In the early eighteenth century, then, Great Britain may be described as an increasingly centralized body politic but one with powerful local variations in its political, religious and economic life. These, however substantial, were nevertheless contained by a number of unifying influences. As historians of political culture have argued, these include the pressures making for cultural uniformity created by English educational and social institutions and which powerfully affected the landowning classes of Scotland and Ireland; the enormous social and economic pull of London; the threat – and just occasionally the reality – of the use of military force and, not least, the emerging sense of pride in belonging to the state of Britain with its armed services (the British army and the British navy), its rapidly expanding (British) empire and, not least, its much vaunted (British) constitution.
These were not mere abstractions. The Scottish desire for a close union with England within a larger ‘Britannic’ framework has its roots in the early seventeenth century, in the court of James VI and I. Already in 1707 Scots held 10 per cent of the regimental colonelcies in the British army (by 1763 this had increased to 20 per cent). Members of the Irish aristocracy, too, were willing to see military service within the empire. Indeed, Ireland in the early eighteenth century shared in many ritual celebrations of British naval and military victories and in the anniversaries of royal birthdays. Furthermore, as we have seen, the enthusiasm generated by the Glorious Revolution reached North America. In a more general sense, British political culture and manners made their mark in many parts of the empire; West Indian planters, the colonial gentry in mainland America and wealthy merchants everywhere identified themselves with the homeland, its aristocratic traditions, its prevailing ideals of the gentleman and, not least, with the continuing influence of ‘Country’ ideals. Such people conducted their political life and, indeed, expressed their criticisms of colonial rule, in Country terms. The idea of a British nationhood, therefore, was not a theoretical construct but an active and practical catalyst for the creation and definition of people’s identities. In the quarter of a century after the Glorious Revolution, indeed, a British national identity, born of tradition, Protestantism, war against France and, increasingly, commercial and colonial achievement, was emerging. A British state, a British empire and a British nation were in the process of construction.
NOTES
1.When he reissued the declaration in May 1688, James demanded that the clergy read it out from the pulpit on two successive Sundays. Ominously, large numbers of them – probably a majority – refused to do so.
2.For these arguments, however, see J. R. Jones, The Revolution of 1688 in England (1972), p. 11.
3.S. Pincus, 1688: the First Modern Revolution (2009), pp. 474–5. In my opinion, Pincus exaggerates the extent and significance of violence in England during the revolution crisis, and appears unwilling to provide details of the bureaucratic intentions of James II.
4.G. M. Trevelyan, The English Revolution (1938), p. 120.
5.The future George I, for example, promised in 1710 that he would assume the throne of Britain ‘as a ruler by hereditary right’. See J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1688–1832 (1985), pp. 132–3.
6.My own slightly dismissive account of the declaration is different from that of Lois Schwoerer, The Declaration of Right (1981). The only completely novel clauses were those relating to the army (see J. Miller, The Glorious Revolution (1983), p. 37) and the right of citizens to bear arms. See J. L. Malcolm, ‘The Creation of a “True Ancient and Indisputable” Right: the English Bill of Rights and the Right to be Armed’, Journal of British Studies, 32(3) (1993), pp. 226–49.
7.Indeed, providential elements in Tory thinking remained powerful after 1689. The Tory view of the world still included the belief that civil society and civil government were created by God and that ‘the people’ did not have the right to dissolve it.
8.H. T. Dickinson, ‘The Precursors of Political Radicalism in Augustan Britain’, in C. Jones (ed.), Britain in the First Age of Party, 1680–1750 (1987).
9.The Test Act for England had been passed in 1673 and for Scotland in 1681. The acts compelled holders of civil and military offices and members of corporations to take the Anglican Communion, to take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance and to make a declaration against the Catholic doctrines of transubstantiation.
10.Convocation was the representative body of the Church of England and consisted of assemblies of the clergy of the two provinces, Canterbury and York. The bishops sat in the upper house, the clergy in the lower. After this failure, convocation was not summoned again until 1700.
11.Pincus, 1688: the First Modern Revolution, pp. 474–5.
12.P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756 (1967). Since Dickson wrote, most historians would emphasize almost as strongly as the growth of the system of public credit the growth in the use of private credit in changing people’s attitudes to consumer goods and, indeed, to many aspects of life itself.
13.Clark, English Society, esp. ch. 3.
14.See H. Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics in the Reign of William III (1977), p. 316.
15.Occasional Conformity was the practice of Protestant Dissenters who, by receiving communion in Anglican churches on exceptional occasions, escaped the penalties of the Test Act and were thus qualified to serve in the army and navy, to sit in Parliament and to serve in municipal corporations.
16.The Whig Junto was a confederation of aristocratic Whig factions in the reign of William III and Anne, led by Lords Somers, Orford, Wharton, Halifax and Sunderland.
17.‘1694 is one of the great watersheds in the development of the party,’ J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675–1725 (1965), pp. 134–5.
18.Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford (1661–1724), one of the great leaders of the Tory Party in the reigns of William III and Anne and one of the principal exponents of ‘Country’ politics. Paul Foley was an ostentatiously incorruptible Country Tory who became Speaker of the House of Commons in 1695.
