Some of these directions provoked ridicule. Lord Dartmouth noted against the passage relating to the Queen’s pious activities in Burnet’s History of My Own Time
There came forth at this time several puritanical regulations for observing the Sabbath in London, savouring so much of John Knox’s doctrine and discipline, that Burnet was thought to have been the chief contriver. One was that hackney coaches should not drive upon that day; by another, constables were ordered to take away pies and puddings from anybody they met carrying of them in the streets; with a multitude of other impertinences so ridiculous in themselves, and troublesome to all sorts of people, that they were soon dropt, after they had been sufficiently laughed at.48
Others objected to the Societies’ apparent supplanting of the Church’s role in regulating moral behaviour and were suspicious of the religious aspirations of some members. As has already been stated, some founding members of the movement were dissenters or had close links with nonconformist groups. Some certainly hoped that the Societies would have a role in fostering religious union. Edmund Calamy wrote that it was ‘an hopeful Prognostick in the Present Case, that those who differ in Rituals but with too much Vehemence, should unanimously join together in forming those Societies for Reformation, who aim at the Checking those Vices which threaten to over-run us, which are heartily detested by Good Men of all Perswasions’.49
The possibility of the Societies being a route to comprehension by the back door was picked upon, and objected to, by some Anglicans. William Nicolson, Archdeacon of Carlisle, stated that they smacked too much of the ‘associations of the Presbyterians and Independent Ministers in the days of the Rebellion’.50 Then, there might have been some role for these voluntary associations, as the national church had been demolished by the Long Parliament, but this was not now the case. The Anglican controversialist Henry Sacheverell described the Societies as places wherein ‘every Tradesman and Mechanick is to take upon him the Gift of the Spirit, and to expound the difficult Passages of Scripture, and every Justice of Peace is allow’d to settle its Canon, and Infallibly Decide what is Orthodox or Heretical’.51 However, Josiah Woodward argued that in fact the Societies had helped bring people back within the communion of the Church of England: ‘For they have been instrumental to bring several Quakers and Enthusiastick people to Baptism, and to a sober Mind; and the Conversion of many profane Persons.’52
It was also the case that some advocates of the Societies attempted to make partisan capital out of their work. Thomas Papillon stated: ‘Under the name of Whigs is comprehended most of the sober and religious persons of the Church of England that … are willing that there might be a Reformation to take away offence, and that desire that all Swearing, Drunkeness, and Ungodliness should be discountenanced and punished … As also all dissenters of the several persuasions are included under this title.’ On the other hand, the Tory party was made up of those who ‘press the forms and ceremonies more than the Doctrines of the Church, which are sound and Scriptural; and that either in their own practice are Swearers, Drunkards, or loose in their Conversation, or do allow of and are unwilling such should be punished, but give them all countenance, provided they stickle for the forms and ceremonies and rail against and endeavour to discountenance all those that are otherwise minded’.53 The Whig writer and publisher John Dunton, in his The Night-walker, or Evening Rambles in Search after Lewd Women, an early piece of tabloid journalism in which sexual titillation masqueraded as moral exposé, addressed his pamphlet to the aged Duchess of Cleveland, Barbara Villiers, Charles II’s former mistress, ‘as being the first after the Re[storation], who in an avowed and daring manner polluted this Nation by your bad Example. It had been a greater Instance of your Loyalty, to have rejected the unchast Embraces of [Charles II] than to have complied with him, in turning the Grace of God towards him into Wantoness; and infecting other Ladies by your Example.’54 His clear intent was to link the Societies to a campaign to overturn the excesses both political and moral of Charles II’s reign. Dunton denied that his work was ‘a Satyr against one Party more than another … but if the Tories will need have it that a Satyr against Whoreing is a Satyr against them, we cannot hinder them to apply it as they please’.55 It was notable, however, that many of the prostitutes and brothel-keepers that Dunton accosted seemed to have Tory or Jacobite political sympathies. Dunton alleged that one madam told him she would ‘rather have half a dozen of King James’ Officers, they Drink and Carouse, and make all the house merry; and not only pay my Girls well for their Company, but gratifie me for my procurement’. To which Dunton replied that he had ‘often heard that all the Whores in Town are Jacobites, and now I perceive something of the reason of it’.56 A remarkable number of the ‘lewd-women’ Dunton interviewed were also Catholics, one whore telling him that she did not fear heavenly punishment for her activities:
