquiry after new discoveries’ were encouraged. The ‘gross rusticity’ of the Protestant reformers, by contrast, destroyed ‘politeness’ and ‘the furious controversies of theology took the place of the calm disquisitions of learning’. Similar antinomies are highlighted in the culture of early Stuart England. One of Hume’s central criticisms of the Puritans in seventeenth-century England was their intellectual and cultural philistinism, their hostility to the pleasures of civilised living. According to Hume, James I was superior in his use of language to successive Speakers of the Commons. And Icon Basilike, ascribed (wrongly) to Charles I, was praised by Hume as ‘the best prose composition’ of the time. [691] The king is admired for his taste, his knowledge and his encouragement of painting, architecture and writing. ‘Before the civil wars, learning and the fine arts were favoured at court, and a good taste began to prevail in the nation.’13 In contrast to Charles’s intellectual abilities, Cromwell’s writing and speeches are criticised for ‘obscurity, confusion, embarrassment and

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absurdity’.14 ‘Cromwell, though himself a barbarian, was not insensible to literary merit,’15 Hume drily remarks, acknowledging the Lord Protector’s patronage of Ussher, Milton, Marvell and Waller. He cannot, however, resist another sarcasm at mention of the last: ‘That poet always said, that the protector himself was not so wholly illiterate as was commonly imagined.’16 If political oratory left some impressive monuments to the Commonwealth, there were few other cultural achievements of the reign of the Saints: The wretched fanaticism which so much infected the parliamentary party was no less destructive of taste and science, than of all law and order. Gaiety and wit were proscribed; human learning despised; freedom of inquiry detested; cant and hypocrisy alone encouraged.17

Hume’s representation of the philistinism of the Puritans is subliminally evoked by his repeated descriptions of their sheer noisiness and vulgarity. The preaching of Puritan divines is exhibited as ‘noise and fury’, ‘daily harangues and invectives’, ‘unsurmountable passion’, ‘vehement harangue’, ‘furious attacks’ and so on, page after page. No doubt his cultivated readers took the cue and shared Hume’s distate for this lack of politeness. The noisy religious enthusiast is clearly not a suitable dinner-party guest: A gloomy, hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the calendar; but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delirious and dismal as himself.18

More was at stake in the charge sheet against Puritanism than their loud and gloomy vulgarity, their offensive lack of civility, their hostility to the innocent pleasures of life. These were merely symptoms of a deeper sickness. Hume’s rejection of philosophy as some kind of autonomous sphere separate from the everyday world of custom and civility was crucial to the redirection of his writing in the 1740s towards the dialogic form of the essay and towards history.19 But it was a shift which had a significant political dimension, too. The separation from social life of the solitary philosopher was liable to produce not only a barbarous and unintelligible writing but, especially when claiming the authority to criticise the world, dangerous forms of metaphysical thinking. Already in the Treatise Hume was paying attention to these potential dangers: ‘The Cynics are an extraordinary instance of philosophers, who from reasonings purely metaphysical ran into as great extravagancies of conduct as any Monk or Dervise that ever was in the world.’20 For Hume there were close affinities between particular kinds of philosophical error and religious enthusiasm and superstition. Deviation from

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common sense and custom led to illusions with unpredictable effects in the real world. ‘When men depart from the maxims of common reason . . . no one can answer for what will please or displease them. They are in a different element from the rest of mankind . . .’21 This notion of the antisocial potential of certain kinds of philosphicoreligious attitude underpins Hume’s criticisms of Puritanism in all its historical forms and its presence within particular political groupings in eighteenth-century Britain. His essay ‘Of Parties in General’ makes the distinction between different kinds of political party. On the one hand there are parties that operate within the terms of custom and common life. Those representing particular economic interests – land or trade – are, he says, reasonable. Less reasonable but still common and excusable are parties united by bonds of loyalty to, for instance, a particular ruling family. On the other hand, a very different kind of party has emerged in recent years: ‘Parties from principle, especially abstract speculative principle, are known only to modern times, and are, perhaps, the most extraordinary and unaccountable phenomenon that has yet appeared in human affairs.’ This is not, I think, intended as ironic. For Hume metaphysical political parties are dangerous because they foment violent opposition without being rooted in any real political practice. Their antagonism is not to this or that specific policy, to this or that political grouping, but to reality itself. They are mobilised by an abstract negation of the world as it is. The speculations of ‘these sublime theorists’, Hume says, ‘may yet be found, in practice, totally pernicious and destructive’.22 These kinds of metaphysical political parties and ‘political projectors’ have grown out of the historical development of European Christianity and its particular fusion of religion and philosophy. The spread of Christianity involved the development of a particular set of speculative opinions, and its theism brought it close to important schools of philosophy. When combined with the political union of Church and State, the alliance of religion and philosophy generated metaphysical absolutes and sectarian identities, bigotry, intolerance and persecution, even civil war. PURITANS AND THE CRISIS OF THE STATE

His account of the crisis of the early Stuart State in the first volumes of The History of England is Hume’s most extensive exploration of the political effects of this kind of metaphysical party, in the gloomy shape of Puritanism. The Church of England was an old established religion which, whatever its superstitions, was at least part of the common life

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of English society and had beneficial effects on the population. But, with the emergence of the Puritans in the sixteenth century, a very different kind of religious body began to play a role in the State. Full of abstract anger and enthusiasm, it was profoundly antisocial in its rejection of all authority, custom and common sense. As this Puritanism infiltrated Parliament, it began to shape the political struggle with the Crown. Hume drily notes how the philosophical controversy concerning free will entered the political sphere in early seventeenth-century England as Arminians in the Church hierarchy became the focus of Parliamentary polemics by Calvinist MPs: To impartial spectators surely, if any such had been, at that time, in England, it must have given sufficient entertainment, to see a popular assembly, enflamed with faction and enthusiasm, pretend to handle questions, for which the greatest philosophers, in the tranquillity of retreat, had never hitherto been able to find any satisfactory solution. [320]

Through the insidious influence of Puritanism, practical political realities had, by the 1620s, become infused with abstract philosophical oppositions. As a result, disputes between Crown and Parliament became insoluble. It was impossible for the Crown to placate, Hume says, ‘the endless demands of certain insatiable and turbulent spirits, whom nothing less will content than a total subversion of the ancient constitution’.23 Their infinite and finally unrealisable political demands, made them subversive of any political order. Note the shift in tense here to ‘will’, suddenly and dramatically bringing these ‘insatiable and turbulent spirits’ into the reader’s mid-eighteenth-century present. The political intent of Hume’s argument was to invalidate this kind of philisophico-religious party as a contemporary political model. Against a history which represented only the heroic struggles of a Hampden or a Pym, Hume counterposes the wider social effects of Puritan enthusiasm. What looks like heroic principle and martyrdom, when the focus is on a single individual, looks altogether less comfortable when the wider social influence of Puritanism is considered. Stirring up the ‘irregular passions’ of men through their speculative principles and their wild harangues from the pulpit, Puritanism loosened the bonds of society itself. Among the generality of men, educated in regular, civilized societies, the sentiments of shame, duty, honor, have considerable authority, and serve to counterballance [sic] and direct the motives, derived from private advantage. But, where fanaticism predominated in such a degree as among the parliamentary forces, all these salutary principles lost their credit . . .

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In this way Puritan enthusiasm ‘loosened all the ties of morality, and gave intire scope, and even sanction to the selfishness and ambition, which so commonly adhere to the human mind’. [627] All kinds of wild schemes proliferated in the aftermath of what Hume pointedly terms ‘the murder’ of Charles I, as the restraints of custom dissolved: ‘The bonds of society were everywhere loosened; and the irregular passions of men were encouraged by speculative principles still more unsocial and irregular.’24 Hume has little to say about the post-Restoration Dissenters in England, dismissing the various religious sects prevailing at the Restoration as being too numerous to enumerate and documenting briefly the measures of government against them.25 He does focus on the Quakers in more detail, as an example of the continuing absurdities of enthusiasm. They originated, we are told, among ‘the lowest vulgar’. A satirical narrative of their founder, George Fox, follows, requiring no explicit commentary from Hume. ‘That he might wean himself from sublunary objects, he broke off all connexions with his friends and family, and never dwelt a moment in one place; lest habit should beget new connexions and depress the sublimity of his aerial meditations.’26 He spent whole days in hollow trees, the Bible his exclusive reading, and then abandoned even this, seeking only the inward light. For Hume, of course, family and friends were ‘natural’ and Fox’s rejection of these and of society as a whole was a typical sign of the derangement of the enthusiast. ‘When he had been sufficiently consecrated in his own imagination, he felt that the fumes of self-applause soon dissipate, if not continually supplied by the admiration of others; and he began to seek proselytes.’27 Thus the origins of Quakerism. Their rejection of all the externals of Christian worship (‘invented by pride and ostentation’) stemmed, Hume notes, ‘from a superior pride and ostentation’ and, he adds, ‘even the ordinary rites of civility were shunned, as the nourishment of carnal vanity and selfconceit’.28 Hence the absurdity of their austere forms of behaviour and of dress. ‘Even a button to the hat, though sometimes useful, yet not being always so, was universally rejected by them with horror and detestation.’29 Hence also their antisocial behaviour – their breaking into churches and disrupting services, their disrespect towards magistrates. Even their apparent virtues, their pacificism and their rejection of all violence, are represented as ridiculous. Their sufferings are given scant sympathy by Hume. He merely says: ‘The patience and fortitude with which they suffered begat compassion, admiration, esteem.’30 Their one ‘laudable’ innovation was that they gave up all haggling in the market and fixed their prices, but even this carries the implication that the enthusiast was always canny enough to keep a shrewd eye on money.

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PURITANS AND LIBERTY

One of the principal strategies of The History of England was to instruct Hume’s polite reader in the horrors of enthusiasm and metaphysical parties and to reaffirm the social virtues of refinement, politeness, custom and tradition. In the case of seventeenth-century England that meant exploring the disastrous cultural, political and social effects of enthusiasm in its Puritan form. But surely, one might argue, whatever the extremes of some elements of Puritanism in early Stuart England, it did ultimately have extremely beneficial effects in laying the basis for civil liberty and religious tolerance? Hume has not only to underline the negative dimensions of Puritanism in early Stuart England, but must also subvert claims for its long-term positive effects. Throughout The History of England he is keen to demythologise the kinds of accounts found in Dissenting histories of the heroic historical role of Puritanism in laying the basis for the religious and civil liberties of Hanoverian Britain. Hume is remarkably approving of the effects of the Reformation on the sixteenth-century English Church – but precisely because it was so limited and so gradual. Of all the European churches its reformation was the most moderate and preserved many of the traditional Roman forms and structures: no innovation was admitted, merely from spite and opposition to former usage: and the new religion, by mitigating the genius of the ancient superstition, and rendering it more compatible with the peace and interests of society, had preserved itself in that happy medium which wise men have always sought, and which the people have so seldom been able to maintain.31

This was not because of the character of the English reformers but in spite of it, for these were ‘men of more warm complexions and more obstinate tempers’ who, Hume said, ‘indulged themselves in the most violent contrariety and antipathy to all the former practices’.32 Hume’s account of the English Reformation demonstrates that, at least in its English form, Protestantism emerged out of a contingent combination of concupiscence, political manipulation and greed. Henry VIII’s break with Rome had nothing to do with Protestant principle. It was a result, first, of the king’s alienation from his queen. Her age and a series of illnesses had made ‘her person unacceptable’ to the king (as Hume delicately puts it). Raising Anne Boleyn to the throne was because ‘her virtue and modesty prevented all hopes of gratifying his passion in any other manner’. In addition, the lack of a male heir was a serious political problem and foreshadowed another power struggle, even civil war, for

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the succession. As Hume puts it: ‘the king was thus impelled, both by his private passions, and by motives of public interest, to seek the dissolution of his inauspicious, and, as it was esteemed, unlawful marriage with Catherine’. But this dragged Henry and the State into a highly complex political situation, with major national and international ramifications. Ultimately the break with Rome was, Hume says, the outcome of ‘an unlucky concurrence of circumstances’. Its effects were similarly contingent. Hume states: ‘on the whole, there followed from this revolution many beneficial consequences; though perhaps neither foreseen nor intended by the persons who had the chief hand in conducting it’. Unintended consequences – this is the key point for Hume. The break from Rome and the formation of the English Protestant Church cannot be assigned to any human intention, individual or collective. It was a ‘revolution’ without heroes. The dissolution of the monasteries that followed was equally messy and contingent. Hume is, unsurprisingly, hostile to the monasteries – ‘these fetters on liberty and industry’. And here he risks sounding like one of his detested Puritans. The monasteries encouraged idleness and ignorance. The monks were, he said, ‘an order founded on illusions, lies and superstition’ and used pious frauds to keep the people in subjection and to extract gifts from them. But Hume discounts the reports of the king’s commissioners whose stories of widespread sexual immorality were cynically motivated. The people were assured that the income from monastic lands would relieve taxation and was for the public good but it was, by and large, the nobility and gentry who profited. One other change was similarly ascribed to the material greed of the landed classes. The single instance of a change in forms of religious worship that was carried through in ‘the spirit of contradiction to the Romanists’, and universally accepted in England, was the shift of the altar from the wall to the middle of the church: ‘the nobility and gentry got thereby a pretence for making spoil of the plate, vestures, and rich ornaments which belonged to the altars’.33 To be able to trace key moments in the formation of English Protestantism to the uncontrollable sexual appetites of a middle-aged man and the greed of the Court circles around him was no doubt gratifying to Hume. But if Henry’s break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries could not be ascribed to the Protestant principles of the English people, then at least, one could argue, the Protestant martyrs of the 1550s, victims of the papist Mary, could provide some Protestant heroes? After all, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs not only commemorated Protestant heroism in those bleak years but, under Elizabeth, copies of the book had been installed in every parish church, becoming a part of the

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collective memory of the nation. Hume looked with some scepticism on the claims of the Protestant martyrs. Martyrdom was no more than the other side of the persecutory coin which all forms of Christianity dealt in. Hume observes that Calvin had burnt Servetus at Geneva as Cranmer had burnt Arians and Anabaptists. Mary’s Protestant victims were as zealous in persecuting other Christians as any of their own Catholic persecutors. It seems to be almost a general rule, that in all religions except the true, no man will suffer martyrdom who would not also inflict it willingly on all who differ from him. The same zeal for speculative opinions is the cause of both.

Because by Hume’s own evidence every religious grouping was persecuting, and being persecuted, it is difficult to point to any form of actually existing Christianity that could be ‘the true’. Corresponding to Hume’s particular disdain for fanatics and enthusiasts, these martyrs of persecution are represented as peculiarly opposed to the practical virtues which encourage social order and civility. Similarly, those Puritans subjected to brutal punishments under Charles I are treated by Hume with cool irony as having a fanatical desire to court martyrdom: All the severities, indeed, of this reign, were exercised against those, who triumphed in their sufferings, who courted persecution, and braved authority: And, upon that account, their punishment may be esteemed the more just, but the less prudent. To have neglected them intirely, had it been consistent with order and public safety, had been the wisest measure, which could have been embraced, as perhaps, it had been the most severe punishment, which could have been inflicted on these zealots. [339]

In the case of the harsh treatment of the Puritan barrister William Prynne, Hume has great fun parodying his lengthy diatribe against plays, music, dancing and other popular amusements. His punishment of standing in the pillory, having his ears cut off, paying a staggering fine of £5,000 and then serving imprisonment for life – all for the publication of a book – earns little sympathy from the enlightened historian. His sufferings are ascribed to his own obstinacy, and Hume follows with a piece of heavy irony which almost shares in the brutalities he is describing: The thorow-paced Puritans were distinguishable by the sowrness and austerity of their manners, and by their aversion to all pleasure and society. To inspire them with better humor, both for their own sake and that of the public, was certainly a very laudable intention in the court; but, whether pillories, fines, and prisons, were proper expedients for that purpose, may admit of some question. [342]

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For Hume, the Puritans relentlessly tested the tolerance of the State under Charles I. The cases of Bastwick, Burton and a second trial of Prynne before the Star Chamber had, he said, been gratuitously and intentionally provoked by these Puritan fanatics. They had attacked the Church with ‘intemperate furious zeal’ and, even when brought before the court, they were ‘full of contumacy and of invectives against the prelates’. [347] These were not, for Hume, the innocent victims of an aggressive persecutory regime. And the occasionally brutal response to Puritan provocations was no more than could be expected from any state in that period. Hume warns against anachronistic judgements by the eighteenth-century reader. The severity of the Star Chamber will appear ‘enormous’ he says, ‘to us . . . who enjoy, to the full, that liberty of the press, which is so necessary in every monarchy, confined to legal limitations’. But in early seventeenth-century England there were no such limitations and no conception of a state in which either freedom of speech or religious toleration was feasible. ‘No age nor nation, among the moderns, had ever set an example of such indulgences: And it seems unreasonable to judge of the measures, embraced during one period, by the maxims which prevail in another.’ [347–8] So, the seventeenth-century Puritans had no intention of laying the foundations for liberty in the form of the modern Whig constitution. In fact, Hume emphasises, on political grounds they were further from eighteenth-century Whigs than was Charles I: ‘Never in this island was known a more severe and arbitrary government than was generally exercised by the patrons of liberty in both kingdoms.’34 Puritan intentions were shaped by theological considerations, ‘of the most frivolous and ridiculous kind’. The surplice, in particular with the tippet and corner cap, was, Hume drily notes, ‘a great object of abhorrence to the popular zealots’.35 Under Elizabeth these endless petty squabbles, initiated by the Puritans, and often about the most trivial aspects of religious worship, were already a threat to the whole social order. And there was no power to do much about it. Hume sighs wearily: So fruitless is it for sovereigns to watch with a rigid care over orthodoxy, and to employ the sword in religious controversy, that the work, perpetually renewed, is perpetually to begin; and a garb, a gesture, nay, a metaphysical or grammatical distinction, when rendered important by the disputes of theologians, and the zeal of the magistrate, is sufficient to destroy the unity of the church, and even the peace of society.36

Already in Elizabethan England these ridiculous controversies were ‘inflaming’ the people, encouraging them to boycott particular churches and even to insult clerics in the street. Hume comments: ‘while the

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sovereign authority checked these excesses, the flame was confined, not extinguished; and burning fiercer from confinement, it burst out in the succeeding reigns, to the destruction of state and monarchy’.37 And yet under the sway of Elizabeth it was the Puritans alone who constituted any kind of opposition and only a few pages later this dangerous underground fire had become for Hume the ‘precious spark’ of liberty: So absolute, indeed, was the authority of the crown, that the precious spark of liberty had been kindled, and was preserved, by the puritans alone; and it was to this sect, whose principles appear so frivolous, and habits so ridiculous, that the English owe the whole freedom of their constitution.38

At first glance this looks like an unexpected accolade for the Puritans, and Dissenters seized on it as such. But its intent was, I think, ironic. The liberty of the English Constitution was not owing to heroism and principle but to the enthusiasm of a few Puritan fanatics. Only a deluded fanatic had the courage to endure the brutal sanctions of Elizabeth’s regime merely to make a point about trivial matters and thus, inadvertently, to keep alive ‘the precious spark of liberty’. The corrosive work of Puritanism was consummated in the reign of Charles I. The very real political crisis of the state by 1640 could still have found a reasonable political solution, Hume argues, ‘had not the wound been poisoned by the infusion of theological hatred’: the grievances, which tended chiefly to enflame the Parliament and the nation, especially the latter, were the surplice, the rails placed about the altar, the bows exacted on approaching it, the liturgy, the breach of the sabbath, embroidered copes, lawn sleeves, the use of the ring in marriage, and of the cross in baptism. On account of these, were both parties contented to throw the government into such violent convulsions; and, to the disgrace of that age and of this island, it must be acknowledged that the disorders in Scotland intirely, and those in England mostly, proceeded from so mean and contemptible an origin. [417]

The very listing of the issues effectively represents their triviality. Here in the first edition, Hume assigns responsibility for the theological poison equally to ‘both parties’. By the final edition of 1776 responsibility is thrown solely on to the Puritans. It is no longer ‘both parties’ but ‘the popular leaders’ alone who were willing to push the State into deeper crisis over such frivolous theological disputes.39 Again, it was ‘fears and jealousies’ of a religious, not a civil, nature that, in 1642, pushed the people to arms against an already impotent king. The distempered imaginations of men were agitated with a continual dread of popery, with a horror for prelacy, with an antipathy to ceremonies and the

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liturgy, and with a violent affection for whatever was most opposite to these objects of aversion. The fanatical spirit, let loose, confounded all regards to ease, safety, interest; and dissolved every moral and civil obligation. [502]

Popular Puritanism was, in other words, purely negative, driven by fear and ‘agitated’ by the ravings of a minority of fanatics. The superstition of the uneducated populace was excited by the enthusiasm of Puritan preachers to produce a noxious and subversive brew. The courage and conduct of the Parliamentary leaders, on the other hand, have led historians, Hume says, to credit them with far-sighted political intentions that their religious pronouncements merely symbolised. But, he says, they were ‘the dupes of their own zeal’. They were driven by ‘those more familiar motives of interest and ambition’: Equally full of fraud and of ardor, these pious patriots talked perpetually of seeking the Lord, yet still pursued their own purposes; and have left a memorable lesson to posterity, how delusive, how destructive that principle is, by which they were animated. [503]

For Hume religious toleration was an unintended effect of the persecutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Governments slowly learned that traditional use of legal violence to eliminate religious schisms and heresies was counter-productive: It was found by fatal experience, and after spilling an ocean of blood in those theological quarrels, that the evil was of a peculiar nature, and was both inflamed by violent remedies, and diffused itself more rapidly through the whole society. Hence, though late, arose the paradoxical principle and salutary practice of toleration.40

Throughout his history of the Stuart dynasty, then, Hume questions any claim that the puritans already embodied the principles of religious and civil liberties which were later to be realised after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. CHURCHMEN, PURITANS AND THE ‘GREAT REBELLION’

On the flyleaf of the copy of the first volume of the first edition of Hume’s History of England in the Bodleian Library there is an inscription. It is in the handwriting of the Reverend Charles Godwyn, Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford: I have heard much of Mr. Hume from persons who know him well, and think him to be one of the oddest characters in the world. Consider him as an historian and in private life there is not a better man living. No man has more

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generous sentiments of social virtue. He has great candour and humanity and the utmost regard for truth. Consider him as a philosopher in his speculative capacity, there is not a grain of virtue or religion in him . . . I am informed that he has a great regard for the Church of England, and that if he was disposed to make choice of a religion, he would give this the preference. Written in the year 1757.41

These remarks by an Oxford cleric were seconded by other churchmen. Hume had claimed in My Own Life, that the primates of England and Ireland were among the few educated men who could tolerate the first volumes of the History of England – ‘which seems two odd Exceptions’, he added himself. ‘These dignified prelates separately sent me messages not to be discouraged.’ Herring, Archbishop of Canterbury, had forwarded ten guineas to Hume via his publisher and invited him to be a guest at Lambeth Palace whenever he was in London. The idea of being among the archbishop’s chaplains diverted Hume, and Boswell told him: ‘You would have done well at Lambeth; you would have given them good Politicks, and they would have given you good Religion.’42 Were the positive responses of these Churchmen to Hume’s history of the seventeenth century ‘odd exceptions’? Hume’s History of England, I want to argue, was an effective demolition of the pretensions of those Dissenting histories which tried to connect Tudor Puritans and contemporary Dissenters. And it was, at the same time, a powerful and sophisticated vindication of the establishment in Church and State. A spectre was haunting the eighteenth-century Church of England: the spectre of the ‘Great Rebellion’. It was institutionalised in legal sanctions against anyone who refused to bend the knee to the restored hierarchy of the Church of England. It was institutionalised also in a historical narrative in the pages of The Book of Common Prayer: a highly politicised interpretation of the seventeenth century which was circulated throughout England via the official annual commemorations of three key historical events. Clarendon, of course, had been pivotal both in the construction of that legislation and of the historical narrative which justified it. Each year every church, including the college chapels of Oxford and Cambridge and Eton and Winchester Schools, was required by law to commemorate: 30 January, anniversary of the execution of Charles I; 29 May, Royal Oak Day and the Restoration (and birthday) of Charles II; and 5 November, the failed Gunpowder plot. A specific service and forms of prayer were laid down for each of these commemorations.43 These were politically aggressive services, as the banner titles, in italics, across the head of each page of The Book of Common Prayer, signalled:

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‘King Charles the Martyr’, ‘The Restoration of the Royal Family’, ‘Gunpowder Treason’.44 The full title of the first is indicative of the political subtext of the day’s service: ‘A Form of Prayer with Fasting, to be used yearly on the Thirtieth of January, being the Day of the Martyrdom of the Blessed King Charles the First; to implore the mercy of God, that neither the Guilt of that sacred and innocent Blood, nor those of other sins, by which God was provoked to deliver up both us and our King into the hands of cruel and unreasonable men, may at any time hereafter be visited upon us or our posterity.’

Throughout the service, Charles is represented as a Christian martyr, an innocent victim divinely appointed – ‘thine annointed blessed King Charles the First’ – to suffer for the sins of his people. At one point he is explicitly identified with Jesus Christ, following in ‘the steps of his blessed Master and Saviour, in a constant meek suffering of all barbarous indignities, and at last resisting with blood; and even then, according to the same pattern, praying for his murderers’. Those responsible for his execution are described in the formal prayers as ‘violent and blood-thirsty men’, and ‘cruel men, sons of Belial’. The church service for 29 May, commemorating the restoration of Charles II, contained more specific historical interpretation and was more directly political. ‘We yield thee praise and thanksgiving for the wonderful deliverance of these Kingdoms from the Great Rebellion, and all the Miseries and Oppressions, under which they had so long groaned.’ The Restoration, in another prayer, is represented as ‘a deliverance from the unnatural Rebellion, Usurpation, and Tyranny of ungodly and cruel men, and from the sad confusions and ruin thereupon ensuing’. And the final prayer of the service raises the spectre of the return of these shadowy unnamed men ‘who, under the pretence of Religion, and thy most Holy Name’ had almost completed the destruction of Church and State. God is called on to ensure that ‘no such dismal calamity may ever again fall upon us: Infatuate and defeat all the secret counsels of deceitful and wicked men against us . . . cut off all such workers of iniquity, as turn Religion into Rebellion, and Faith into Faction, that they may never again prevail against us, nor triumph in the ruin of the Monarchy and thy church among us.’ In thousands of churches, year after year, these services – and especially the 30 January service – directed the thoughts of the parish to events of the previous century. Charles was a martyred saint, a Christian king brutally put to death by wraith-like figures without names. And the successors of these ‘ungodly and cruel men’ were still at work, through

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‘secret counsels’, using a deformed version of religion, plotting similar rebellions against Church and King. The vagueness of the specifications enabled these representations to be superimposed on various political oppositions in the eighteenth century. But it is not difficult to see their continuing applicability to those self-proclaimed sons of the men who fomented the ‘Great Rebellion’ and murdered the king – the Dissenters. Admittedly the impact of the January 30 service was fading by the middle years of the eighteenth century. Some clergymen questioned the appropriateness of persisting in this annual commemoration which served only to provoke political animosities.45 Others increasingly ignored the requirement of delivering an appropriate sermon. The service and accompanying sermons remained important, nevertheless, in diffusing a particular kind of interpretation of the seventeenth century. If we look closely at 30 January sermons preached in the early 1750s, we can begin to trace the outlines of a more or less official Church of England history of the seventeenth century with some significant convergences to the arguments of the first volume of Hume’s History of England. Frederick Cornwallis’s sermon of 1751, preached before the House of Lords at St Margaret’s Church in Westminster, provided a solid Hanoverian perspective, as expected of a Churchman who owed his rise to the patronage of leading Whig politicians. Born into landed wealth, his path through the Church hierarchy was rapid: Eton, Christ’s College, Cambridge, a fellowship, then canon of Windsor and, before the age of forty, a bishopric. A few years later he was to become dean of St Paul’s and then, by his mid-fifties, Archbishop of Canterbury. So here we have a voice of the Whig establishment reflecting on the political revolution of the seventeenth century – and from the highest pulpit of the State. In early Stuart England, Cornwallis says, every act of government was met with opposition, often involving ‘unfair practices’ and ‘crafty Management’. ‘Factions were sprouting up in every Corner,’ artfully fomented by ambitious men. But above all, it was ‘Enthusiasm’ that underpinned these divisions: For Enthusiasm is a Kind of temporary Madness; tho’ it differs from other Kinds of Madness, by making Men resolute and courageous: unattentive to difficulties, and unmindful of Dangers: hurrying them on continually in pursuit of something that is undetermined, and perhaps undeterminable: and at last leading them like a fallacious Meteor by a false Light, into ruinous Events, and to Ends that were never propos’d by them.46

It was through enthusiasm that ‘the Spirit of Discord got possession of the Nation’:

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The parties became more exasperated and enflam’d, the Sword was drawn, and dy’d in the Blood of Friends, Relations, Countrymen. – All tender Affections, and humane Dispositions, were torn up and laid aside: And in their room succeeded Jealousy, Ill-will, Suspicion, Cruelty, and Revenge; and all the black Tribe of evil Passions.47

The Puritans are never directly specified here, but they are clearly implied. And the consequences of this enthusiasm and the political factions it generated included civil war, the execution of the king and the complete destruction of the constitution: ‘The goodly Edifice that our Forefathers had been raising at great Expence, and with great Difficulty, against the unbounded Claims, and extravagant Pretensions of ambitious Monarchs, was tumbled down and broke to pieces.’48 All the divisions of powers, the checks and balances which had been installed since Magna Carta to protect the subject were swept away in the name of liberty, and a dictatorship was set up. Cromwell is described as ‘one, who had amus’d them with the Cry of Liberty, until they had enabled him to laugh at their Purposes, and despise the Instruments of his own Elevation’.49 For Cornwallis, the moral of this story was that those who rule need always to gain the consent of the governed. But equally, the latter needed to respect the authority of their legitimate superiors, being always wary of ‘the Snares and Artifices of the Factious and Designing’. The 30 January sermon preached at Westminster in 1754, by Anthony Ellys, Bishop of St David’s, provides a second example of the Church’s version of English history. This rehearsed conventional Whig arguments that Parliament was initially justified in opposing those measures of the king which overstepped his prerogative. The intolerant actions of some Churchmen similarly provoked a justifiable resistance. He then develops an attack on ‘the Nonconformists’ as he terms them, who, under cover of a call for liberty of conscience had other motives: Their design was to subvert the whole Form of Church-Government then established, and erect upon its Ruins a Polity, unknown to the whole Church of Christ for, at least, fourteen Ages before their Time, and visibly less suited, than one of an Episcopal Kind, to royal Government.50

Suppressed under Elizabeth, this design burned underground. And here Ellys cites a passage from Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans: The Breach widened by Degrees, and the Passions of the contending Parties increased, till the Fire, which for some Years was burning under Ground, broke out into a Civil War and with unspeakable Fury destroyed the Constitition in Church and State.51

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While it did burn underground, Ellys adds, ‘it was employed, with no small success, in raising Vapours, and gloomy Imaginations, Jealousies, and Fears, and the Heat of Enthusiasm destitute of Light, in the Minds of the People’.52 So much for two eminent Whig Churchmen of the early 1750s, speaking from a pulpit at the centre of the State and under the watchful eye of Parliament and Government. Exactly contemporary, and speaking from a very different place – before the University of Oxford – was Thomas Fothergill, Fellow (and later Provost) of Queen’s College. Here we have the fully fledged narrative of Christian martyrdom. Deserted by his friends, abused by his enemies, stripped of everything and finally publicly executed, Charles is explicitly compared to Christ: ‘History itself does not set before us an Object more deserving of our Pity and Commiseration, Him only excepted, who was emphatically stiled a Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with Grief.’53 A martyr requires a persecutor. For Fothergill this exemplary Christian king was destroyed by religious fanatics and scheming politicians. In rare and special cases, Fothergill allows, resistance to power may be justified. But this was not the case with the regime of Charles I. There may have been ‘some undue stretches of Power’, but it would be wrong to measure these against later constitutional arrangements. Some of these steps, Fothergill says (a point also stressed by Hume), ‘were in Fact such as the most admired of his Predecessors had taken; and such as would have been little regarded in a less factious and turbulent Age’.54 In other words, Charles was doing no more than following precedents set by Elizabeth and Henry VIII before him. Turning their back on proper and constitutional forms of opposition, the king’s enemies, a minority of fanatics, fomented violent rebellion and civil war by poisoning the minds of the people. The Church’s pivotal role in maintaining subordination was undermined by ‘Swarms of Sectaries’ which, he says, ‘afterwards arose in such Numbers to destroy it, and have ever since hung over it, like a Cloud, ready at the least Encouragement to settle upon it and devour it’.55 There are some differences in emphasis and perspective here, and yet across the sermons of two Whig bishops and an Oxford Tory in the early 1750s there is also a great deal of consensus. Though differing in detail, the historical interpretation of each of these sermons is, I think, more or less consonant with Hume’s account of the crisis of Charles’s reign. Each seeks to balance the errors of Crown and Parliament. And they agree about the disastrous effects of religious enthusiasm, especially when exploited by scheming politicians. In 1760 another 30 January sermon preached before the University of Oxford, explicitly appropriated Hume’s

