This population was not evenly distributed. Within England, there were four principal centres of population: the south-east and the south-west had about one million people each, East Anglia and the north-west about half a million each. In Scotland, population was at its densest in the Central Lowlands, including Edinburgh and Glasgow. In Ireland, there were two centres of population, one around Dublin, the other around Cork and Limerick in the west. In Wales, population was scattered, but there were already signs of a growth in population density in the Vale of Glamorgan.
MAP 1: The counties of England and Wales in the eighteenth century.
The pattern of life was overwhelmingly parochial. It was local families, local custom, local institutions and local boundaries that maintained the framework in which people lived their lives. Eighty-five per cent of the inhabitants of England lived either in villages or in small market towns with less than 1,000 inhabitants. Over 90 per cent of them were employed in agriculture or in associated trades and crafts. The Midlands area of England was still farmed on the open-field system, but much of the rest had already been enclosed. Most villages were for some purposes self-contained and self-governing; many were strongly influenced – some even controlled – by the estates of the gentry and aristocracy, which so strongly characterized the English scene. What distinguished the 40 counties of England, the 200 corporate towns, the dozens of market towns, the 9,000 parishes and the even more numerous villages were their differences. Communities in upland pastoral areas tended to be more thinly populated than those in arable areas. In a society in which the seas and the rivers were the only efficient means of transport, patterns of life and speech remained local and diverse.
The dynastic union of Scotland with England in 1603 had not led to a merging of their political, ecclesiastical and legal systems. Scotland remained a strongly independent nation with a firm sense of its own identity. This was reinforced by her feudal social organization, which was based on kinship and the clan as much as on lordship. In some circumstances, land law provided for the division of property on death. Consequently, the Scottish rural scene was marked by small units and uncertain tenure. Partly for this reason Scottish villages and towns tended to be smaller than they were in England. This does not necessarily imply that Scottish society was backward. At the start of this period, the Lowlands were enjoying some prosperity and, under the aegis of a small number of improving landlords, some agricultural improvement and expansion. Yet, few benefits trickled down to the mass of the crofters and landless labourers, most of whom endured lives of grinding poverty on inhospitable soil.
Furthermore, Scotland remained a divided society: about one-third of its population lived in the Gaelic-speaking Highlands, whose feudal culture based on oral tradition and the kinship networks of the clan confronted the more progressive and more commercially orientated print culture of the Scots-speaking Lowlanders. What united Scotland was, first, a common Presbyterian Protestantism and, second, the (largely successful) attempts by Stuart kings to enhance a Scottish identity by uniting Lowlands and Highlands in a common loyalty to the House of Stuart. Last but not least was the unity of national sentiment imparted by an abrasive tendency to attribute any Scottish misfortune to the English.
Nevertheless, the prospect of a closer union between the two countries was much discussed during the seventeenth century, not least by James VI of Scotland (James I of England). There are signs that the economies of the two countries were beginning to develop for their mutual benefit: sectors of the Scottish rural economy, especially in the borders and in the south-west, were already geared to supplying food for the English market. More importantly, there were signs that the landed elites of the two countries were beginning to draw together. Although the English landed classes in the later seventeenth century were uninterested in colonizing either the land or the institutions of Scotland, most of the greater landowners (around 1,500) of the northern kingdom were speaking English and adopting English patterns of life and leisure. Nevertheless, serious political and religious differences between the two nations remained, which could, on occasion, undermine relations between them. In 1637, the Scots reacted violently against the introduction of the English Prayer Book, thus contributing enormously to the sequence of events which led to warfare between the two countries in 1639 and to civil war in England in 1642. The Restoration of 1660 restored the political system that had existed before 1637: government by a royal Privy Council at Edinburgh in uncomfortable association with the Scottish Estates. Nevertheless, religious and dynastic issues continued with some regularity to plunge relations between the two kingdoms into turmoil, as they did in 1688–92 and as they continued to do long into the eighteenth century.
Ireland did not constitutionally become a part of Britain until the Act of Union of 1800. Nevertheless, the fortunes of England and Ireland were already inseparable. Ireland was governed by a Lord Lieutenant and an executive appointed from England and controlled by a large standing army. She had a largely ineffective autonomy. Almost all major posts in church and state were held by Englishmen. Statutes of the English Parliament automatically applied to Ireland, while those of the Dublin parliament required the consent of London before they could enjoy legal status. Protestant settlers had colonized much of Ireland during the previous century and continued to do so. Indeed, in the second half of the seventeenth century, a stream of emigrants from England and Scotland, most of them Presbyterian, were settling in Ulster. By 1700, English settlers and their dependents made up perhaps 20 per cent of the population in Ireland, but they owned four-fifths of the land. Not surprisingly, this Anglo-Irish ruling elite was deeply unpopular in Ireland. It depended in the last analysis upon British arms to maintain its colonial status; its loyalty to London thus rested upon the strongest of all possible foundations, a sense of survival.