such Bug-bears might well frighten us who were Protestants, but for her part she was a Roman Catholick, and could be absolved when she pleased; and having the Eucharist brought her on her death bed, which was a never failing Viaticum: I answered her that I found the Church of Rome might properly enough be called the Mother of Harlots in a literal sense, seeing by her Doctrines and Pardons people were incouraged to lead loose lives, adding that those Pardons and Absolutions of their Priests were meer Cheats, which would stand in no stead at the bar of God, and therefore advised her to have recourse to the Word of God where she would find that he would judge Whoremongers and Adulterers.57
Nonetheless, despite attempts to hijack the campaign for reformation of manners for particular political and religious groups and causes, many people responded positively to this initiative. By 1701 there were more than a dozen Societies in London and the rest of England. In 1738 they claimed they had prosecuted 101,638 people for disorderly and lewd behaviour. Campaigns to regulate the nation’s moral behaviour were nothing new, for movements of this kind went back to at least the fourteenth century, one of the most recent and famous (or infamous) being the puritanical rule of the major generals under the Cromwellian Protectorate. Three factors distinguished the Societies from previous attempts to suppress vice. First, there was the long duration of the movement, with formal reports of the Societies’ activities continuing until 1738. Secondly, the supporters of moral reformation were for the first time organised into independent Societies which not only lobbied for better enforcement of the laws but also assumed (to a certain extent) the duties of parish officers. Members of the Societies were encouraged to observe their surroundings carefully and inform JPs of any profanity, drunkenness, Sabbath-breaking, lewdness or other immorality. To facilitate this process, the Societies printed up blank warrants and paid agents to hear informers’ complaints and fill out the warrant forms correctly. The informer then took the warrant to a JP, who would sign it and seal it after examining him or her under oath to ensure that their story was true. Constables received the warrants and would arrest offenders, who would be brought before the Justices and either prosecuted by indictment, committed to a house of correction or asked to enter into a recognisance, depending on their circumstances. Some of the punishments meted out were fairly severe; keepers of bawdy houses could be fined 10 shillings or more and sentenced to be whipped along the Strand from Charing Cross to Somerset House and ordered to stand in the pillory. The names of ‘Delinquents’ were published in ‘Black Lists’ to shame in particular those offenders who could not be punished by the courts (that is, mainly the better-off). The Eleventh Black List, published in 1706, listed 830 ‘Lewd and Scandalous Persons’ who had been legally prosecuted.
Finally, this moral reformation, while tackling familiar vices such as drunkenness, loose swearing and blasphemy, also addressed new problems. Although, as we will see, the Societies spent considerable energy in prosecuting ‘lewd’ heterosexuals, indicting female prostitutes and their male clients, they also attempted to suppress the emerging homosexual ‘molly culture’ of this time. Some satirists alleged that ‘he-whore
s’ were now so common that they were putting their female counterparts out of business. The Women’s Complaint to Venus (1698) alleged
Poor Whores may be Nuns
Since Men turn their Guns
And vent on each other their passion.
In the Raign of Good Charles the Second
Full many a Jade
A Lady was made
And the Issue Right Noble was reckon’d:
But now we find to our Sorrow
We are overrun
By Sparks of the Bum
And peers of the Land of Gommorah.
To curb homosexual activity, the Societies even employed agents provocateurs to expose and convict gay men. Captain Edward Rigby was accused of soliciting one Minton by taking him by the hand in St James’s Park on Bonfire Night and putting his ‘Privy Member Erected into Minton’s Hand; kist him, and put his Tongue into Minton’s Mouth’. Minton attempted to run away but was pursued by Rigby, who ‘after much Discourse prevailed with Minton to tell him where he lodged, and to meet him the Monday following about Five a Clock, at the George-Tavern in the Pall mall, and to Enquire for Number 4’. Minton then went to a Middlesex JP, Thomas Rialto, ‘who being informed of what past between Rigby and Minton, appointed his Clark with a Constable, and two other Persons, to go with Minton to the George-Tavern, who were to stay in some Room adjoyning to the Room whereinto Minton should go: and if any Violence should be offered to him, upon crying out “Westminster” the Constable and his Assistance should immediately enter the Room’. Minton went to Rigby’s rooms at the George Tavern as arranged but with the constables lodged in the adjoining room.
