English Radicals and the American Revolution

Colin Bonwick

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780807896228, 9780807812778
• eBook ISBN: 9781469610443
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Bonwick brings together related elements that have been treated separately on previous occasions--English radicals as personalities, their relations with one another, their connections with Americans; the imperial controversy between England and the colonies; the movement for parliamentary reform in England; and the campaign for civil rights for Dissenters. The study brings fresh meaning to English radicalism and ideas about liberty during the revolutionary era.

Originally published 1977.

A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

1

English Radicals

In the age of the American Revolution the main line of English radicalism ran with those who stood in the commonwealth tradition.¹ Though clearly a minority in a conservative nation, they were neither a small squadron of obscure and pedantic theoreticians nor a totally uniform group. Rather, these moderate radicals were a heterogeneous body of men and women, several of whom were prominent figures in the intellectual life of the country. Among their many interests, they believed it the duty of all men to formulate and hold political opinions, especially in times of crisis, and they argued that statesmen had no right to exclude the people from knowledge of political affairs.²

The radicals’ understanding of the two grand themes of the American Revolution—the war of independence and the experiment in government—was rooted in a complex network of social attitudes, spiritual values, intellectual principles, and ideological requirements. Most radicals belonged to those middle ranks of society who formed a broader political nation outside the aristocratic circles of national authority. As individuals they often participated in a wide range of reform activities, though for analytical convenience they can be roughly brigaded into those whose first concern was with parliamentary reform, and those, being religious Dissenters, who were primarily interested in securing relief from discriminatory legislation directed against them. Such clarity of definition is less possible when discussing their arguments. To suggest that their rhetoric expressed a systematic political philosophy would be misleading; the term “ideology” better describes their corpus of ethical values, political principles, and empirical programs. Of its many components, two are worth particular note. As inheritors of a long political tradition and beneficiaries of somewhat more recent social stability, radicals had great hopes for human progress. Yet they were poised at a crucial stage in ideological development since all around them they observed evidence of moral decay and political corruption. They were sharply aware of this anomaly and anxiously sought to resolve it. And though the radicals’ deployment of their ideology in public debate often made it appear insular, in reality its application was universal. In particular, radical understanding was sensitive to libertarian issues beyond the shores of England and was willing to perceive relevance in the experience of other countries.

Excluded from the central arena of national politics by a self-denying ordinance that prevented them from making the easy compromises necessary to conform to the practices of church and state, radicals operated as a pressure group whose object was the promotion of constitutional integrity. Their recurrent argument was that the vital principles of the constitution had been so extensively corrupted that the government was in imminent danger of degenerating into tyranny; they constantly reiterated that if English liberty was to survive, immediate action was essential. They took part in many campaigns. During the second half of the eighteenth century they were involved in Wilkite agitation in London and elsewhere, the associated counties movement for parliamentary reform which began in 1779 and faded away after 1785, the more advanced recommendations of the Westminster Sub-Committee of 1780, the Society for Constitutional Information (founded in the same year), and the moderate reform movement of the 1790s. In ecclesiastical politics the radicals took part in the so-called “Feathers Tavern” petition of 1771–72 to secure for Anglican clergy relief from the obligation to subscribe to the Trinitarian Articles of Religion, the request for similar relief for dissenting clergy and schoolmasters, and the campaigns to obtain repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1787, 1789, and 1790.³ Beyond all was the cause of the American colonists.

Nor should the importance of their actions be denigrated. In objective terms, the radicals’ only victory was modest—they secured relief for nonconformist ministers and schoolmasters in 1779—and success on that occasion was largely the consequence of external factors not of their making. But they set themselves tasks of a far higher order than, for example, the Quakers did when they obtained exemption from the requirement to take oaths and register their children with the ecclesiastical parish. For their programs were concerned with the central structure of English political society, and at the very least their rhetoric compelled a deeper discussion of many fundamental issues.