One-quarter of the population of 2,500,000 lived in and around Dublin. Most Irish towns were too small to sustain that rapidly growing middling section of society which was such a feature of English life. In rural areas, there was no significant yeoman class of small farmers such as that which could be found in England. Among the mass of the Catholic Irish, the Protestant landowning elite, usually referred to as the Ascendancy, was resented for its high rents and its harsh leases. The peasantry nursed its grievances, past and present, within its own cultural traditions, expressed in the distinctive and, to the English, impenetrable Gaelic tongue. By the end of the century, the mass of the people sustained a strong sense of their own identity, while the English-speaking Protestant elite looked upon themselves as English and, occasionally, as ‘British’.
As in Scotland, religious differences had shaken the foundations of British rule in Ireland in the middle of the seventeenth century. The consequence of earlier policies of settlement and religious discrimination was the Irish rebellion of 1641. During this uprising of the Catholic peasantry, the rebel leaders claimed, as they were to claim in 1689, that they were acting in the names of their Stuart kings. The failure of the rebellion was followed by military occupation and savage reprisals. During the Civil Wars in England, Charles I had looked for military assistance from Ireland. Indeed, the mass of the Irish identified themselves and their religion with the Stuart monarchy and warmly welcomed the Restoration of 1660. Significantly, their Catholicism did not seem to them to be an insurmountable obstacle to their continued inclusion within a ‘British’ state.
The case of Wales was much more straightforward. Wales had never experienced a national government of her own, knew little of national unity and had never had an agreed capital city. North was separated from south by mountains and by the absence of roads. Wales had been absorbed into England during the reign of Henry VIII. By the terms of the Acts of Union of 1536 and 1543, Wales became a part of England in three ways: politically by adopting English forms of administration and by sending twenty-four members of Parliament to the Westminster Parliament; legally by adopting the English common law and a comparable system of assizes; a
nd, finally, religiously by accepting Anglican church organization and doctrine. By the early seventeenth century, her landed and urban elites were speaking English and assuming the cultural manners of the English elite, including a vigorous adoption of the hunt, an exaggerated devotion to the London season and a gentlemanly interest in building and architecture. When James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603, discussions about a possible Anglo-Scottish Union completely ignored Wales. It was assumed that, like Cornwall in earlier centuries, Wales had become one with England. Her intense loyalty to the royalist cause during the civil wars confirmed the fact of her willing obedience. In many ways, too, Wales prospered economically from Union. Certainly, by the second half of the seventeenth century, the country’s wealth in mineral resources (lead in north Wales, coal and copper in the south) was being exploited by local landowners. It was not quite as simple as that. A distinct Welsh nation survived even if a Welsh state did not. The mass of the Welsh people spoke Welsh, most of her bishops and clergy were Welsh and the Bible was known mainly in Welsh translations. Indeed, the Welsh people continued to regard the English as a separate people. (The English, in return, regarded the Welsh as unruly barbarians.) Furthermore, the Anglicization of the Welsh gentry can be exaggerated. In some parts of Wales, notably the south-west, it proceeded much more slowly than elsewhere, as ruling families clung to Welsh customs and language. The Welsh ruling class was becoming anglicized, but there was still a Welsh ruling class.
In the later seventeenth century, then, ‘Britain’ was made up of a number of nations with distinct past histories and sometimes perplexing present relationships. Furthermore, Britain was a devolved state in which considerable autonomy remained with local families and local interests. Compared to other European countries, however, Britain was a remarkably coherent and unified state. There were at least four principal reasons for this.
First, the economic and political influence of London in particular and of England in general upon Wales, Scotland and Ireland was an immensely powerful agency of cohesion and centralization. The dramatic events of the civil wars and of the Interregnum had done much to politicize the country and to involve its outlying areas in matters of state at the highest level. Furthermore, we have already noted the economic pull of London not only upon local hinterlands but also even upon areas of Scotland and Wales. In addition, tens of thousands of individuals sought work in London, many of them as apprentices. By the start of this period, moreover, London was the hub of a modest yet growing network of stage-coach services from Chester, Exeter, Newcastle and York. The relative compactness of England facilitated efficient communication, which made for geographical cohesion. Furthermore, there were no internal restrictions upon the freedom of commerce in this, the largest free-trade area in Europe. Such developments promoted a growing awareness of national as opposed to local concerns and tended to broaden horizons which were normally parochial.
Second, the ruling classes of Britain were developing a common political culture alongside common patterns of social behaviour. The growth of literacy and the spread of the printed word opened the door to common cultural and educational standards. The enormous expansion of educational opportunities which had occurred in the previous century had established a national network of grammar schools offering a classical education that shaped the minds and values of the gentry classes and of the urban patriciate and that generated ideals of service to the state. Their political culture acknowledged the leadership of a constitutional monarchy sharing power with ministers and parliaments. This political system celebrated the institution and values not only of the parliament in London but also those of the subsidiary parliaments in Edinburgh and Dublin.