Rigby seemed much pleased upon Mintons coming, and drank to him in a glass of Wine and kist him, took him by the Hand, put his Tongue into Mintons Mouth, and thrust Mintons hand into his (Rigby) Breeches, saying, ‘He had raised his Lust to the highest degree,’ Minton thereupon askt, ‘How can it be, a Woman was only fit for that,’ Rigby answered, ‘Dam’em, they are all Port, I’ll have nothing to do with them.’ Then Rigby sitting on Mintons Lap, kist him several times, putting his Tongue into his mouth, askt him, ‘if he should F[uck] him’.
When Minton objected, Rigby attempted to convince him by stating that it was ‘no more than was done in our Fore-fathers time’ and that, moreover, the French king did it, and so did Peter the Great, who Rigby himself said he had seen through the porthole of his ship ‘lye with Prince Alexander’. Minton allowed Rigby to continue to fondle him until it was clear that the Captain intended to bugger him (providing the evidence for a conviction for assault with sodomitical intent). Giving the appointed sign, the constables and their assistants rushed into the room and apprehended Rigby. The Captain was sentenced to stand in the pillory for three days, fined £1000 and imprisoned for a year.58
It was not coincidental that the first Societies for the Reformation of Manners emerged in the capital. In addition to dealing with moral or sexual offences, they attempted to deal with some of the social problems that came with increasing urbanisation and commercialisation. Many of those convicted of breaking the Sabbath were not alehouse tipplers but traders and shopkeepers who now opened their businesses on a Sunday. Woodward reported that the Societies had had success in closing down several Sunday markets. The Societies’ attack on vice was also linked to the problems of the confusion of status and identity produced by a consumer culture in which, as Defoe complained, a whore could afford to dress like a gentlewoman. Dunton often described the prostitutes that he met as wearing ‘genteel attire’ and complained about ‘Tradesmens wives dressing as Ladies’, which, he said, proved a great temptation to men.59 There is also good evidence that the Societies endeavoured to tackle the perceived threat to law and order posed by the urban poor. Under the offence of ‘lewd and disorderly conduct’, informers often included a variety of activities, not only prostitution and soliciting but also ‘idleness’, vagrancy and theft. Of course, as we have already seen, there was a link in the public imagination between prostitution and crime and equally poverty was seen to increase the temptation to sin (many charitable endeavours were motivated mainly by the desire to check immorality rather than out of a commitment to social justice or to provide a safety net). However, parish officers of St Martin in the Fields who called for the suppression of brothels also did so because they contributed to the ‘daily increase of poor in the said parish’ and had caused ‘several great disorders and misdemeanors … against the peace’. Some individuals were convicted of ‘lewd and disorderly conduct’ on the basis of little evidence of actual misbehaviour besides the fact that they were poor, lacked a proper job and were found in suspicious circumstances (which could mean as little as walking the street at night). The minister John Shower admitted that the Societies tended to prosecute poorer people but hoped that the punishment of meaner persons would ‘so far influence the greater sort, as to bring them to be more private, and less scandalous in their crimes’.60
Historians have been divided as to the level of public support for the work of the Societies. The Societies’ informers not only lay in wait for men soliciting prostitutes on the street, or lone ‘lewd women’ night-walking, but also went into the brothels to catch individuals engaging in sexual acts. Seventy-five per cent of all arrests of prostitutes’ clients in Middlesex and Westminster in the 1720s were ‘inside a well-known bawdy house’ rather than on the street. One John Walker was bound ‘for being … in a Notorious house with a woman of known ill fame and Reputation she standing between his Leggs and him … having his briches [sic] down and his Privy parts Bare’. Richard Lary was taken with ‘2 lewd women in an obscene posture’, while Samuel Hornby was found ‘in Bedd with a whore bigg with child’. Justice of the Peace John Sully arrested a whore, ‘Having my Selfe taken my sunn in Bed with her’. Unsurprisingly, a number of the accused attacked the constables who interrupted their activities. Thomas Cowper, listed as a gentleman, was accused of ‘picking up a woman in the streete, and goeing along with her’. He resisted arrest and was also bound for ‘assaulting, striking, kicking and very much abusing’ the constable and his assistants.61