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History. George Horne, a young Fellow of Magdalen College and future Bishop of Norwich, called Hume ‘a very acute and sagacious writer and one who is far from being a friend to monarchical principles’. He cited him several times to reinforce representations of Charles as a Christ-like figure, a devout and pious man, living a life of saintly asceticism and accepting the duty of martyrdom for his people.56 Hume is used to testify to Charles’s intellectual abilities and to the impossible position in which his political enemies had placed him. Several extracts are taken from Hume’s sentimental account of Charles’s trial and execution. For instance: A writer, who cannot be suspected of any partiality on the side of the king’s religion, yet speaking of his amiable deportment during his imprisonment, bears this testimony to its power in him – ‘The great source, whence the king derived consolation amidst all his calamities, was undoubtedly religion’; let us be permitted to add, it was the Christian religion, as professed in the Church of England.57

The political lesson of the sermon was: ‘to eradicate from the minds of men those diabolical principles of resistance to government in church and state which brought his head to the block’.58 Horne cited Clarendon and Carte in his support, but it was Hume who was the star witness, quoted and referred to several times from a pulpit in the Oxford headquarters of the conservative wing of the Church of England. There was, I want to argue, a convergence between Hume and Churchmen, whether Whig or Tory, on the disastrous effects of enthusiasm in the seventeenth century and on the continuing danger of zealous enthusiasts in the present. This was partly because they shared certain inherited presuppositions. In the History of England, and some of its associated essays, Hume was building on an intellectual tradition stretching back to the seventeenth century. ‘Enthusiasm’ involved an irrational claim to divine inspiration which was in some sense pathological. The enthusiast placed his own inspired truth above common sense and above established authorities and institutions, with dangerous political consequences. These meanings were elaborated in some of the key texts of high culture in this period – Butler’s Hudibras, Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Shaftesbury’s Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, Swift’s A Tale of a Tub and his essay ‘The Mechanical Operations of the Spirit’, the second book of Pope’s The Dunciad among others. But the connotations of ‘enthusiasm’ and its immediate association with Dissenters and their Puritan forebears were diffused across the wider culture – part of the common language of everyday life, which Hume and

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Churchmen shared. Dictionaries, for example, defined enthusiasts as ‘fanaticks’ and fanatics were also, usually, ‘sectaries’, who were, in turn, Dissenters. Dissenters and Puritans were more or less synonymous. And Puritans were enthusiasts and sectaries and fanatics, and so on in a closed circle of interconnected definitions. In Phillip’s English dictionary, in its sixth edition by 1706, an ‘enthusiast’ was one who pretended to divine inspiration; a ‘fanatick’ was also one who pretended to inspiration and was ‘a Reproachful Title, commonly given to Quakers, Muggletonians, anabaptists and other Sectaries that Dissent from the Church of England’.59 And ‘puritan’ was ‘a name given to those that Dissent from the Church of England, upon account of their pretending to a Purity of Doctrine and Worship beyond other Protestants’. Other dictionaries repeated the same definitions, sometimes verbatim.60 For Samuel Johnson in 1756 a Puritan was a ‘sectary pretending to eminent purity of religion’ and a ‘fanatick’ was ‘an enthusiast, a man mad with wild notions of religion’ and, of course, a ‘fanatick’ was a sectary and a sectary was someone ‘who divides from publick establishment, and joins with those distinguished by some particular whim’. In other words, a sectary was a Dissenter and Dissenters were Puritans and Puritans were enthusiasts and fanatics, etc.61 PURITANS AND REFORMERS IN THE 1760S AND 1770S

In ‘Of Superstition and Enthusiam’ and ‘Of National Characters’, two essays of the 1740s, Hume had represented the energies of Puritanism evaporating after the storms and turbulence of the seventeenth century. But even in the middle years of the eighteenth century it was a lingering source of anxiety for Hume. It lurked within the philosophical ‘enthusiasm’ of some of the Whigs. In ‘Of the Coalition of Parties’, first published in 1759, he spluttered against radical arguments about the right of the people to change any government. ‘There is no end of these seditious and arrogant claims. The power of the crown is now openly struck at: The nobility are also in visible peril: The gentry will soon follow . . .’62 And so will begin again, Hume feared, that process of disintegration which will conclude, as it had done in the 1640s, with military despotism and another Cromwell. Just below the surface of the ordered polity of Hanoverian England smouldered the old flames of Puritan enthusiasm: the present fury of the people, though glossed over by pretensions to civil liberty, is in reality incited by the fanaticism of religion; a principle the most

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blind, headstrong, and ungovernable, by which human nature can possibly be actuated. Popular rage is dreadful, from whatever motive derived: But must be attended with the most pernicious consequences, when it arises from a principle, which disclaims all controul by human law, reason, or authority.63

Hume’s anxieties about the resurgence of ‘metaphysical parties’ assumed a new urgency in the political crises of the late 1760s. In the calls of ‘Wilkes and Liberty!’ Hume heard the rantings of seventeenth-century Puritans. It was a cry not for the reform of any specific grievance nor a demand for anything concrete and realisable. It was, Hume complained, ‘without any grievance’, ‘founded on nothing’, ‘without a Cause’.64 Threatening the fragile balance between authority and liberty in the Britain of the 1760s, Wilkite rhetoric was a destructive passion; a ‘Frenzy of Liberty’, he called it. Hume the historian saw the parallels with the Civil War of the 1640s. The Cromwells and Pyms of the seventeenth century had reappeared in secular form with demands which were similarly unrealisable. The events and characters would make ‘a fine Narrative in History’ he said, envying ‘the lot of that Historian who is to transmit to Posterity an account of these mad abandon’d times’.65 Hume had intended to write a history which transcended the political memory of contending groups – Whigs and Tories and Jacobites, Churchmen and Dissenters. But his History of England reinforced a dominant historical perspective which, from the Restoration onwards, vilified the Puritans, and implicitly or explicitly, their Dissenting successors. Far from transcending the antagonisms inherited from the seventeenth century or exorcising its ghosts, David Hume’s History of England reproduced them and refurbished them for new political purposes. He thus reinforced a powerful connection between past and present, between the seventeenthcentury Puritan and the Wilkite radical and Dissenting political intellectual of the 1760s and 1770s. It was a connection which was to be exploited by Churchmen and other conservative forces in England in the 1770s and 1780s and was to find its most spectacular representation in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France in the 1790s. But it was a connection between past and present which the Dissenters themselves were producing in these years. NOTES 1 The first edition of the first volume, covering the first half of the seventeenth century, was published in 1754 with the title The History of Great Britain. Subsequent volumes were published as The History of England and this is what the whole work has always been called.

96 2 3 4 5 6 7

8

9 10 11 12

13

14 15 16 17 18 19

Dissenting Histories ‘Of the Protestant Succession’, Hume, Essays, p. 502. Ibid., p. 510–11. Ibid., p. 511. The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Grieg (Oxford, 1932) 1, p. 185. Ibid., 1, p. 179. There is a vast literature on Hume. I have found the following especially helpful: Duncan Forbes, Hume’s Philosophical Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); and two works by Donald Livingstone, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984) and Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Hume’s Pathology of Philosophy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998). On Hume’s History of England there is again a huge literature, but see especially: N. Phillipson, Hume (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989); D. Livingstone and N. Capaldi, eds, Liberty in Hume’s History of England (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990); D. Wootton, ‘Hume, ‘‘The Historian’’ ’, in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, ed., D. F. Norton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). David Hume, The History of Great Britain. The Reigns of James I and Charles I, ed., Duncan Forbes (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), pp. 71–2. Subsequent references to this volume are in parentheses within the text. MR, 12 (1755), p. 207. [Daniel MacQueen] Letters on Mr Hume’s History of Great Britain (Edinburgh, 1756) where both passages are quoted on pp. 5–7, 7–11. MR, 14 (1756), p. 309. ‘An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals’ in L. A. Selby-Bigge, ed., Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals by David Hume, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), p. 270. Subsequent references to this collection are given as Selby-Bigge, Enquiries, etc. David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688. A New Edition with the Author’s Last Corrections and Improvements (1848) Vol. V, p. 435. Subsequent references to this standard six-volume edition, which incorporated Hume’s final revisions and was first published in 1776, will be cited as Hume, History, volume, chapter, page. Hume, History, V, lxi, p. 341n. Ibid., lxii, p. 436. Ibid., p. 436. Ibid., p. 436. ‘An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals’ in Selby-Bigge, Enquiries, p. 270. On this important matter see Jerome Christensen, Practicing Enlightenment. Hume and the Formation of a Literary Career (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987) and Mary Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact.

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20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

45

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Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998) esp. 197–213. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. E. C. Mossner (Harmondswoth: Penguin 1969), p. 319. ‘A Dialogue’ in Selby-Bigge, Enquiries, p. 343. Hume, Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed., revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 193. Hume, History, V, liv, p. 163. Ibid., lx, p. 281. Ibid., pp. 471, 491; VI, pp. 6, 47. Ibid., lxii, p. 428. Ibid., p. 428. Ibid., p. 429. Ibid., p. 429. Ibid., p. 429. Hume, History, III, xl, p. 492. Ibid. Ibid., p. 494. Hume, History, V, lix, p. 365. Hume, History, III, xl, p. 493. Ibid., xl, pp. 495–6. Ibid. p. 496. This image was derived from Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans. Ibid., p. 520. Hume, History, V, liv, p. 22 Hume, History, IV, Appendix, p. 351 Quoted in Letters of David Hume to William Strahan, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), p. 6n. E. C. Mossner, The Life of David Hume, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 309. See Andrew Lacey, The Cult of King Charles the Martyr (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2003). The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, According to the Use of the Church of England . . . (Oxford, 1776). Numerous editions of this were printed from the 1660s, all of which seem to have unnumbered pages. See for instance: John Watson, The Apology . . . for his Conduct, Yearly, on the 30th of January. Together with a Sermon preach’d on that Day, in the Year 1755 (1755); ‘Plebius’, Letter, 26 January 1765, in [Francis Blackburne] A Collection of Letters and Essays in Favour of Public Liberty, First Published in the Newspapers in the Year 1764–70 by an Amiable Band of Well-Wishers to the Religious and Civil Rights of Mankind (1774) 1, p. 34. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid.

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48 Ibid., p. 19. 49 Ibid. 50 [Anthony Ellys], A Sermon Preached before the Rt Hon the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament Assembled . . . Thursday January 30th, 1754. Being the day appointed to be Observed as the Day of the Martyrdom of King Charles I (1754), p. 14. 51 Ibid., p. 14 (from Daniel Neal, A History of the Puritans, 1, p. 231). 52 Ibid., p. 15. 53 Thomas Fothergill, The Reasonableness and Uses of Commemorating King Charles’s Martyrdom. A Sermon . . . (Oxford, 1753), p. 8. 54 Ibid., p. 23. 55 Ibid., p. 13. 56 George Horne, The Christian King. A Sermon Preached before the University of Oxford at St.Mary’s, on Friday January 30th, 1761. Being the Day Appointed to be Observed as the Day of Martyrdom of King Charles I (Oxford, 1761), p. 25. 57 Ibid., pp. 28–9. 58 Ibid. p. 30. 59 Edward Phillips, The New World of Words: or, universal English Dictionary, 6th ed. (1706). 60 See, for instance, John Kersey, Dictionarium Anglo-Brittanicum: or, a general English Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1721). 61 Samuel Johnson, A dictionary of the English language: in which the words are deduced from their originals, explained in their different meanings, . . . In two volumes (1756). Incidentally, Johnson takes this definition of ‘puritan’ more or less verbatim from other older dictionaries. See also Nathan Bailey, An universal etymological English dictionary . . ., 21st ed. (1770). 62 ‘Of the Coalition of Parties’, Hume, Essays, p. 499. 63 Ibid., p. 500. 64 Letters, ed., Grieg, 2, pp. 178, 210. 65 New Letters of David Hume, ed. R. Klibansky and E. C. Mossner (Oxford, 1954), p. 189.

4 Enlightenment, Republicanism and Dissent: William Harris’s Histories

At the same time as Hume, another historian was producing a history of seventeenth-century England – William Harris, a Dissenting minister in the west of England. Born in Salisbury in 1720, the son of a Dissenting woolcomber, he was educated for the ministry at Taunton Academy. He served brief spells as a minister to Dissenting congregations first at St Looe in Cornwall and then at Wells in Somerset, where he was ordained in April 1741.1 He married Miss Elizabeth Bovit of Honiton in Devon and lived the rest of his life there, ministering to a small Dissenting congregation of around a dozen families, mostly farmers, at the nearby village of Luppit.2 They raised only £12 a year for his stipend which Harris donated to charity. His wife’s estate, however, brought in between two and three hundred pounds a year and he lived as a gentlemanscholar. ‘Poor Dr. Harris died of a consumption, contracted by midnight studies’, Thomas Hollis told a mutual friend in 1770.3 His first publication, in 1751, was An Historical and Critical Account of Hugh Peters, after the manner of Mr. Bayle. There followed in sequence over the next fifteen years four substantial volumes on the reigns of James I, Charles I, Cromwell and Charles II. A projected fifth volume on James II and the Revolution was not finished. These volumes had little of the success of Hume’s History of England. They were difficult to read, with little to attract the general reader. Crabbed in style, a brief narrative was submerged beneath a tidal wave of notes. The rationale for this mode of presentation is signalled on the title page of all five of Harris’s histories: ‘After the Manner of Mr Bayle’. The reference is to the late seventeenth-century French Huguenot writer, and in particular to his Historical and Critical Dictionary published in 1697 and translated in several English editions.4 This work had a considerable influence on the form of historical writing in eighteenth-century England. As the editors of Biographia Britannica explained in 1747, Bayle’s method was ‘to give a plain, clear, succinct detail of facts’ and then ‘to illustrate this by a body of notes, which might serve by way of commentary, and give the reader satisfaction in those points, that in the text were but barely mentioned,

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and yet deserved a particular discussion’.5 Harris pushed this form of presentation to an extreme. From his first short pamphlet on Hugh Peter, through all four of his seventeenth-century works, his writing takes the form of a brief biography supplemented by extensive footnotes. For instance, his Life of Charles the First is a succinct biographical narrative of around 6,000 words. But the book is 426 pages in length. The narrative biography is usually no more than a line or two at the top of each page, some sentences stretching across half a dozen pages. There are, then, two parallel texts in Harris: a brief narrative and a long series of references, quotations, proofs, debates and asides. As another dissenting minister commented in 1760, Hume’s work was characterised by elegance of composition. Harris, by contrast, was one of those historians ‘who chiefly attend to fidelity and exactness’ and who search ‘with indefatigible labour’ for evidence to settle historical disputes. We dare say Mr Harris will not be displeased with us for expressing our opinion, that his Life of Oliver Cromwell is not so eminent for beauty of composition as it is for the faithfulness and diligence with which it is wrote. In this last respect it has all possible merit. It is compiled with prodigious attention and exactness, and contains a large number of curious particulars.6

Despite their inhospitable appearances, Harris’s works were reviewed in the London journals and there were second editions. The anonymous editor of a new 1814 edition of his five historical works commented: They were well received on their first publication, and the recent demand has raised them to an enormous price, which alone might justify the appearance of a new edition, if their curious and valuable contents had not given them a claim to a place in every English historical library.7

Harris’s historical works questioned core principles of the established political order and pointed forwards to some of the ideological strategies of the extra-Parliamentary Wilkite campaigns of the 1760s. But first it is necessary to read carefully these difficult texts. RESCUING HUGH PETER

Harris’s first publication was a life of Hugh Peter, the Independent preacher who was executed in October 1660 as an abettor of the execution of Charles I. The narrative biography of Peter is succinct, around 800 words, but augmented by many pages of notes.8 Harris’s account is generally sympathetic. He defends Peter against allegations of immorality.9 He notes his abilities, which were appreciated by parliament

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and by the generals, and his talents as a preacher. He notes, too, his generosity. Peter gave material assistance to several noble families during the Civil War and under the Protectorate. Harris remarks: ‘his good Nature, and Readiness to oblige, were manifested, and one would have thought should have merited some Return to him when in Distress’. [12n] But the help he had given to others in trouble under the Commonwealth was not reciprocated after the Restoration. Even Peter’s supposed guilt in pushing for the execution of the king is questioned by Harris. Several witnesses swore that he had urged the execution of the king in two sermons, one of them preached before the two Houses of Parliament. Burnet, in his History of His Own Times, had described Peter as ‘a sort of an enthusiastical buffoon preacher tho’ a very vitious man’ who ‘had been outrageous in pressing the King’s Death, with the Cruelty and Rudeness of an Inquisitor’.10 And yet, Harris notes, Peter had used his influence first to allow the king to have his own chaplain, Dr Juxon, and then for Sir John Denham to gain access to the king. ‘These were considerable Services, and could hardly have been expected from a man who was outrageous in pressing the King’s Death, with the Cruelty and Rudeness of an Inquisitor.’ [22n– 24n] Harris grants that Peter was too willing to support the generals. ‘Certain it is, he too much fell in with the Times, and, like a true Court Chaplain, applauded and justified what his Masters did, or intended to do; though he himself might be far enough from urging them beforehand to do it.’ [25] Party men, subordinating their consciences and independence to their political paymasters, were even to be found in the present day, Harris drily remarks. To execute Peter for this was unnecessarily severe. Even if he did go some way towards justifying the execution of the king in these sermons, these were only words and not actions – though, Harris adds, ‘words, it must be owned, unfit to be uttered’. Others, including Milton, said as much and more. Peter was doing no more than many others in a time of civil war and social disorder, when ‘Laws are disregarded, and Rank and Character unminded, Contempt is poured on Princes, and the Nobles are had in Derision.’ [46n] In such a climate, if all who spoke in such terms of the king were to be punished then, says Harris, ‘whole Cities would be turned into Shambles’. Harris dared to suggest that the crime of those who justified the execution of a king was less wicked than the crime of those who supported the tyranny of Charles I and shared responsibility for the destruction of the constitution and of the rights and liberties of the people:

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The loss of a good Prince is greatly to be lamented; but it is a Loss which may be repaired: Whereas the Loss of a People’s Liberties is seldom or ever to be recovered: And, consequently, the Foe to the latter is much more detestable than the Foe to the former. [50n]

An Historical and Critical Account of Hugh Peters went a considerable way towards defending one of the popular villains of the English revolution, a man described by Hume as ‘the mad chaplain of Cromwell’.11 HUME AND THE EARLY STUARTS

Harris now began a much more ambitious biographical series of seventeenth-century British histories, beginning in 1753 with James I – ‘a very mean and despicable subject’ as he remarks in his preface. The argument can be summarised briefly. Acceding to the Crown without legal restrictions, James violated the privileges of Parliament, debased the peerage and undermined the liberties of the subject. His foreign policy brought himself and the nation into contempt abroad. His addiction to drunkenness, swearing, idleness, amusement and luxury brought disgrace on to the Crown and the Church: ‘He was excessively given to ease and pleasure,’ Harris says, like Daniel Neal before him, shuddering at his dissipation and comparing him to some eastern despot immured in his seraglios. He makes this pointed remark about his sexuality: from his known love of masculine beauty, his excessive favour to such as were possessed of it, and unseemly caresses of them, one would be tempted to think, that he was not wholly free from a vice most unnatural. [67–9]

Harris’s next, much more substantial volume, was a life of Charles I. This has to deal with more contentious issues. In his private life, Harris acknowledges, Charles was a contrast to his father. He was constant to his wife and was ‘remarkably grave and sober in his whole behaviour, free from intemperance, and but little addicted to the foolish custom of swearing . . .’12 Regular and punctual in the performance of the external acts of religion, both in public and in private, the king set a good example to the rest of the Court. But Harris expresses surprise at Charles’s revival of his father’s declaration encouraging sports on Sundays. This alienated not only ‘those who were usually termed puritans’ but also many others who were, initially at least, well disposed towards the regime. The Lord Chief Justice, Richardson, was himself reprimanded by the king, at Laud’s behest, for upholding the Somerset Justices in their suppression of ales and revels on the Sabbath.

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It certainly is a very odd way to express a pious care for the service of God, by encouraging Morice-dancers, May-games, and May-poles, on the day set apart for his worship; and men could not easily bring themselves to believe that the practice of virtue could be much promoted by the mixt dancing of men and women, and their association at Wakes and Whitsun-ales. [51n–52n]

Such encouragement of idleness and diversion produced ‘a loose turn of mind’ and led to ‘a great depravity of manners’, Harris says, making explicit his own Puritan values. The Lord’s Day should be strictly observed and those in positions of authority should enforce ‘a regular and exemplary behaviour’, ‘decency of manners’ and the acquisition of knowledge and practical virtue. Charles corrupted the Sabbath in more insidious ways, however, by falling into superstition – ‘the vice of weak minds’. This was of a piece with his tendency to be too easily distracted into petty and irrelevant activities – correcting the grammar and prose style of official pronouncements, for example, or entering into pedantic theological controversies with Churchmen. These weaknesses were inconsequential for Harris compared to the king’s dishonesty and intolerance. And here Harris begins to engage with Hume’s recently published History of Great Britain. Charles’s dishonesty can be traced back to the beginning of his career and the breaking off of negotiations with the Spanish in 1622. Buckingham’s account of this was full of lies and distortions. Charles had been involved in these negotiations every step of the way and yet he gave Buckingham’s distorted version of events his full approval. Even Hume found this difficult to palliate and struggled to find some excuse in Charles’s youth and inexperience.13 Harris will have none of it. Hume, he says, ‘is vindicating his honesty at the expense of his understanding’. [74n] Charles was old enough to know what was going on and must share responsibility for Buckingham’s false account. This was the start of a long career of public dishonesty. Charles, Harris says, ‘gave further proofs of his want of sincerity, and continued to do so thro’ the course of his unfortunate reign’. [75n] Again he pushes the case against Hume. Early in his reign, Parliament had been critical of the king’s failure to enforce the penal laws against Roman Catholics. Hume had remarked: He had promised to the last house of commons a redress of this grievance: but he was too apt, in imitation of his father, to consider these promises as temporary expedients, which, after the dissolution of parliament, he was not any further to regard.14

Harris cites this passage and comments: ‘And yet, as we shall presently see, probity and honour are, in the judgment of this writer, to be among

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his most shining qualities!’ [75n] Further examples of Charles’s dishonesty and insincerity in his dealings with Parliament are then detailed, notably his systematic evasion of the Petition of Right which he had publicly promised to adhere to. By 1642 an exasperated Parliament was declaring that the king could not be trusted to adhere to any promise or to conform to any of the laws of the kingdom. And yet, amazingly, Hume could write: Some historians have rashly questionned [sic] his good faith: but, for this reproach, the most malignant scrutiny of his conduct, which, in every circumstance, is now thoroughly known, affords not any reasonable foundation. On the contrary, if we consider the extreme difficulties to which he was so frequently reduced, and compare the sincerity of his professions and declarations, we shall avow, that probity and honour ought justly to be placed among his most shining qualities.15

Hume was not being ironic here, though it is difficult not to read this without an ironic chuckle. For Harris, Charles’s persistent refusal to keep to his word was a major factor in the breakdown of trust which led to civil war: ‘his adversaries gave no heed to his words, protestations, oaths, or actions, as judging that he was not bound by them. Hence a civil war arose, which ended in his destruction.’ [82n–83n] Harris, like Neal before him, was scathing about the political role of Charles’s queen. From the time of Buckingham’s assassination, Henrietta Maria had ruled the king: ‘she was bigotted [sic] to the Romish religion, industrious in promoting its interests, and an advisor and an encourager of the king in his most imprudent actions’ [22n–23n]. Hume had remarked that his letter to the queen, intercepted at Naseby in June 1645, reflected well on Charles. His declaration that he would never adopt any measures without her sanction need not be taken literally: ‘so legitimate an affection, avowed by the laws of God and man, may, perhaps, be excusable towards a woman of beauty and spirit, even though she was a papist’.16 Harris briskly dismisses these remarks of Hume: ‘an inexcusable attachment to the councils, and submission to the rule, of a violent unskillful [sic] woman, is glossed over with the title of a legitimate affection towards a woman of beauty and spirit!’ [97n] The issue of the authenticity of Ikon Basilike provided another opportunity for Harris to counter Hume. This collection of papers, ascribed to Charles I, had gone through forty-seven editions by the 1750s and was immensely important in manufacturing an image of the king as a saintly martyr. Harris weighs up the evidence and is no more than cautiously sceptical about the king’s authorship. [101n–113n] Whether he wrote it

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himself, merely edited and corrected it, or never even saw it, Harris granted that Ikon Basilike does ‘contain his own sense of things’. Harris observes that there are some deliberate exclusions from the canon of Charles I’s writings, notably his letters to popes Gregory XV (1623) and Urban VIII (1634). The former, in particular, seems to display a considerable sympathy for the Roman Catholic Church. Hume airily dismissed it as merely a polite reply to a letter from an important public figure. Harris responds: ‘all writers have not been so complaisant to the memory of this monarch as Mr Hume’. [122n] Harris seizes on other issues to challenge Hume’s account of Charles I. Two cases attracted his closest attention: the torture and imprisonment of Prynne, Burton, Bastwick and Leighton; and the Irish massacre. For Harris, as for other Whig and Dissenting commentators, the former was indicative of the wider strategy of Charles and Laud. Under their direction a whole series of ‘superstitious practices’ were introduced: consecrating church buildings, bowing to the altar, introducing pictures into churches, and so on. ‘In short, the church of England assumed a new dress under this prince and seemed too much to resemble the Romish one’. [194–5] Clerics with leanings towards Rome were advanced. Outright Catholics moved within court circles and were promoted to positions of authority in the State. Their Protestant critics were, by contrast, suppressed. Harris is willing to grant that neither Charles nor Laud intended to return England to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Rome. What they did intend was to undermine the forces of Protestantism, and thus of liberty, within the national Church and thus to strengthen the doctrine of divine right and the authority of the Crown. This was, in effect, popery. Anyone who opposed this strategy was subjected to severe punishment. Harris comments: ‘The sufferings of Leighton, Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton, are read still with horror by those who have compassion; and stand as eternal monuments of the cruelty of the government, and the influence of the priests.’ [224–9] Here Hume is brought into the dock. He had remarked, as we saw in the previous chapter, that the severity of the punishment of these men was perhaps ‘somewhat blameable’ – but that it should not be judged by contemporary standards. Harris rejects such moral relativism: ‘ ’tis to be hoped the measures of this as well as every other reign, are to be judged by the maxims of equity: if they are inconsistent with these, they deserve condemnation, tho’ of ever so long a practice . . .’ [229n] A second key issue is the Irish massacre. ‘The Irish rebellion was one of the most shocking things in history,’ Harris says. The first question that divided historians was the extent of the massacre. Hume had stated:

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By some computations, those, who perished by all those cruelties, are made to amount to a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand: By the most moderate, and probably the most reasonable account, they must have been near forty thousand.17

Harris responds sharply: It were to be wished Mr Hume had told us where this moderate, reasonable account is to be found: for my own part, I have sought for it in vain. Those who, one would think, should have been best informed, make a very different calculation. [337n]

Rapin had mentioned a figure of 40,000 deaths though he provides no documentation for this figure and seems to be referring to those deaths occurring in Ulster at the inception of the rising on 23 October and the days immediately following.18 A couple of pages later he mentions ‘above forty thousand’ and a footnote, presumably added by Tindal, gives contemporary estimates ranging from 154,000 to 300,000.19 Harris similarly cites widely varying contemporary estimates and, in the absence of any solid information, leaves the question open, making the inescapable point: It is not my business to enter into a controversy about the number destroyed in this massacre: take it at the lowest, it is large, and almost incredible, had we not such incontestable authority for it. [338n]

Hume, of course, is no less appalled by the massacres and describes the cruelty of the Irish against the mostly defenceless English families as ‘the most barbarous, that ever, in any nation, was known or heard of . . .’20 Was Charles I in any way implicated in this massacre or in the rebellion that triggered it? Hume had peremptorily dismissed the very idea: ‘It is now so universally allowed, notwithstanding some muttering to the contrary, that the King had no hand in the Irish rebellion, that it will be superfluous to insist on a point, which seems so clear.’21 He does then ‘insist’, however, on rebutting the charge in nine points. These Harris scrupulously rehearses and then itemises points on the other side. He comes to a cautious conclusion. The reader here is carefully to remember, that those who think worst of this prince, do not suppose him consenting or even privy to the massacre. This is too black a thing for him to be charged with, even by his foes. But what is alledged [sic] against him is, that he excited the Irish to appear in arms, master the protestants, and help the king against his parliament. [351n]

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Harris’s life of Charles, inevitably, draws to a close with his trial and execution. There is one equivocal remark: ‘Amidst all the sufferings which Charles underwent, he seems to have preserved great equanimity; and before, at, and after his trial, his patience, or his insensibility, was very remarkable.’ [409–11] But, in contrast to Hume’s dramatic and sentimental narrative, there is little about the execution itself, merely quotations from some contemporary accounts. HARRIS AND CROMWELL

Four years later there appeared Harris’s life of Cromwell, placed on equal terms between Charles I and Charles II in this chronological series of heads of state. As we saw in Chapter 2, eighteenth-century assessments of Cromwell, Whig and Tory alike, were generally hostile. Dissenting historians like Daniel Neal and Isaac Kimber had been more positive. But Harris is boldly supportive of Cromwell on a range of contentious issues. Again space permits no more than a cursory outline of a 500-page volume. Hume had claimed that Cromwell’s religious enthusiasm as a converted sinner in the 1630s was such that he neglected his estate and his finances. Harris notes the implausibility of this. Contemporaries respected him as a sensible man of business and indeed elected him as MP for the county. As a soldier, Cromwell’s religious enthusiasm was similarly in harmony with practical affairs. Harris praises the discipline he maintained over his troops. Some have made fun of the religiosity of the New Model Army. But that he successfully enforced religious duties and the fear of God as well as sobriety and decent behaviour is, says Harris, a matter of honour both to Cromwell and to his soldiers. [81n] One main charge against Cromwell, by Hume and others, is conceded by Harris: his capacity for dissimulation, hypocrisy and double-dealing. This is rooted in his religious enthusiasm, a disposition which permits both great devotion and great crimes: ‘Men who think themselves under the special and extraordinary influence of the deity, attribute to him their feelings, sentiments, and desires, and whatever proceeds from him must be wise and good.’22 But Cromwell’s situation required from him a degree of political cynicism and dexterity – not least because most of those with whom he had to deal, including the king, were equally devious and untrustworthy though often, Harris notes, ‘with less art, and worse grace’. Harris barely disguises his glee at Cromwell’s use of the selfdenying ordinance, ‘a masterpiece’ of political chicanery. Cromwell was always blamed for the execution of Charles I:

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it would be tedious as well as endless to reckon upon the reproaches which have been cast on Cromwell for this action: suffice it to say that the bigots, the time-servers, the party-men, and many of the honest and sensible men of most denominations, have joined in the cry and represented him as one of the most wicked of men. [212–213n]

Contemporaries are cited who defended the king’s trial and execution. Harris avoids declaring his own position but he adds that ‘the abettors of it gloried that it was performed in the eye of the world, and that an example was set to posterity how to act in similar circumstances’. [219n] And he goes on to shower praise on the Commonwealth Parliament for its programme of reforms in Church and State. By the end of 1653 Cromwell had assumed many of the traditional powers of an English king. The instrument of government which he solemnly swore at his inauguration granted Parliament ultimate authority in the making of law. According to Harris, ‘despotism was far enough from being the intention of Cromwell and his officers’. [343n] But, under the specific circumstances of England, return to rule by a single man was unavoidable: there was a necessity for some sovereignty or other to be erected, that men might not be forced upon new civil wars. And who but Cromwell was capable of this? Who so fit, in his own eye at least, to exercise it? [348n]

Who so fit, clearly, in Harris’s eyes too? How blameworthy soever the protector might have been in the acquisition of his high office; or how wickedly soever he had acquired it, (for his admirers confess he had faults, and pretend not wholly to exculpate him) yet certain it is, he rivalled [sic] the greatest of the English monarchs in glory, and made himself courted and dreaded by the nations around him. [342–52]

Under Cromwell the Protestant interest in Europe was defended, as never before, by the strength of English arms. The Court was free of debauchery. Men of ability and principle were raised in the State. The benches were filled with honest and able judges. State expenses were kept to a minimum. If Cromwell was occasionally severe in his punishment of political enemies, the instances were few and possible to justify. Harris’s final judgement is guardedly positive: At the restoration, indeed, his ashes were trampled on, and his memory was branded; but time, the great friend to truth, has, in some measure, cleared up his character, and done justice to his abilities; and, if he cannot be ranked among the best, he, undoubtedly, is to be placed amongst the greatest of princes. [499n]

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In his account of Cromwell, Harris had stepped over the conventional bounds of Whig political argument. The Monthly Review had praised Harris’s first two volumes for their Whig principles. According to Flexman, another Dissenting minister, the author of the life of James I, ‘breathes a laudable spirit in favour of the excellent constitution and liberties of Great Britain’. And Owen Ruffhead’s review of Harris’s volume on Charles similarly commends the author as ‘a true friend to religious and civil liberty’.23 The Life of Cromwell, however, received no such Whig plaudits. Ruffhead was appalled by Harris’s favourable comments on the Protector. when he endeavours to throw a favourable gloss on the conduct of Cromwell, who only destroyed an irresolute tyrant, that he might himself take a firmer grip of the sceptre of tyranny, he certainly errs in his judgement, and becomes, we trust, involuntarily partial.24