In some respects radicals formed a diverse gathering of men and women. Many were Dissenters, some were Anglicans; a number were landowners, most were professional men. Though many either lived permanently in London or visited the capital regularly, centers of radicalism flourished in many parts of the provinces. But if there was neither total correspondence nor symmetry in their background and social status any more than in their opinions, the bonds of unity, common interest, and similarity of outlook were sufficient to consider them as a single group. Also there was a complex network of connections among the great majority which, although it lacked the single center of a spider’s web, was still very tightly knit.⁴

Before examining their social standing and the nature of their ideology, a number of radicals must be discussed individually. Although they shared a common ideology, there were so many that, for purposes of description, they should be broken down into different groups. A rough-and-ready criterion can be fashioned out of the two great causes that agitated them: parliamentary reform and the repeal of discriminatory legislation directed against Dissenters. It is essential to note, however, that this categorization is neither entirely consistent nor mutually exclusive; many radicals were actively involved in both causes.

Parliamentary reform attracted the attention of almost all radicals. Some of the most active were Christopher Wyvill, John Cartwright, Granville Sharp, John Jebb, and Thomas Brand Hollis. Among them they spanned the gamut from moderate to advanced within the limits of their own form of radicalism.

Most cautious and most shrewd among the reformers was Christopher Wyvill. A liberal clergyman of the established church, his theological views were all but Unitarian. After the failure in 1772 of the “Feathers” petition he decided to remain a member of the church but abandoned the active practice of his ministry. At about the same time he inherited through his wife’s family lands which established him as one of the leading gentry in the North Riding of Yorkshire; the independence given by his income and social status enabled Wyvill to devote his attention to political affairs. A man of complete integrity, clear vision, and political intuition, he was the guiding force behind the associated counties movement that promoted parliamentary reform from 1779 to 1785.⁵ Thereafter he remained active though less prominent in the cause of reform; he also worked for the repeal of discriminatory legislation against Dissenters. As a tactician, he exploited the newspapers for propaganda purposes, understood the importance of cooperating with the great parliamentarians while remaining independent, and accepted the need for compromise. If Wyvill was unable to achieve success, no one could.

Few men played leading roles in the agitation of the nineteenth century as well as that of eighteenth; Major John Cartwright achieved this distinction.⁶ A member of an old Nottinghamshire family that had lost much of its estate during the Civil War, he nevertheless owned substantial landed property and had connections with the aristocracy of his neighborhood; having originally intended to make a career in the navy, he had resigned his commission shortly before the American Revolntion and taken up farming and reform politics. Though active in the associated counties movement, Cartwright’s principal contribution to eighteenth-century reform was as a propagandist. His first reform tract, Take Your Choice! (published in 1776), advocated universal manhood suffrage and proposed one of the most advanced programs of its day: one which anticipated the Chartists by more than fifty years. In 1780 he played an important part in founding the most significant organ of its generation for the dissemination of radical opinion, the Society for Constitutional Information. Pertinacious in spirit rather than original or adaptable in mind, he continued to advocate parliamentary reform until his death in 1824; in his last years his views became markedly more extreme.

The breadth of interest among the reformers is illustrated to a remarkable degree by the career of Granville Sharp. A member of a distinguished clerical family, Sharp was highly unusual among the radicals for remaining a devout and orthodox member of the Church of England; biblical interpretation was always the principal intellectual focus of his life. John Adams, who met Sharp while Adams was American minister in London after the Revolution, aptly remarked that “the grandson of the famous Archbishop Sharp [was] very amiable & benevolent in his dispositions, and a voluminous writer, but as Zealously attached to Episcopacy & the Athanasian Creed as he is to civil and religious Liberty—a mixture which in this Country is not common”⁷ Sharp’s theological devotion led him into a multitude of humanitarian campaigns and particularly into the crusade against slavery; his greatest triumph (perhaps the greatest success of any reformer in his generation) came in 1772 with Lord Mansfield’s decision in Somerset’s Case that slavery was an institution unknown in English law. He became interested in parliamentary reform during the American Revolution and was much respected as the author of a number of tracts advocating considerably more radical reform than that proposed by Wyvill, including his own distinctive institution of “frank-pledge.” He was also active in the associated counties agitation, providing material for his brother James, who sat on the London Common Council, and any others who wished to use it.