Third, the existence of the common law in England, Wales and to a large extent in Ireland stamped a certain level of uniformity upon many areas of life. Whether the law was an instrument for maintaining elite power or whether it was a guarantee of the rights of a free people – or, indeed, whether it was both – cannot be resolved here. What cannot be denied is that it was constantly used by large numbers of contemporaries, especially by the propertied sections of the population, who had inflated expectations about the quality of justice that they might receive. The political implications of the common law, its role as the expression of the will of Parliament and its widely perceived historical achievement in imposing limitations upon royal power were widely applauded and rarely questioned.
A fourth element promoting the peaceful coexistence of the nations of the British Islands was the common recognition that these nations, whatever their differences, belonged to ‘Britain’. By the end of the seventeenth century, it was universally assumed that England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland were permanently to constitute a single Union, even though the terms and conditions of that Union, and of the place of the monarchy within it, were to be liable to occasional revision, as in 1660 and 1688–9. Pride in Britishness, most commonly expressed in the figure of Britannia (which first appeared on coins of the realm in 1665), arose out of a popular conviction that the British were a unique people, honest, plain-speaking, enjoying an unmatched standard of living, courageous, martial, and, in the end, invincible. In the late seventeenth century, Britons enthusiastically followed the fortunes of the British army and, especially, the British navy. They frequently proclaimed the unique virtues of the British constitution and compared her institutions favourably with those of Britain’s national enemies, Holland, Spain and France. Many Scots and, indeed, some of the Irish, acknowledged their membership of a Britannic state. Many of them pursued their careers and their interests within a British framework: in the armed services, in trade and in the Protestant churches. Within this universe, the English, the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish were able to maintain some elements of their native characteristics while developing their British identities.
BELIEF
In the later seventeenth century, Britain was, in formal terms, a cluster of Christian societies whose churches claimed a continuity of religious experience and identity stretching back to the Middle Ages. This sense of unbroken tradition was a source of immense strength and confidence to churchmen. Although the mass of the people were casual about church attendance and family prayers – their religion was spasmodic and superstitious rather than devotional and reverent – they believed in the power of religion to give meaning to their existence. Through its universally recognized rituals, religion lent depth and significance to the great transitions in people’s lives: birth, marriage, parenthood and death. It provided a religious sanction for the individual’s place in the social world. However, Christianity did more than provide an explanation for the trials of this world and the ultimate expectation of happiness in the next. It provided both an explanation and a justification for the existing social order, its hierarchies and its distribution of property and wealth. It vindicated the powers of government and strengthened the forces of law and order. Yet, people in the later seventeenth century were easily frightened into the belief that religious dissent implied an attack upon the social order. Religious belief, therefore, needed to be carefully tempered with discipline and prudence. It was widely believed that if taken to extremes, religion could arouse social divisions, excite fanaticism and even provoke civil war. This had occurred in the middle decades of the century and it could occur again.
It was exactly this message of caution and restraint that the established church was preaching towards the end of the seventeenth century. The Anglican church was the most powerful single institution within Britain. Its twenty-six bishops and two archbishops sat in the House of Lords; its 10,000 parishes ranged across the whole of England and Wales, and parts of Ireland and Scotland. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 prescribed the Anglican Book of Common Prayer as the basis of liturgy and worship. The Test Acts of 1673 and 1678 required holders of crown office or MPs to be members of the Church of England, thus enshrining the power of the church in the political and social life of the country. The church, furthermore, had it
s own system of ecclesiastical courts and, in convocation, its own representative body. In theory, the church took one-tenth of people’s income in tithes. In addition, the church was a property owner on an enormous scale.
The church confidently pursued its religious mission – to minister to the spiritual needs of the people – while maintaining its own discipline and unity. Only thus could its secular objectives – the defence of the social and political order – be achieved. Its command of the media of the day was unmatched. Of these, the sermon was probably the most important, offering information, opinions and authority on a wide variety of subjects, not least politics and public life. Because the monarch was the head of both church and state, it was inevitable that the pulpit would uphold his legitimate authority. Church and state were one, both divinely ordained, the defence of one being the first line of defence for the other.
The Church of England was at the height of its power and influence in the second half of the seventeenth century. The decades immediately following the Restoration witnessed the emergence of a vibrant and self-conscious Anglicanism. The church recovered its lands at the Restoration, repaired the damage to its fabric that had occurred during the civil wars and took steps to improve its economic position. Within two decades, the church’s internal order, discipline and education had reached extremely respectable standards. It was a period of steady consolidation and considerable promise, thanks to the quality of the bench of bishops, especially two archbishops of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon and William Sancroft.
The Long Eighteenth Century Page 3