19.The Partition treaties of 1698 and 1700 were agreed between England, France and Holland and provided for the partition of the Spanish empire on the death of the current king, Charles II.
20.Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751), one of the leading Tory politicians of the reign of Anne. St John was the major Tory ideologue of these years. He entered Parliament in 1701, became Secretary for War in 1704 and Foreign Secretary and joint leader of the Tory Party in 1710. He became a peer in 1712. On the death of Queen Anne, his Jacobite sympathies led to his flight to France. He returned to England (1725–35), once more retreating to France (1735–42).
21.Sydney Godolphin (1645–1712) accumulated great experience as a politician under Charles II and James II before taking the treasury on the accession of William III. He served thereafter in a number of capacities. His occasional contacts with the Jacobites infuriated the Whigs, who dismissed him in 1700 and again in 1702.
22.Few historians today resist the powerful, orthodox view that parties occupied a vital position at the centre of politics in the early eighteenth century. See for example, J. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability; G. Holmes, The Making of a Great Power, 1660–1722: Late Stuart and Early Georgian Britain (1993), p. 334.
23.Holmes, British Politics in the Reign of Anne, rev. edn (1987); The Electorate and the National Will in the First Age of Party (1976); W. A. Speck, Tory and Whig: the Struggle in the Constituencies, 1701–15 (1970). There is, perhaps, a danger of exaggerating the influence of party – especially in rural areas – to the exclusion of other influences before 1714, and thenceforward of exaggerating the extent of its decline after 1714.
24.Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics, p. 319.
25.Holmes, The Electorate and the National Will in the First Age of Party, p. 15.
26.Holmes, The Electorate and the National Will in the First Age of Party, pp. 15–
17.
27.I. Jones, Britain and the World, 1649–1815 (1980), pp. 115–16, 133–5.
28.Historians have tended to exaggerate the foreign policy differences of William and the Tories. It was William’s methods – expensive continental wars and allowance systems which promised to lock Britain into permanent European entanglements – which roused the Tories. They shared his broad strategic objectives of maintaining a European balance of power.
29.Historians have tended to exaggerate the seriousness of the threat which Louis XIV presented to the British, and to the rest of Europe. After 1697 France was not the military threat that it had been earlier. The economy of France was in serious difficulties and the French were soon anxious for peace. As the peace negotiations of 1709 illustrate, Louis was unable to control the actions of his grandson, Philip V, King of Spain.
30.I. B. Cowan, ‘Anglo Scottish Relations’, Historical Journal, 32(1) (1989).
31.J. Black, The Politics of Britain, 1688–1800 (1993), p. 13.
32.For a balanced summary of the coming of Union, see Tony Claydon, ‘British History in the Post-Revolutionary World, 1690-1715’, in G. Burgess (ed.), The New British History: Founding a Modern State 1603-1715 (1999), pp. 122–5. See also the magisterial treatment to be found in K. Bowie, Scottish Public Opinion and the Anglo-Scottish Union, 1699-1707 (2007); C. A. Whatley, The Scots and the Union (2006, new edn 2014). There is still much to be gleaned from D. Daiches, Scotland and the Union (1977) and T. C. Smout, ‘The Road to Union’, in G. Holmes (ed.), Britain after the Glorious Revolution (1969).
33.C. Kidd, Union and Unionism: Political Thought in Scotland, 1500-2000 (2008).
34.Poynings’ Law of 1494 subordinated the Irish Parliament to the English Parliament. The former could not initiate legislation without the approval of the Privy Council in London. Irish acts, moreover, could not become law without the approval of the Westminster Parliament.
35.Sean J. Connolly, Divided Kingdom: Ireland 1630-1800 (2008); Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland, 1660-1760 (1992).
CHAPTER THREE
Whiggism Supreme, 1714–1757
The years between the Hanoverian Succession and the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War have traditionally been presented as years of peace and calm, sandwiched between periods of upheaval and disruption. In contrast to the era of political revolutions in the later seventeenth century and that of the economic and social transformations of the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the first half of the eighteenth century appears to be an ordered and peaceful period in which society was agreed on its fundamentals. According to a traditional historical convention, these years of Whig supremacy represent the dominance of an exclusive landed elite over society and the political system. According to this view, the ruling classes controlled the political system in order to protect their social and economic privileges, using their wealth and power to command the obedience of their dependents. In this elegant scheme of things, the mass of the people had little or no part to play; they were an off-stage chorus whose voices could only intermittently be heard. Indeed, some historians have condemned this regime for its conservatism, its complacency and its corruption.1
Few historians today accept this interpretation of early Hanoverian Britain. On the one hand, the Glorious Revolution and the events that followed did not usher Britain down a peaceful path to constitutional progress. The Glorious Revolution, as we have seen, fostered an English domination of the British Isles that was achieved partly through violent means. This in its turn created powerful tensions, not least in Scotland and Ireland. Both the Presbyterian church establishment in Scotland and the Anglican establishment in Ireland denied civil rights to vast sections of their populations – Episcopalians in Scotland, Catholics in Ireland – which positively fomented the conditions for discord and disunity. Furthermore, how can Britain be treated as an ordered and settled body politic in view of the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745 and the continuing resentment displayed by a public opinion that was for many years hostile to the dynasty? As we proceed to survey the narrative of Hanoverian politics between 1714 and 1757 and proceed to examine the structure of Hanoverian society, these issues need constantly to be borne in mind.