Had Cromwell’s tyrannical actions – the packing of juries and dismissal of independent judges, the consistent violations of the privileges of Parliament – been temporary expedients in the larger cause of liberty, there might be some mitigation. But they were for no other purpose than personal aggrandisement. A heated Ruffhead says that he finds it ‘a matter of amazement that any friend to liberty should attempt to apologize for a character so obnoxious and injurious to civil society’.25 Harris’s claims for Cromwell’s religious tolerance are disputed and his conclusions about Cromwell’s greatness are derided. For Ruffhead, Cromwell was a brutal tyrant and his public conduct was such as ‘to render his memory odious to every friend to justice and liberty’. The review closes on a conciliatory afterword, perhaps added later by the Monthly’s editors: ‘sorry we are to disapprove of the work of a person of Mr Harris’s worthy character, as a hearty friend to liberty, both civil and religious, and a truly honest man’.26 HARRIS AND THE RESTORATION

Four years later, in 1766, Harris’s two volumes on Charles II appeared. For Hume, and for a broader common sense, the Restoration was a return to the natural order of things. As Smollett succinctly put it: ‘the king remounted the throne of his ancestors, and law, order and subordination, began to flow quietly in their ancient channels’.27 For Harris by contrast, the return of Charles II was a reversion to a vicious and outmoded political regime. As he had stated in his previous volume, it was only Cromwell’s

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authority which held the Commonwealth together. After his death there was no such authority. His son Richard resigned as Lord Protector and, Harris says, ‘thereby prevented the effusion of blood, and calamities of his people’. Had army and Parliament been united, those who supported the restoration of the Stuart dynasty would have remained powerless. A majority of the people, Harris thinks, would have been satisfied with any ‘equitable government’. But deepening divisions within the Commonwealth state alienated all confidence and support.28 Milton warned several times that to restore monarchy and episcopacy would soil the memories of those who fought and died to gain these liberties for all. And it would require another civil war ‘to fight over again all that we have fought, and spend over again all that we have spent’. [Quoted 303–4] Others are quoted to the same tragic effect. Harris looks on with equal rage and sorrow as former supporters of Cromwell protested their loyalty to the restored Stuart monarchy. Looking only to their own safety and profit, they sacrificed laws and liberties regardless of the real interests of the people. Others of stronger principles silently acquiesced in what it was now futile to oppose. At the same time Royalists at home and in exile ‘took all possible care to lull the nation asleep, by smooth words, plausible professions, and such assurances as were judged aptest to work on their credulity’. [I, 285n] The fears of many Puritans were calmed by the king’s declaration at Breda that liberty of conscience would be preserved and that actions in the Civil War and during the Commonwealth would be forgotten. ‘How well all these promises were made good – for promises they were taken to be – will be shewn hereafter,’ Harris notes bitterly. [I, 287n] To permit Charles II to regain the crown without any conditions or agreements was he says ‘contrary to sense, honesty, justice and the security of the rights and liberties of the nation’. Who were the real agents of the Stuart Restoration – ‘this act of treachery and baseness’? The answer is, the Presbyterians. Burnet had it first hand from Holles that he and other leading Presbyterians – including Shaftesbury and influential ministers such as Edmund Calamy – induced General Monck to use his military power to turn out ‘the Rump’ Parliament and bring in the king. Baxter tells the same story. But this powerful Presbyterian group envisaged the restoration of the monarchy within a rigorous set of conditions and agreements. Harris thoroughly documents this. Who then prevented these conditions and agreements being hammered out prior to the king’s return? Harris is emphatic: ‘it was Monck’.29 Events leading up to the return of Charles II occupy a substantial section of the first volume. Turning to Harris’s account of Charles II and

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the Restoration period, a predictable Dissenting theme is the immorality of the new king. Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans, as we have seen, made much of the debauchery of Charles II and of his Court. Harris describes how, during their exile, the uneducated young princes, Charles and James, fell under the domineering influence of their mother who had already caused so many difficulties for their father. The circles of exiled Royalists were calculated to demoralise them further: A more contemptible group can hardly be figured, by the imagination, than these men: beaten in the field; fugitives in a foreign land; adorned with empty, insignificant, high-sounding titles; poor; beggarly; quarrelsome; and contentious; hateful; and hating one another. [I, 165n]

Charles wasted his days in ‘idleness or low amours’. This was the moral ethos that shaped the Court of Charles II after 1660. ‘In respect to his morals,’ Harris says, ‘he was one of the most perfect profligates to be met with in history.’ [II, 31–9] Many kings have kept mistresses but most had some regard to decency and made some effort to disguise their adulteries. ‘But Charles kept no measures: he spoke, and did, those things which are hardly to be mentioned without blushing.’ [II, 38n] But mention them Harris does, cataloguing his mistresses and his illegitimate children. The drunkenness, lewdness, profligacy, which thrived openly in the Court of Charles II influenced the whole of Restoration England. Most of Harris’s history is concerned with Charles II’s role in Restoration politics and here it is his religious proclivities which were crucial. Successive Stuarts chose, Harris says, ‘to fetter the free-born minds of men, and render them obedient to their galling yoke’. It was not only the king and his court, however, but also leading members of the Church of England who pushed forward the repressive measures against religious liberty in the early 1660s. Royalist Churchmen wanted revenge against their Puritan opponents and, through the Act of Uniformity and a raft of other legislation, they got it. Clarendon was ‘the great promoter of the barbarous laws on account of religion’. The measures that became known as the Clarendon Code, Harris says, ‘will reflect disgrace on his name and administration, as long as there is sense, virtue, or humanity, in the world’. [II, 111n] On the Popish Plot Harris is cautious, weighing ‘the evidence for and against it with all the care in my power’. The weight of evidence in Harris’s account seems to be against the existence of the Popish Plot as elaborated by Titus Oates. But Harris has no doubts about the threat posed by a papist court. He describes the Roman Catholic Church as ‘a sect whose characteristic has always been persecution, persecution most

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bloody’. [II, 85n] Only the ‘exercise of reason and the practice of virtue’, he says, will combat ‘the delusions, sorceries and witchcrafts of those, who endeavour to impose on the understanding, in order to enslave the body and the soul’. [II, 86n] Subsequent sections look at the exclusion crisis, the Rye House Plot, and the executions of Russell and Sydney, in each of which Harris adopts an uncompromising anti-Stuart position worth exploring further. DISSENTERS AND WILKITES

The received picture of Dissent in the middle years of the eighteenth century is of a rather quiescent body of people whose opposition to the political establishment had pretty much evaporated. The reforming energies of a section of Dissent from the end of the 1760s is taken to be sui generis, a new and innovative form of radicalism emerging out of the complex political conjuncture which included the Wilkes case and the conflict with the American colonists. There is much to substantiate this interpretation. But the work of William Harris opens a door into a wider network of Dissenters in the 1740s and 1750s, and raises questions about their apparent political quiescence. I want to suggest that these difficult works can usefully be read as a contribution to a wider project to maintain an alternative historical narrative of English history and an alternative political tradition. Amid a plethora of historical detail, Harris’s histories argue that rebellion against the king in the 1640s was legitimate; that the execution of the king in 1649 was a salutary lesson to all kings; that Cromwell was not a brutal tyrant but a great and worthy national leader; that the Commonwealth was a brief period of moral government and social order; that the Restoration of Charles II was a disaster because, like his grandfather, James I, before him, he was installed without adequate legal safeguards to protect the liberties of the subject. Harris died before he reached the brief reign of James II and the events of 1688 but it is clear from his previous volumes that he would have argued that, in 1688 as in 1641, a Stuart king had forfeited the right to the Crown and that in both instances popular sovereignty was vindicated. Harris had concluded his study of Charles I with the warning: ‘All princes in limited monarchies ought to take warning by his fate, against breaking the laws and misusing the prerogative.’30 Kathleen Wilson has noted that one of the significant ‘ideological strategies’ of the extra-Parliamentary Wilkite campaigns of the 1760s was the revival of the historical experience and political language of the seventeenth century: ‘Rather than privileging ahistorical natural rights

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doctrines per se, radical rhetoric combined natural and historical rights arguments to give primacy to the role of resistance in 1688 and conflate it with ‘‘the people’s’’ actions in 1649 . . .’31 Dominant accounts of the Revolution had long repudiated such a strategy, stressing the profound differences between the offensive popular action of the 1640s and the defensive elite action of 1688. Wilkites stressed the parallels between the two, celebrating a long and positive tradition of popular resistance to tyranny. Wilkes was inserted into a line of political martrys – John Hampden, victim of Charles I; Algernon Sidney and Lord Russell, victims of Charles II; and now John Wilkes, victim of John Stuart, Earl of Bute, and the power behind the throne of George III.32 The refurbished rhetoric of radical Whiggism provided an effective ideological weapon in the political struggles of the 1760s. It legitimised dire warnings of a revival of Stuart tyranny. And it legitimised popular action against the authorities as a good old English tradition to which the nation owed its liberties. Wilson points to Mrs Macaulay’s republican History of England as the exemplar of this kind of alternative narrative of patriots and republicans resisting the tyranny of the Crown in the name of the people. But though her first volume was published in 1763, Macaulay had reached only the 1640s by the time of her fifth volume published in 1771. It was the 1780s before her History got to Restoration England and the political martyrdom of Sidney, Russell and Essex. Where then did the Wilkite retrieval, in the early 1760s, of seventeenth-century political language and experience come from? William Harris’s difficult, crabbed, almost unreadable biographical histories of Stuart England point to an answer to that question: the political culture of one strand of Protestant Dissent. It was here that the dominant narratives of Clarendon and Hume, enshrined as we have seen in the Liturgy of the Church of England, were contested, and alternative historical narratives of the seventeenth century eleborated. And it is here we find a bridge between the Commonwealthman tradition of Milton, Harrington, Sidney, Trenchard and so on, on the one hand, and the post-1760 extra-Parliamentary reform campaigns on the other. At Taunton Academy, Harris’s tutor was Henry Grove (1684–1738), a disciple of Locke and Newton, a contributor to The Spectator, and author, published posthumously, of two substantial philosophical works.33 He was on the liberal wing of Dissent, opposing doctrinal subscriptions of any kind. Politically he was a proponent of the ‘Old Whig’ tradition which traced its ancestry back to Milton, Harrington, Sydney and Russell. Grove’s assistant and successor at Taunton, Thomas Amory (1701–74), held to a similar set of Whig positions and was later to share the pulpit at Stoke Newington with the young Richard Price. From

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his first publication to his last, Harris remained loyal to the old Whig and Dissenting tradition which he had imbibed in the 1730s at Taunton. His historical writing is packed with references to Harrington’s Oceana, Henry Neville’s Plato Redivivus, Algernon Sydney’s Discourses on Government, Marchmont Nedham, Locke’s essay on government, Trenchard on standing armies, Molesworth on Denmark, Gordon’s Discourses on Tacitus. John Milton is cited more than any other single author and frequently quoted at length – ‘this divine man’, Harris calls him, ‘whose love of liberty, and of his country, was ever uppermost in his breast’.34 These are the canonical texts of the old Whig Commonwealthman. There was another Taunton Academy influence on both the form and the content of Harris’s histories: An Essay towards Attaining a True Idea of the Character and Reign of King Charles the First, And the Causes of the Civil War, by Micaijah Towgood (1700–92), published in 1748.35 Grandson of an ejected minister, Towgood had been educated at Taunton under Grove between 1717 and 1722; Thomas Amory was his fellow student. Settled as minister at the large and prestigious meeting house in Exeter, he married the daughter of Edward Hawkes of Luppit. Evidence is circumstantial, but there are too many connections between Towgood and Harris for them not to have encountered each other in Dissenting circles in the west of England in the 1740s and 1750s. Towgood was one of the leading voices of religious Dissent, not just in the west of England but nationally.36 His lengthy debate with White, A Dissent from the Church of England fully justified, was perhaps the most powerful elaboration of the principles of religious Dissent in mid-eighteenthcentury England. First published in 1746, it had reached an eighth edition by the end of the century.37 John Wesley called it ‘the most saucy and virulent satire on the Church of England that ever my eyes beheld’ and began to draft a reply.38 Towgood’s Essay towards attaining a True Idea of the Character and Reign of King Charles the First consists of nineteen chapters covering the main points of Charles’s reign. Each chapter is a collection of quotations taken from the most influential historians of the period – mostly Clarendon, Whitelocke, Burnet, Echard, Oldmixon, Rapin and Neal. The influence of Bayle here is obvious. In this way, according to Towgood, the reader can weigh up the different interpretations of historians and come to an independent view. This aim is rather compromised by his own introductory critique of his sources. Clarendon’s are ‘the Accounts of a zealous Advocate for the Royal Case’ written to vindicate the king. Echard is described as ‘a florid and prolix writer, not celebrated for his Impartiality . . . a passionate Admirer and most zealous Advocate of

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the King’.39 Whitelocke and Burnet by contrast receive Towgood’s approval and Rapin is ‘an impartial Umpire’ unconnected with party. Passages are selected by Towgood to demonstrate a rigorously anti-Stuart case, reinforced by his own chapter headings and interpolations. Thus, Chapter 3 is entitled, ‘His designs to overthrow the CONSTITUTION and to render himself absolute’. And it opens: ‘That it was the avow’d Designs of this Prince to overthrow the ancient Constitution and Government of this Kingdom, and to make himself absolute and independent of Parliament, his whole History puts beyond all rational Doubt.’40 Other chapter titles and interpolations are hardly less tendentious. For instance: ‘The Confusions and Civil war proceeded not from any Religious Sect or party amongst the People but solely from the Oppressions and Tyranny of the Court’ or ‘The King’s flagrant Invasions of the Privilege and Rights of PARLIAMENT, and the Violences committed on it’.41 Towgood’s Essay towards attaining a True Idea of the Character and Reign of King Charles the First concludes with an account of the Revolution as radical as anything to be found among the Wilkites in the 1760s or, for that matter, in Price or Priestley at the end of the 1780s. The representatives of the English nation had declared that the king had violated the fundamental laws and original contract. James II had, therefore, Towgood argues, forfeited his right to the throne. Legally he had ceased to be the king and the people might lawfully wage war against him. And yet James had not gone nearly so far as his father. ‘The same Principles therefore which justify the deposing by Force of Arms and setting aside the one, will justify the Endeavour to do the same by the other.’ To approve of the Revolution but to call the overthrow of Charles I as a rebellion was, according to Towgood, inconsistent.42 Towgood’s Essay is a forceful and succinct restatement by an important Dissenting minister, at the end of the 1740s, of a radical Commonwealthman position on seventeenth-century English history and on its continuing effects in the present – a position which Harris was to develop much further in the 1750s. Harris’s historical work, especially its republican affinities, brought him in 1758 into the orbit of Thomas Hollis (1720–74), a remarkable Dissenter who used his considerable wealth to keep alive that radical Whig tradition which was so important in Harris’s writing. Hollis bought old copies of books by Commonwealth and Old Whig writers, had them rebound and donated them to libraries. He also financed new editions of works by Milton, Algernon Sydney, Robert Molesworth, Locke and others. Harris benefited directly from Hollis’s patronage in various ways,

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including, at his behest, the award of a doctorate from the University of Glasgow in 1765. He also received from Hollis copies of several original and unpublished letters of Cromwell, three of which Harris printed as an appendix to his life of Cromwell. Harris became part of the network of correspondents marshalled by Hollis and Archdeacon Blackburne, bombarding the press throughout the 1760s with dire warnings about the drift of the State towards despotism and popery.43 They included John Jebb and Theophilus Lindsey, Churchmen who were to break from the Church of England in the 1770s and ally with Dissenters such as Richard Price in the reform movements of the 1780s. Other Dissenting ministers were part of Hollis’s network and, like Harris, engaged in one way or another in a critical engagement with dominant histories or in the retrieval of alternative traditions. One key figure was Richard Baron. Announcing his death in February 1768, the London Magazine described him as ‘a baptist minister, well known by his writings, and his warmth, even enthusiasm, in the cause of liberty’.44 British Biography, edited by another radical Dissenting minister, Joseph Towers, described him as ‘a high-spirited Republican, an adorer of Milton, Sydney, and Locke’.45 ‘A Toast for January XXXth’, subsequently printed as a card, gives an indication of Baron’s uncompromising republicanism: May all statesmen that would raise the King’s prerogative upon the ruin of public liberty meet the fate of Lord Strafford. May all priests that would advance power upon the belly of conscience, go to the block like Archbishop Laud. May all kings that would hearken to such statesmen and such priests have their heads chopt off like Charles the First.46

Baron had already begun to collect and republish texts from this oppositional tradition – including Towgood’s 1737 ‘High-flown Episcopal and Priestly Claims Examined’.47 From 1756 he co-operated with Hollis and they reprinted a number of important works by Milton, Sidney and others.48 Hollis’s ‘Amiable Band’ included another Dissenting minister on the radical wing of mid-eighteenth century Whiggery: Caleb Fleming (1698– 1779). His voluminous writings represent the kind of historical perspective inherited from Neal and Calamy and reshaped for new uses by this generation of Dissenters. And he, too, announces his affiliation to the Commonwealthman position by his references to Algernon Sidney, ‘that distinguished patriot’ and to Milton – ‘the prince of poets’, he calls him. Two of Fleming’s works cite Milton on their title pages.49 Like Towgood,

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Fleming was energetically contesting dominant historical narratives of the seventeenth century a generation before Mrs Macaulay. Look, for instance, at his polemic against a 30 January sermon preached at St Paul’s in 1750. Fleming disputes Clarendon’s History, denounces Charles for his concessions to popery and his ambitions towards despotism, and links 1641 and 1688 in a legitimate tradition of popular resistance. This sermon, he says represents as rebels, a generation of men who took up arms, who spent their treasure and their blood in securing to that age and to posterity, what is most dear to us, as Christians, and as Protestants! – whereas the very principles on which the revolution took place, under the immortal William, sanctified the parliament arms . . .50

For Fleming, then, 1688 justifies 1641 and both vindicate popular resistance: Charles I and James II equally ‘abused and forfeited’ the Crown. When Wilkes exploded on to the political scene in 1763, generations of Dissenters had already established an alternative historical narrative of Tudor and Stuart England which justified resistance to the Crown. Enshrined in a body of substantial historical works (Calamy, Neal, Harris) it was articulated in the practices and even the common sense of a wider community of co-religionists. Wilkes himself had emerged precisely out of this community. His parents were Dissenters and for a number of years attended Carter Lane Chapel in the City of London. Wilkes as a youth had a Dissenting minister, Matthew Leeson, as his tutor. Like his parents, he attended the chapel in Carter Lane after his marriage to the Dissenting heiress, Mary Mead, in 1747. By the 1760s Wilkes was, of course, a notorious libertine and religious sceptic. Dissenters kept him at arm’s length. But, according to a Scottish historian, when Richard Price was reminded of Wilkes’s ‘gross immoralities’: ‘he said he was a man he could trample under his foot, but the question which he had been the occasion of moving was of such constitutional magnitude, that his private character ought to have no influence on the decision of it’.51 Sharing his deep antipathy to arbitrary power, Dissenters supported the cause of ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ in considerable numbers in the 1760s. And Wilkes supported the cause of the Dissenters in the Commons on several occasions. CONCLUSION

William Harris’s historical works were written by a Dissenting minister but they are not Dissenting histories in the ways that those of Calamy and Neal are. There is no attempt, for instance, to preserve the memory of

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Dissenting heroism. Ecclesiastical affairs are never the main focus and Harris’s anti-clerical perspective sometimes sounds like Hume. The disputes between Puritans and prelatists in the early years of Charles I’s reign seem, Harris says, ‘in the eyes of most, in this age, as very trifling and insignificant’: ‘They were a very stiff kind of men, many of them of both sides; of weak capacities or unformed understandings; who opposed unreasonably and resisted obstinately.’52 It was not their religious tenets but their courageous resistance to tyranny and their uncompromising anti-popery, which brought them the support of lovers of civil liberty. It is precisely here that there are significant convergences between religious dissent and an oppositional, even republican, politics in eighteenthcentury England. In an important essay on Dissenters in Restoration London, Gary de Krey has explored how their commitment to liberty of conscience uncoupled the link between priest and king which had been fundamental to the English State since the break from Rome in the 1530s.53 In some cases – the Quakers, for instance – there was an uncompromising rejection of the authority of the State. Others accepted a limited authority on the part of the Crown. But all Dissenters rejected traditional assumptions about the necessity of religious uniformity and rejected also the legitimacy of coercion in matters of conscience. Dissenters not only argued, they also defied laws enforcing uniformity throughout the reigns of the last Stuart monarchs. To push for the legitimacy of the Dissenting tradition was, at the same time, and unavoidably, to contest ground with established institutions and with dominant historical narratives of Church and State. To put it another way, adherence to the right and duty of liberty of conscience, exposed the repressive functions of the monarchical State. Thus, for Harris, Stuart monarchs, by invading the liberty of conscience of the individual, abused the prerogative of the Crown: The severe laws enacted by Elizabeth, inheritrix of her father’s tyrannical spirit, on account of religion, were confirmed and enlarged by them, and many an honest and good man smarted under them. The governors of the Commonwealth, and Cromwell, indeed saw the absurdity and iniquity on which they were founded; and therefore made little or no use of them. But when Charles II revisited his native land, and he had got a parliament after his own heart, they soon became again in vogue; and the people found, to their cost, that, like his father, he was a persecutor.54

Richard Baron made the same point, demonstrating again how political opposition in the 1760s was grounded in historical experience, and here specifically the experience of Dissenters:

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Oppression in matters of religion, and ecclesiastical tyranny, ever made way for, and will eternally introduce, civil bondage, and the tyranny of princes: and in our own history more especially it appears, that civil and religious oppression rise and fall together.55

The same points were made in a powerful essay in the Wilkite weekly the North Briton in 1768. The anonymous author stressed the elective affinities between Dissenters and the extra-Parliamentary opposition of these years. James I had famously declared: ‘No Bishop, no King’: I would say, and, I believe, with equal truth, NO DISSENTER, NO LIBERTY. The Dissenters are, and ever have been, the very life and soul of the republican part of our government. They have often saved it, when upon the brink of destruction . . . Accustomed to think freely in religious matters, the Protestant Dissenters have ever exercised the same freedom in their political speculations.56

They and their Puritan forebears, the article continued, had opposed the absurdities of divine right, passive obedience and non-resistance. They had consistently maintained that government was for the people, that the king was the first servant of the public and was bound by the laws, that the subject was freed from allegiance to a king who violated laws essential to the constitution: These are the principles, which the Dissenters have ever embraced, and which they still embrace. These are the principles upon which the civil war was begun, and the revolution effected.57

Again historical continuities between the 1640s and the Revolution of 1688 are affirmed, legitimising and aligning popular acts of resistance to tyranny and the Puritan and Dissenting tradition of resistance to arbitrary power. No wonder then that Samuel Johnson was growling in 1770 that Wilkes was supported by ‘the sectaries, the natural fomentors of sedition, and confederates of the rabble, of whose religion little now remains but hatred of establishments’.58 Or that David Hume was appalled by the echoes of the rantings of seventeenth-century Puritans in the calls of ‘Wilkes and Liberty’: ‘the present fury of the people, though glossed over by pretensions to civil liberty, is in reality incited by the fanaticism of religion’.59 NOTES 1 Samuel Billingsley, The Character of St. Paul as a Preacher, considered and recommended. A Sermon Preach’d at the Ordination of the Rev.William

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2 3 4

5

6 7

8 9

10 11 12

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Harris. At Wells in the County of Somerset, April 15 MDCCXLI (1741). There is a short but useful biographical sketch in the Monthly Magazine, 10, 2 (1800), pp. 20–1. The remarkable dearth of biographical material is noted in the anonymous ‘Sketch of the Life of the Author’ which prefaces William Harris, An Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and writings of James I and Charles I and of the Lives of Oliver Cromwell and Charles II, after the Manner of Mr Bayle, from Original Writers and State-Papers, 5 volumes (1814) 1, p. i. The Diary of Sylas Neville 1767–1788, ed. B. Cozens-Hardy (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1950), pp. 13–14. [Francis Blackburne] Memoirs of Thomas Hollis Esq., 2 vols (1780) 1, p. 445. Pierre Bayle, An Historical and Critical Dictionary. By Monsieur Bayle. Translated into English, with many additions and corrections . . . (1710), 4 vols; A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical: in which a new and accurate translation of that of . . . Mr. Bayle . . . By the Reverend Mr. John Peter Bernard; the Reverend Mr. Thomas Birch; Mr. John Lockman; and other hands . . . (1734–41), 10 vols. For a good introduction see Pierre Bayle, Political Writings, edited by Sally Jenkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). ‘Preface’ to Biographia Britannica: or, the lives of the most eminent persons who have flourished in Great Britain and Ireland, from the earliest ages, . . . and digested in the manner of Mr Bayle’s Historical and critical dictionary . . . 1 (1747), p. vii. [Andrew Kippis] ‘Literary Article’, The Library, 1 (1760), p. 440. ‘Sketch of the Life of the Author’ in Harris, Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of James I and Charles I and of the Lives of Oliver Cromwell and Charles II, . . . (1814) 1, pp. iv–v. An Historical and Critical Account of Hugh Peters. After the manner of Mr. Bayle (1751). Subsequent references to this edition will be in parentheses. Zachary Grey claimed to have found evidence that Peter, ‘an infamous, juggling and scandalous villain’, had got a mother and her daughter pregnant and had had a sexual liaison with, horror of horrors, a butcher’s wife. Z. Grey, An Examination of the Third Volume of Mr Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans . . . (1737), p. 358. Gilbert Burnet, Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time . . ., 1 (1725), p. 268. Hume, History, ed. Forbes, p. 652n. William Harris, An Historical and Critical Account of the Life and Writings of Charles I. King of Great Britain. After the manner of Mr. Bayle. Drawn from original writers and state papers (1758), pp. 39–41. Subsequent references are in parentheses within the text. Hume, History, ed. Forbes, p. 202. Ibid., pp. 272–3.

Enlightenment, Republicanism and Dissent 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

29

30 31

32 33 34 35

36

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Ibid., p. 685. Ibid., p. 604. Ibid., p. 463. Rapin, History of England, 5th ed. (1759), p. 340. Ibid., p. 343 and n. Hume, History, ed. Forbes, p. 459. Ibid., p. 467n. William Harris, An Historical and Critical Account of the Life of Oliver Cromwell, . . . After the manner of Mr. Bayle. Drawn from original writers and state papers. To which is added, an appendix . . . (1762), p. 105n. Subsequent references are in parentheses within the text. MR, 10 (1754), p. 301 and MR, 18 (1758), p. 459 MR, 26 (1762), p. 96. Ibid. Ibid., p. 103. T. Smollett, A Complete History of England, deduced from the descent of Julius Caesar, to the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle, 1748 . . . 3 (1757), p. 401. William Harris, An Historical and Critical Account of the Life of Charles the Second, King of Great Britain . . . 2 vols (1766) 1, pp. 256n–257n. Subsequent references are in parentheses within the text. Calamy recounts how his grandfather, Edmund Calamy, soon came to repent the role he played in persuading Monck to bring back the king. One Sunday shortly after the Restoration Monck was present during a sermon in which Calamy’s mentioned ‘filthy lucre’: ‘And why’, said he, ‘is it called filthy lucre, but because it makes men do base and filthy things? Some men’, said he, ‘will betray three kingdoms for filthy lucre’s sake.’ Saying which, he threw his handkerchief, which he usually waved up and down while he was preaching, towards the General’s pew. Calamy, Abridgement (1713) 2, p. 6. Harris, Charles the First (1758), pp. 423–4. Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People. Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 212–13. Middlesex Journal, 21 April 1770. A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty (1741); A System of Moral Philosophy, edited and completed by T. Amory, 2 vols (1749). William Harris, Charles the Second (1766), pp. 302–303n. [Micaijah Towgood] An Essay towards Attaining a True idea of the Character and Reign of King Charles the First, And the Causes of the Civil War (1748). This work is subsequently abbreviated to Towgood, An Essay (1748). Towgood’s influence on others of Harris’s generation in the west of England is indicated in the dedication to Joshua Toulmin, Letters to the Rev. John Sturges, M.A. in answer to his considerations on the present state of the church establishment (1782), p. 3.

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37 M. Towgood, A Dissent from the Church of England fully justified, and Proved to be the Genuine and Just consequence of the Allegiance which is due to Jesus Christ, the only Lawgiver in the Church: being the Dissenting Gentleman’s Three Letters and Postscript in Answer to the Letters of Rev. Mr. White on that Subject . . . (8th ed., 1800). 38 An Extract of the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s Journal, from February 16, 1755, to June 16, 1758 (Bristol, 1761), p. 128. 39 Towgood, An Essay (1748), pp. vii, x. 40 Ibid., p. 10. 41 Ibid., pp. 13, 36. 42 It is worth noting that Towgood and Fleming were actively involved in the campaign against the Test and Corporation Acts in the 1730s and again in the campaigns against subscription in the early 1770s. 43 [Francis Blackburne] A Collection of Letters and Essays in Favour of Public Liberty. First Published in the Newspapers in the Year 1764–70 by an Amiable Band of Well-Wishers to the Religious and Civil Rights of Mankind, 3 vols (1774). 44 London Magazine, 37 (1768), p. 165. 45 British Biography, ed. J. Towers (Sherborne, 1780) 10, p. 453n. 46 Reprinted in Blackburne, Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, 2, p. 583. 47 Another Cordial for Low Spirits by Mr Gordon and Others, ed. R. Baron (1751); R. Baron, The Pillars of Priestcraft and Orthodoxy Shaken (1752); Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, Esq . . . With a collection of original papers, . . . To which is now added, the case of King Charles the First . . . (1751); The Works of John Milton, Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous . . . 2 vols (1753). 48 For instance: J. Milton, Eikonoklastes, ed. R. Baron (1756); J. Toland, Life of Milton, ed. T. Hollis (1761); A. Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, ed. T. Hollis (1763); H. Neville, Plato Redivivus, ed. T. Hollis (1763); M. Nedham, The Excellencie of a Free State, ed. R. Baron (1767). 49 Caleb Fleming, Religion Not the Magistrate’s Province, or arguments from reason and scripture, against the civil magistrate’s claim of authority in the province of religion, . . . By Philotheorus (1773), p. 53; Caleb Fleming, The Equality of Christians in the Province of Religion. Or Popery has no Divine Foundation . . . (1760); Caleb Fleming A dissertation upon the unnatural crime of self-murder: occasioned by the many late instances of suicide in this city . . . (1773). 50 [Caleb Fleming] The Devout Laugh, or, Half an Hour’s Amusement to a Citizen of London, from Dr. Pickering’s Sermon At St. Paul’s . . . A Letter from Rusticus to Civis (1750), p. 8. 51 Thomas Somerville, My Own Life and Times, 1741–1814 (Edinburgh, 1861), p. 146. 52 Harris, Cromwell (1762), pp. 45–46n. 53 Gary de Krey, ‘Radicals, reformers and republicans: academic language and

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54 55 56 57 58 59

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political discourse in Restoration London’, A Nation Transformed. England after the Restoration, eds A. Houston and C. Pincus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 71–99. Harris, Charles the Second (1766) 2, p. 108n. [Baron] A Cordial for Low Spirits . . ., 3 (1763), p. v. The North Briton, 61, 13 August 1768, p. 366. Ibid., p. 367. Samuel Johnson, ‘The False Alarm’ (1770) in Samuel Johnson, Political Writings, ed. D. Greene (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 344. ‘Of the Coalition of Parties’ in Hume, Essays, p. 500.

