The Long Eighteenth Century

by Frank O'Gorman

  How did people experience Jacobitism? In the first place we may identify a culture of Jacobitism which was secretive and conspiratorial and related, as it frequently was, to the political calendar. At a time when it was dangerous openly to express opinions which might have been judged to be treasonable, an underground culture of loyalty to the exiled dynasty spread throughout Britain. This amounted to something more than a superficial dislike of the Whig regime. Individuals chose to adopt some positive indications of support for the Stuart cause, perhaps by drinking the health of the Pretender, by wearing tartan waistcoats, by collecting Jacobite souvenirs or by observing one or more of the Jacobite anniversaries. Just as compelling was the writing and dissemination of Jacobite propaganda, the circulation of songs and stories and the meetings of Jacobite clubs and societies. This culture of Jacobitism depended on regional, national and even international communication networks. The existence of such a Jacobite ‘underground’ was extremely worrying to the authorities. Its success in preserving and, after the military catastrophes of the early 1690s, rebuilding Jacobite support should not be underestimated.

  In the second place, we may discern a tradition of plots and conspiracies which preoccupied the leaders of Jacobitism especially during periods of acute international tension. Most of these came to nothing, but several of them have come to the notice of the historian. Three of them occurred within twenty years of the Glorious Revolution. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that they can be dismissed as harmless. In the Ailesbury Plot of 1691–2 a group of mainly Catholic peers and gentlemen in the south of England hoped to coordinate a raising of their tenants with the landing of a French army. The failure of the army to materialize led to the rounding-up of the conspirators. In the Fenwick Plot of 1695–6 a French army was to combine with a local force of Kentish Jacobites as a preliminary to a march on London. A dilemma which was to become very familiar in the history of Jacobitism was then confronted: the army would not sail until the plotters had risen and the plotters would not rise until the army had arrived. In the event, the invasion plan was still-born. The plotters then diverted themselves with a plan to assassinate William III which was frustrated by timely government action. Finally, in 1708 the French, reeling from Marlborough’s victories, were anxious to pin down the British at home by sending a small force to the north-east of Scotland which would link up with a Jacobite rising in the northern kingdom. A naval squadron prevented the French fleet from landing the troops and the domestic rising was aborted. On all three occasions the causes of the lack of success were identical: the failure of the French to land, the inability of the Jacobites to take the government by surprise and their failure to nurture domestic support for their cause.

  After 1714 the Jacobite cause was a pawn in the European diplomatic game, one that was kept on the board by the French court and one that was for many years checkmated by Walpole’s policy of peace at any price. It was only when the circumstances of European diplomacy permitted that the Jacobites had any real expectation of the military support which was necessary for the victory of their cause. In 1719 a Spanish invasion fleet set sail, but much of it was dashed to pieces in the Bay of Biscay. A few ships managed to reach Scotland, but the soldiers were joined by only a few hundred Highlanders, and at Glenshiel in mid-June they were easily mopped up by loyal government forces. The ‘Atterbury Plot’ (1722), of such great significance in the history of the Tory Party, was much less menacing. The usual Jacobite conspiracy had no effective foreign support and was easily foiled. So effectively did Walpole exploit the incident that the only further Jacobite ‘plot’ that managed to break the tranquil-surface of politics until the rebellion of 1745, if such a term can be given to the Cornbury Plot of 1733–5, was even less substantial.

  MAP 6: Scotland.

  In the third place we must identify the great risings of 1715 and 1745, the two culminations of Jacobite activity in their respective periods. On the first of these occasions, the rebellion was a consequence of profound political and social tensions in both Scotland and England. A steady accumulation of Scottish grievances after the Act of Union of 1707 coincided with the dynastic insecurity of George I and the willingness of France to fish in British waters. It is unlikely that the rebellion would have got off the ground had the Tories not been driven into the arms of the Pretender by the Whigs seeking to impeach Tory leaders. In England, it was only where local, usually Catholic, gentry of the north of England decided to support the cause that Jacobitism enjoyed any degree of popular support. In Scotland, however, the Jacobites managed to mobilise between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of the adult male population. What destroyed Jacobite prospects in the ‘15 – much brighter prospects than those enjoyed by William III in 1688 – was the dismal military strategy of the Earl of Mar. Had he and the other Jacobite leaders behaved more energetically the ‘15 might have given rise to a prolonged civil war in the two countries.