However, if some prostitutes’ clients naturally objected to the activities of the Societies, there was a strong level of condemnation in the press of men who went whoring. Some authors even began to see women as the victims, and Joseph Addison condemned that ‘loose tribe of men … that rambles into all the Corners of this great City, in order to seduce such unfortunate Females as fall into their Walks’. John Dunton also pointed out a moral double standard, that whores’ clients ‘would be ill pleas’d to have [their] Wives follow [their] own Examples … which is a plain Demonstration that [they] hate[d] that vice in others, which [they] indulge[d] in [them]selves’. Sexual vice was now seen as damaging to gentle reputation and The Gentleman’s Library instructed men to avoid sexual ‘Adventures’ or they would render themselves ‘more vile and despicable than any innocent man can be, whatever [his] low station’. Dunton stated that only a ‘Porter, Common-Soldier, trooper or Common Carmen [sic]’ would hold himself so low as to resort to ‘bawds’. In investigating sexual crimes, JPs were also urged not to exhibit an overly puerile interest in the details of the case lest they be seen to taking ‘too much pleasure in the inquiry’. The JP’s job in such situations was to encourage the woman’s ‘Natural Modesty’ otherwise he would ‘effectually teach instead of Correcting the Crime’.
As to the general public, there are hints here too that there was some popular support for the campaign against sexual vice. Dunton reported that young ‘sparks’ were jeered at for bringing prostitutes into taverns. An angry group of spectators killed Mother Needham, an infamous procuress, when she was put in the pillory in 1730 and the same year Colonel Charteris, a notorious whoremonger who was known as the ‘Rape Master General of Great Britain’, was beaten by a mob when spotted in Chelsea with two young women. There may, though, have been less enthusiasm for the Societies’ prosecution of other offences.62 Two reforming con
stables were killed while attempting to apprehend offenders. At the funeral of one of the officers, John Dent, it was claimed that he had ‘often been much abused, beaten, mobbed and wounded; and in a very great danger of his life in detecting and bringing to justice, the lewd and disorderly persons’. John Disney noted that the stocks, a form of punishment which attempted to embarrass a criminal in front of his friends and neighbours, was ‘of little or no effect’ in punishing persons who were ‘guilty of vice’.63
Members of the Societies also complained that the judiciary were often more a hindrance than a help in prosecuting offenders. Woodward complained that ‘where either the Informer or the Magistrate fails in his respective Duty, Justice is obstructed, the Efficacy of the Law null’d, Iniquity cherish’d, and the Wrath of God provoked’.64 Yet, he said, some informers had complained that they ‘had spent above half [a day] going from the House of one Justice of Peace to another, before they could get a Warrant signed’.65 Many members of the magistracy complained, however, that the use of unpaid informers was producing all sorts of legal sharp practice. The Middlesex JP Ralph Hartley, an enthusiastic supporter of the Societies’ activities – he had even convicted and fined one of his fellow justices for profane swearing at a JP’s dinner – was ejected from the commissions of the peace for irregular conduct. The main objection against him was that he had convicted and sentenced offenders without summoning them to appear before him. Magistrates also questioned the powers of constables to arrest persons for ‘disorderly conduct’ without good grounds. The killers of John Dent in 1709 were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter only because, Chief Justice Holt argued, the constable had had no good grounds for arresting them, the three soldiers only being in the company of Anne Dickens, who was labelled a ‘nightwalker’, disorderly woman and the like. Holt invoked Magna Carta, stating: ‘If a man is oppressed by an officer of justice, under a mere pretence of an authority, that is provocation to all the people in England.’ He went on: ‘I like a religious zeal for reformation very well, but let this zeal be according to knowledge and consistent with the laws of our country, not furious and mistaken. No man ought to think himself so far more righteous than his neighbours as to enter into such voluntary societies for reformation of manners, as contradict our laws and endanger our rights and liberties.’66
The Glorious Revolution Page 28