5 Dissenting Histories in the 1770s and 1780s

MANSFIELD, BLACKSTONE AND THE LEGAL STATUS OF RELIGIOUS DISSENT

Several factors converged in the 1770s to bolster interest among Dissenters in their own history. First, in 1767 the long, wearying legal battle between the City of London Corporation and the Protestant Dissenting Deputies came to end when six out of seven Law Lords decided in favour of the Dissenting position.1 By Lord Mansfield’s judgment, Dissent was legally secured. Dissenting religious worship was, he said, ‘not only exempted from punishment, but rendered innocent and lawful: it is established, it is put under the protection, and is not merely under the connivance of the law’.2 But within two years, in the fourth volume of his Commentaries on the Laws of England, William Blackstone had countered Mansfield’s judgment. His remarks were brief but, coming from the Solicitor General and published under the auspices of Oxford University, they attracted a considerable amount of worried attention among Dissenters. According to Blackstone, the penalties for religious Dissent were only suspended by the Toleration Act, and care should be taken that ‘this indulgence’ was not carried so far as to threaten the security of the Church. His judgment was prefaced with some brief but tendentious remarks. The laws against Protestant Dissenters were less severe than those against Roman Catholics, he said, because the principles of the latter were judged to be more subversive of civil government than those of the former. But Blackstone cannot resist summoning up the spectre of fanatical sectaries and ‘the Great Rebellion’: As to the papists, their tenets are undoubtedly calculated for the introduction of all slavery, both civil and religious: but it may with justice be questioned, whether the spirit, the doctrines, and the practice of the sectaries are better calculated to make men good subjects. One thing is obvious to observe, that these have once within the compass of the last century, effected the ruin of our church and monarchy; which the papists have attempted indeed, but have never yet been able to execute.3

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A threat to civil order is the only justification for the intervention of the law into the private realm of religious belief and practice, Blackstone says. And it was ‘the experience of their turbulent disposition in former times’ that led to the introduction of the severe laws against Dissenters. The Act of Toleration, ‘with a spirit of true magnanimity, extended that indulgence to these sectaries, which they themselves, while in power, had held to be countenancing schism, and denied to the church of England’. But this ‘indulgence’, Blackstone warns, stretches only as far as suspending those penalties against Dissent introduced during the reign of Charles II.4 Joseph Priestley charged into print. Blackstone’s ‘most injurious reflections’ on Dissenters, he said, sounded like nothing so much as one of those High Tory sermons preached every 30 January. And they displayed a similar ignorance of history. The disturbances of the previous century had nothing to do with the ‘turbulent disposition’ of Dissenters. They were caused by the absolutist pretensions of the Stuarts. ‘The nation, not the Dissenters only, asserted their natural and civil rights. They bravely opposed force to force, justice to injustice, and at length prevailed.’5 Had the king and the court triumphed, an absolute despotism on the model of France or Spain would have followed. And if Laud had succeeded, the ecclesiastical constitution would have become ‘something much nearer the gross, abject, and impious superstition of the church of Rome’. The Dissenters had no hand in the trial and execution of the king in 1649. Their record of loyalty to the constitution since the Restoration demonstrates the injustice of the legal restrictions placed on Dissenters. They were the particular victims of the restored Stuarts whose aim to establish popery and arbitrary power was defeated by providence in the form of William. This excellent prince, to whom, under God, we owe all our liberties, was a Presbyterian, and he found all of that name, and the Dissenters in general, his best friends in this island. The same have the princes of the House of Hanover always found them.6

Priestley even has the unexpected pleasure of being able to cite Hume in his support. His History of England had acknowledged, Priestley says, ‘that whatever civil liberty we now enjoy in Great-Britain, is owing to our ancestors, the Puritans’.7 This is, of course, a somewhat slanted reading of what Hume has to say about the Puritans and civil liberty. The controversy surrounding Mansfield’s decision and Blackstone’s semi-official pronouncements alerted Dissenters to the uncertainty of their legal status at precisely the moment when trust in the political establishment was being undermined, especially by the Wilkes case and

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the deepening American crisis. Priestley wondered whether others in government shared Blackstone’s views of Dissenting rights. Were they even an indication ‘that some design is formed to establish a system of ecclesiastical tyranny’?8 These questions inevitably focused attention on the unfinished business of 1688. SUBSCRIPTION CONTROVERSIES

Issues surrounding restrictions on religious liberty surfaced in another controversy at this time, initiated by supporters of reform within the Church of England. Why, an open letter in the St. James Chronicle asked in 1766, were the Dissenters so quiet? Is it out of all memory what your worthy forefathers have suffered from the iron claws of intolerance? Are all records lost of the noble and undaunted testimony they bore against religious and civil oppression under every disadvantage, danger, indignity, that could intimidate the human spirit.9

The author of the letter was Francis Blackburne, rector of Richmond in North Yorkshire. But it was the product of a circle of Churchmen and Dissenters, including the wealthy republican Dissenter Thomas Hollis and the Dissenting historian William Harris, who were carrying on a campaign in the press against what they perceived to be a dangerously conservative shift away from Whig orthodoxies in both Church and State.10 Their aim was to disturb the complacency of Dissenters and Protestant Churchmen. Blackburne told the Dissenting minister John Wiche (a correspondent for around twenty years) that the influence of the Archbishop of Canterbury was behind attempts ‘to revive the absurd Pretensions of the Laudean Aera, and who think it of use to their scheme to connive at, if not to countenance the manifest and scandalous encroachments of Popery’.11 Blackburne’s The Confessional, published in 1766, was one of the most important works of religious controversy published in this period. It converged in key respects with Dissenting complaints about their uncertain legal status and with growing anxieties about the direction politics was taking under George III. Its recommendations were radical. What would the Church need to do to become the leader and chief of all the reformed Protestant churches of Europe? Let her be the first to remove every stumbling-block out of the way of her weak (if so she will needs call them) but conscientious fellow-christians . . . Let her remove all grounds of suspicion of her hankering after Romish superstition, by renouncing every rite and ordinance, and ceremony, which may nourish this

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jealousy among the Dissenters, and for which she is driven to make apologies, that so remarkably contrast her pretensions to decree them.12

No Dissenter could have asked for more than the programme of Church reform set out in The Confessional. It quickly provoked a lively pamphlet literature, for and against. And it helped to initiate a campaign against subscription within the Church. In July 1771 a meeting of clergy took place at the Feathers Tavern in London. Here a petition drafted by Blackburne was debated and circulated for signatures.13 It was presented to the Commons in February 1772. But, despite some weighty Parliamentary support, two attempts to change the terms of subscription in the Church were defeated in the Commons.14 The failure of the clerical petition had some positive outcomes for the Dissenters. First there was the accession of several Churchmen to their ranks. In 1774 Theophilus Lindsey, one of the most active petitioners, resigned his Yorkshire living. In a public statement he aligned himself with others who had resigned from the Church on grounds of conscience and cited at length a testament of one of the ejected ministers of 1662, describing Calamy’s account of the two thousand as ‘a long list, that does honour to human nature’.15 He had told the Wakefield Dissenting minister, William Turner, two years before: I never was more affected with any book than Calamy’s history of those worthy Confessors that gave up all in the cause of Christ and for a good conscience at the Restoration. No time or countrey [sic] ever did furnish at once such a list of christian heroes and I fear our own country now would fall far short of furnishing so large a number, upon a like trying occasion.16

Lindsey’s own resignation was in some degree an emulation of the ejected ministers of 1662, and his substantial book on the history of Unitarianism was to some extent modelled on Calamy’s work. We are, he said, ‘very highly obliged to the learned and respectable Compiler for his vast labours in procuring and furnishing us with memorials of so many excellent persons’.17 And he set about ensuring that the memories of those who had suffered in the cause of Unitarianism were similarly preserved. With the active support of Priestley, Price and the Dissenting MP, John Lee, a key member of the Rockingham circle, Lindsey set up a Unitarian chapel in London. At its first service, according to Lee, there were ten coaches at the door, and among those attending were the dukes of Norfolk and Richmond. Fox subscribed £100 to the new chapel and, among the chapel’s trustees, was another Rockinghamite, Sir George Savile. Lindsey was only the first and most public accession to the circles

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of Dissent among reforming Churchmen in the 1770s. Others followed – including John Jebb, John Disney, William Frend and Gilbert Wakefield. The debates around The Confessional in the late 1760s and then around the Feather’s Tavern Petition in 1771–2, encouraged Dissenters to think that a larger body of Churchmen were sympathetic to ecclesiastical reform. They might even indicate that Whig politicians and leading Churchmen could be persuaded to support a softening of anti-Dissenting legislation. Churchmen who had opposed reform within the Church had nevertheless publicly stated their commitment to liberty of conscience and to religious toleration. In March 1772, a meeting of the General Body of Dissenting ministers took the cue. They decided to petition Parliament to remove the requirement for Dissenting tutors and schoolmasters to subscribe to the articles of the Church of England. A committee of fifteen promoting this petition included Richard Price and Andrew Kippis. With some support behind the scenes from several influential MPs, including Sir George Savile and George Onslow, a motion successfully passed two readings in the Commons, the second by seventy to nine. But in the Lords, despite warm support from Whig notables such as Chatham, Shelburne, Richmond and Lyttleton, the bill was decisively rejected by 102 to 29. In 1773, after delays and counter-petitions, another bill passed the Commons. Again it was decisively defeated in the Lords, eighty-six to twenty-eight. DISSENT’S HISTORICAL RECORD

The publication of The Confessional and the ensuing campaigns of 1772 and 1773 generated intense public debate. One contributor to the London Magazine in 1774 noted that the question of religious liberty ‘for two years past, hath engrossed much of the attention of the public’.18 At the heart of these debates were several contentious historical questions: first about the origins of legislation which subjected Dissenters to restrictions on their civil liberties; and second about their own historical record in the seventeenth century and since. This ground had been thoroughly covered a generation before in Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans, as we have seen. But it was crossed and recrossed in numerous tracts and pamphlets produced by Dissenters and Churchmen in the 1770s. Dissenters were clear about the injustice of their dubious legal situation. It was a survival of the arbitrary regime of the later Stuarts – one which was not properly dealt with at the Revolution of 1688. In one of the most striking and influential pamphlets of the whole controversy, The Case of the Dissenting Ministers, the Dissenting

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layman Israel Mauduit noted that the penal laws introduced during the reign of Charles II were ‘Instruments in the Hands of a popish King and popish Ministers, to divide Protestants’. Shouldn’t a proper regard to Protestantism, he asked, now lead to the abolition of ‘those severe Laws, which were made Use of by Papists on Purpose to destroy it’?19 Other Dissenting contributions to the subscription debate of 1772 and 1773 pointed to the anomaly of the survival of these vestiges of Stuart policy. Dissenters were also clear about the generally positive political record of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Puritans and of the postRestoration Dissenters. They celebrated their courage in resisting oppression during the reigns of successive Stuarts and their consistent support of the Hanoverian succession when it was threatened by Jacobite incursions in 1715 and again in 1745. In a particularly fiery response to the House of Lords’ rejection of the first Dissenters Bill, Ebenezer Radcliffe observed the implications of the Bishop’s argument that Dissenting demands were subversive of the status quo: If every law was obligatory because it passed through usual forms, and had the sanction of the reigning powers, all the bloody edicts issued by the Roman emperors, in the madness of their pride and cruelty, were just and sacred, and the disobedience of the first Christians was sedition and rebellion.20

All reform becomes impossible and, Radcliffe insists, ‘the struggles of our ancestors for civil and religious liberty, which ended at last in the revolution, were all wicked and inexcusable . . . and the authors of them deserve to be branded as incendiaries and traitors’.21 There were Churchmen at this time who did not hesitate to pursue precisely this line of argument. Mauduit noted that anti-Dissenting caricatures were to be expected from the old Tory gentry: When we heard well-meaning High Church Country Gentlemen set us forth as wild Enthusiasts, and Fifth-monarchy Men; when People that died a hundred Years ago, Ancestors of we know not whom, were raised to Light again, to sit for our Pictures, and we were drawn with all the Attributes of Fanaticism; we thought the Painter injudicious in going so far out of the way to make his Picture unlike; but felt no Disposition to be offended at the meer [sic] Effect of the narrow Prejudices of Education, and a profound Ignorance of every Thing relating to us.22

The Annual Register observed how Hoghton’s 1772 motion caused great alarm in the Commons among what it termed ‘the high church gentlemen’.23 Sir Roger Newdigate and Sir William Dolben, Oxford MPs, took the lead in denouncing the historical crimes of the Dissenters.

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Frederick Montague wearily responded that the Presbyterians ‘had just reason for arming themselves against a tyrannical king’. And anyway these events were so long past, he said, that it was ‘unfair to tax the children with the sins of the fathers’.24 These kinds of attacks on the Dissenters were not restricted to Parliamentary debate. As in the 1730s, so in the 1770s, any step towards securing the legal status of Dissenters, by removing statutes passed into law during the reigns of Charles II and James II, was met by hysterical rants about regicides and fanatics from a thousand pulpits and in numerous pamphlets and letters to the press. The ‘sins of the fathers’ during the 1640s and 1650s were still to be visited upon the Dissenters. From the debate around The Confessional after 1766 to those surrounding subscription in 1772 and 1773, the allegation of Dissenting responsibility for ‘the Great Rebellion’ and the execution of Charles I was repeated over and over again. They came not just from old Tory clerics, backwoodsmen far from the seats of power, but from within the Church hierarchy itself. Thomas Balguy, one of Blackburne’s weightier opponents, questioned Dissenters’ claims that they were consistently ‘the friends of liberty’: ‘experience has given us woeful proof, what liberty is to be expected from, even protestant Dissenters, when they have the upper hand; witness the times of confusion and oppression, from 1641, to the restoration . . .’25 According to Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol: ‘We know very well what an intolerant spirit possessed the Dissenters in the last century while they had the power in their hands.’26 The bishops, with the single exception of Green, Bishop of Lincoln, opposed the Dissenting motions of 1772 and 1773. They ‘shewed that the spirit of Episcopacy is still much the same as it has ever been’, one leading Dissenter bitterly commented.27 Another muttered darkly that the bishops ‘were never friends to liberty and reformation’: ‘We now begin to remember their severities to our ancestors, and that when the law for burning heretics was repealed, every bishop, except one, was against the repeal . . .’28 It was, Priestley said, ‘the tricks and artifices of the court, and the influence of the bishops, who have the same views and interest with the court’, which had frustrated the Dissenting bills of 1772 and 1773. Both had passed through the Commons: ‘but all was blasted by a nearer approach to the throne, a throne from which mercy is extended to papists and rebels, because friends of despotism, and even to murderers, if they be employed against the constitution of the country’.29

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DISSENTING DIVISIONS

It is important to stress again that there was no essential coherence underpinning the large and growing body of groups and congregations with some kind of Dissenting affiliation scattered across England and Wales in the 1770s. There were differences and disagreements at every level – about doctrine, about church government, about religious practices. There were Dissenters in the early 1770s who disagreed with the strategy of contesting the political establishment. A majority of the General Body had supported the political action of 1772 but its secretary, Henry Mayo, did not and resigned. He subsequently voiced his objections publicly, saying that the General Body had no grounds for their optimism and had hurried forward without consulting the wider body of Dissenters outside London.30 Other interventions, for and against, followed. Several voiced the resentment of those apparently excluded from the privileged inner circles of metropolitan Dissent.31 The historical legitimacy of various forms of Dissent was even questioned. Richard Hutchings, for instance, disputed the political lessons which some Dissenting contemporaries were drawing from history. He contrasted the gratitude of their forefathers for the toleration they had enjoyed since the Revolution, ‘when their captive chain was taken off’, with the ingratitude of a new generation of Dissenters. This ingratitude was rooted, he claimed, in doctrinal differences: The act of toleration did indeed suit our forefathers, for they believed the things contained in that form of sound words, the doctrinal articles of the church of England, and all their true-born sons, are of the same mind. But there is a spurious race sprung up amongst us: children of the bond-woman, and not of the free-woman; whose abominable principles have been hatched in the warm sun-shine of prosperity.32

Note the metaphor of bastardy here. For Hutchings the genealogy of Dissenters in the 1770s was divided between a legitimate and an illegitimate line from the seventeenth-century forefathers. The latter were the rational Dissenters who were abandoning their traditional Calvinism, both as a set of doctrines and as an ascetic moral code. It is important not to jump too quickly to an equation of rationalist theology with political radicalism, however. Many of those who were not rational Dissenters still voiced their commitment to a shared and nondoctrinal Dissent. According to one thoughtful pamphlet, though they distanced themselves from ‘the rational Gentlemen’ on doctrinal grounds, orthodox Dissenters continued to support the principles of religious

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liberty for all. And they supported relief of ministers, tutors and schoolmasters from penal laws. Orthodox Dissenters, he said, had supported the campaign against subscription, or had not opposed it.33 The controversy within Dissent surrounding the campaigns of 1772 and 1773 cannot be pursued here; it was indicative of the potentially destructive divisions within that unstable entity called ‘the Dissenters’. They certainly weakened the Dissenting campaign and were exploited by their opponents, especially the bishops.34 These tensions within Dissent bring us back to the political education of Dissenters and the key role which history had to play in this education. Their own continued existence as a distinct set of churches depended upon maintaining themselves as communities of memory. Continuing loyalty to Dissent was a commitment to a founding historical moment – a commitment that needed renewing. As William Enfield explained in 1770, all that Dissenters really agreed on was the right of private judgement in matters of religious faith and religious practice – and a concomitant rejection of the right of any man or body of men to impose any form of these on any individual: These principles were, doubtless sufficient to justify the resolute opposition, which the Puritans and Nonconformists of the last century made to the encroachments of ecclesiastical tyranny . . . And the fortitude and chearfulness [sic] with which they suffered persecution, rather than resign their integrity, will be admired and applauded, as long as the history of their times shall be preserved.35

Times may have changed, persecution may have relaxed, but, Enfield stresses, ‘it is on solid principles and with good reason, that the Dissenters of the present age tread in the steps of their forefathers, and continue the separation from the Church of England’.36 But, to preserve the historical link to their ‘forefathers’, a new generation of Dissenters needed to be taught about ‘the history of their times’. In numerous sermons and addresses, new generations of Dissenters were reminded of the sacrifices and the virtues of their founding fathers. Here is Dr John Taylor, tutor at Warrington Academy, addressing the Dissenters of Lancashire in 1761 – and reminding them that their principles and their forms of worship were developed by ‘a great number of men of learning and integrity’: I mean the Bartholomew Divines, or the Ministers ejected in the year 1662; men prepared to lose all, and to suffer martyrdom itself; and who actually resigned their Livings, (which, with most of them, were, under God, all that they and their families had to subsist upon) rather than sin against God, and

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desert the cause of religious and civil Liberty; which together with serious religion, would, I am persuaded, have been sunk to a very low ebb in the Nation, had it not been for the bold and noble stand these worthies made against imposition upon conscience, profaneness, and arbitrary power.37

And he went on to praise the learning, the devotion, the courage of these men – ‘the Fathers, the first Formers of the Dissenting Interest’. The works of these ‘fathers’ of Dissent were republished in new editions in which their lives and sufferings were constantly invoked. In 1766 a substantial two-volume work extracted biographical writings on Restoration figures from the voluminous works of Baxter, Bates and Howe. As the preface explained, these brief biographies of Dissenting divines served as models of Christian life for young Dissenters in the England of George III.38 Richard Baxter, in particular, remained a canonical figure. His works were reprinted in new editions, abridged or adapted for new generations of Dissenting readers.39 The sense of Apostolic succession is suggested in a footnote to the 1766 Biographical collections, in which the anonymous compiler, clearly a Dissenting minister, recalled talking to someone over twenty years before who, in turn, had recalled how, as a young minister, he had visited the aged and infirm Baxter: ‘his conversation was such, that he said he would go forty miles barefoot to enjoy such another’. Another man, still living, had recounted his memories as a child of a sick and aged Baxter being supported to climb up into the pulpit.40 SAMUEL PALMER

Samuel Palmer was one of the most important figures in the work of preserving this seventeenth-century heritage and recycling it for a Dissenting readership in the late eighteenth century. Brought up in Bedford, a member of the old Dissenting congregation which traced its origins back to Bunyan, he had sat at the feet of the minister (Samuel Sanderson) who had himself sat at the feet of John Bunyan’s successor (Ebenezer Chandler). Palmer was subsequently involved in considerable editorial labour on Restoration divines.41 In particular, at the promptings of old Job Orton, he produced a new edition of Calamy’s accounts of the ejected ministers. Though highly valued by several generations of Dissenters, these bulky octavo volumes had long been out of print. Palmer’s edition, entitled The Nonconformist’s Memorial and first published in two volumes in 1775, was an extensively reorganised and rewritten version of Calamy’s original volumes.42 Now a reader could much more easily trace an individual ejected minister by name or locate the founding fathers of any particular

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congregation. Palmer had also edited out what he regarded as redundancies of language and materials of limited relevance. ‘In a word, the editor has aimed to make the work as concise as possible, while he has been careful to retain every thing of importance.’ 43 As in the case of Calamy’s original texts, The Nonconformist’s Memorial was very much a collective effort, with Dissenters sending in corrections and additions to the accounts of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The Dissenting minister, Hugh Farmer, for instance, revised and expanded the entry for his grandfather Hugh Owen. The Baptist minister Robert Robinson corrected errors in Calamy’s original volumes and provided much additional material which Palmer incorporated and gratefully acknowledged. He had also been helped by Edmund Calamy, grandson of the author, who gave access to some manuscript material in his possession. Not everyone welcomed this new version of Calamy. William Enfield expressed some doubts about the book in the Monthly Review. The sacrifices which the ejected ministers made for the sake of conscience will, he says, ‘doubtless ever be mentioned with applause’. But, the biographies of these men were now, he thought, dull and repetitive ‘as must render the work extremely insipid to every reader who does not sit down to the repast with an appetite particularly prepared for the occasion’. But The Nonconformist’s Memorial did find a readership among those dismissed by Enfield as ‘that large body of readers, to whom every remnant of Puritanism is valuable’.44 Over a thousand subscribers were listed in the first edition, including many of the leading ministers of rational Dissent.45 It was reissued in 1777 and 1778. Calamy’s original work, of course, had also been a biography and an autobiography of Richard Baxter, as well as a religious and political history of the seventeenth century. In The Nonconformist’s Memorial relevant biographical material on Baxter had been moved to his entry under the county of Worcestershire. Much of the rest of Baxter’s, and Calamy’s, narrative was condensed into a seventy-three-page introduction: ‘Containing a brief History of the Times in which the ejected ministers lived, from the Rise of the Civil War to the Revolution: With the Reasons of their Nonconformity; extracted from Dr. Calamy’s Life of Mr. Baxter.’ This narrative runs through the history of Elizabethan Puritanism, the deepening crisis of the Stuart monarchy, the Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Restoration and the Revolution. There is nothing which contravenes the canonical Dissenting history of the period, especially as represented by the four volumes of Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans. Palmer is critical of Elizabeth’s regime, especially her ecclesiastical policies; he rebuts charges that Puritans were responsible

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for the execution of Charles; he cautiously defends the Commonwealth, is scathing about Charles II and provides a detailed account of the effects of the Act of Uniformity and the oppressions suffered by the Dissenters. Palmer pointedly concludes with the coronation of William and Mary and the unfinished business of 1688: and none had a greater share in the common Joy than the Dissenters, [who considered this glorious Revolution as the Aera of their liberty, which was secured by law in the beginning of this reign, by the passing of the act of toleration; which, has, thro’ a kind Providence, remained inviolate to this day; tho’ the benefits of it are suspended upon such conditions as the friends to religious liberty wish to see removed].46

The historical message of The Nonconformist’s Memorial was reinforced by Palmer’s The Protestant-Dissenter’s Catechism, first published in 1773 and in its eleventh edition by 1800. Written at the request of several ministers, the text was carefully revised and given their imprimatur by Job Orton and Philip Furneaux, two key figures of an older Dissenting generation. The full title declared its aim: ‘to instruct and establish Young Persons among the Dissenters in the Principles of Nonconformity’.47 As the title suggests, it was organised as a sequence of questions and answers, providing in simple terms the rationale for Dissent from the established Church. And it covered the history of Dissent chronologically, providing a critical and political account of the ecclesiastical policies of successive monarchs. Palmer pretty much follows the established historical narrative, as given in Daniel Neal and in his own introduction to The Nonconformist’s Memorial. Elizabethan Puritans are represented as Protestants merely trying to develop a purer form of worship and church discipline. They were, Palmer says, ‘treated with great severity’ throughout Elizabeth’s reign. The Queen was, he says ‘very fond of popish ceremonies, and extremely ambitious of supporting and extending her authority in church affairs’. [6] There is no celebration here of the reign of ‘Good Queen Bess’ nor any sense that the accession of the Stuarts marked some kind of radical break. Young Dissenting readers were not just educated in the long history of Puritan and Dissenting sufferings in the cause of genuine Protestantism. They received a political education, too. With the accession of Charles I, Palmer’s narrative turns to secular politics. The king’s dissimulation and his ‘arbitrary proceedings’ caused a civil war and culminated in his execution. Question 36 asks whether the Presbyterians are justly charged with the king’s murder. The reply is a vigorous denial. He was condemned by a House of Commons reduced to a small number of members,

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including a single Presbyterian and under the army’s influence. Fiftyseven Presbyterian ministers in London and many more in the country protested against the trial and the sentence. Pointing to the relevant section of Neal’s History of the Puritans, Palmer states: ‘Any impartial person will be convinced how unjustly the Dissenters are so commonly reflected upon as Regicides (especially in 30th of January sermons)’. [10n] The recall of Charles II owed much to the Presbyterians, Palmer says, ‘who had all along opposed Cromwell’s arbitrary measures, and were friends to the English limited monarchy’. [13]. With the Restoration The Protestant-Dissenter’s Catechism goes into greater historical detail. First, of course, there is revulsion against the immoralities of Charles II and his Court: ‘He was remarkably addicted to pleasure and lewdness, and his Restoration was attended with a deluge of wickedness and debauchery, which spread itself from the court thro’ the kingdom, and corrupted the manners of the Clergy.’ [13] Charles is also severely criticised for his failure to live up to the promises he had made at Breda. A series of measures made conformity to the Church more and more difficult, culminating in the Act of Uniformity which forced ‘above two thousand worthy conscientious ministers’ to leave the Church on St Bartholomew’s Day, 1662. These were, he says, ‘the fathers of the Dissenting interest’: It was doubtless a glorious stand which they made in favour of christian liberty, which did great honour to the protestant faith, and tended more than a thousand other arguments, to convince a licentious atheistical age of the reality of religion, and the regard that is due to the rights of conscience . . . [14–15]

There follows a detailed account of the various anti-Dissenting measures of the 1660s and their disastrous effects on a generation of Dissenters subjected to fines, imprisonments and loss of trade. The bishops are pinpointed as the primary agents of this persecution, and Clarendon is described as ‘one of the bitterest enemies the Dissenters had’. Palmer also stresses that the Test and Corporations Acts remain in force a century later despite being ‘flagrantly inconsistent with the common rights of good subjects’. [17] Under James II the fury of the persecutors intensified. Sudden shifts in policy towards toleration in 1686–7 were treated by the Dissenters, according to Palmer, with scepticism. Spotting a device to restore popery, they opposed the dispensing power on principle and supported the Church in its hour of need. ‘For which, however, they were poorly rewarded, as the solemn promises she made them in the time of danger, were forgotten as soon as the danger was over’. [19] The Revolution of

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1688 was a religious matter. William was brought in, Palmer insists, ‘to support the Protestant-cause’. The limited protection for Dissenters provided by the Toleration Act was threatened during the reign of Queen Anne, especially in her last years when the Jacobite party rose to power in Court circles. But she was succeeded by George I, ‘a firm friend to civil and religious liberty’. No young Dissenter who had gone through Palmer’s Catechism would be ignorant of basic facts about the historical origins of anti-Dissenting legislation. He or she would also have learned of the wickedness of the Stuarts, of the unreformed character of the Church of England, and of the qualified liberation of Dissenters by the Revolution in 1688. ROBERT ROBINSON AND JOSEPH CORNISH

Two other Dissenting histories published in the 1770s are worth examining. The first was by Robert Robinson (1735–90). Apprenticed to a London hairdresser, he had been converted by the preaching of Whitfield and found his way to the Baptists, becoming minister to a congregation in Cambridge. It was in the years 1773 to 1775, his biographer noted – the years of the subscription controversy – that Robinson ‘bestowed a very particular attention on the history of nonconformists, or of those ministers of the church of England, who were ejected from their livings, or silenced by the Act of Uniformity’. His access to the records of most of the Cambridge colleges ‘rendered him a kind of nonconformists’ repository’.48 Robinson’s most striking historical intervention was his Plan of Lectures on the Principles of Nonconformity. It provided a succinct history, in note form, of nonconformity from the sixteenth century to the present. Its aim was to be of practical help for pastors in inculcating among the youth of their congregations some knowledge of the historical ground of their Dissent. This ground, he argued, was the constitution of the Church of England. Henry VIII’s Reformation altered the form of popery but did not remove its essential principle – ‘human authority in matters of religion’. His outline of Elizabeth’s reign is more hostile than anything in the negative accounts of Neal or Hume: Queen Elizabeth’s reigning passion was love of despotism – HER means of obtaining it were full of duplicity – TREACHERY – and cruelty – SHE made religion an engine of government – AND framed the English espiscopal corporation so as to serve her arbitrary plan of governing.49

Elizabethan bishops were appointed for secular political purposes and the whole Church as established in this period was irreligious and uncon-

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stitutional. Prelacy is ecclesiastical tyranny, equally friendly to popery and despotism. Turning to the Stuarts in Lecture V, Robinson pulls no punches: ‘James I was weak in his intellects – PROFANE in his life – DESPOTICAL in his government.’ [14] He was ‘the author of all the calamities of his son’s reign’. Lectures VI and VI pursue the policies of Charles I, the descent into civil war and the execution of the king, keeping pretty much to the kind of narrative found in Neal, though in more strident terms. On the one side there was the Crown, the Court and the Church hierarchy; on the other side was an oppressed people. ‘The unhappy Charles was an incorrigible tyrant – AND deserved to die’, Robinson asserts. But he then exonerates the Puritans of any responsibility. NO religious party was the cause of his death – ALL remonstrated against it – AND he fell a sacrifice to military power – BY the hands of a few desperate officers – AND their dependents [sic] – WHO were of various denominations. [35]

Criticisms of the Revolution settlement are equally forthright. Robinson pointed the finger at the bishops who, he said, were lukewarm in their support for the new regime: ‘They pretended to abide firmly bound by oath to an abdicated tyrant – who had broken all his oaths to them.’ They had preached the doctrines of non-resistance, ‘and had considered the whole nation as the property of a tyrant – inalienable in his family – to be transmitted from father to son – like a herd of cattle to be fed – worked – or butchered – as their master pleased’. [45–6] William’s plans to introduce a comprehension of all his Protestant subjects, and ‘every design of liberty’, were frustrated, Robinson says, by the Church. Robinson’s Plan of Lectures was equally uncompromising in its opposition to the Church of England and to the traditional prerogatives of the Crown, and caused something of a furore. Before coming to that, there is another interesting contributor to Dissenting history in the 1770s: Joseph Cornish. Born in 1750 into a Dissenting family in Taunton – two of his uncles were Dissenting ministers – Cornish was educated by some of the leading ministers of the time. He was a pupil of Joshua Toulmin. Then, at Hoxton Academy, he sat at the feet of Kippis, Rees and other rising young ministers in London. Cornish turned his back on the attractions of metropolitan Dissent and a promising career, choosing to spend the rest of his life ministering to a small Presbyterian congregation at Colyton in Devon. In his twenties he produced a series of substantial interventions in the debates surrounding subscription including, in 1771, while still a Hoxton student, A Serious and Earnest Address to Protestant Dissenters. This

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cheap pamphlet sold rapidly and went through several editions. ‘Our ancestors the puritans, having been most unjustly represented by the greatest part of our historians as a set of weak enthusiasts, and by many as a race of hypocrites’, Cornish noted, and had begun to draw up a defence of them for this Address.50 The material had grown too extensive, however, and it was turned into a separate book: A Brief and Impartial History of the Puritans, published in 1772. Its aim was to anchor Dissenting loyalties to their traditional principles. In this way, Cornish says, ‘the consideration of what our ancestors suffered in this cause must afford the most animating motives to persist in them’.51 These ancestors go back to the fourteenth century, to Wycliffe and his followers (‘whose memory is ever to be revered’). So begins the long unfinished struggle for the reformation of organised Christianity, to turn it back towards its primitive form as represented in the New Testament. And so begins the courageous resistance of the Puritans, generation after generation, against the corruptions of the Church. Tudor Puritans are not immune from criticism. There was a hot-headed minority but, Cornish says in mitigation, ‘oppression will make a wise man mad’. And they were unrepresentative: ‘By far the greatest part . . . notwithstanding their sufferings, were peacable, humble, quiet men.’ [16] Cornish’s is essentially Neal’s story – of law-abiding Christian men persecuted by wicked Churchmen, abetted by the crown, and forced against their will into opposition to the State. His judgement of Elizabeth’s long reign was mixed: ‘Elizabeth’s was a glorious reign, and she was the chief support of the protestant religion, yet her persecuting and arbitrary spirit will always reflect dishonour on her memory.’ [17] Cornish’s account of the Stuarts is more astringent. He follows the conventional Dissenting narrative of the sufferings of the Puritans in resisting the innovations of Laud. His account of the trial and execution of the king is cautious. The army got the king into their hands and rode roughshod over Parliament, constituting itself as a high court of justice and condemning the king. The Presbyterians, he said, ‘did all in their power to prevent his being put to death’ – an act which, he says, ‘was perpetrated by an army of enthusiasts, made up of all parties’. [46] Charles is allowed some private virtues. He was ‘chaste, temperate, grave, learned, diligent and exact in performing external acts of religion’. These private virtues were more than counterbalanced by his public vices, however, including his bigotry and his cold-hearted persecution of Puritans: as to his honour, probity and promises, no dependance [sic] could be placed on them, and his attempts to exalt his prerogative, to the destruction of the

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national rights of his subjects which he had sworn to maintain, will render his memory detestable to every Briton. [46]

Cornish has little to say about Cromwell or Commonwealth politics, concentrating on the religious aspects of the 1650s. He is critical of some aspects of the Puritan regime. Proscribing the Book of Common Prayer for family or private use was ‘unreasonable and cruel’. The imposition of the Solemn League and Covenant as a religious test was ‘a real grievance’ and ‘a great hardship’: ‘the rights of conscience were at this time but little understood, all parties were infected with that worst of errors, a persecuting temper’. [48] A Brief and Impartial History of the Puritans looks back, however, with some nostalgia to the Commonwealth period. For Cornish, as for other Dissenters, it was a golden age of religion and virtue. Never were there so many pious, good and diligent ministers in the churches. Never, he says, ‘were better laws made against vice, or better put in execution’. Never was the dress and conversation of the people more sober, their manner of living simpler. Never was Sunday worship and family prayer so strictly observed. ‘The state of things was much changed after the restoration, and to those who will seriously consider the matter, it will appear, that we have been declining ever since in that righteousness which exalteth a nation.’ [51] On the Restoration, Cornish ruefully remarks: ‘The king was voted home in a great hurry, without any terms being made, of which the nation had afterwards great reason to repent.’ [52] Subsequent pages document the political shifts between 1660 and 1662 and the effects of the Act of Uniformity and subsequent legislation on those who Dissented from the new order in Church and State. ‘The ingratitude of the high churchmen can never be forgot’, says Cornish, reactivating that resentment in the political present of 1772. Equally important was the duty of remembering the courage of the founding fathers of their congregations. Near two thousand . . . to their honour be it spoken, chose reproaches, afflictions and want, rather than comply with what they thought unlawful. Much they suffered in the glorious cause of liberty and truth. Peace and everlasting honour be upon their heads, future generations will rise up and call them blessed! It is likewise worthy of remembrance, that the people would not suffer their ministers to bear all the burthen. They esteemed and loved them, and notwithstanding all the terror of penal laws would attend their preaching, and exposed themselves to be fined, plundered and imprisoned . . . [62]