  The ‘15 occurred at a time of great domestic unrest. The ‘45 occurred in the middle of a major war. Much of the impetus for the ‘45 arose out of the sheer personal magnetism generated by the Young Pretender and his wild gambles, and by the willingness of the French court to play the Jacobite card. Indeed, the rising came astonishingly close to success even though the political climate was unfavourable. Fatally, the inability of the Jacobites to synchronize their rising with French support in the end destroyed their prospects. The reluctance of the English Jacobites, in particular that of the Roman Catholics, to move doomed the rebellion to failure. No wonder that the failure of the Jacobite march into England to attract respectable and propertied support on any scale demoralized its leaders. Although there is much evidence of apathy and indifference towards the regime in England, there is scarcely any evidence of a desire to do anything to change it. It is true that many English landed families held back from declaring for the government until the outcome of the Jacobite advance into England was clear. It is even more revealing that the towns that fell to the Jacobites without resistance – Edinburgh, Carlisle, Lancaster, Manchester, Preston and Derby – was a long and ominous one. But it was up to the Jacobites to force the issue. In the absence of a French invasion in the south of England, they were unable to do so. The only circumstance in which it is possible to imagine a rebel victory in 1745 is if the Jacobite army had continued on to London and either taken the capital or seriously challenged it, thus creating the conditions for a French invasion into the south of England which might have sorely embarrassed the regime. As it was, the English ruling class kept its nerve and maintained its morale. In the end, the ‘45 resembled a civil war of some seriousness in Scotland, but it entirely failed to arouse effective support in England.

  The failure of the ‘45 marked the final resolution of a major international, political and religious issue which had bedevilled politics since 1688: that of the dynastic succession to the throne of Britain. The Jacobites could only look back to disastrous political and military failure between 1688 and 1692, to the disappointment of a French invasion scare in 1708, to the sad end of a serious rebellion in 1715, to the frustration of a Spanish invasion attempt in 1719, to the revelation of a plot in 1722 and to ultimate disaster in the great gamble of 1745. Until Hawke’s victory over the French fleet at Quiberon Bay in 1759 permanently established British naval supremacy there was still a lingering prospect that the Jacobites might try again, but little enthusiasm could be found for it anywhere.

  The significance of the Jacobite movement can be variously assessed. In the light of recent discoveries that Jacobitism was more widespread in both Scotland and England than had been previously imagined, especially at the levels of ritual, language and popular culture, we can never return to the days when the movement could be dismissed as irrelevant and archaic. Yet it is difficult to see that Jacobitism, however extensive its support, represented a mortal threat to the Hanoverian regime. Many individuals and groups had some interest in the Jacobite cause but most of them were unwilling to use violent means to
effect a Stuart restoration. The English Tories and the non-jurors wished to use a Jacobite restoration to force themselves into office. The Scottish Jacobites viewed the restoration of the Stuarts as a means of ending the Union with England. Scottish Episcopalians wished to use it to weaken their Presbyterian opponents. The Irish Jacobites wished to restore the Catholic Church, Catholic lands and estates while weakening, if not breaking, English control over the Irish Parliament. Fundamentally, however, neither the English nor the Scots showed any enthusiasm for the prospect of a Catholic monarch restored by force of arms, backed by a French invasion. The Jacobite option unquestionably existed, but it was not an option that many were prepared to back. In a dynastic society it is not surprising that a dynastic alternative to the Hanoverian regime was available. It is surprising how unattractive it was to the majority.