THE HANOVERIAN SUCCESSION, 1714–1721
The death of Queen Anne on 1 August 1714 triggered a series of events of some little complexity and which were to have far-reaching consequences. In spite of the fact that no fewer than fifty-eight individuals had a closer kin relationship with the queen, George Lewis, Elector of Hanover, was immediately proclaimed king. Until he could arrive from Hanover to claim his inheritance, a Regency Council, dominated by Whigs, governed the country.
During this brief period, the precarious unity of the Tory Party dissolved. Already seriously divided by the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, the Tories could not agree on its plans for the new reign. Oxford defended the Hanoverian Succession against Bolingbroke’s fatuous plans to recognize James Edward, the Old Pretender, and son of James II, as king.2 Tory divisions enabled the Whigs to procure the dismissal of Oxford four days before the death of Anne. Worse still, the new king had no love for the Tories. He had been a committed member of the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV and had contributed 12,000 Hanoverian troops. In short, he had been a firm supporter of the policy of William III and he was aghast at the pacific drift of Tory foreign policy after 1710. Even before his arrival in England on 18 September, he had dismissed Bolingbroke and challenged the Tories to declare their loyalty. The refusal of several Tory leaders to serve him was little less than a declaration of war against the court and was treated as such. George I and his advisers proceeded to reconstruct the ministry. The new cabinet, in which Townshend and Stanhope were the two Secretaries of State,3 was almost completely dominated by Whigs and included several Junto lords. This was followed by a purge of office holders in both local and central government. Within a short period, no fewer than twenty-two of the forty-two Lords Lieutenant in England had been removed and their offices placed in loyal, Whig hands. We now know that the Tories were able to survive in the corporate towns. The Mandamus Act of 1711 had given borough partisans considerable judicial protection from summary dismissal.4 Nevertheless, after this purge, the prospects of the Tory Party were desperate. Its future hung upon the outcome or the general election of 1715.
The election was a complete disaster for the Tories. In January and February 1715, they campaigned against the new dynasty on the old cry of ‘the Church in Danger’. This may have done them some electoral good in the past, but it came a little oddly from a party in which some sections were actively negotiating with a Catholic Pretender who had persistently refused to convert to Anglicanism. Working tirelessly to mobilize their loyal adherents, and acutely aware of their insecure position within the new regime, the Whigs fought to secure the position of George I and themselves5 and in this they were successful, transforming a Tory majority of 240 in the House of Commons into a Whig majority of almost 130. The historical significance of the general election of 1715 is that it gave electoral sanction, and thus a powerful stimulus of legitimacy, to the Hanoverian dynasty. In the open constituencies, public opinion was clearly on the side of the Whigs and the Protestant succession. They doubled the number of the county seats they controlled, traditionally the last redoubts of the Tory Party.
The extent of their electoral rout drove a minority of the leading Tories into the arms of the Pretender. Bolingbroke fled to France on 6 April. They were negotiating with the French court for naval and military assistance when on 6 September 1715 the Earl of Mar raised the Jacobite standard at Braemar. Eighteen Lords responded to the call and within three weeks the Jacobite army had swelled to 5,000 men. At the end of September, Mar had occupied Perth. All of Scotland north of the Tay was in his hands. Had he struck at once against the 1,500 regular troops quartered in Scotland, the new Hanoverian dynasty might have been sorely pressed. Mar delayed, awaiting reinforcements – by November he had 10,000 m
en – and the moment was lost. The cause was always going to be decided south of the border, and Mar’s delay gave the English government time to strike at its opponents.
The Jacobites had always recognized that a successful rebellion could not be achieved by Scottish forces alone but would require a simultaneous uprising in England. Such a rising was not beyond the realms of possibility. The new dynasty had not been greeted with much enthusiasm. The day of George I’s coronation (20 October 1714) had been marked by riots and disturbances in several towns in the south. Matters were not improved by the king’s aloofness and the fact that he insensitively chose to surround himself with his own Hanoverian advisers and mistresses. During the general election of 1715, moreover, Jacobite mobs were in evidence in some constituencies. This gave way to more general, desultory rioting throughout the country. Indeed, by the summer of 1715 over 100 Tory and Jacobite riots had occurred in England and Wales. The rioting became so serious in the capital and in the Midlands and Welsh border counties that the ministry had to rush the Riot Act through Parliament in July 1715.6 This was followed by the suspension of habeas corpus on 21 July. Meanwhile the two Secretaries of State, Stanhope and Townshend, moved in for the kill and impeached some of the leading Tories, including Bolingbroke and Oxford. These were catastrophic blows for the Tory Party. Its infuriated supporters retaliated by senseless attacks on Dissenting meeting-houses. It was against this backdrop that Mar raised the Jacobite standard in Scotland.
The Long Eighteenth Century Page 14