Cornish details the numbers of Dissenters who died in the prisons of Restoration England, the larger numbers who emigrated to Holland or to North America and the huge financial losses of Dissenters through fines,

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confiscation of goods and loss of trade. All this, Cornish pointedly reminds his reader, was sanctioned by the clergy who, throughout these years, were ‘real abettors and supporters of tyranny’. [71] The book draws to a conclusion with some praise for the liberality of George I and George II, but not a word for George III. The Restoration period continued to cast its shadow over the present, particularly in the form of the Test and Corporation Acts which, Cornish complained, hung like a sword over the heads of all Dissenters. [79] A Brief and Impartial History of the Puritans is a remarkably confident and mature work for a young man of twenty-two. It provided an intelligent, straightforward and readable narrative of the historical role of the Puritans under successive Tudor and Stuart monarchs. It is detailed but does not get bogged down in minutiae. It is based on a thorough reading of mainstream and of Dissenting histories – especially Neal’s History of the Puritans (‘an excellent work’). He also knows the recent work of William Harris: ‘whose valuable lives of James I, Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II ought to be read by all who wish to see a history really impartial’.52 There is no parade of learning, no references to sources, no criticisms of other histories. Cornish is not aspiring to produce a learned and scholarly work. But nor is he courting a popular readership by providing a colourful and superficial narrative or by indulging in polemic and controversy. His history provided a simple and brief outline for a literate Dissenting readership who needed to know something of their community’s past but had neither the time nor the inclination to work their way through the four large volumes of Neal’s History. His aim to reach a wider readership seems to have been fulfilled. Most of a large edition, priced at fourpence, was, he says, ‘speedily sold’. Cornish waited till 1797 to publish, via Joseph Johnson in London, a new and much expanded version.53 DISSENTING HISTORIES IN THE 1770S

Robinson, a Baptist of the eastern counties, Samuel Palmer, a Bedfordshire and now London Independent, Joseph Cornish, a west of England Presbyterian and prote´ge´ of rational Dissenters in London – three very different representatives of late eighteenth-century Dissent. Yet they shared a common perspective on English history. And they shared a common aim in these books: to provide a resource for pastors in inculcating among the youth of their congregations a loyalty to Dissent. Cornish had concluded:

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I hope from this brief but true account, those who have been taught to despise their ancestors, will learn to revere them as men who made a noble stand for their religious and civil liberties, imitate them in their strict attachment to truth and holiness, and as they live in a more enlightened age, improve upon such great examples. [82]

Palmer’s The Protestant-Dissenter’s Catechism was subtitled Designed to instruct and establish Young Persons among the Dissenters in the Principles of Nonconformity. Similarly, Robinson’s Plan of Lectures on the Principles of Nonconformity carried the subtitle For the Instruction of Catechumens. Originating in, and contributing to, political campaigns for the reform of legislation on religious subscription between 1772 and 1774, these books were also concerned with the political education of a new generation of Dissenters. And they each reflect a growing unease among Dissenters in the 1770s, not just about government policy but about the changing character of the Hanoverian State itself. Their historical criticisms of the political establishment brought Palmer and Robinson into sudden and unexpected notoriety. Robinson’s Plan of Lectures was written, he said, ‘without any malevolent design’ and was not published ‘because it was known to contain some disagreeable truths, which are at all times a censure, and are therefore always an offence to some people, and it was thought needless to offend where there was no hope to reform’.54 It was privately printed in Cambridge in 1778, with the imprimatur of the Eastern Association of Baptist Churches, for the use of local congregations. But the book attracted attention among Dissenters, and was subsequently published in London, reaching a fifth edition by 1781. Theophilus Lindsey noted that it had upset a number of Churchmen, and described it to William Turner as ‘the most cutting book agst the ch of England and Prelacy that ever was written’.55 The vehemence of its attacks on the historical record of the bishops was exploited a few years later to undermine the Dissenting case for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. According to George Horne, Bishop of Oxford, Robinson’s Plan of Lectures, recommended by ‘a Synod of Baptists’, was directed at the bishops, ‘pronouncing sentence upon them, as bloody tyrants and persecutors of the Nonconformists’.56 Burke took the cue, and in his attack on the third motion for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in the Commons in March 1790, he seized on Palmer’s Catechism and, more especially, Robinson’s Plan of Lectures.57 They were proof, he told the House, that Dissenters aimed at much more than merely a repeal of specific laws. Robinson’s ‘catechism’, he said (mixing

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up the volumes), ‘contained no one precept of religion’ and was ‘one continued invective against Kings and Bishops’: it was a catechism of misanthropy, a catechism of anarchy, a catechism of confusion! Grossly libelling the National establishment in every part and passage, these catechisms were to be put into the hands of Dissenters’ children, who were thus to be taught in their early infancy to lisp out censures and condemnation of the Established Church of England, and to be brought up as a rising generation of its determined enemies . . .58

Burke read to the House several sections in which the Church was attacked and, it was reported, ‘laid great stress on these’.59 THE POLITICS OF MEMORY IN THE 1780S

This points us towards a much bigger and more complex conjunction of political campaign with history and memory, among the Dissenters and among their antagonists – the campaigns around repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts between 1787 and the early 1790s. If memories and histories were inextricably tied up with politics in the 1770s, this was even more powerfully the case in the 1780s. The Dissenting campaigns against the Test and Corporation Acts have been documented by several historians, so a bare narrative will be sufficient here.60 The first campaign began in London in December 1786, in a mood of optimism. A committee of patrician Dissenters, dissociating themselves from party politics and avoiding agitation out of doors, engaged in lobbying and persuasion. Despite the leading role of three Dissenting supporters of Pitt in the Commons – Henry Beaufoy, William Smith and Sir Henry Hoghton – the motion was defeated, 176 votes to 98, in March 1787. The second campaign called for ‘the exertion of wise and active, but dispassionate, endeavours’ from Dissenters everywhere.61 Pressure on the Commons was intensified by two recommendations of the Dissenting Committee at a meeting in December 1788. The first called on Dissenting voters across England and Wales to apply to their MPs requesting their vote for the next motion for repeal. And the second went further, strongly recommending Dissenters: to show a marked and particular attention at the ensuing general election to the interest of such candidates as they believe to be well affected to civil and religious liberty, but especially to such as being now in parliament have proved themselves friends to the rights of Protestant Dissenters.62

The second motion for repeal, in May 1789, was again defeated in the Commons. Note that the narrowness of defeat, 122 votes to 102, was at

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least in part because the motion was not for outright repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts but only for a Parliamentary inquiry into the working of the sacramental test. The third Dissenting campaign generated provincial committees and public meetings, sometimes calling loudly for repeal as part of a broader move towards reform. ‘There is a general and vehement bustle at this time among the Dissenters,’ Bishop George Horne complained: ‘Delegates are hastening from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south . . .’63 By January and February 1790 Dissenting activity had provoked counter-petitions and dozens of public meetings from Churchmen across England. More publications for and against the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts poured from the press at this time than in all three previous years of debate together. Polite debate about the limits of civil and religious liberty was increasingly replaced by passionate tirades, especially from the side of the Church. In March 1790 the Dissenting motion was heavily defeated in the Commons – by 294 votes to 105. In the debate on this third motion for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Burke had expressed his distaste for ‘abstract priniciples’ and told the Commons: ‘of all abstract principles, abstract principles of natural right (which the Dissenters relied on as their stronghold) were the most idle, because the most useless and the most dangerous to resort to’.64 But the dozens of pamphlets, sermons and books published on the Dissenting side during these three campaigns between 1787 and 1790 utilised every resource to justify the Dissenting case and to convince others of its justice. And chief among these resources was the historical. In the spring of 1787 the Dissenting barrister Samuel Heywood put together, in a matter of weeks, a thoroughly documented case for repeal which reviewed the history of Dissenting disabilities since the 1660s.65 Other historical documents were printed which explained the origins of the Test and Corporation Acts and provided some understanding of why they had not been repealed at strategic moments in the past.66 Again and again Dissenting contributions to the public debate on the Test and Corporation Acts built upon a history which had been developed over the previous century by some of the authors explored in previous chapters.67 They stressed the anomalies of laws being maintained in force which were passed in the aftermath of the Restoration with dubious political intentions. They noted the incompleteness of 1688 and the ways in which the historical moment was missed to establish civil and religious liberty on solid foundations. Dissenters argued that, in 1689, William had fully intended to remove all disabilities suffered by the Dissenters. Lord North had disputed this on the floor of the Commons,

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and Dissenters responded by detailing historical evidence in support of this point.68 They pointed to the historical record of Dissenters. They had supported the Church in the crisis of 1688, creating the conditions which made the Revolution settlement possible. They had supported the Hanoverian succession at a critical juncture in 1714. And again in 1745, Dissenters had rallied to the Hanoverian cause and played an important role in the defeat of the Jacobites. The controversy surrounding moves for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts between 1787 and the early 1790s was not a controversy about abstract principles. It was about the history of England and its continuing effects in the present. For Dissenters, debates about the Test and Corporation Acts and about liberty of conscience were inevitably about the unfinished business of the seventeenth century and, in particular, about 1688. Here was the pivotal historical moment when the fate of the Dissenters was decided for generations to come. The ambiguities of the Revolution Settlement, especially of the Act of Toleration, stood at the centre of the disputes around Mansfield’s judgment of 1767 and around Blackstone’s pronouncements in his Commentaries on the Laws of England. They were equally central to the debates around the Dissenting applications to Parliament in 1772 and 1773 and to the campaign against the Test and Corporation Acts from 1787. On the one hand Dissenters celebrated the overthrow of the Stuart dynasty and the political constitution which eventually followed. On the other hand, the Revolution failed to remove in 1689 some of the most repressive legislation of the Restoration against religious Dissent, notably the Test and Corporation Acts. This ambiguity is present everywhere in Dissenting political debate in these years. For instance, at the meeting of the General Body of Dissenting Ministers in London in December 1789, chaired incidentally by Samuel Palmer, the second resolution, agreed unanimously, stated their ‘zealous Attachment to the Principles of our happy Constitution, as defined at the Revolution . . .’ But the next resolution, also unanimous, cut across any uncritical celebration of 1688: That the Exclusion of them, by the Corporation and Test Acts, from the Offices of Trust and Honour, in which they might prove of Benefit to the state, or enjoy the Immunities of faithful Citizens, is disgraceful to the Justice of the Nation, the Generosity of Britons, and the liberal Spirit of the Times.69

RICHARD PRICE AND THE REVOLUTION SOCIETY

The Revolution was at the core of the best-known Dissenting contribution to the debate about the Test and Corporation Acts: Richard Price’s

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sermon to the Revolution Society at the Old Jewry in November 1789, published in a revised version as A Discourse on the Love of our Country. The Revolution was, he said, the pivotal moment in English history and an event which the Dissenters have particular reason to be grateful for. By a bloodless victory the fetters which despotism had long been preparing for us were broken, the rights of the people were asserted, a tyrant expelled, and a sovereign of our own choice appointed in his room. Security was given to our property, and our consciences were emancipated.70

Had it not been for the Revolution, ‘we should now have been a base people, groaning under the infamy and misery of popery and slavery’. But, he goes on, ‘though the Revolution was a great work, it was by no means a perfect work, and . . . all was not then gained which was necessary to put the kingdom in the secure and complete possession of the blessings of liberty’.71 Two imperfections in the Revolution of 1688 concerned Price. The first, and the most important, had to do with the state of Parliamentary representation. It was, he said, ‘our fundamental grievance’. The basis of all constitutional liberty, and thus of legitmate government, is a fair and equal representation of the people. But, he implied, England was moving to the worst form of partial representation: ‘a government carried on and supported by spreading venality and profligacy through a kingdom’.72 The other imperfection of the Revolution was to do with religion. This was an issue which Burke pretty much ignored in his critique of Price and the Dissenters in Reflections on the Revolution in France. Having celebrated 1688 as a step forward in religious toleration, Price stressed – as numerous Dissenters had before him – how restricted that toleration was. There remained on the statute book, he said, ‘penal laws on account of religious opinions which (were they carried into execution) would shut up many of our places of worship, and silence and imprison some of the ablest and best men’.73 The Test Acts, in particular, continued to exclude from a variety of civil and military offices any who could not in conscience subscribe to the established form of worship. Of course, the Test Acts had initially been directed against the Roman Catholics. For Price, like other eighteenth-century Dissenters and members of the Revolution Society, the Catholic Church represented a corruption of Christianity, to remedy which, sixteenth-century Protestant reformers, their successors the Puritans, and several generations of Dissenters had endured brutal persecution. Popery, superstition, religious persecution and arbitrary government were more or less synonymous.74 But, it is worth noting that Price leaves an opening for Catholics to be included

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among the victims of legislative intolerance. Congratulating the Dissenters on their campaign for the repeal of the Test Acts, his careful choice of words could be construed as approving an end to the exclusions of all religious groups outside of the established Church, including Roman Catholics: ‘Should they at last succeed, they will have the satisfaction, not only of removing from themselves a proscription they do not deserve, but of contributing to lessen the number of our public iniquities.’75 When Richard Price stepped up into the Old Jewry pulpit in November 1789 to address the Revolution Society, he assumed a historical discourse about the Puritans in Tudor and Stuart England, about the Restoration, and about the Revolution. It is worth remembering that Price was nearly seventy years old at the time. As a member of a Dissenting family, he couldn’t help but take for granted the historical roots in Stuart absolutism and popery of his own religious community’s uncertain political status. When Samuel Jones, Vicar of Llanynwyd, was ejected by the Act of Uniformity in 1662, Price’s paternal grandfather, Rees Price, followed him out of the Church and into Dissent, both of his sons becoming Dissenting ministers. Richard Price, the grandson, was raised among Welsh Dissenters in the 1720s and 1730s, within living memory of the persecutions of the Restoration period and of the closing years of Queen Anne’s reign. From 1740 he lived in London in the family of his uncle, Samuel Price, co-pastor with Dr Isaac Watts, who was himself the close friend and near relation of Daniel Neal. For several years Price served as assistant pastor to Samuel Chandler at whose ordination Edmund Calamy had preached. Richard Price’s youth, then, was passed among Dissenting ministers who had been born and educated in Restoration England and Wales, who had themselves experienced the brutalities of the State and anti-Dissenting riots again in 1710 and in 1715. And several of them were closely connected to the two great historians of the Dissenters. A Discourse on the Love of our Country also represented Price’s own long political experience and that of many other Dissenters. Based in London throughout his adult life, he had mixed in the circles of metropolitan radicalism from the 1760s and had numbered James Burgh among his congregation. From 1771 he was an intimate of Shelburne and privy to all kinds of political information. Involvement in the 1770s, and again in the late 1780s, in various campaigns for repeal of anti-Dissenting statutes inevitably focused Price’s attention on the unfinished business of seventeenth-century history. He seems to have read carefully the latest historical works. During the 1772–3 campaign, for instance, he drew Chatham’s attention to the recently published first volume of Dalrymple’s History. It showed, Price said, that Charles II intended by the severity of

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the laws against Dissenters to drive them into armed rebellion, creating a pretext for a strengthening of the army and a restoration of arbitrary government and Catholicism: How hard it is that in this more liberal age and under a family to which we have always been the warmest friends, we cannot succeed in procuring the repeal of laws made with views so odious and savage?76

Of course, as Price well knew, a succession of Dissenting historians had said this before Dalrymple, and more effectively. But he took advantage of the brief notoriety of this new work of history to try to influence Pitt’s thinking. In his hugely influential Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the American cause is identified by Price with the cause of those who opposed Charles I in seventeenth-century England. The fundamental principle of the English government is the right of the people to grant their own money to the State. Taxation, in other words, is a voluntary contract: It was an attempt to encroach upon this right, in a trifling instance, that produced the civil war in the reign of Charles the First. – Ought not our brethren in America to enjoy this right as well as ourselves? Do the principles of the constitution give it to us, but deny it to them?77

Threatened by a single man in the seventeeth century, this right was now threatened by a body of men. But the principles remained the same. Price looks back with some nostalgia to the Commonwealthmen of the seventeenth century, mourning their passing. Once the encroachments of power on the liberties of the people were resolutely opposed. Now willingness to defend the cause of liberty, Price laments, seems to be declining: The fair inheritance of liberty left us by our ancestors many of us are not unwilling to resign. An abandoned venality, the inseparable companion of dissipation and extravagance, has poisoned the springs of public virtue among us: And should any events ever arise that should render the same opposition necessary that took place in the times of Charles the First, and James the Second, I am afraid all that is valuable to us would be lost.78

Price’s complex readings of the history of Puritanism was touched on again a few years later. The proceedings of the Presbyterian Assembly of Divines in the 1640s demonstrate, he says, that they were as dogmatic and persecutory – ‘adverse to every principle of religious liberty and charity’ – as the Churchmen they opposed. ‘Many in this assembly had smarted severely under the exercise of prelatical authority; and this should have

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led them to detest such principles.’79 And yet their proceedings suggest, Price says, ‘that they wanted only to transfer the seat of church tyranny and the powers of persecution from the bishops to themselves’.80 Having marked his distance from his Puritan forebears, Price goes on to make something of a historical apology for them: In justice, however, to their characters, it should be considered, that their narrowness and intolerance were the faults of the age in which they lived. They had not yet escaped far enough from the darkness of popery to enjoy the light and comfort of enlarged sentiments.

‘Those venerable reformers’, he says, were ‘excellent men.’ And they were at least consistent. If they would burn others, from the same principle ‘they would also burn themselves’.81 Uncompromising in his criticism of Puritan dogmatism, Price nevertheles respected their political recalcitrance. A Discourse on the Love of our Country was not simply the expression of a set of abstract political doctrines nor the views of an individual. It was rooted in a history, it articulated a tradition and it represented a religious as well as a political constituency. After all, it was addressed to the members of the Revolution Society instituted for the purposes of historical commemoration and a body which consisted, Price told Shelburne in October 1788, ‘chiefly of Dissenters’.82 NOTES 1 For an account of this long and complex case, going back to the 1730s, see A Sketch of the History and Proceedings of the Deputies Appointed to Protect the Civil Rights of the Protestant Dissenters . . . (1814), pp. 45–8. 2 ‘Lord Mansfield’s Speech to the House of Lords’, Appendix to Philip Furneaux, Letters to the Honourable Mr. Justice Blackstone, concerning his exposition of the Act of Toleration, and some positions relative to religious liberty, in his celebrated commentaries on the laws of England, 2nd ed. (1771), p. 265. Mansfield’s speech was impromptu. It was taken down in shorthand by the Dissenting minister Philip Furneaux, approved by Mansfield and subsequently printed as an appendix to this book. For another transcript see ‘Lord Mansfield’s Speech in the Cause of the Dissenters’, London Magazine, 41 (March 1771), pp. 131–8. 3 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England. Book the Fourth (Oxford, 1769), p. 52. 4 Ibid., p. 53. 5 Joseph Priestley, Remarks on some paragraphs in the fourth volume of Dr. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the laws of England, relating to the Dissenters (1769), pp. 29–30.

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6 Ibid., p. 33. 7 Ibid., p. 40. 8 Ibid., p. 3. For Blackstone’s conciliatory response to what he called Priestley’s ‘very angry pamphlet’ see: A reply to Dr. Priestley’s Remarks on the fourth volume of the Commentaries on the laws of England. By the author of the Commentaries (1769). Priestley responded in: ‘A Letter to Dr Blackstone’, St. James Chronicle, 10 October 1769. 9 ‘A Country Curate of the Established Church’, ‘An Affectionate Address to British Protestant Dissenters’, St. James Chronicle, 1 January 1766 (reprinted as Appendix 45 in Francis Blackburne, Memoirs of Thomas Hollis [1780] pp. 690–1). 10 These were subsequently collected together and published by Blackburne as The Budget: A Collection of Letters and Essays in Favour of Public Liberty, First published in the Newspapers in the Year 1764–70 by an Amiable Band of Well-Wishers to the Religious and Civil Rights of Mankind, 3 volumes (1774). 11 Blackburne to Wiche, 19 September 1766, DWL Mss 12.45. 12 Francis Blackburne, The Confessional; or, a full and free inquiry into the right, utility, edification, and success, of establishing systematical confessions of faith and doctrine in protestant churches (1766). 13 See Francis Blackburne, Proposals for an Application to Parliament for Relief in the Matter of Subscription to the Liturgy and Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England . . . (1771). 14 See Francis Blackburne, Reflections on the Fate of a Petition for Relief in the Matter of Subscription, offered to the Honourable House of Commons, February 6th, 1772 (1772). 15 The Apology of Theophilus Lindsey on Resigning the Vicarage of Catterick, Yorkshire (1774), p. 208n. 16 Lindsey, Letters, p. 130. 17 Theophilus Lindsey, An Historical View of the State of the Unitarian Doctrine and Worship, from the Reformation to our own Times. With some account of the obstructions which it has met with at different periods (1783), p. 451. 18 London Magazine, 44 (June 1774), p. 277. 19 Israel Mauduit, The Case of the Dissenting Ministers (1772), p. 7. Mauduit was the son of a London Dissenting minister, Isaac Mauduit, and the grandson of an ejected minister, John Mauduit. 20 E. Radcliffe, A Sermon preached to a congregation of Protestant Dissenters, At Crutched-Friars; occasioned by the denial of Relief, respecting Subscription, to the Articles of the Church of England (1772), p. 7. 21 Ibid., p. 8. 22 Israel Mauduit, The Case of the Dissenting Ministers. Addressed to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal (4th ed., 1772), p. 51. This is a muchexpanded version of the first edition cited above.

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23 AR (1772) ‘History’, p. 97. 24 For these exchanges see Cobbett’s Parliamentary History, Vol. XVII (1810), pp. 432–8; AR (1772) ‘History’, pp. 96–101. 25 Thomas Balguy, Letters Concerning Confessions of Faith, and Subscriptions to Articles of Religion in Protestant Churches; occasioned by perusal of The Confessional (1768), p. 45. 26 Thomas Newton, ‘A Speech designed for the House of Lords on the Second Reading of the Dissenters’ Bill, May 19, 1772’ in The Works of the Right Reverend Thomas Newton, . . . 1 (1782), Appendix I, n.p. 27 [Samuel Palmer] The Protestant-Dissenter’s Catechism. Containing I. A brief History of the Nonconformists: II. The reasons of the Dissent from the National Church. Designed to instruct and establish Young Persons among the Dissenters in the Principles of Nonconformity, 2nd ed. (1774), p. 22. 28 John Towill Rutt, Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley, 2 vols (1831), Vol. 1, p. 171n. 29 [Joseph Priestley] An Address to Protestant Dissenters of all Denominations, On the Approaching Election of Members of Parliament . . . (1777), p. 5. 30 Henry Mayo, Remarks on ‘The Case of the Dissenting Ministers’ (1772). 31 Remarks on the postscript to ‘The case of the Dissenting ministers, by Israel Mauduit’ . . . ( 2nd ed., 1772), pp. 11–12, 30. 32 Richard Hutchings, Gospel truths displayed, and gospel ministers duty, in a day of great defection proved . . . (1773), p. 49. 33 Candid Thoughts on the Late Application of some Protestant Dissenting Ministers to Parliament . . . By an Orthodox Dissenter (1772), p. 13. 34 See the intervention of the Bishop of London in the first Lords’ debate, claiming that the petitioners were opposed by ‘a great and respectable’ part of the Dissenters of London, a blatant lie: Parliamentary History, 47 (1810), pp. 436–37. See also Thomas Newton, ‘A Speech designed for the House of Lords on the Second Reading of the Dissenters’ Bill, May 19, 1772’ in Works of Thomas Newton . . . 1 (1782), Appendix I, n.p. 35 [William Enfield] Remarks on Several late Publications relative to the Dissenters in a Letter to Dr Priestley. By a Dissenter (1770), p. 9. 36 Ibid., p. 10. 37 John Taylor, The Scripture Account of Prayer in an Address to the Dissenters in Lancashire . . . (1761), pp. 46–7. 38 Biographical Collections: or lives and characters, from the works of the Reverend Mr. Baxter, and Dr. Bates . . . (1766) 2 vols. 39 See, for instance, A Call to the Unconverted. By the late Reverend and Pious Mr. Richard Baxter. To which are added, directions how to spend every ordinary day, and every Lord’s day. Collected from the works of Mr. Baxter and Dr. Doddridge, . . . (1746); there were new editions in 1761, 1767, four more in the 1780s, and another four during the 1790s. 40 Biographical Collections, 1, pp. vi n and vii n. 41 See, for instance, The Reformed Pastor; a Discourse on the Pastoral Office.

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42

43 44 45

46 47 48 49

50

51

52 53 54 55 56

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Designed principally to explain and recommend the duty of personal instruction and catechising . . . Written by the Reverend . . . Mr. Richard Baxter. Abridged and reduced to a new method by Samuel Palmer (1766); and Samuel Palmer, ed., A Collection of Family-prayers from the Devotional Writings of Baxter, . . . and others (1783). Samuel Palmer, The Nonconformist’s Memorial: being an account of the ministers, who were ejected or silenced after the Restoration, particularly by the Act of Uniformity, . . . Aug. 24, 1662. Containing a concise view of their lives and characters, . . . Originally written by the reverend and learned Edmund Calamy, D.D. Now abridged and corrected, and the author’s additions inserted, . . . (1775) 2 vols. Ibid., p. xiii. MR (1776), pp. 65–6. They included Andrew Kippis, Joseph Towers, Micaijah Towgood, Joshua Toulmin, Abraham Rees, Hugh Worthington, Thomas Belsham, Caleb Fleming, Hugh Farmer, Philip Furneaux, William Turner of Wakefield, and Job Orton. Palmer, Nonconformist’s Memorial, p. 71. [Samuel Palmer] Protestant-Dissenter’s Catechism . . . 2nd ed. (1774). Subsequent references are included in parentheses within the text. George Dyer, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Robert Robinson, . . . (1796), p. 110. Robert Robinson, A Plan of Lectures on the Principles of Nonconformity. For the Instruction of Catechumens (Cambridge, 1778), p. 6. Subsequent references to this text are included in parentheses. Joseph Cornish, A Serious and Earnest Address to Protestant Dissenters of all Denominations; representing the many and important principles, on which their Dissent from the establishment is grounded, 2nd ed. (1772). Joseph Cornish, A Brief and Impartial History of the Puritans; representing their principles and sufferings, with occasional observations . . . (1772), p. 1. Subsequent references are included in parentheses within the text. Cornish, A Serious and Earnest Address, p. 63n. Joseph Cornish, A Brief History of Nonconformity, from the Reformation to the Revolution: with Remarks on Church-establishments (1797). Robert Robinson, A Plan of Lectures on the Principles of Nonconformity. For the Instruction of Catechumens, 5th ed. (1781) ‘Preface’, p. ix. Lindsey, Letters, p. 272. [George Horne] Observations on The Case of the Protestant Dissenters with Reference to the Corporation and Test Acts (Oxford, 1790), pp. 8–9. See also [Samuel Horsley] A Review of the Case of the Protestant Dissenters . . . (1790), pp. 22–3, 30. According to some reports of Burke’s speech he cited the ‘catechisms’ of Palmer and Robinson and this has been taken to refer to the latter’s Political Catechism (1782). But it is clear that he was talking about the Plan of

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58 59 60

61 62 63 64 65 66

67

68

69 70

71 72

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Lectures, as several contemporaries noted. See Joshua Toulmin, Christian Vigilance. Considered in a Sermon . . . to which is added some account of Mr Robinson and his Writings (1790), p. 50; [Sir George Colebrooke] Six Letters on Intolerance: including Ancient and Modern Nations, and Different Religions and Sects (1791), p. 192. The Debate in the House of Commons on the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, March 2nd, 1790, 2nd ed. (1790), p. 44. Ibid., p. 45. See, for instance, U. Henriques, Religious Toleration in England, 1787–1833 (London: Routledge, 1961); G. M. Ditchfield, ‘The Parliamentary Struggle over the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts’, English Historical Review, 89 (1974), 551–77; Thomas W. Davis, Committees for Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts: Minutes 1786–90 and 1827–8 (London Record Society: 1978); Albert Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty. The English democratic movement in the age of the French Revolution (London: Hutchinson, 1979) Ch. 3. T. W. Davis, Committees for Repeal, p. 21. Ibid., p. 25. [Horne] Observations on The Case of the Protestant Dissenters, p. 16. Debate in the House of Commons on the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, March 2nd, 1790 . . . p. 42. [Samuel Heywood], The Right of Protestant Dissenters to a Compleat Toleration, asserted; . . . (1787). Capel Lofft, An History of the Corporation and Test Acts . . . (1790); Public Documents Declaratory of the Principles of the Protestant Dissenters and Proving that the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts was earnestly desired by King William III and King George I . . . (Birmingham, 1790); Facts submitted to the Consideration of the Friends to Civil and Religious Liberty . . . (1790). For a useful bibliography see [John Disney], An Arranged Catalogue of the Several Publications relating to the Enlargement of the Toleration of Protestant Dissenting Ministers; and the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts . . . (1790). See for instance [Benjamin Hobhouse] An Address to the Public in which an Answer is given to the Principal Objections urged in the House of Commons by the Rt. Hon. Frederick Lord North . . . and the Rt. Hon.William Pitt, against the Repeal of the Test Laws . . . (Bath, 1790), pp. 6–9. Printed notice: At a numerous and respectable meeting of the General Body of the Protestant Dissenting . . . [22 December 1789]. ‘A Discourse on the Love of our Country’ (1789) Richard Price: Political Writings, ed. D. O. Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 189. Ibid., p. 191. Ibid., p. 192.

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73 Ibid., p. 191. 74 See, for instance, the Revolution Society’s Preamble: ‘This Society, sensible of the important advantages arising to this Country by its deliverance from Popery and Arbitrary Power . . .’, An Abstract of the History and Proceedings of the Revolution Society . . . (1790), p. 47. 75 ‘A Discourse on the Love of our Country’, p. 191. 76 Price, Correspondence, 2, p. 159. 77 Richard Price, Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America . . . (5th ed., 1776), p. 49. 78 Ibid., p. 18. 79 Richard Price, Sermons on the Christian Doctrine as Received by the Different Denominations of Christians, . . . (2nd ed., 1787), p. 65. 80 Ibid., p. 66. 81 Ibid. 82 Price, Correspondence, 3, p. 185.

6 ‘The Fiction of Ancestry’: Burke, History and the Dissenters

HISTORY AND THE REVOLUTION DEBATE

The focus of this chapter is Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. It is worth remembering the full title of the book that was published in November 1790: Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the proceedings in certain societies in London relative to that event. In a letter intended to have been sent to a gentleman in Paris. For the first few months of its writing it had a different title. It was announced in February 1790 as: Reflections on certain proceedings of the Revolution Society, of the 4th November 1789, concerning the affairs of France. The initial polemic against Richard Price and the Revolution Society was overtaken by a more ambitious engagement with events taking place in France. Nevertheless, despite the larger pretensions of the completed work, the original targets – Richard Price, the Revolution Society and a wider network of Dissenting intellectuals – remained at the core of the Reflections. This made some contemporaries uneasy. The Whig MP, Philip Francis, was given a sight of part of the initial draft of Reflections on certain proceedings of the Revolution Society. He wondered aloud to Burke about the propriety of an eminent MP and Privy Councillor lowering himself by entering into a public controversy with a mere Dissenting minister.1 When he received his copy of the Reflections in November 1790 he repeated his concerns about Burke becoming involved in ‘an altercation with men, who were utterly unworthy of levelling themselves with you in a contest of any kind’.2 Much modern discussion of the Reflections seems to share something of this patrician unease. A long tradition of writing about Burke’s Reflections seems to have registered only the first part of the title, Reflections on the Revolution in France, giving little attention to Richard Price, the Revolution Society and the English Dissenters. Such readings forget Burke’s comment that he is concerned only with the events in France insofar as they have consequences in Britain. Burke’s starting point in the Reflections was that the reformers and

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Dissenters, represented by Richard Price and the members of the Revolution Society, gathered at an old Dissenting chapel in the City, were confused about the past: These gentlemen of the Old Jewry, in all their reasonings on the Revolution of 1688, have a revolution which happened in England about forty years before, and the late French revolution, so much before their eyes, and in their hearts, that they are constantly confounding all three together.3

The historical record, Burke says, disproves the claim that 1688 set a precedent for the right of the people to form a government for themselves. If you are desirous of knowing the spirit of our constitution and the policy which predominated in that great period which has served it to this hour, pray look for both in our histories, in our records, in our acts of parliament, and not in the sermons of the Old Jewry and the after-dinner toasts of the Revolution Society. [36]

On the one hand there were sermons and boozy toasts, on the other there were histories, laws and official records: in other words, Price, and the circle of Dissenters and reformers to which he belonged, had no serious history worth refuting. For Burke, 1688 handed on ‘an inheritance from our forefathers’ and ‘we’ have taken care not to introduce into the stock anything ‘alien to the nature of the original plant’. All the ‘reformation’ we have introduced, Burke says, has proceeded upon ‘the principle of reverence to antiquity’. From Magna Carta the policy of the constitution has been to assert our liberties ‘as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity’. [38] Burke’s language is of landed property and of the order of succession of the generations within a history – crown, peerage, privileges, franchises and liberties are all inherited from a long line of ancestors. But the spirit of innovation has no ancestors. Price and the Dissenters and reformers of the Revolution Society are denied historical legitimacy. They are not the descendants of ‘our forefathers’, not part of the traditional order of land and Church. They are not part of Burke’s ‘we’. They are a contagion from abroad, an alien stock, interlopers and, like similar kinds of fanatics in other periods of English history, sources of violence and disorder. PRICE AND PURITAN REGICIDES

Even in the Reflections, Burke sometimes remembered Hume’s teaching about the abuse of history to revive obsolete historical identities and animosities.