  Indeed, what is remarkable is the degree of anti-Jacobite sentiment which had sprung up in both countries by 1745 and which acted as the vehicle of a vociferous British patriotism. The collapse of the ’45 enabled a recasting of British politics in which Toryism lost its Jacobite following, thus clarifying the conflict between Whigs and Tories. Furthermore, the failure of Jacobitism was a fatal blow to the development of a viable Scottish patriotism as it had developed after 1707. After all, Jacobitism implied absolutism, Catholicism and French imperialism – all of them totally unacceptable to the mass of the people in both countries. In this sense Jacobitism may have helped to promote the acceptance of parliamentary government, the unity of the Protestant faiths, and even the cohesion of the United Kingdom, all of which were threatened by a Jacobite restoration. Had Jacobitism led to an independent state in either Ireland or Scotland, that state would have looked to Europe for support and resources to use against the English. Such a challenge to English rule within the British Isles might have weakened England’s ability to challenge the power of France and Spain. In this sense, then, the defeat of Jacobitism was an essential preliminary to Britain’s emergence as a European and world power.

  NOTES

  1.L. B. Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution, 2nd edn (1961); The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 2nd edn (1982).

  2.P. Backscheider, Spectacular Politics: Threatened Power and Mass Culture in Early Modern England (1993), p. 60.

  3.R. P. Bond (ed.), Studies in the English Periodical (1957), pp. 3–4.

  4.Bob Harris, ‘Print Culture’, in H. Dickinson (ed). A Companion to Eighteenth Century Britain (2002, 2006), pp. 286–7.

  5.On William III, see T. Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution (1996); E. Gregg, Queen Anne (2001); D. Green, Queen Anne (1970); R. Hatton, George I (1978).

  6.Perhaps the final expression of this Whiggish narrative is G. M. Trevelyan, The Glorious Revolution, 1688-1689 (1938), especially Chapters 6–8.

  7.Such as J. C. D. Clark, Revolution and Rebellion, ch. 5; P. D. G. Thomas, The House of Commons in the Eighteenth Century (1971); H. Roseveare, The Treasury, 1660-1870: The Foundations of Control (1973); J. A. Cannon, The Fox-North Coalition: Crisis of the Constitution, 1782-84 (1969); J. Black, British Foreign Policy in the Age of Walpole (1985); J. Owen, The Rise of the Pelhams (1957).

  8.Supra, pp. 81–4.

  9.J. Brewer, Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783 (1989), pp. 66–7.

  10.Ibid., pp. 167–217.

  11.See above pp. 97–8 for the state’s reaction to the ’45.

  12.The Custos Rotulorum was historically the principal leading civilian who recommended the men to serve as justices.

  13.G. Holmes, The Electorate and the National Will (1976), pp. 30–9.

  14.N. Rogers, Whigs and Cities, chs 4 and 9.

  15.See L. B. Namier’s essay ‘Monarchy and the Party System’ in Crossroads of Power.

  16.W. A. Speck, ‘Whigs and Tories Dim their Glories’, in J. A. Cannon (ed.), The Whig Ascendancy: Colloquies on Hanoverian England (1981). Since the 1960s, most writers on this subject have tended to adopt some version of a Whig–Tory framework, and since the first edition of this book appeared in 1997, there appears to have been little change.

  17.L. Colley, In Defiance of Oligarchy: the Tory Party, 1714-60 (1982). Professor P. D. G. Thomas has raised questions about this view of the Tory Party. ‘Party Politics in Eighteenth Century Britain: Some Myths and a Touch of Reality’, British Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies, 102(2) (1987). I believe that Professor Thomas underestimates the survival of Toryism in the constituencies and understates the party’s parliamentary continuity.

  18.Rogers, Whigs and Cities, chs 8 and 9; F. O’Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties: the Unreformed Electorate of Hanoverian England, 1734-1832 (1989), esp. ch. 6; R. R. Sedgwick, The House of Commons, 1715-54, 2 Vols (1970), pp. 19–78.

  19.Rogers, Whigs and Cities, pp. 133–220.

  20.L. Colley, In Defiance of Oligarchy, ch. 5.

  21.Ibid., pp. 121–3.

  22.Sedgwick, The House of Commons, 1715-54, vol. I. p. ix.

  23.I. R. Christie, ‘The Tory Party, Jacobitism and the ‘45’, Historical Journal, 30(4) (1987).

  24.The Militia Act of 1757 provided for the training of Militia Levies to take over the burden of Home defence. The existence of a national militia enabled the country to defend itself against invasion and rebellion much more safely, thus enabling the authorities to dispense with foreign auxiliaries.

  25.B. Lenman, The Jacobite Risings in Britain (1980), pp. 256–7.