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In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. It may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties in church and state, and supplying the means of keeping alive, or reviving dissensions and animosities, and adding fuel to civil fury. [166]

In France, ‘atheistic libellers’ have ransacked ‘the histories of former ages’ to unearth every instance of oppression by the clergy. Men are not liable for the crimes of their forefathers, Burke says, much less for those of their predecessors in institutional positions. French clerics are being punished by the National Assembly, Burke says, though they equally condemn the behaviour of Churchmen in previous times: It is not very just to chastise men for the offences of their natural ancestors; but to take the fiction of ancestry in a corporate succession, as a ground for punishing men who have no relation to guilty acts, except in names and general distinctions is a sort of refinement in injustice belonging to the philosophy of this enlightened age. [165]

And yet, from the very beginning of the Reflections, Burke was keen to align Price and his fellow Dissenters with the Puritan revolutionaries of a century-and-a-half before. They were to be marked with the stain of their supposed regicide ancestors, to be chastised for the offences of their predecessors ‘in a corporate succession’. Price’s Discourse on the Love of our Country is compared with the preaching of Hugh Peter, a Puritan tried at the Restoration and executed with some of the regicides at Charing Cross: That sermon is in a strain which I believe has not been heard in this kingdom, in any of the pulpits which are tolerated or encouraged in it, since the year 1648, when a predecessor of Dr. Price, the Rev. Hugh Peters, made the vault of the king’s own chapel at St. James’s ring with the honor [sic] and privilege of the Saints, who, with the ‘high praises of God in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hands, were to execute judgment on the heathen. And punishments upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron.’ [13]

Citing Peter as a ‘predecessor’ of Price is a remarkable instance of ‘the fiction of ancestry in a corporate succession’. The quotation is from Psalm 149, but no educated reader of the Reflections would have missed the threatening Miltonic echo of ‘a two-edged sword’. Nor would they have missed the connotations of the year 1648 – the year of royalism’s final defeat and the king’s trial though, of course he was executed on

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30 January 1649 (1648 OS). By a rapid series of connotations, Burke summons up traditional fears of Dissenters as crypto-Puritans, fanatics and regicides. Richard Price, as a descendant of seventeenth-century Puritans and regicides, reappears later in the Reflections. The politics of revolution, Burke says, requires a hardening of the temper and the heart ‘to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme situations’. Even if never enacted, this disposition affects the mind and the feelings. It is this violent spirit that animates Price’s sermon, a spirit which Burke names ‘enthusiasm’. And here he quotes the famous passage in which the sixty-six-year-old Price speaks of having lived long enough to witness the revolution in France: ‘What an eventful period is this! I am thankfull that I have lived to see it; I could almost say, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.’ [77]4 Burke comments drily on Price’s claim that he had lived to see ‘a diffusion of knowledge, which has undermined superstition and error’: ‘The last century appears to me to have been quite as much enlightened’. And he reasserts Price’s identity with seventeenth-century Puritans and, in particular, the regicide Hugh Peter, cleverly seizing on some unconfirmed textual parallels between the two. At his trial for high treason in 1660 Peter was described by a witness as riding before Charles I ‘triumphing’ (italicised by Burke) as the latter was brought into London for his trial and subsequent execution. And Peter, from the pulpit of the royal chapel at Whitehall during the king’s trial, had used the same citation from the Old Testament as Price: ‘I have prayed and preached these twenty years; and now I may say with Old Simeon, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation’. [78]5 Price in 1789 is merely following seventeenth-century precedents. A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, Burke says, ‘differs only in place and time, but agrees perfectly with the spirit and letter of the rapture of 1648’. [78] Reflections on the Revolution in France was also following seventeenth-century precedents. Burke is writing in that anti-Puritan tradition, stretching back through David Hume to Swift, to Butler’s Hudibras, to Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, which has been touched on in previous chapters. These intellectual co-ordinates are apparent in Burke’s lengthiest narrative of the seventeenth-century Puritans – to be found in An Account of the European Settlements in America, first published in 1757. Ostensibly this two-volume work was by William Burke, but Edmund Burke was co-author at least, probably overall editor of the book, and he almost certainly drafted these seventeenth-century

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chapters.6 Though it provides no history of the Civil War, the execution of the king or the interregnum, its picture of seventeenth-century Puritanism is fundamentally hostile and rehearses some of the key points of Hume’s History of England. Burke distinguishes two parties of Protestants during the Reformation in England. On the one hand, were those who withdrew from the Church of Rome very gradually, preserving many of the externals of the old faith: ‘softening the lines rather than erasing the figure, they made but very little alteration in the appearances of things’.7 These moderate reformers evidently have his approval. But there was another party, ‘of a warmer temper’ Burke says, which had ‘more zeal and less policy’. Several of these had been forced into exile in the 1550s during the persecutions of Queen Mary: ‘Abroad they learned an aversion to the episcopal order, and to religious ceremonies of every sort; they were impregnated with an high spirit of liberty, and had a strong tendency to the republican form of government.’8 Note that Puritanism (and republicanism) become foreign imports. As Burke’s account proceeds into the deepening crisis of the Stuart monarchy, the shadow of Hume’s History is obvious. Elizabeth, we are told, had ruthlessly and effectively suppressed the Puritans. James persecuted them, too, but less effectively: ‘They were persecuted, but not destroyed; they were exasperated and yet left powerful; and a severity was exercised towards them, which at once exposed the weakness and the ill intentions of the government.’9 Similarly under Charles I, a prince, Burke says, ‘with many great virtues’ but ‘very few amiable qualities’, Puritanism was brutally oppressed but grew in power. There is a slip here which indicates how Burke is already identifying early seventeenth-century Puritans with eighteenthcentury Dissenters. Charles, he says, put himself entirely in the hands of ‘the church and churchmen’, meaning the Laudians. But, of course, the Puritans were also ‘the church and churchmen’ at this time. Burke follows Hume in representing the core of Puritan resistance to the ecclesiastical policies of Elizabeth, James and then Charles as a bloody-minded refusal to conform on trivial matters: ‘they became every day further and further from listening to the least terms of agreement with surplices, organs, common-prayer, or table at the East-end of the church’.10 The sketch of ‘the affected plainess of their dress’, the ‘gravity of their deportment’, the use of biblical language in the most ordinary transactions of everyday life, recycles the Puritan stereotype of dozens of Restoration satires, though the language here is mild. The debt to Hume is more obvious when Burke mentions the names of Puritans, ‘striking and venerable’, drawn from the pages of the Old Testament. Hume, as we have seen, had great fun in

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listing absurd Puritan names – though these were often fictions, derived from scurrilous texts like Butler’s Hudibras or Zachary Grey’s antiDissenting polemics of the the 1720s and 1730s. English Puritans, Burke says, were seeking not liberty of conscience but liberty from any restraint or hierarchy. This they found in North America and here, out of reach of the spiritual arm of the State, they succeeded against great odds in wresting a livelihood: ‘That enthusiasm which was reversing everything at home, and which is so dangerous in every settled community, proved of admirable service here.’11 But these early Puritan communities in New England were characterised, he says, by ‘religious violence’ and consisted of ‘persons of a contracted way of thinking and most violent enthusiasts’.12 Their laws on religious matters amounted to ‘a complete code of persecution’ and were, Burke says: ‘not only contrived but executed in some respects, with so much rigour, that the persecution which drove the Puritans out of England might be considered as great lenity and indulgence in the comparison’.13 WHIGS AND DISSENTERS

Early in his career, then, and more than thirty years before the Reflections, Burke demonstrated his affinity with the predominant tradition of anti-Puritan writing in eighteenth-century England. In particular, he had assimilated the sophisticated arguments about the political dangers of fanaticism in Hume’s History of England. In practical political terms, however, Burke had to come to terms with the electoral influence of contemporary Dissenters. The particular party grouping to which he was affiliated from his entry into Parliament in 1765 had committed itself to religious liberty and showed considerable sympathy for the Dissenters. As the Duke of Richmond suggested in 1772, urging Rockingham to support the Dissenters in their campaign for relief from certain legal restrictions, the continuing electoral power of religious Dissent was pivotal for Whig political influence: ‘your giving it a warm support will greatly recommend you to that weighty body of men, the Dissenters, who all over England are very powerful and who stick pretty much together . . .’14 Burke himself acknowledged the alignment of the Church with government in the war against the American colonists and the party’s dependence upon the Dissenters. They were, he noted in 1777 ‘the main effective part of the Whig strength’.15 Burke was accommodating to the cause of religious Dissent in the 1770s, making several strategic interventions in Parliament in defence of their legitimacy as a historical community within the British polity. In

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1772, during the Commons debate around the petition of the Feather’s Tavern Association, Burke made a cautious defence of the historical record of Dissenters: If the Dissenters as an honourable gentleman has described them, have formerly risen from a ‘whining, canting, snivelling generation’ to be a body dreadful and ruinous to all our establishments, let him call to mind the follies, the violences, the outrages and persecutions, that conjured up, very blamably, but very naturally, that same spirit of retaliation.16

Dissenters are defended here by Burke (and also criticised) in terms of their historical record. If they were responsible for the overthrow of the monarchy and the established Church in the 1640s, they had also played a vital role in the protection of the established order in the crisis of 1689 and again in 1715 and 1745. Relations between Dissenters and the Rockinghamite Whigs, Burke appreciated, were based on more than mutual electoral advantage. There was also a shared language of opposition to absolutism and arbitrary government. In his Speech on Conciliation with America, in March 1775, he had spoken in energetic terms of the contribution of religious Dissent to the ‘free spirit’ of the American colonists: ‘The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it.’17 Roman Catholicism and the Church of England have been supported by governments and by the authority of the State. From their origins in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English Puritanism, Dissenting groups in England and America have stood in opposition to the State: the dissenting interests have sprung up in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of the world; and could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.18

Note that a positive or a negative sign could be placed against this statement. For Burke, any verdict on the political role of the Puritan tradition was shaped in the light of specific and changing circumstances. It was necessarily a historical judgement. In one case their dissidence in the face of worldly powers was a valuable defence of liberty against arbitrary and unconstitutional government, aligning them with the

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political principles of the Whigs. Equally, in a different set of circumstances, that same dissidence could be a bloody-minded and dangerous resistance to legitimate authority. Burke’s public support for the cause of religious Dissent was put under some stress in the 1780s, especially after the collapse of the political alliance between the Foxite Whigs and the ranks of Dissent in the crisis of 1783–84. The Fox–North coalition in 1783 – Burke had been important in its formation – profoundly shocked many Dissenters as a piece of cynical opportunism. Richard Price called it ‘one of the most scandalous events that ever happen’d’.19 And he told Benjamin Franklin: ‘Never surely was there an instance of such profligate conduct.’ It was, he said, ‘merely, a struggle of ambitious and disappointed men to get into power’.20 Specific measures of this short-lived coalition government, notably the East India Bill, alienated Dissenters further. The Foxite Whigs were decimated in the general election of 1784, and the mass desertion of the Dissenters was a major factor. Two letters from Burke to the Bristol Dissenter, Richard Bright, in May 1789 and February 1790 demonstrated that there was to be no forgiveness for Dissenters. Representing a committee of Dissenters in Bristol, Bright had asked for Burke’s support for Beaufoy’s forthcoming Parliamentary motion for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. Burke’s reply begins coolly: There are no Men on Earth to whom I have been more attached, and with a more sincere Esteem and Affection, than to some amongst the Dissenters. From my earliest years my Connexions have been very much with them. I flatter myself that I have still friends of that denomination.21

Note that in 1789 his attachment is personal and individual – to particular men, and to ‘some among the Dissenters’, not to Dissenters per se. He shows no sympathy for the principles of religious Dissent nor to Dissent as a body. But, Burke goes on, the election of 1784 had changed all that. At this point in his letter all restraint is abandoned and his rage breaks out of control, scorching the page and barely remaining coherent: all of them who seem’d to act in Corps, have held me out to publick Odium, as one of a gang of Rebels and Regicides, which had conspired at one blow to subvert the Monarchy, to annihilate, without cause, all the Corporate privileges in the Kingdom, and totally destroy the Constitution. It is not their fault that I am in a situation to be asked by them or by any body else, for my poor Vote; or that I have even One of the old friends of my principles and my heart, to assist Me, amidst the Slaughter which they have made of the most honourable and Virtuous Men in the Kingdom.22

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Burke subsequently took no part in the Parliamentary debate around Beaufoy’s motion. In February 1790 Bright resolutely wrote to Burke again with a request from the committee of Bristol Dissenters for his support for the third (and final) motion to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts. Burke’s reply referred back to his letter of the previous May. There was some slight apology for his failure to attend the debate and perhaps some embarrassment about the tone of that letter: ‘I was, as you observe, not in the best State of health last year when the Business of the repeal of the Test came on.’ This time Burke stated in sharper and more specific terms the issues ‘which made me less desirous, than formerly I had been, of becoming active in the Service of the Dissenters’. His reservations about some of the leading voices of the Dissenting campaign had been reinforced by the attempts of some – the Revolution Society is clearly implied – to initiate closer links with the new regime in France and to offer it as a model for England. Two Dissenting books had recently come into his hands which, he says: leave no Doubt upon my Mind, that a considerable party is formed, and is proceeding systematically, to the destruction of this Constitution in some of its essential parts. I was much surprised to find religious assemblies turned into sort of places of exercise and discipline for politicks; and for the nourishment of a party which seems to have contention and power much more than Piety for its Object.23

And what were these two ‘extraordinary works’ by Dissenters? They were two works considered in detail in the previous chapter: Samuel Palmer’s Protestant Dissenter’s Catechism, first published in 1772, and Robert Robinson’s 1778 Plan of Lectures on the Principles of Nonconformity. Burke went on to tell Bright that his own unease over the commitment of Fox, his party leader, to the Dissenting campaign was shared by such Whig luminaries as Portland, Fitzwilliam and Lord John Cavendish. And here again we are back to the desertion of Fox by the Dissenting interest in the 1784 election. It was a mistake for Fox to give the Dissenters his support: Because it furnishes in my humble opinion a very bad example, and of a most immoral tendency, to the world; in teaching Men, that they may persecute and calumniate their true friend, and endeavour, by undermining his reputation, and battering down his consequence, to put it out of his power to be serviceable to his Country, and yet that they may, (even whilst they are continuing these practices) make use of his abilities for the service of their party.24

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In other words, the Dissenters must be punished for their lack of due subordination to their political masters six years earlier. And this brings us back to 1790, to Dr Price and to the ‘gentlemen of the Old Jewry’ who are now connected to a specific political faction of Whigs. As Burke told Philip Francis in February 1790, replying to his worries about an eminent Parliamentarian lowering himself in public controversy with a mere Dissenting minister: . . . I intend no controversy with Dr Price or Lord Shelburne or any other of their set. I mean to set in full View the danger from their wicked principles and their black hearts; I intend to state the true principles of our constitution in Church and state – upon grounds opposite to theirs . . .25

Burke was not alone in his personal detestation of Shelburne or in his suspicion that Dissenters were a significant presence within his circle. Shelburne had a Dissenting minister as tutor to his sons (Thomas Jervis) and Joseph Priestley as his librarian. The comings and goings of the likes of Price and Priestley and Kippis and Lindsey at Bowood and in Berkeley Square were public knowledge. There were loud accusations that Price was a mere tool of Shelburne and/or that Shelburne was the puppet of a dangerous group of crypto-Puritans during the War of American Independence. Wild diatribes circulated in print rehearsing some of the rhetorical strategies Burke was to use in the Reflections on the Revolution in France. One anonymous tract linked ‘our factions at home’ and ‘the craft of some designing men among them, who, like Cromwell, mean to usurp all power and stand upon sovereign ground’ (Shelburne) and on the other ‘the ill-featured productions of some fanatical casuists, who have long concealed in their bowels the puritanical principles which now is let loose upon us with its spangled incitements to liberty, with its veil of hypocisy and simulation . . .’ (Price).26 These noisy polemics had an influence. Contemporaries thought Price was some kind of political tool of party. Lord Monboddo told Price in 1781: ‘I heard of you in London as one of the sons of Party, that I was not very desirous to be acquainted with.’ Only on meeting him did he discover, he admitted, ‘that you was not that tool of Party, which you had been represented to me’.27 The most detailed contemporary account of the Shelburne/Dissenting connection appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine in January 1783. The anonymous author claimed to be an American refugee who had recently settled among the Dissenters in Taunton. On my first acquaintance with them, my ears were stunned with the sound of Lord Shelburne’s name; the distinction paid to their ministers, by his having

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committed his children to their care; and the manifold advantages which would arise to their body, if ever his Lordship should get into power.28

Shelburne thought to gain political influence by attaching the Dissenters to him through networks of Dissenting ministers who had influence over their congregations. Price was soon being deployed ‘to serve the immediate views of his patron’ so that ‘the Dr. was carnalized by the Peer, not the Peer spiritualized by the Dr.’. But, according to the author, Shelburne found Price ‘cautious, slow and supercilious’, influenced by friends who opposed his closer involvement in his political affairs. He turned to Joseph Priestley, seeing more ‘fire and spirit’ in him. But again this went badly wrong: ‘the reluctance shown by Dr Priestley, to cover his political errands to Franklin and others, with philosophical pretences, produced a coolness that ended in disappointment and disgust’. So Shelburne discovered that the political organisation he was seeking to establish through Dissenting ministers was ‘a rope of sand’. Hostile both to Shelburne and to the Dissenters, distorting and simplifying the complex issues for its own political puposes, this essay is, nevertheless, well informed. And it is indicative of a wider public perception that Shelburne and the Dissenters constituted some kind of political connection. Theophilus Lindsey, who was well connected to Whig political circles, commented in a letter immediately after the 1784 election: The Dissenters in London have taken a very warm and open part for Mr Pitt, of which I am told Ld Shelburne takes merit to himself and perhaps not without cause, as Dr Price in particular continues very much attached to and intimate with him.29

It was a perception that persisted after 1784 and after Shelburne (now Landsdowne) was frozen out of the inner circles of political power. When, at the beginning of 1787, the Dissenters opened a new campaign for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, the Archbishop of Canterbury told William Eden: ‘I know . . . that Lord Lansdowne is secretly the first mover of this business.’30 And the Foxite Whig Churchman Samuel Parr growled to a fellow clergyman about Fox being duped by the cunning Dissenters who, he said, ‘certainly mean rebellion’: Fox will only make enemies in the Church without gaining any friends among the Presbyterians, who are all with Lansdowne, Lord Stanhope and Pitt; and Sheridan owns that out of eleven Presbyterian members they never have one vote with them except upon the Test.31

Burke’s intense political frustrations of the 1780s found their source in the machinations of Shelburne and the Dissenters. And there was a

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network of connections between the two which Richard Price embodied. Reflections on the Revolution in France was, in part, an intervention in the internecine struggles within the Whig party in the 1780s. And it was an attack upon Dissenters, because their mass desertion of Fox in the 1784 general election and their alignment with Shelburne and Pitt had done irreparable damage to the Foxite Whigs – who were, for Burke, the true and natural governors of the nation. But most of all, it was an attack on Richard Price and the Revolution Society as representing a dangerous tendency in the political world of the 1780s: an aristocratic elite were increasingly being managed by, and even subordinated to, a wider grouping of Dissenting intellectuals and organisations. He was already complaining in 1780: ‘the bane of the Whiggs [sic] has been the admission among them of the Corps of schemers’32. So the Reflections was also a hostile intervention in the debate around the Test and Corporations Act. MEDIEVAL DISSENTERS

Turning back to the text of Reflections, it is worth noting that Burke does not confine himself to seventeenth-century history for representations to delegitimise Price and the Dissenters. The historical archive of late eighteenth-century England is ransacked for hostile stereotypes. For instance, Price had argued that the constitutional settlements subsequent to the revolution of 1688 made George III ‘the only lawful king in the world’. Such global pronouncements, Burke responds, are papal in their grandiosity, and he called A Discourse on the Love of our Country ‘a fulminating bull’ pronounced by ‘this arch-pontiff of the rights of men’. [15] Other images deployed by Burke in the Reflections pander to popular prejudices about intellectuals and ‘doctors’. Price mixes up the contents of A Discourse in a ‘cauldron’. Burke depicts ‘this spiritual doctor of politics’ as a ‘caballer’, ‘a sort of oracle’, and talks of ‘the fumes of his oracular tripod’. Richard Price is Puritan fanatic and regicide, medieval pope and Jesuit missionary, occultist and necromancer. Two periods of history figure prominently in the Reflections and in other writings and speeches of Burke at this juncture: first, medieval peasant uprisings and second, the recent Gordon riots. Both utilise the key terms of the anti-Puritan interpretation of English history. In An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs in August 1791 Burke triangulates medieval uprisings with the French Revolution and with Dissenting ministers and reforming clubs in England. This is not, he remarks ‘the first time that the people have been enlightened into treason, murder, and rapine’. Jack Cade, Robert Kett and Jack Straw, he says, ‘did no more

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than exert, according to the doctrines of ours and the Parisian societies, the sovereign power inherent in the majority’.33 Burke points to the figure of a dissident clergyman – ‘the enlightened Dr Ball’, ‘that reverend patriarch of sedition, and prototype of our modern preachers’.34 Preaching to the rebels, Ball took for his text the couplet: ‘When Adam delved and Eve span,/ Who was then the gentleman?’ ‘It is no small loss to the world’, Burke drily observes, that this sermon – preached at Blackheath before a crowd equal to that assembled on the Champ de Mars in Paris on Bastille Day, 1790 – has not been preserved.35 Note again the gratuitous comparison between a London crowd in 1381 and a French crowd in 1790 and the implied link to Price’s Revolution Society sermon. Burke has some fun suggesting how ‘this sapient text’ of John Ball was decorated with all the paraphernalia of medieval scholastic philosophy supplied by the schoolmen, just as his modern equivalent is ‘supplied from the new arsenal at Hackney’.36 The comparison pokes fun at the pretensions of these new reformers. A Dissenting academy in Hackney – Price had been a tutor there – is hardly to be compared with great medieval universities at Oxford or Paris. And, in a sarcastic footnote, Ball is described as a conspicuous member of a fourteenth-century Society for Constitutional Information. Burke even claims that he prefers their pithy publications to ‘the loose and confused prolixity of the modern advertisements of constitutional information’.37 Like the Reflections the previous year, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs exploits an archive of collective memories and images. In eighteenth-century histories, the 1381 uprising of Wat Tyler figured as an emblematic moment of what happens when a dissident preacher arouses the enthusiasm of the uneducated lower orders. Hume’s History of England had stressed the role of John Ball in preparing the minds of the people for insurrection. He was, Hume wrote, ‘a seditious preacher, who affected low popularity’ by preaching equality and attacking social distinctions and the power of the ruling few. These doctrines were ‘greedily received by the multitude . . . and scattered the sparks of that sedition, which the present tax raised into a conflagration’.38 Maitland, in his important History of London, described Ball as ‘an excommunicated, factious and seditious priest’ whose sermon was instrumental in stirring up the people into rebellion in 1381.39 Tobias Smollett went further, calling John Ball ‘a wretched fanatic’ and: a fanatic priest, who acted as principal incendiary, and even from the first manifestation of their discontent, spirited them up to mischief and revolt, by inflammatory sermons and circular letters, couched in quaint mysterious

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rhymes, admirably calculated to work up the minds of ignorant rustics to fury and enthusiasm.40

With its references to ‘fanatic’, ‘inflammatory sermons’ and ‘enthusiasm’ this passage unmistakably invoked contemporary anxieties about Puritan and Dissenting preachers. Anti-reforming polemicists in the 1790s appropriated historical juxtapositions of Wat Tyler and John Ball with contemporary reformers in England. One pamphlet pointed to the seditious influence of those ‘whose irritable tempers might be worked upon to produce that affection of the mind, which hath frequently made villains martyrs, I mean – Enthusiasm’. And his prize exhibit is John Ball who, ‘by his seditious speeches and sermons raised the people’s fury to the utmost height’.41 One of Burke’s disciples, the Churchman John Brand, pushed the historical comparisons further. The Wat Tyler risings of 1381 were the result of ‘the contagion of the principles which had prevailed in France some time before’ and he calls the Jacquarie ‘the ancient Jacobins’. ‘Seditious orators’, he says, naming John Ball as merely one of them, did the preparatory work for this rising: ‘To borrow a metaphor from a modern writer of great eminence, it was thus a mine was dug to blow up civil society.’42 The reference is, of course, to David Hume and his image (appropriated from Daniel Neal) of the Puritans in Elizabethan and Jacobean England as an underground fire, eventually exploding under the foundations of Church and State. ‘The principles of sedition preached by John Ball have a singular similitude to those now solicitously propagated,’ Brand states.43 Burke’s biographer, Robert Bisset, claimed John Ball, ‘a seditious lecturer’, as the ‘first attempt to excite a democratical spirit recorded in English history’, ‘preaching’ equality and the rights of man. Had the government been sufficiently vigilant in repressing these lectures then the uprising might have been prevented. The contemporary lesson was obvious.44 INVOKING THE GORDON RIOTS

Barely concealed behind these historical juxtapositions of Price and other Dissenters alongside Wat Tyler and Jack Cade and the Reverend John Ball was a more recent figure, one whose Protestant preaching had generated the most destructive riots in London of the whole century: Lord George Gordon; and a more recent event – or rather, two overlapping recent events – the storming of the Bastille in July 1789 and the Gordon Riots, and in particular the destruction of Newgate prison, in June 1780. Not only were these two events joined in contemporary

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accounts but the Gordon Riots had become linked to the Dissenters. Once again, the dangers of enthusiasm and of religious fanatics – the dreadful history of the seventeenth century – were brought into the present. There is a single direct reference to the Gordon Riots in the Reflections. Burke makes an ingenious link between those, such as Price, who, he says, libel the king and queen of France, and Lord George Gordon who, in 1787, had been convicted of libelling Marie-Antoinette. Gordon is described as ‘having, in his zeal against Catholic priests and all sort of ecclesiastics, raised a mob (excuse the term, it is still in use here) which pulled down all our prisons’. [98–9] There is no explicit reference to Dissenters or fanatics, but there is another oblique reference to Price which fuses the Dissenters, the sermon at the Old Jewry, English and French Jews and a money-grubbing, stockjobbing mentality. Gordon, he says, is imprisoned in Newgate until somebody from France, ‘to please your new Hebrew brethren, shall ransom him’: He may then be enabled to purchase, with the old hoards of the synagogue, and a very small poundage on the long compound interest of the thirty pieces of silver (Dr. Price has shewn us what miracles compound interest will perform in 1790 years) the lands which are lately discovered to have been usurped by the Gallican church. Send us your popish Archbishop of Paris, and we will send you our protestant Rabbin. [99]

There is much compressed in these lines, equating Dissenters and Jews, Price and Gordon. As it happened, Price’s Revolution Society sermon was preached in an old meeting house in the north-east corner of the Old Jewry, more or less on the site of the first synagogue in England. Built in 1701, for a Presbyterian congregation dating back to the Restoration, it was described by a contemporary as ‘a large, substantial brick-building, neatly fitted up with pews, and contains three galleries of considerable size’.45 Burke insistently repeats, page after page, the ancient street name, inviting a reading which begins to hear identity where there is only a coincidence of location: ‘the meeting house of the Old Jewry’, ‘this lecture in the Old Jewry’, ‘pulpit of the Old Jewry’, ‘sermon of the Old Jewry’, ‘preacher of the Old Jewry’, ‘gentlemen of the Old Jewry’, ‘this society of the Old Jewry’. Subliminally this repetition reinforces an identity between Dissenters and Jews – together with a third negative and overlapping stereotype, the city stockjobber. Burke mentions together ‘moneyjobbers, userers and Jews’ and ‘Jews and jobbers’. And remarks: ‘The Jews in Change Alley have not yet dared to hint their hopes of a mortgage on the revenues belonging to the see of Canterbury’.

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In his speech against Fox’s motion for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in March 1790 Burke had accused the Dissenters of seeking to despoil the property of the Church of England – ‘the same sort of robbery and plunder of the wealth of the Church as had happened in France’. In the Reflections he had gone a step further and had laboured to demonstrate the money-grubbing, calculating spirit of English Dissenters. Price was, of course, a mathematician, the author of several works on actuarial topics and adviser to the Society for Equitable Assurances. He and ‘the gentlemen of the Old Jewry’, many of them money-men in the City, are therefore prominent among those ‘sophisters, oeconomists and calculators’ – Jews by principle if not by birth – who have destroyed the spirit of chivalry. Burke’s ‘anti-Semitism’ has attracted some attention in recent years, and much more could be said about it and about the whole question of Puritan and Dissenting philo-Semitism.46 But I want to strike off in another direction – to track the convergence of Burke’s attack on Price to a wider set of hostile representations of religious Dissent derived from collective memories of the London riots of 1780. The Gordon Riots had a particular resonance for Burke. Though his involvement had been discreet, his active role in the drafting and the passing of the Catholic Relief Act in 1778 was well enough known. So, too, were his Roman Catholic affiliations. He had a Catholic wife, a Catholic mother and a Catholic sister. He was regularly caricatured as a Jesuit priest and was vilified by Lord George Gordon in several of his speeches to the Protestant Association.47 His London house was threatened during the riots.48 Burke’s lengthy speech in the Commons debate immediately after the riots utilised images of the mob and their fanatical manipulators which were subsequently to figure in his speeches and writings of the early 1790s, including the Reflections. He was reported to have made ‘a very animated speech’ and was ‘extremely severe against those who were capable of misleading the people to such violent outrages against the laws and constitutions of their country’.49 On 19 June he spoke again in Parliament, responding to a speech by Alderman Bull ‘with unusual vehemence’. Burke’s ad hominem attack on the alderman caused a furore. Only after some delay was Burke able to resume his denunciations of those who had organised the petitions and engineered the riots as ‘a set of deluded fanatics’, motivated by ‘bigotry and fanaticism’. He repeated the term ‘fanatic’ and ‘fanaticism’ several times in a long speech.50 The particular target of Burke’s rage, Frederick Bull MP, was Gordon’s most active supporter in Parliament, seconding both of his motions on 2 June. After the events in Parliament that day, Gordon’s carriage was

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pulled in triumph by the mob not to his own house but into the City to the house of Bull where a large crowd was already gathered.51 As Burke well knew, Bull was a Baptist, and ‘a leading man among the City-Dissenters’. Magistrate, alderman, Lord Mayor of London and ultimately Member of Parliament for the City, Bull had a considerable radical following in London. He had been one of Wilkes’s most committed supporters and an active member of the Bill of Rights Society. He was soon to be a member, alongside Richard Price and other metropolitan Dissenters, of the Society for Constitutional Information. In the speech to which Burke was so vehement in reply, Bull had repeated his support for the Protestant Association petitions – ‘and, Sir, I am happy in having a sanction for this opinion from that corporation of which I have the honour to be a member, and in which there are a large number of my constituents’.52 As a correspondent to the Protestant Magazine noted in 1781, it took unusual courage to stand up in Parliament in the immediate aftermath of the Gordon Riots and defend the Protestant Association.53 DISSENTERS AND THE PROTESTANT ASSOCIATION

Was Bull voicing a wider Dissenting position here? Contemporary assessments largely exonerated English Dissenters from any significant degree of involvement in the Protestant Association. Burke, at least in public, continued to make careful distinctions between the ranks of respectable Dissenters and the ‘fanatics’ of the Protestant Association. Dissenters had played an important role in his election at Bristol in 1774, serving as his agents and giving him the bulk of their votes. ‘The presbyterians are in general Sound, and in our Interest,’ he told Portland in the run-up to the 1780 election. The Baptists and, especially, the Methodists had moved into opposition to him, however, though his recent support for the Roman Catholic cause was only one of the reasons.54 In September 1780, in his Speech at Bristol, in the Guildhall Previous to the Election, he expressed his satisfaction that only four or five people in Bristol seem to have signed ‘that symbol of delusion and bond of sedition, that libel on the national religion and English character, the Protestant Association’.55 He described the Protestant Association as ‘the counsels of Fanaticism and Folly’ and the London rioters as ‘a fanatical force’.56 But if ‘fanaticism’ and ‘fanatical’ would suggest to contemporary readers the religious zeal of the old Puritans, Burke makes no explicit connection to their contemporary Dissenting heirs. Indeed, he suggests a measure of affinity between Catholics and Dissenters, calling the former a ‘sect’ among other sects and ‘our Catholic Dissenters’. Later

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in the Bristol Speech he indicates an identity of oppression when he refers to ‘the statutes against Protestant or Catholic Dissenters’.57 The Catholic Relief Act, Burke noted, had the support, not just of the whole of the Lords and the Commons, the bishops and ‘all the distinguished clergy’ of the Church of England, but also of ‘all the eminent lights (for they were consulted) of the Dissenting churches’.58 The disposition of Dissent was not, however, quite so straightforward. The ‘eminent lights’ of Dissent remained cautious about moves towards Catholic toleration. In 1765, as a tutor at Warrington Academy, Joseph Priestley had called for a widening of ‘the common circle of liberty’: Whatever be the particular views of the numerous tribes of searchers after truth, under whatever denomination we may be ranked, whether we be called, or call ourselves Christians, Papists, Protestants, Dissenters, Heretics, or even Deists . . . we stand in need of the same liberty of thinking, debating, and publishing.59

But he told Theophilus Lindsey a few years later that, even among the liberal rational Dissenters at Warrington, ‘I was singular in my opinion concerning the toleration of popery’. Though he shared Dissenting hostility to what he termed ‘the gross, abject, and impious superstition of the church of Rome’, his 1769 Essay on the First Principles of Government was forthright in calling for a complete religious toleration for all groups, including Catholics.60 The latter were, he thought, less and less of a political threat. The danger of a Stuart restoration had now largely disappeared; even the pope had rejected their legitimacy. Freed from their ‘civil disadvantages’, Catholic landowners and men of property, Priestley thought, could become supporters of the Hanoverian constitution and enemies of arbitrary power. Other reforming rational Dissenters were less sanguine. When Andrew Kippis reviewed Priestley’s Essay on Government, he picked out the section on toleration of Catholics as ‘the most exceptionable part’ of the whole book, though he acknowledged that the question was so complex as not to allow a brief answer: The nature of Popery should particularly be inquired into; not merely as a system of absurd doctrines and worship, but as a practical and intolerant superstition; as a cruel conspiracy against all the essential privileges of mankind; as a scheme which cannot rise to a high degree of power, except upon the ruins of every thing that can render life desirable and valuable.61

A few months before the Gordon Riots, Kippis was still warning against popery as ‘so absurd, so superstitious, so idolatrous, so wicked and so

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cruel a system, that we cannot be too much upon our guard against it; and that we ought to withstand the progress of it by every wise, rational and Christian method’.62 Two 5 November sermons by influential London ministers illuminate the uncertainties of rational Dissenters on the eve of the Gordon Riots. First, in 1778 Hugh Worthington stressed that whatever the superstitions and absurdities of the Catholic Church, the key point at issue is its persecutory character: We must be strangely ignorant of popery, if we do not know that religious persecution is essential to its nature. And could it once get a footing in this kingdom again, you might read by the light of Smithfield fires the truth of what I have asserted.63

And he went on to cite the hundreds of thousands of deaths for which popery was responsible during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Worthington is willing to grant that many individual Catholics are good and virtuous people – but this is not the point. It is the system as a whole, and the principles which inform it, that matter. As to the liberty which should be granted to them, if I may give you my own sentiments on so delicate a point, could a line be drawn between their religious and civil opinions, they have a perfect right to the exercise of the former, but the latter are inconsistent with the safety and prosperity of this kingdom.64

In particular, because the individual Roman Catholic owes a primary allegiance to the Pope, he, or she, is not bound to keep faith with a heretic. This means that no reliance can be placed on the loyalty of Catholics either to the State or to the law. ‘If this obstacle could be removed,’ Worthington says, ‘I persuade myself, that no bar should be put to the enjoyment of their religious principles: for religion in every state should be free.’65 As to the recent extension of Catholic rights, Worthington adds a chary rider: ‘against which no objection should be made, if dependence may be placed on their oath’. In his 5 November sermon at Salter’s Hall in the following year, Abraham Rees, representative of the new generation of rational Dissenters, was equally cautious about the political implications of untrammelled religious liberty for Catholics. He distanced himself from a recent Appeal from the Protestant Association. This had stated that toleration permitted any man to profess his own faith, as long as that faith was ‘not evidently repugnant to the holy scriptures’. This, responded Rees, was drawing the boundary dangerously tight: ‘Is there any species or degree of intolerance, that may not be justified by this unguarded restriction?’66

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What he called ‘the question of difficulty’ between Catholics and Protestants was not the extent of conformity between anyone’s faith and the scriptures. Who after all is to make an authoritative judgement of this? It was not the religious faith of individual Catholics but its political effects which was the problem: A slight acquaintance with the history of our own country will inform us, that Popery has been always favourable to a system of arbitrary government; and that popish principles with regard to religion have been generally adopted and encouraged by those who have pursued despotic measures in the state.67

Rees pointed to the Gunpowder Plot and to the policies of James II – ‘an undisguised and bigotted papist’ – whose every policy was directed by his religious principles, Rees says, and whose brief reign was characterised by ‘oppression and blood’. The civil and religious liberties enjoyed by Englishmen in the 1770s had been wrested out of the hands of a papist state in 1688. And, at least in principle, popery remained a political threat to these hard-won liberties of England. Whether this justified the continuation of ‘civil restraints and penalties’ remained, Rees concluded, ‘a question of a very complicated nature, and deserves to be very maturely considered by those that are more immediately concerned’. And on this cautious uncertain note, the sermon ends. So, even some of the leading lights of rational Dissent in the metropolis remained uncertain and suspicious of Catholics in the 1770s. And note that both Rees and Worthington played a public part in the centenary commemorations of the Revolution Society, leading prayers before and after Kippis’s sermon at the Old Jewry in November 1788. Among a wider section of Dissenters, an uncompromising anti-popery remained intact. Burke’s sharp eye cannot have missed two references to ‘popery’ in Price’s 1789 sermon. The Revolution Society was there to commemorate, he had said, ‘the anniversary of our deliverance at the Revolution from the dangers of Popery and arbitrary power’. Without that Revolution, Price went on, England would still be ‘groaning under the infamy and misery of popery and slavery’.68 But anti-popery among Dissenters did not convert automatically into support for the Protestant Association. Many Dissenters were suspicious of the populist anti-popery of Gordon and his followers before the riots in June 1780. In February a Dissenting layman in London noted the Protestant Association’s limited success in mobilising respectable Dissenters: I am glad, sir, to find that the applications which the associators have made to the several Dissenting congregations, in and about London, have met with that contempt which the pernicious views of the leading associators deserve. Some

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ministers have indeed joined them, and several of the laiety have contributed to their designs, by their names and their money; but almost all the regular Dissenting ministers, with much the greater part of their congregations, have behaved as good subjects, and done honour to the protestant cause.69

A month later a correspondent to the Protestant Magazine complained about ‘the strong prejudices’, which were preventing ‘many zealous friends to the cause of protestantism’ from signing the Protestant Association’s petition, making it clear that he is referring to Dissenters.70 The ranks of the Protestant Association, according to The New Annual Register, were ‘chiefly Methodists and bigotted Calvinists of the lower ranks of life’. Other contemporaries said much the same. According to John Milner, a Catholic in London at the time of the riots, ‘inflammatory harangues’ against the increase of popery and support for the Protestant Association came from the ‘pulpits of the lower sort, particularly those of John Wesley and his associates’.71 PURITAN RIOTS

Collective anxieties were not always capable of drawing such fine distinctions. A few days after the riots, Edward Gibbon wrote of the ghosts of the seventeenth century haunting the streets of London: ‘forty thousand Puritans, such as they might be in the time of Cromwell, have started out of their graves; the tumult has been dreadful . . .’72 And the next day in another letter he again ascribed the riots to the revenants of old Puritanism: ‘the month of June 1780 will be marked by a dark and diabolical fanaticism, which I had supposed to be extinct, but which actually subsists in Great Britain, perhaps beyond any other country in Europe’.73 Fanaticism and Treason, an anonymous account of the Gordon Riots, made much of the Puritan affinities of Lord George Gordon and the Protestant Association. Anyone who would thoroughly understand the riots and the imminent danger in which the nation was placed must, the author says, ‘travel back near a century and a half’, to the early years of the reign of Charles I. ‘The distempered imaginations of men were agitated with a continual dread of Popery. The fanatical spirit, let loose, confounded all regards to ease safety, interest; and dissolved every moral and every civil obligation’.74 There are five references to Hume’s History of England in the next couple of pages during which the dangers of Puritanism are illustrated in a brief historical sketch of the fall of Charles I and ‘the fanatical days of Cromwell?’75 Hypocrisy and

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fanaticism, self-interest and religious zeal, were inextricably combined in the political puritanism of the seventeenth century: Equally compounded of fraud and of ardour, these pious patriots talked perpetually of seeking the Lord, yet still pursued their own purposes; and have left a memorable lesson to posterity, how delusive, how destructive, that principle is by which they were animated.76

Note that there is not just a Humean argument but even a Humean cadence in this sentence. And what were the effects of the sustained cry of ‘No popery’ in the 1640s? ‘What it finally effected in January, 1649, every reader knows.’ Every reader also knew who was responsible for the events of that time. Elsewhere in this intelligent narrative of the riots, links between Puritanism and the Protestant Association are reinforced. In the concluding paragraph the lessons to be drawn from the historical record are again applied, though in very general terms: The reader, who shall be at the trouble of turning back to the beginning of those tumults in the reign of our first Charles, which ended in the subversion of the constitution, and in the tyranny of Cromwell, will see how much more serious and threatening were the tumults we have experienced, than those. – Let us then be upon constant guard against the dark designs of modern Cromwells and their followers . . .77

There is no attack here on specific Dissenters – but for many contemporary readers, no-one fitted better the model of ‘modern Cromwells and their followers’. Fears of a revival of popular Protestantism and a repeat of the Gordon Riots were summoned up and exploited for narrower political purposes in the late 1780s by Churchmen countering the Dissenting campaign for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. And this draws us back to Edmund Burke and the Reflections. In one 1787 pamphlet, the Dissenters’ restrained lobbying campaign was compared to ‘the fatal effects of a licentious mob, spirited up, under pretence of zeal for the Protestant Religion, to commit the most horrid outrage . . .’78 The Times joined in. During the run up to the centenary celebrations of the revolution in 1788, it warned the authorities to be on guard, not just against drunkenness and misbehaviour, but against something much worse. The memory of what happened from the patriotic band, in St. George’s Fields, is yet alive in the minds of the public. – There is a Conspirator at the bottom of the Centenary Meetings much more cautious and deep than was in the Assemblages of 1780. 79

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And it went on to mutter darkly about ‘the Cromwellian Party’ and its threat to the Crown. A year later, in the run-up to the Revolution Society meeting at which Price was to give his sermon On the Love of our Country, The Times lamented: What a pity Lord George Flame could not be present at the REVOLUTION meeting, to join issue with FIREBRAND HOLLES and the rest of the Worthies who composed that glorious congratulation to the National Assembly. He no doubt would have thrown so many inflammable materials into the political cauldron, as would have set both nations instantaneously into a BLAZE!80

By the spring of 1790 Churchmen were mounting a concerted assault on Price, Priestley and the Dissenters as dangerous incendiaries, the heirs of Gordon. One cleric described the Gordon Rioters as ‘a lawless multitude, under the conduct of an enthusiastic Presbyterian’.81 Another spoke of ‘the late Dissenters mob, headed by Lord G. Gordon, a Presbyterian’.82 He went on to conjure up a Miltonic scene, a Pandaemonium of a million or more discontented Dissenters, frustrated by another failure to repeal the Test Acts, liberating Lord George Gordon from Newgate: A place larger than St George’s Fields must be appropriated for their rendezvous; a numberless multitude of Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Muggletonians, Swedenborgians, New-Light-Men, Sandemanians, and the various motley description of modern Schismatics, aided by the Turks and Infidels of all names and nations, with Lord George Gordon at their head with a beard as long as Aaron’s and Jewish priests sounding the horns of sedition, in his train.83

The Dissenters are already rejoicing at mob rule in Paris. It is a simple matter of time before they reintroduce mob rule in England, or at least in London. The year 1790 will doubtless answer as well for riots and disturbances as the year 1780, and the madness of the multitude will, no doubt, be as unrestrained, especialy [sic] as they will have the same cause to promote, and are fighting on the Lord’s side.84

Fortuitously, in February 1790 the Protestant Association placed an announcement in The Times stating that they had nothing to do with the Dissenters’ renewed application to Parliament for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. ‘The papists being included in the claims of rights of these modern Dissenters’, it grumbled, is inconsistent with the principles of Protestantism. So, too, was what it called their ‘religious coalition’ with Mr Fox, who had been ‘a violent Opposer’ of the Protestant Association petition in 1780. The Protestant Association had, in fact, written to the

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chairmen of Dissenting committees at Manchester, Leicester and elsewhere, calling on them to separate themselves publicly from the Catholic cause. No such assurances had been received and the suspicion therefore remained that the Dissenting organisations campaigning for repeal of this legislation were being manipulated by Catholics.85 As far as public perception went, this announcement by the Protestant Association counted for little. The link had been established. Every denial merely strengthened it. When Burke in the Reflections juxtaposed Price and seventeenth-century regicides and Puritan fanatics and Lord George Gordon, he did not need to state explicitly the identity between them. For a much wider public by the autumn of 1790 they were taken as read. He had already connected them in his speech to the Commons on 2 March 1790 against Fox’s motion for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, as he was drafting the Reflections. This is what he is reported to have said in the fullest contemporary account: Among other examples to provoke the caution of the House, he instanced Lord George Gordon’s mob, and the dangers that were then likely to have ensued under a blind idea that they were acting in support of the established Religion, when they were endeavouring to enforce the most intolerant persecution . . . Mr Burke dwelt on this event, as one that ought to stimulate to caution in the present circumstances . . .86

These points immediately followed an explicit and detailed attack on named Dissenters, astutely selected as prominent figures in various reforming groups and movements: Samuel Palmer, Robert Robinson, Richard Price and Joseph Priestley. Each, he suggested, was voicing the hostility of a much wider body of Dissenters towards the Church of England and to the whole established order. Fox spotted Burke’s strategy here and tried to reverse its polarities. ‘To stimulate the House to caution, under the present circumstances,’ Fox said, ‘they had been most pathetically called upon to remember the riots in the year 1780 . . .’ By his ‘affecting imagery of language’, Burke had ‘endeavoured to assimilate the past occurrences with the present’.87 Fox praised Burke for his courage in 1780 in remaining firm in support of the rights of the Catholic minority in the face of violent intimidation. But, if he looked at the arguments in the present case, he would find, Fox said, ‘the Clergy of the established Church stood in the shoes of the Mob, and the Dissenters in those of the poor persecuted Roman Catholics’: The Mob, in 1780, shamefully insisted upon the repeal of a salutary law: and the mob of the High Church now, insisted against the repeal of a prejudicial law . . . to him the cry of a Mob was constantly the same; and whether it issued

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from a Mob of Gentlemen, or a Mob of Bishops, or a Mob from Newgate, it proved equally odious to him; for, it was, always, the cry of either fanaticism, or prejudice, or ignorance!88

Fox’s rhetorical energy, however, was no match for the sheer weight of anti-dissenting prejudice by 1790. It was Richard Price, Joseph Priestley and a wider body of Dissenters who elicited traditional fears of violent mobs of religious fanatics and enthusiasts, not Dr Samuel Horsley or the Bishop of Oxford. In other Parliamentary speeches at this time, Burke insinuated links between Dissenters and Gordon Rioters, conjuring up renewed fears of a London dominated by lawless mobs and Puritan fanatics. In a debate in Parliament in April 1791 he adverted to the ‘the dreadful consequences of the riots occasioned by Lord George Gordon’.89 The numbers of those infected with doctrines subversive of the State were few. But the threat was real and parallel, he stressed, to the situation in 1780.90 Three weeks later he accused those who were disseminating doctrines subversive of the royal prerogative and, as he put it, ‘making violent and flaming panegyrics’ on events in France, of doing the same as those who joined Lord George Gordon’s cry against popery in 1780 – adding a firebrand to the pile which turned into a conflagration. ‘Let them take warning by that event,’ he said.91 ‘THE REPEAL OF THE TEST ACT, A VISION’

In February 1790, a fortnight before the third Parliamentary debate on the Test and Corporation Acts, as public controversy reached boiling point, there appeared an etching by James Sayers: ‘The Repeal of the Test Act, a vision’. This complex and important image indicates how many of Burke’s hostile references to Dissenters were part of a much wider historical culture, or collective memory, in late eighteenth-century England. At the centre of Sayers’ picture is a pulpit in which Richard Price was flanked by two other leading figures of religious heterodoxy, Joseph Priestley and Theophilus Lindsey. On his right a gesticulating Priestley breathes out fumes of ‘Arianism’ and ‘Deism’. On his left a shifty looking Lindsey tears up the 39 Articles. In the centre a grim-faced Price is leading a prayer: And now let us fervently pray for the abolition of all unlimited and limited monarchy, for the annihilation of all ecclesiastical revenues and endowments, for the extinction of all orders of nobility and all rank and subordination in civil society, and that anarchy and disorder may, by our pious endeavours, prevail throughout the universe. See my sermon on the anniversary of the revolution.

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Below the pulpit, gazing up admiringly and cheering, ‘Hear, hear, hear’, is Charles James Fox. Near him is Mary Nicholson, who had attempted to assassinate the king in 1785. Among the congregation are several prominent Dissenting ministers associated with the Revolution Society, Andrew Kippis, Abraham Rees and Joseph Towers, and its president, Earl Stanhope. Towards the bottom left corner is a swarthy bearded figure, clearly intended to represent a Jew. He is looking into a large chest, property of the Church of England and saying, ‘O vat fine plaat. I vill give you de monies for it soon.’ He is speaking to a figure with Priestley’s The Importance of Free Inquiry in Matters of Religion sticking out of his coat. In the centre, lying open, is a book: Killing no Murder a Sermon for the thirtieth of January. Revealed in the ‘Sanctum Sanctorum’ is a picture of Cromwell. Through the window a crowd is pulling down church steeples. Framing the title at the foot of the sheet are lines adapted from Samuel Butler’s Hudibras: From such implacable Tormentors Fantatics, Hypocrites, Dissenters, Cruel in Power, and Restless Out, And when most factious, most devout, May God preserve the Church and Throne . . .

There are many more references scattered around this rich disordered image. Dorothy George described ‘The Repeal of the Test Act, a vision’ as ‘a key print’ of the period and a crude anticipation of Burke’s Reflections.92 In some ways, the print is a kind of synchronic draft of Burke’s book. Parts of the Reflections could be read as themselves a reading of this print. The point is not to suggest that Burke wrote with Sayers’s picture before him, but that both print and text ransack a kind of archive of potent popular images of Dissenters and their supposed ancestors, the Puritans of Tudor and Stuart England. It was an archive which was being exploited in 1790 precisely to revive ancient animosities and dissensions, ‘adding fuel to civil fury’, around the issue of the repeal of anti-Dissenting legislation. Virulent caricatures of Dissenters, in which Price and Priestley were often prominent, poured from the press during the final campaign for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in the autumn of 1789 and the spring of 1790. They continued after its defeat. The ghosts of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell figured prominently. This is one of the symbolic spaces in which Burke’s Reflections intervened and to which, in turn, it contributed. A spectre was haunting the corridors of dominant institutions in eighteenth-century England: the spectre of the ‘Great Rebellion’.

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But it was a spectre that was itself mixed up with other spectres from the more distant and the more recent past – John Ball, Wat Tyler, and insurrectionary peasants in medieval England; Lord George Gordon and the anti-Catholic rioters of 1780. NOTES 1 Burke, Correspondence, 6, p. 86. 2 Ibid., p. 151. 3 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France . . . in Burke. Select Works, 2, ed. E. J. Payne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898) p. 18. Subsequent references to this edition will be given in parentheses within the text, or as Burke, Reflections. 4 ‘A Discourse on the Love of our Country’ (1789), Richard Price: Political Writings, ed. D. O. Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) p. 195 5 But note Gardiner’s cautions about the evidence of what Peter is alleged to have said and when: S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, 1642– 1649 (1894), 4, p. 314n. 6 See John Lind, An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress, 2nd ed. (1776) p. 82. See also W. B. Todd, A Bibliography of Edmund Burke (1964), p. 28–9 and F. Lock, Edmund Burke Vol. 1: 1730–1784 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 129–30. Apparently ‘stylometric analysis’ has recently suggested that these sections on puritanism were written by Edmund Burke: see ODNB. 7 An Account of the European Settlements in America. In Six Parts (1757) 2, p. 134. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., p. 136. 10 Ibid., p. 137. 11 Ibid., p. 139. 12 Ibid., pp. 142–3. 13 Ibid., pp. 144–5. 14 L. Albemarle, Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham (1852) 2, p. 224. 15 Burke, Correspondence, 3, p. 383. 16 Burke, Speeches, 1, p. 102. 17 ‘Speech of Edmund Burke, Esq., on Moving his Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22nd 1775’ in Edmund Burke: Prerevolutionary Writings, ed. Ian Harris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 223. 18 Ibid., pp. 223–4. 19 Price, Correspondence, 2, p. 175. 20 Ibid., p. 177. 21 Burke, Correspondence, 5, p. 471. 22 Ibid., p. 471.

182 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44

45

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Burke, Correspondence, 6, pp. 83–4. Ibid., p. 84. Ibid., pp. 91–2. The Duty of the King and Subject, on the Principles of Civil Liberty . . . Being an Answer to Dr Price’s System of Fanatical Liberty. By the Author of the Political Looking Glass (1776), p. 19. Price, Correspondence, 2, p. 101. ‘An account of the Origin and Dissolution of Lord Shelburne’s Connection with the Dissenters’ GM, 53 (1783). Lindsey, Letters, p. 418. The Journal and Correspondence of William, Lord Auckland . . . (1861) 1, p. 406. The Works of Samuel Parr . . . with Memoirs of his Life and Writings and a Selection from his Correspondence, ed. J. Johnstone, 8 vols (1828), 1, p. 346. Burke, Correspondence, 4, p. 295. Edmund Burke, ‘An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs’ (August 1791) in Further Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. D. E. Ritchie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992) p. 170 Ibid. Ibid., p. 171n Ibid. pp. 172–3. Ibid., p. 173n. Hume, History of England, 2, Ch. xvii, pp. 229–30. William Maitland, The history of London from its foundation to the present time: . . . A new edition . . . Vol. 1. (1775), pp. 138–9. Tobias Smollett, A complete history of England, deduced from the descent of Julius Caesar, to the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle, 1748 . . . 2 (1757–8) p. 146 A narrative of the insults offered to the King, on his way to the and from the House of Lords, on Thursday last . . . By an eye-witness (1795), p. 6. See also Cursory Remarks on Paine’s Rights of Man (1792), pp. 11–12. John Brand, An Historical Essay on the Principles of Political Associations in a State . . . (1796), p. 47. Ibid. p. 49. Robert Bisset, A Sketch of Democracy (Dublin, 1798), pp. 342–3. Bisset was a major contributor to the Anti-Jacobin Review and the author of two AntiJacobin novels. W. Wilson, The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting-Houses in London, Westminster and Southwark . . ., 4 vols (1808–14) 2, p. 304. Relevant here are two important essays by Iain McCalman: ‘Mad Lord George and Madame La Motte: Riot and Sexuality in the Genesis of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France’, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3 (July 1996), pp. 343–67; and ‘Mystagogues of Revolution: Cagliostro, Loutherbourg and Romantic London’ in Romantic Metropolis: the Urban

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48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59 60

61 62

63

64 65 66

67 68

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Scene of British Culture, 1780–1840, eds J. Chandler and K. Kilmartin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Leslie Mitchell notes the widespread belief that Burke was some kind of crypto-Catholic in his introduction to The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. The French Revolution 1790–94 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 24–5. F. Lock, Edmund Burke, 1, pp. 467–9. Burke, Speeches, 2, pp. 175–6. Ibid., pp. 178–9. The trial of George Gordon, Esquire, commonly called Lord George Gordon, for high treason, at the bar of the Court of King’s Bench, on Monday, February 5th, 1781. Taken in short-hand, by Joseph Gurney (1781) p. 26. The Parliamentary Register, 17 (1780), p. 730. ‘Zuinglius’, The Protestant Magazine, 1 (1781), p. 170. Burke, Correspondence, 4, pp. 270–1. Edmund Burke, A speech of Edmund Burke, Esq. at the Guildhall, in Bristol, previous to the late election in that city, upon certain points relative to his parliamentary conduct (1780), p. 27. Ibid., pp. 46, 57. Ibid., pp. 37, 61. Ibid., p. 38. Joseph Priestley, An Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life . . . (1765), pp. 183–4. Joseph Priestley, Remarks on Some Paragraphs in the Fourth Volume of Dr. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, relating to the Dissenters (1769), p. 31. MR, 39 (1769), p. 473. Andrew Kippis, The Example of Jesus in his Youth, recommended in imitation: in a Sermon preached at St. Thomas’s, January 1st 1780 . . . (1780), p. 23. Hugh Worthington, Christianity, an easy and liberal system; that of Popery, absurd and burdensome. A sermon preached at Salters-Hall, November 5, 1778 (1778), p. 19. Ibid., pp. 20–1. Ibid., p. 21. Abraham Rees, The Obligation and Importance of Searching the Scriptures, as a Preservative from Popery. A Sermon preached at Salters-Hall, November 5, 1779. to the society, that support the Lord’s-day evening-lecture at that place; . . . (1779). Ibid., pp. 29–30. ‘A Discourse on the Love of our Country’ (1789) Richard Price: Political Writings, ed. D. O. Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 178, 189.

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69 [John Stevenson] A Letter to a Dissenting Minister, containing remarks on the late act for the relief of his Majesty’s subjects professing the popish religion; with some strictures on the appeal from the Protestant Association to the people of Great Britain . . . By a Lay Dissenter (1780) pp. 26–7. 70 Protestant Magazine, 3 (1783), p. 47. 71 John Milner, Letters to a Prebendary: being an answer to Reflections on popery, by the Rev. J. Sturges . . . (Winchester, 1800), p. 211. 72 Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon Esq., with Memoirs of his Life and Writings, composed by himself . . . (1796) 1, p. 546. 73 Ibid. p. 547. 74 Fanaticism and Treason: or, a dispassionate history of the rise, progress, and suppression of the religious insurrections in June 1780. By a real friend to religion and to Britain (2nd ed., 1780), p. 3. 75 Ibid., p. 4. 76 Ibid., p. 6. 77 Ibid., p. 88. 78 [Richard Graves] A Letter from a Father to his Son: relative to a late address to young students &c (Oxford, 1787), p. 23. 79 The Times, 4 November 1788. 80 The Times, 11 September 1789. The reference is to Thomas Brand Hollis, a committee member of the Revolution Society in 1789 and a steward for the commemorative dinner in November of that year. However, for the educated reader the name spelt as Holles would immediately suggest the leading seventeeth-century Presbyterian parliamentarian Denzil Holles, evoking the Great Rebellion. 81 George Croft, The Test Laws Defended. A Sermon . . . (Birmingham, 1790), p. xv. 82 A Scourge for the Dissenters; or Non-Conformity Unmasked . . . By an Ecclesiastic (1790), p. 22. 83 Ibid., p. 51. 84 Ibid., p. 52. 85 The Times, 22 February 1790. 86 The Debate in the House of Commons, on the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, March 2d, 1790 (1790), pp. 49–50. 87 Two Speeches Delivered in the House of Commons, on Tuesday the 2d of March 1790, by the Right Honourable Charles James Fox, in Support of his Motion for a Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (1790), pp. 81–2. 88 Ibid., pp. 82–3. 89 Burke, Speeches, 4, p. 21. 90 Ibid., p. 22. 91 Ibid., p. 36. 92 Dorothy George, English Political Caricature to 1792. A Study of Opinion and Propaganda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 207–8.

Conclusion

To move beyond Burke’s Reflections into the Revolution debate of the 1790s is to move beyond the scope of this book – indeed, would warrant another book. These rich and complex exchanges, in a situation of acute political crisis, were the nexus out of which came some of the major works of Whig history of the first half of the nineteenth century, bedevilled by the unfinished business of 1688.1 The Revolution debate was precisely – and this has been underplayed in the secondary literature – a dispute about history. It was, in key respects, initiated by the Dissenters in their campaigns against the Test and Corporation Acts which refocused public attention in the late 1780s on these survivals of Stuart England. The Revolution debate was an argument about the meaning of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and behind that the English revolution – or the ‘great rebellion’ – of the 1640s. It was an argument about the similarities and differences between English and French history. And it was an argument about history itself, about the relations between present and past, about the extent of the former’s debt to the latter, about the pertinence of historical identities, about ancestors and genealogies. It was also, finally, a contest over the control of the nation’s political memory. The Revolution Society was commemorating and seeking to institutionalise an alternative historical perspective on the seventeenth century. Burke’s Reflections was a reaction that tapped into a darker set of collective memories – memories of Wat Tyler and Jack Cade and insurrectionary peasants pouring into medieval London; memories of a king executed by Puritan fanatics in Whitehall on a winter afternoon in 1649; memories of London’s night sky ablaze, the prisons broken open and a violent Protestant mob rampaging through the streets in 1780. There were other kinds of revolution ‘debate’ going on in the 1790s. A Baptist minister in Plymouth, William Winterbotham, was dragged before the courts in 1793 because of two sermons, one preached in November 1792 to commemorate both the Gunpowder Plot and the Revolution.2 He served four years in Newgate prison.3 Another Dissenting minister, Jeremiah Joyce, tutor to the sons of Earl Stanhope and active in both the Revolution Society and the Society for Constitutional

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Information, spent six months in the Tower of London as one of the dozen defendants in the great treason trial of 1794. And elsewhere across the country there was legal pressure on individual Dissenters, ministers and laymen alike. Intimidation was sometimes more direct. There were several Church and King riots against Dissenters, damage to, and in some cases the complete destruction of, Dissenting chapels, threats and assaults on the streets, the burning of effigies in town centres at night, stones thrown through windows, as well as arrests, interrogations and imprisonments. These, too, would have to be part of any study of the Revolution debate of the 1790s. And it was suffused with histories and memories of Stuart England. Church and King mobs in Manchester in the early 1790s were heard to chant ‘Down with the Rump’.4 Theophilus Lindsey lamented the emigration of increasing numbers of Dissenters to North America: ‘These all flee the country as in the Laudian times.’5 History remained a constituent of Dissenting identity. In 1790, after the defeat of the third motion for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, ‘An Old Dissenter’ called on his fellow Dissenters to form stronger bonds among themselves: be zealous in maintaining your common principles – and see to it you well understand them – instruct your children in the growth of nonconformity, and in the great principles of civil and religious liberty, which are its main pillars.6

By the end of the eighteenth century there was a set of canonical histories, valued and circulated among the Dissenters, which served this purpose. Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans was revised by the radical Baptist minister Joshua Toulmin, and published in five volumes between 1793 and 1797.7 Samuel Palmer, encouraged, he said, by the increasing demand for the work, brought out a new and expanded edition of The Nonconformist’s Memorial in three volumes in 1802.8 There were also new editions of his Protestant-Dissenter’s Catechism in 1792, 1794, 1795 and 1800. Robinson’s notorious Plan of Lectures on the Principles of Nonconformity, brandished in the Commons by Burke, was in its eighth edition by 1800. It is worth noting the lack of sectarian divisions in the production and circulation of these Dissenting histories. Calamy was a Presbyterian, and Palmer, his editor, was an Independent. Neal was an Independent, and it was a Unitarian Baptist who was responsible for the new 1790s’ edition. The orthodox Baptist Caleb Evans in 1795, outlining in introductory terms the main features of the Dissenters in England, pointed the reader to four main historical works, none of them by orthodox Baptists. They were Calamy’s Abridgment, Palmer’s The Nonconformist Memorial,

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Cornish’s A Brief and Impartial History of the Puritans and Neal’s History of the Puritans. The last, now appearing in a new ‘improved’ edition, was especially recommended by Evans: ‘Here the historian traces, step by step, the differences which originally occasioned the separation, and an affecting narration is given of the sufferings which our forefathers were doomed to undergo in the cause of religious liberty.’9 One more example: when Towgood’s An answer to the Inquiry, Why are you a Dissenter? was republished in 1797, it was prefaced with a brief bibliography, for those needing to know more about the principles of Dissent. The brief list included Calamy’s Abridgment, Neal’s History of the Puritans, Palmer’s Catechism and Robinson’s Plan of Lectures.10 These historical texts exemplify a common historical culture among eighteenth-century Dissenters. ‘Our forefathers’ cited by Caleb Evans were, of course, in one sense, the Baptists to which he and generations of his family belonged. But they included other sections of Dissent, too. There was a denominational ‘we’ but also a much wider Dissenting ‘we’. There was an even bigger ‘we’ – a national ‘we’. These Dissenting histories critically engaged with official narratives of English history. Whether we are looking at the work of Edmund Calamy in the early decades of the century, Daniel Neal’s four historical volumes in the 1730s, the works of William Harris in the 1750s, or the works by Cornish, Palmer and Robinson in the 1770s, these Dissenting histories were not providing a narrow, parochial history of a marginal people. At pivotal moments in the history of England – Tudor Reformation, English Civil War, Restoration, Glorious Revolution, the Hanoverian succession – the Puritans or the Dissenters were decisively involved. No national history could omit them. But, as we have seen, a whole series of national histories, most importantly Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion and Hume’s History of England, had represented their role as negative, even pathological. Any Dissenting history had to confront and challenge this dominant narrative and produce a counter-narrative in which the Puritans and their Dissenting heirs were defended against false accusations and were demonstrated to have played a positive role. All Dissenting histories, in their different ways, followed in the footsteps of Neal and Calamy in vindicating the historical record of the Dissenters and their Puritan forebears and in emphasising their positive contribution to the development of the constitution and the creation of civil liberty. This historical tradition might, in one reading, point to a radical political engagement in the 1790s. Benjamin Flower, soon to become

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editor of the radical anti-war Cambridge Intelligencer, reacted to the political defeats of the cause of reform with defiance. ‘Remember’, he told his fellow Dissenters in 1792, ‘you are the descendants of those who by resisting unto blood, preserved that excellent constitution, to which the nation owes so much freedom and happiness.’11 And he went on: It is the bounden duty of the different denominations of Protestant Dissenters, to unite, to claim, and to persist in claiming those rights of which they, the constant, firm supporters of the constitution, have been too long robbed. They should never cease to associate, to petition, to remonstrate . . .12