  CHAPTER SIX

  What Kind of Regime? (1714–1757)

  A STABLE REGIME?

  From a vantage point in 1714, the history of Britain during the Stuart period must have seemed bleak and unpromising. The country had experienced two major revolutions, three civil wars, one major rebellion (Monmouth’s), several minor, local risings and an unhealthily large number of conspiracies since the Gunpowder Plot. Although the Glorious Revolution had removed the threat of autocratic monarchy, it actually inaugurated a period of further instability, seen in the intense bitterness of party competition and the numerous ministerial changes of the time. If all this were not enough, the ‘15 seemed an ominous reminder that the age of revolutions and rebellions had not passed. But then, within a decade, the clouds of confusion had parted, and in the years of Walpole and the Whig supremacy, a new age of stability dawned.

  How is this astonishing change to be explained? What exactly had happened? In his influential The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675–1725, published in 1967, J. H. Plumb set out a series of answers to these questions. There were, he announced, three major factors: ‘single party government; the legislature firmly under executive control; and a sense of common identity in those who wielded economic, social and political power’.1 Defining stability as ‘the acceptance by society of its political institutions, and of those classes of men and officials who control them’, Plumb enlarged his account of its achievement by pointing to additional causes: the victory of the Court over the Country, the control of the electoral system by a small oligarchy of patrons, the pacification of Scotland and Ireland and the establishment of government influence over the City of London. This interpretation had much to commend it. Not least, it enabled the student of the period to identify many of the underlying developments which conditioned early Hanoverian politics, to clarify the achievement of Walpole and the Whigs and to place that achievement in a general historical perspective.

  But no general interpretation can endure for almost five decades without attracting a number of serious criticisms. First, a number of scholars have remarked upon Plumb’s omission of religious considerations. It is, with the benefit of hindsight, astounding that such a powerful and ubiquitous force should have been ignored. Obviously, it needs to be incorporated within any viable theory of ‘stability’, if only to suggest that religious issues were no longer as potent in the era of ‘stability’ as they had been earlier, possibly because of the growing ability of the authorities to deal with it . Second, some hi
storians have wondered just how politically stable the period after 1725 actually was. The Jacobite option remained a profoundly unsettling issue until Culloden, at least. In addition, how could a period of two major wars (1739–48 and 1756–63), with their concomitant threats of French invasions, be accommodated within the ‘stability’ hypothesis? Indeed, how stable was a society that was still subject to acute religious divisions, as was seen in the reaction to the Jewish Naturalization Bill in 1753. How stable was a political order that could be brought to its knees on a relatively minor matter of taxation, such as the Excise Crisis of 1733–4, when rioting was alarmingly widespread and in which the regime was shown to be bitterly unpopular? How ‘stable’ was a society in which the accession of a new king in 1760 could throw the political world into confusion? (As late as 1788–9, indeed, the simple issue of the health of the monarch could divide the political nation with extraordinary intensity.) Third, many contemporaries did not believe that they lived in a particularly settled and ordered society. It was not just the aristocracy but the propertied classes in general during the eighteenth century who were persistently anxious about the possibility of disorder. Sir Robert Walpole constantly worried about enemies within and without, and fretted about losing his parliamentary majorities. The political confusion and ministerial instability which characterized the periods 1714–21, 1739–46 and 1754–7 dismayed many contemporaries who looked back upon half a century of recurring political disruption, lamenting that the British could be so wild and ungovernable in their politics. The ‘liberty’ on which the British prided themselves seemed too frequently to tend to anarchy rather than to stability. Some observers even wondered (rather extravagantly) whether such licence might have to be tempered by royal despotism. Fourth, there are difficulties with some of the details of the explanations for ‘the growth of political stability’ which Plumb adopted. For example, he attributed ‘stability’ in part to the rapid growth in the size of the executive, but between 1689 and 1727 that expansion was really quite modest. Dramatic reductions in the size of the army from 42,000 to 18,000 and the navy from 50,000 to 10,000 at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession and, indeed, reductions in the diplomatic and navy boards, offset increases in the bureaucratic machine occurring elsewhere. Furthermore, significant increases in the excise and salt offices only occurred in the 1730s.