Flower, like many Dissenters, still assumed that they would not have to face the kinds of sufferings experienced by their Dissenting forebears: ‘you are not called to such painful duty’, he said. But in 1799 he was sentenced to a £100 fine and six months imprisonment in Newgate for an alleged libel against Bishop Watson. Flower was voicing in 1792 a Dissenting disposition but it was nevertheless a minority one. A much wider body of Dissenters assimilated the hardships they experienced in the 1790s to a longer history of persecution and martyrdom.The evangelical Independent William Kingsbury, defending itinerant preaching from threats of prosecution in 1798, warned Christians: ‘let us expect reproaches, revilings, and to have our names cast out as evil’. And he brought into a single focus the victims of the Marian persecutions of the 1550s, the ejected ministers after 1662 and the vulnerable Dissenters of the present: Thus did the Papists treat our excellent Reformers of the Church of England. Thus did the worldly-minded and profane enemies of real Christianity, insult and abuse pious and zealous Ministers of the Gospel in the last century. And could some have their wish, we doubt not, that bonds of restraint would now be placed upon us, and that we must either be silenced or suffer.13

A footnote directed the reader to Calamy’s Abridgment and to Samuel Palmer’s The Nonconformist’s Memorial. The lesson here was not active political opposition but a stoical acceptance of suffering in the cause of truth. But this, too, had its politics in its refusal to compromise the principles of liberty of conscience. And this brings us back to the complex relations between memory and history and narrative identities which began this book. Remembering is a complex process. It involves interpretation and reinterpretation over time in the light of shared meanings. In other words, remembering is a social practice and it requires cultural resources. History is not always about remembering. It is often about forgetting – about covering up what

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happened in the past, deflecting and delegitimising certain forms of passionate recollection, stabilising an official version of the past. History is memory disciplined and managed, shaped to social and political purposes. Dissenting Histories has been concerned to explore and to recover an alternative history which, throughout the eighteenth century, resisted and largely prevented the consolidation of an official history of the English State. The writings of Calamy, Neal, Harris, Palmer and others ensured that the role of the Puritans and of the Dissenters would not be forgotten. They kept alive connections to the past for new generations of Dissenters to retrieve once more the memory of their forebears. And because memory is emotional, involving a degree of identification with those who are long dead, to remember is often to refuse forgiveness. It keeps alive the antagonisms of the past in the present and is faithful to what ought never to be forgotten.14 I want to give the final word in Dissenting Histories to William Hazlitt. Son of a Dissenting minister and educated at a Dissenting academy in the 1790s, he had sat briefly at the feet of Joseph Priestley in London after the Birmingham riots of 1791. In one of his brilliant political essays of 1819 he recalled with powerful nostalgia the political culture and bloodyminded refusals of the eighteenth-century Dissenters among whom he was raised. They ‘lived in thought’, as Hazlitt puts it, ‘with those who had borne testimony of a good conscience’ and looked back to the Protestant martyrs of the Reformation. The canonical texts of this Dissenting tradition recalled by Hazlitt included, alongside the Bible and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, both Neal and Calamy: they had Neal’s History of the Puritans by heart, and Calamy’s Account of the Two Thousand Ejected Ministers, and gave it to their children to read, with the pictures of the polemical Baxter, the silver-tongued Bates, the mild-looking Calamy, and old honest Howe . . .15

Hazlitt was presumably one of these children. A few years later, in the chapter on Coleridge in The Spirit of the Age, he recounted how the radical young poet fell into the world of Dissent in the 1790s and was drawn into its historical narratives of Protestant martyrdom and ‘so dwelt for a while in the spirit with John Huss and Jerome of Prague and Socinus and old John Zisca, and ran through Neal’s History of the Puritans and Calamy’s Non-Conformist’s Memorial, having like thoughts and passions with them . . .’16 Even at his most pessismistic, writing in The Plain Speaker in 1826, Hazlitt still warmed to the twilight glow of old Dissent, referring to Calamy’s record of the ejected ministers:

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This was a proud list for Old England; and the account of their lives, their zeal, their eloquence and sufferings for conscience sake, is one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the human mind . . . The retired and inflexible descendants of the Two Thousand Ejected Ministers and their adherents are gone with the spirit of persecution that gave a body and soul to them; and with them, I am afraid, the spirit of liberty, of manly independence, and of inward self-respect is nearly extinguished in England.17

NOTES 1 Charles James Fox, A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II, with an Introductory Chapter (1808); James Mackintosh, History of the Revolution in England in 1688 . . . (1834); T. B. Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vols 1 and 2 (1848), Vols 3 and 4 (1855), Vol. 5 (1861). 2 William Winterbotham, The Commemoration of National Deliverances, and the Dawning Day: Two Sermons . . . (1794). 3 The trial of William Winterbotham, Assistant Preacher at How’s Lane Meeting Plymouth . . . for Seditious Words, taken in shorthand by William Bowring (1794). 4 See, for instance, Joseph Gurney, The Whole Proceedings on the Trial for an Indictment against Thomas Walker of Manchester . . . (1794), pp. 16, 39, 59, 65. 5 ‘More Letters of Theophilus Lindsey’, ed., H. McLachlan, TUHS 3: 4 (1926), p. 374. 6 Gazetteer, 27 March 1790. 7 The History of the Puritans, or, Protestant non-conformists, . . . By Daniel Neal, A new edition, revised, corrected, and enlarged, by Joshua Toulmin, . . . 5 vols (Bath, 1793–7). 8 Samuel Palmer, The Nonconformist’s Memorial . . . (1802), 3 vols, Vol. I, p. xvii. 9 Caleb Evans, A Sketch of the Several Denominations into which the Christian World is Divided; . . . (1795), pp. 72–3. 10 An Answer to the Inquiry, Why are you a Dissenter? Extracted from the Dissenting Gentleman’s Letters to Mr White (1797), pp. iii–iv. 11 Benjamin Flower, The French Constitution; with Remarks on Some of its Principal Articles; in Which their Importance in a Political, Moral and Religious Point of View, is Illustrated; and the Necessity of a Reformation in Church and State in Great Britain, Enforced (1792), pp. 473–4. 12 Ibid., p. 475. 13 W. Kingsbury, An Apology for Village Preachers . . . (Southampton, 1798), pp. 49–51. 14 See Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. K. Blamey and D. Pellauer (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004).

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15 William Hazlitt, ‘On Court-Influence’ [1819] in The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. A. R. Waller and A. Glover, Vol. III (1902), pp. 265–6. 16 W. Hazlitt, ‘Mr Coleridge’, The Spirit of the Age [1825] in Collected Works of Hazlitt, Vol. IV (1902), p. 217. 17 W. Hazlitt, The Plain Speaker [1826] in Collected Works of Hazlitt, Vol. VII (1903), p. 322.

Select Bibliography

This is not a list of everything which has been cited in the notes. Nor does it aspire to provide a reading list for the various topics that the book touches on – eighteenth-century religion or politics, for instance, or the history of history. It is a bibliography of some of the key contemporary texts cited and relating to the book’s central themes. Lengthy titles have been abbreviated. Place of publication is London, unless otherwise stated. The Second and Last Collection of the late London Ministers Farewell Sermons . . . (1663) England’s Remembrancer: Bring a Collection of Farewel-Sermons, Preached by divers Non-conformists in the Country (1663) Seditious Preachers, Ungodly Teachers. Exemplified in the case of the ministers, ejected by the Act of Uniformity 1662 . . . (1709) The Inscriptions upon the Tombs, Grave-stones, &c. in the Dissenters burial place near Bunhill-fields (1717) Sermons Against Popery Preached at Salter’s Hall in the Year 1735, 2 vols (1735) Letters of Eminent Men, Addressed to Ralph Thoresby, 2 vols (1832) The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, According to the Use of the Church of England . . . (Oxford, 1776) Fanaticism and Treason: or, a dispassionate history of the rise, progress, and suppression of the religious insurrections in June 1780. By a real friend to religion and to Britain, 2nd ed. (1780) An abstract of the history and proceedings of the Revolution Society, in London. To which is annexed a copy of the bill of rights (1789) The Debate in the House of Commons on the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, March 2nd, 1790, 2nd ed. (1790) A Sketch of the History and Proceedings of the Deputies Appointed to Protect the Civil Rights of the Protestant Dissenters . . . (1814) A. B., An Expostulatory Letter to Mr Daniel Neal, Upon Occasion of his Publishing the History of the Puritans or Non-Conformists (1732) [Barbauld, Anna] An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, 3rd ed. (1790)

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Baron, Richard, The Pillars of Priestcraft and Orthodoxy Shaken, 2nd ed., 4 vols (1768). Reliquiae Baxterianae, or Mr Richard Baxter’s Narrative of the most Memorable Passages of his Life and Times. Faithfully Publish’d from his own Original Manuscripts by Matthew Sylvester (1696) The Practical Works of the late Reverend and Pious Mr Richard Baxter, In Four Volumes, With A Preface; Giving some Account of the Author, and of this Edition of his Practical Works (1707) Blackburne, Francis, The Confessional; or, a full and free inquiry into the right, utility, edification, and success, of establishing systematical confessions of faith and doctrine in protestant churches (1766) [ —— ], The Budget. A Collection of Letters and Essays in Favour of Public Liberty, First Published in the Newspapers in the Year 1764–70 by an Amiable Band of Well-Wishers to the Religious and Civil Rights of Mankind, 3 vols (1774) [ —— ], Memoirs of Thomas Hollis Esq., 2 vols (1780) Blackstone, William, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols (Oxford, 1765–9) ——, A reply to Dr. Priestley’s Remarks on the fourth volume of the Commentaries on the laws of England. By the author of the Commentaries (1769) Bogue, D. and Bennett, J., A History of Dissenters, 1688–1808, 4 vols (1808–12) The Speeches of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, in the House of Commons and in Westminster-Hall, 4 vols (1816) Burke. Select Works, 2, ed. E. J. Payne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898) Burke, E. ‘An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs’ in Further Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. D. E. Ritchie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992) ——, Correspondence, ed. T. W. Copeland and others, 10 vols (Cambridge, 1958–78) ——, Prerevolutionary Writings, ed. Ian Harris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) ——, Works, 8 vols (1854–89) ——, The Writings and Speeches, ed. Paul Langford and others, vols 1–8 (Oxford, 1981–9) Burke, W., An Account of the European Settlements in America. In Six Parts (1757) Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop Burnet’s History of his own time . . . Containing, I. A summary recapitulation of affairs in church & state, from K. James I. to the Restoration in 1660. II. The history of the reign of K. Charles II. from 1660. to 1670. 2 vols (1725) Calamy, E., An Abridgment of Mr Baxter’s History of his Life and Times. With an Account of many others of those Worthy Ministers who were Ejected, after the Restauration of King Charles the Second (1702) ——, A Defence of Moderate Nonconformity. In answer to the reflections of Mr. Ollyffe and Mr. Hoadly, on the tenth chapter of the Abridgment of the Life of the Reverend Mr. Rich. Baxter . . ., 3 vols (1703–5)

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195

Calamy, E., An Account of the Ministers . . . who were Ejected or Silenced after the Restoration in 1660 (1713) ——, A Letter to Archdeacon Echard, Upon Occasion of his History of England: wherein the True Principles of the Revolution are Defended; The Whigs and Dissenters Vindicated, Several persons of Distinction clear’d from Aspersions; and a Number of Historical Mistakes Rectify’d (1718) ——, The Church and the Dissenters Compar’d, as to Persecution, In Some remarks on Dr Walker’s Attempt to recover the names of the Clergy that were Sequestrated, &c, between 1640, and 1660 (1719) ——, Memoirs of the Life of the Late Revd. Mr John Howe (1724) ——, A Continuation of the Account of the Ministers, Lecturers, Masters and fellows of Colleges and Schoolmasters, who were Ejected and Silenced after the Restoration in 1660 . . . (1727) ——, An Historical Account of My Own Life with Some Reflections on the Times I have Lived in, ed. J. T. Rutt, 2 vols (1829) Cornish, Joseph, A Brief and Impartial History of the Puritans; representing their principles and sufferings, with occasional observations. By the author of the Serious and earnest address to Protestant dissenters (1772) ——, A Serious and Earnest address to Protestant Dissenters of all Denominations; representing the many and important principles, on which their Dissent from the establishment is grounded, 2nd ed. (1772) ——, A Brief History of Nonconformity, from the Reformation to the Revolution: with remarks on church-establishments (1797) Crosby, Thomas, The History of the English Baptists, from the reformation to the beginning of the reign of King George I, 4 vols (1738–40) [Disney, John], An Arranged Catalogue of the Several Publications relating to the Enlargement of the Toleration of Protestant Dissenting Ministers; and the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts . . . (1790) Dyer, George, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Robert Robinson . . . (1796) Echard, Laurence The History of England, 3rd ed., 2 vols (1720) [Ellys, Anthony], A Sermon Preached before the Rt Hon the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament Assembled . . . Thursday January 30th, 1754. Being the day appointed to be Observed as the Day of the Martyrdom of King Charles I (1754) [Enfield, William], Remarks on Several late Publications relative to the Dissenters in a Letter to Dr Priestley. By a Dissenter (1770) Fleming, Caleb, The Devout Laugh, or, Half an Hour’s Amusement to a Citizen of London, from Dr. Pickering’s Sermon At St. Paul’s . . . A Letter from Rusticus to Civis (1750) ——, Religion Not the Magistrate’s Province, or arguments from reason and scripture, against the civil magistrate’s claim of authority in the province of religion, . . . By Philotheorus (1773) ——, The Equality of Christians in the Province of Religion. Or Popery has no Divine Foundation . . . (1760)

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Fothergill, Thomas, The Reasonableness and Uses of Commemorating King Charles’s Martyrdom. A Sermon . . . (Oxford, 1753) Fox, Charles James, A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II, with an Introductory Chapter (1808) ——, Two Speeches delivered in the House of Commons, on Tuesday the 2d of March 1790, by the Right Honourable Charles James Fox, in Support of his Motion for a Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (1790) Furneaux, Philip, Letters to the Honourable Mr. Justice Blackstone, concerning his exposition of the Act of Toleration, and some positions relative to religious liberty, in his celebrated commentaries on the laws of England., 2nd ed. with additions, and an appendix . . . (1771) [Gibson, Edmund], The Dispute Adjusted, About the Proper Time of Applying for a Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts: By Shewing, That No Time is Proper (1732) Grey, Zachary, An impartial examination of the second volume of Mr. Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans . . . (1736) ——, An impartial examination of the third volume of Mr. Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans . . . (1737) ——, An impartial examination of the fourth volume of Mr. Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans . . . (1739) ——, A review of Mr. Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans. With a postscript . . . (Cambridge, 1744) Harris, William, An historical and critical account of Hugh Peters. After the manner of Mr. Bayle (1751) ——, An historical and critical account of the life and writings of James the First, King of Great Britain. After the manner of Mr. Bayle. Drawn from original writers and state-papers (1753) ——, An historical and critical account of the life and writings of Charles I. King of Great Britain. After the manner of Mr. Bayle. Drawn from original writers and state-papers (1758) ——, An historical and critical account of the life of Oliver Cromwell, . . . After the manner of Mr. Bayle. Drawn from original writers and state papers. To which is added, an appendix . . . (1762) ——, An historical and critical account of the life of Charles the Second, King of Great Britain. After the manner of Mr. Bayle. Drawn from original writers and state papers. To which is added, an appendix of original papers . . ., 2 vols (1766) ——, Observations on National Establishments in Religion in General and on the Establishment of Christianity in Particular. Together with Some Occasional Remarks on the Conduct and Behaviour of the Teachers of it . In a Letter to the Author of an Essay on Establishments in Religion (1767) ——, An Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and writings of James I and Charles I and of the Lives of Oliver Cromwell and Charles II, after the Manner of Mr Bayle, from Original Writers and State-Papers, 5 vols (1814)

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197

Horne, George, The Christian King. A Sermon Preached before the University of Oxford at St. Mary’s, on Friday January 30th, 1761. Being the Day Appointed to be Observed as the Day of Martyrdom of King Charles I (Oxford, 1761) ——, Observations on The Case of the Protestant Dissenters with reference to the Corporation and Test Acts (Oxford, 1790) [Horsley, Samuel], A Review of the Case of the Protestant Dissenters . . . (1790) [Howe, John], The Case of the Protestant Dissenters, Represented and Argued (1689) Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England Begun in the Year 1641 . . . , Vol. 1 (1702), Vol. 2 (1703), Vol. 3 (1704) Hume, David, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987) ——, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688. A New Edition with the Author’s Last Corrections and Improvements, 6 vols (1848) The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols, ed. J. Y. T. Greig (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934) New Letters of David Hume, ed. R. Klibansky and E. C. Mossner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954) Kimber, Isaac, The Life of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. Impartially collected from the best Historians and several original Manuscripts (1724) Kippis, Andrew, ed., Biographia Britannica: or, the lives of the most eminent persons who have flourished in Great Britain and Ireland, from the earliest ages, . . . collected from the best authorities, . . . and digested in the manner of Mr. Bayle’s Historical and critical dictionary, 2nd ed., 5 vols (1778–93) ——, The Example of Jesus in his Youth, recommended in imitation: in a Sermon preached at St. Thomas’s, January 1st 1780 . . . (1780) ——, A Sermon Preached at the Old Jewry, 4 November 1788, Before the Society for Commemorating the Glorious Revolution, Being the Completion of an Hundred Years since that great Event (1788) The Apology of Theophilus Lindsey on Resigning the Vicarage of Catterick, Yorkshire (1774) Lindsey, Theophilus, An Historical View of the State of the Unitarian Doctrine and Worship, from the Reformation to our own Times. With some account of the obstructions which it has met with at different periods (1783) Long, Thomas, A Review of Mr. Richard Baxter’s life wherein many mistakes are rectified, some false relations detected, some omissions supplyed out of his other books, with remarks on several material passages . . . (1697) ——, A Rebuke to Mr Calamy, Author of the Abridgment of Mr Baxter’s Life (Exeter, 1704) [MacQueen, Daniel], Letters on Mr Hume’s History of Great Britain (Edinburgh, 1756)

198

Dissenting Histories

[Maddox, Isaac], A Vindication of the Government, Doctrine and Worship of the Church of England, Established in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth: Against the Injurious Reflections of Mr Neale, in his late History of the Puritans (1733) Mauduit, Israel, The Case of the Dissenting Ministers. Addressed to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, 4th ed. (1772) Mosheim, J. L., An Ecclesiastical History, Antient and Modern, from the Birth of Christ to the Beginning of the Present Century . . ., trans. Archibald Maclaine (1768) Neal, Daniel, The History of the Puritans; or, Protestant Nonconformists . . . 4 vols (1732–8) [Neal, Daniel], A Letter from a Dissenter to the Author of The Craftsman. Occasioned by his Paper of the 27th of October last (1733) ——, A Review of the Principal Facts Objected to in the First Volume of the History of the Puritans, By the Author of the Vindication of the Government, Doctrine and Worship, of the Church of England, established in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (1734) Oldmixon, John, The History of England during the Reigns of the Royal House of Stuarts. Wherein the Errors of Late Histories are Discover’d and Corrected . . . (1730) [Palmer, Samuel], The Protestant-Dissenter’s Catechism. Containing I. A brief History of the Nonconformists: II. The reasons of the Dissent from the National Church. Designed to instruct and establish Young Persons among the Dissenters in the Principles of Nonconformity (1773) ——, The Nonconformist’s memorial: being an account of the ministers, who were ejected or silenced after the Restoration, particularly by the Act of Uniformity . . ., 2 vols (1775) Peirce, James, A Vindication of the Dissenters: in Answer to Dr William Nichol’s Defence of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England . . ., 2nd ed. (1718) The Works of Samuel Parr . . . with Memoirs of his Life and Writings and a Selection from his Correspondence, ed. J. Johnstone, 8 vols (1828) Price, Richard, Observations on the nature of civil liberty, the principles of government, and the justice and policy of the war with America. To which is added an appendix and postscript, containing a state of the national debt . . . 5th ed. (1776) ——, Sermons on the Christian doctrine as received by the different denominations of Christians. To which are added, sermons on the security and happiness of a virtuous course, on the goodness of God, and the resurrection of Lazarus . . ., 2nd ed. (1787) Richard Price: Political Writings, ed. D. O. Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) Priestley, Joseph, An Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life . . . (1765) ——, An Essay on the First Principles of Civil Government (1768)

Select Bibliography

199

Priestley, Joseph, Remarks on some paragraphs in the fourth volume of Dr. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the laws of England, relating to the Dissenters (1769) ——, Lectures on History and General Policy (Birmingham, 1781) Radcliffe, E., A Sermon preached to a congregation of Protestant Dissenters, At Crutched-Friars; occasioned by the denial of Relief, respecting Subscription, to the Articles of the Church of England (1772) Rapin de Thoyras, Paul, The History of England, trans. N. Tindal, 15 vols (1728–31) Robinson, Robert, A Plan of Lectures on the Principles of Nonconformity. For the Instruction of Catechumens (Cambridge, 1778) Toulmin, Joshua, Christian Vigilance. Considered in a Sermon . . . to which is added some account of Mr Robinson and his Writings (1790) ——, Proposals for Publishing in Five Volumes Octavo . . . A New Edition of Neal’s History of the Puritans, Revised, Corrected and Enlarged (1791) ——, An Historical View of the State of the Protestant Dissenters in England . . . (1814) Towers, Joseph, Observations on Mr Hume’s History of England (1778) ——, An Oration delivered at the London Tavern, on the 4th of November 1788, on occasion of the Commemoration of the Revolution . . . (1788) ——, Tracts on Political and other Subjects . . ., 3 vols (1796) [Towgood, Micaiah], An Essay towards Attaining a True idea of the Character And Reign of King Charles the First, And the Causes of the Civil War (1748) ——, A Dissent from the Church of England fully justified, and Proved to be the Genuine and Just consequenceof the Allegiance which is due to Jesus Christ, the only Lawgiver in the Church: being the Dissenting Gentleman’s Three Letters and Postscript in Answer to the Letters of Rev. Mr. White on that Subject . . . (8th ed., 1800) Walker, John, An Attempt towards recovering an Account of the Numbers and Sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England . . . (1714) Wilson, W. The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and MeetingHouses in London, Westminster and Southwark . . ., 4 vols (1808–14) Winterbotham, William, The Commemoration of National Deliverances, and the Dawning Day: Two Sermons . . . (1794) The trial of William Winterbotham, Assistant Preacher at How’s Lane Meeting Plymouth . . . for Seditious Words, taken in shorthand by William Bowring (1794) Withers, John, Remarks on Dr. Walker’s Late Preface to his Attempt, &c (1716) Worthington, Hugh, Christianity, an easy and liberal system; that of Popery, absurd and burdensome. A sermon preached at Salters-Hall, November 5, 1778 (1778)

Index

Act of Uniformity (1662), 3, 14, 18, 20, 23, 24, 34, 111, 118 Allein, Joseph, 18, 19 Amory, Thomas, 113, 114 Anne, Queen, 5, 20, 23, 27, 28, 29, 44, 73, 137 Balguy, Thomas, 130 Ball, John, 167–8, 181 Baptists, 2, 3, 6, 14, 51, 63, 69, 70, 117, 137, 186 Barbauld, Anna, 7 Baron, Richard, 116, 118–19 Bartholomew’s Day, 4, 8, 19, 132–3, 136 Baxter, Richard, 1, 13–17, 19, 21, 24, 25, 36n, 133–5 Bayle, Pierre, 99–100, 114 Beaufoy, Henry, 143, 162 Bennett, Benjamin, 41 Bisset, Robert, 168, 182n Blackburne, Francis, 115, 126–8 Blackstone, William, 124–6, 145 Bladon, Thomas, 19 Book of Common Prayer, 88–90 Boswell, James, 88 Bright, Richard, 163 Buckingham, George Villers, 2nd Duke of, 53 Bull, Frederick, 170–1 Bunyan, John, 133 Burgh, James, 147 Burke, Edmund, 1, 9, 95, 142–3, 144, 146, 152n, 155–81, 185 Burke, William, 158 Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop of Salisbury, 17, 27, 66, 114 Butler, Samuel, 93, 158, 160, 180 Calamy, Edmund, the elder, 110, 121n Calamy, Edmund, 1, 5, 8, 13–36, 41, 70, 117, 127, 134, 147, 186, 187, 188, 189 Catholics, 21, 30, 48, 54, 55, 57–8, 63, 66, 75–7, 84, 103, 105, 111–12, 123, 146–7, 148, 161, 169–75, 178

Chandler, Samuel, 147 Charles I, 3, 21, 24, 44, 46–50, 63, 77, 83–4, 101–8, 135–6, 138–9, 148, 158–9, 180 Charles II, 4, 6, 30, 35, 110–11, 136, 147–8 Church of England, 4, 8, 20–1, 22, 24–30, 32–3, 34–6, 42–4, 56, 57, 62–5, 66, 70, 77–80, 88–94, 105, 111, 113, 114, 116, 124, 126, 128, 137, 138, 143, 161, 170, 172, 177, 180 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 21, 23, 30, 46, 49, 53, 114, 117, 136, 158, 187 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 189 Cornish, Joseph, 1, 138–41, 187 Cornwallis, Frederick, Archbishop of Canterbury, 90–1 Cradock, Samuel, 13 Cranmer, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, 84 Cromwell, Oliver, 3, 4, 46, 50–2, 77–8, 91, 94–5, 101–2, 107–10, 112, 136, 140, 164, 175–6, 180 Cromwell, Richard, 52–3, 110 Crosby, Thomas, 69 Defoe, Daniel, 5, 25 De Krey, Gary, 118 Disney, John, 128 Echard, Laurence, 29, 49, 114 Edward VI, 42 Elizabeth, Queen, 34, 43–5, 62–8, 85–6, 135, 137–8, 139, 159 Ellys, Anthony, Bishop of St David’s, 91–2 Enfield, William, 132, 134 Evans, Caleb, 186–7 Feather’s Tavern Petition, 127–8 Fleming, Caleb, 116–17 Flexman, Roger, 109 Flower, Benjamin, 187–8 Fothergill, Thomas, 92 Foucault, Michel, 10 Fox, Charles James, 162–3, 170, 177, 179–80

Index Fox, George, 81 Foxe, John, 19, 83 Francis, Philip, 155, 164 Franklin, Benjamin, 162 Frend, William, 128 Fuller, Thomas, 33, 66 Furneaux, Philip, 135, 149n George I, 5, 29, 44, 73, 137 George II, 62, 141 George III, 126, 141, 166 George, Dorothy, 180 Gibbon, Edward, 175 Gibson, Edmund, Bishop of London, 46, 63, 67 Godwyn, Charles, 87 Goodall, Charles, 25, 26 Goodwin, John, 49 Gordon riots, 166, 168–71, 175–9 Gordon, Lord George, 168–71, 175–9, 181 Gordon, Thomas, 52, 114 Grey, Zachary, 46, 63, 67–8, 160 Grove, Henry, 113 Gunpowder Plot, 45 Hallam, Henry, 67 Harrington, James, 114 Harris, William, 1, 9, 52, 99–119, 141, 187 Hazlitt, William, 189–90 Henrietta Maria, Queen, 48, 104 Henry VIII, 42, 82–3, 137 Herring, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, 88 Heylin, Peter, 33, 66 Heywood, Oliver, 16 Heywood, Samuel, 144 Hoadly, Benjamin, Bishop of Bangor, 21 Hoghton, Sir Henry, 129, 143 Hollis, Thomas, 115–16 Hollis, Thomas Brand, 184n Horne, George, Bishop of Norwich, 93, 142, 144 Howe, John, 4 Hume, David, 1, 2, 8, 9, 44, 73–88, 92–5, 103–6, 118, 125, 137, 158, 160, 176, 187 Hutchings, Richard, 131

201

James II, 4, 17, 30, 35, 53, 55, 58, 115, 136 James, the Old Pretender, 73 Jebb, John, 115, 128 Jeffreys, George, 17 Johnson, Samuel, 41, 94 Joyce, Jeremiah, 185 Kimber, Isaac, 52, 107 Kingsbury, William, 188 Kippis, Andrew, 100, 128, 164, 172–4, 180 Laud, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, 32, 34, 105 Lee, John, 128 Leeson, Matthew, 117 Lewis, John, 27 Lindsey, Theophilus, 115, 127, 164, 172, 179, 186 Locke, John, 6, 93, 115 Long, Thomas, 24, 25, 26 Louis XIV, 53 Macaulay, Catherine, 113 MacQueen, Daniel, 76 Maddox, Isaac, 63–7, 71n Magna Carta, 4, 91, 156 Mansfield, Wiliam Murray, Lord, 124–6, 149n Marx, Karl, 9 Mary I, Queen, 42, 83–4, 159 Matthews, A. G., 40n Mauduit, Israel, 128–9 Mayo, Henry, 131 Mead, Matthew, 5 Milton, John, 110, 115, 116 Molesworth, Robert, 115 Monck, George, 53, 110, 121n Monthly Review, 76, 109, 134 Morrice, Roger, 16 Mosheim, J. L., 42 Muggletonians, 94, 177

Independents, 2, 6, 14, 47, 49, 50, 53, 63, 70, 100, 177, 186 Irish Massacre (1641), 105–6

Neal, Daniel, 1, 8, 41–70, 102, 104, 107, 111, 114, 117, 128, 134–5, 137, 139, 141, 147, 186, 187, 189 Neville, Henry, 114 Newcomen, Matthew, 19 Newton, Thomas, Bishop of Bristol,130 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 2 North Briton, 119

Jacobites, 14, 28, 29, 56, 137, 145 James I, 34, 44, 45, 59, 68, 77, 102, 138, 159

Old Jewry, the, 169 Oldmixon, John, 21, 114

202

Dissenting Histories

Ollyffe, Thomas, 20 Orme, William, 21 Ormonde, James Butler, Duke of, 29 Orton, Job, 135 Owen, John, 14 Palmer, Samuel, 9, 133–7, 141–2, 145, 163, 178, 186, 187, 188 Parker, Matthew, 43 Parker, Samuel, 16 Peirce, James, 5, 41, 44 Peter, Hugh, 49, 99, 100–2, 120n, 157–8, 181n Pope, Alexander, 93 Popish plot, 111–12 Presbyterians, 2, 6, 14, 30, 48–51, 53, 56, 58, 63, 68, 70, 110, 130, 165, 171, 177, 186 Price, Rees, 147 Price, Richard, 9, 115, 117, 128, 145–9, 155–8, 162, 164–9, 171, 174, 177–9 Price, Samuel, 147 Priestley, Joseph, 6, 115, 125, 130, 164, 165, 172, 177, 178, 179, 180. Prynne, William, 84–5, 105 Quakers, 2, 6, 63, 69, 70, 81, 94, 118 Radcliffe, Ebenezer, 129 Rapin, Paul, de Thoyras, 50, 106, 114 Rees, Abraham, 173–4, 180 Regium Donum, 29 Revolution, the Glorious (1688), 55, 144– 6, 156, 185 Revolution debate, 185 Revolution Society, 145–9, 155–6, 174, 185 Richmond, Charles Lennox, Duke of, 160 Ricouer, Paul, 1, 2, 3 Robbins, Caroline, 41 Robinson, Robert, 137–8, 141–2, 163, 178, 186 Rochester, Laurence Hyde, Earl of, 21 Rockingham, Charles Watson-Wentworth, Marquis of, 160 Rose, William, 76 Ruffhead, Owen, 109 Sacheverell, Henry, 22, 27 Sampson, Henry, 16 Savile, Sir George, 127, 128 Sayers, James, 179

Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, Earl of, 93 Shelburne, William Petty, Earl of, 128, 147, 149, 164–6 Sherlock, Thomas, 62–3 Smalbroke, Richard, Bishop of Lichfield, 57 Smollett, Tobias, 109 Society for Constitutional Information, 185–6 Stanhope, Charles, Earl, 180, 185 Strype, John, 65–6 Swift, Jonathan, 93, 158 Sydney, Algernon, 112, 114, 116 Sylvester, Matthew, 13, 14 Taunton Academy, 99, 113–14 Taylor, John, 132–3 Taylor, William, 16 Test and Corporation Acts, 4–7, 28–9, 47, 55–6, 62, 65, 67, 122n, 136, 141–7, 162–3, 165–6, 170, 176–80, 185–6 Thompson, John, 18 Thoresby, Ralph, 16, 20 Tillotson, John, Archbishop of Canterbury, 17 Toleration, Act of (1689), 5–6, 20, 56, 58, 63, 67, 124–6, 131, 135, 137, 145 Toulmin, Joshua, 186 Towers, Joseph, 180 Towgood, Micaijah, 114–15, 187 Trenchard, John, 52 Tyler, Wat, 167–8, 181, 185 Voltaire, 8, 33 Wakefield, Gilbert, 128 Walker, John, 23–8, 31–3, 40n Walpole, Robert, 29, 62, 67 Warrington Academy, 132, 172 Watts, Isaac, 41, 147 Westminster Assembly, 49, 148 Whitelocke, Bulstrode, 114 Wilkes, John, 95, 113, 117, 119, 125 William III, 20, 27, 44, 56, 73 Wilson, Kathleen, 112–13 Winterbotham, William, 185 Wood, Anthony, 17 Worden, Blair, 7, 52 Worthington, Hugh, 173–4 Wycliffe, John, 42, 139