An extreme wing of commonwealth radicalism existed in the persons of Thomas Hollis, Thomas Brand Hollis, and John Jebb. Both Hollises came from dissenting stock and were said to be republicans. A retiring man, Thomas Hollis owned estates in Dorset but, disgusted by the bribery and other corrupt practices endemic in eighteenth-century politics, he rejected several suggestions that he should enter Parliament. Instead he published and distributed throughout the world books on liberty; he arranged for the republication of many of the classic texts of the previous century, and through these works he influenced the course of English radicalism in his own day. Brand Hollis was less circumspect. Although unrelated, he had inherited Thomas Hollis’s estates and wealth in 1774 and used it to obtain election for the rotten borough of Hindon at the general election of that year. Later, however, he was unseated on petition and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and a fine for bribery; he was able partially to restore his reputation by his association with Jebb and the Society for Constitutional Information. In the early 1790s he associated with Thomas Paine and as a Dissenter participated in the campaign for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts; always he was more of a lieutenant than a leader.⁸

John Jebb, who collaborated with Brand Hollis as a member of the subcommittee of the Westminster Committee for parliamentary reform in 1780 which advocated universal manhood suffrage, came from an Anglican family. As a theological liberal he was active in the movement to abolish clerical subscription, but when it failed he resigned his preferments and, with great reluctance, his Cambridge fellowship. Lacking an independent income, Jebb might have entered nonconformist orders; instead he took up medicine and practiced as a London physician. His arrival in the metropolis came at an opportune moment for he had been interested in politics for some time. He became active in the Middlesex reform movement as well as Westminster agitation and collaborated with Cartwright in founding the Society for Constitutional Information; the extremity of his views and his reputation for hotheadedness somewhat diminished his influence. Unfortunately, he died in 1786.⁹ His wife Ann was also an active radical.

Many others were actively concerned with political reform. James Burgh, a dissenting schoolmaster of Newington Green, provided the radicals with a contemporary text when he published his most influential book Political Disquisitions shortly before his death in 1775. Catharine Macaulay, a brilliant woman who had many intellectual admirers including Thomas Hollis, published a six-volume history of England as a rebuttal to the famous History by David Hume. Though useful as a reference work for radicals, it failed to supplant its conservative rival in the public mind; her various political pamphlets probably were more influential. Thomas Day was a devotee of Rousseau’s educational theories and author of a celebrated didactic children’s book Sandford and Merton; he was also an active political writer and for a time was one of the leading members and authors of the Society for Constitutional Information. Radicals were rare in Parliament, but David Hartley was notable as an enthusiastic reformer in the House of Commons; unfortunately his prolixity and eccentricity severely reduced his effectiveness. Matthew Robinson-Morris, Baron Rokeby, also sat in the Commons, but published his tracts from retirement. Charles Lennox, duke of Richmond, was an unlikely figure to be included among the radicals, as were Viscount Mahon, later Earl Stanhope, and Willoughby Bertie, earl of Abingdon; all enjoyed a reputation for radicalism in the upper House. The bench of bishops was traditionally conservative, but Jonathan Shipley, bishop of St. Asaph, was known for his liberal beliefs, and the consecration of Richard Watson as bishop of Llandaff in 1782 added a distinctive touch of political heterodoxy to the Lords, as he had earlier been active in the reform movement in Cambridgeshire.¹⁰

The second great cause, the relief of Dissenters, was narrower in objective and attracted the attention of a much more homogeneous group. Nevertheless, as has already been shown, Nonconformists were not concerned exclusively with their own sectarian interests but were also active in political reform. Some were laymen, others were ministers; few became as unorthodox as David Williams, who opened a deistic chapel near Cavendish Square and later became a French citizen. Andrew Kippis served for forty-two years as a Presbyterian minister in Westminster, but achieved greater fame as a journalist and biographer; his greatest enterprise was the Biographia Britannica. Many other London and provincial ministers offered overt or tacit support to the cause of reform. Of all the black regiment of nonconformist clergy two men stand out: Richard Price and Joseph Priestley. Both had wide intellectual interests—Price published a number of tracts on demography, finance, and insurance, and Priestley acquired a distinguished reputation as an experimental scientist—but they were particularly notable as advanced theologians. Price was an Arian and Priestley a Socinian, and their theological principles ensured that they could never be popular in a generally orthodox society. Their politics only exacerbated public hostility toward them. Price was a gentle person and a poor preacher, but his political views were clear and forceful and his tracts sometimes provoked vigorous reprisals by those who disagreed with them. Already unpopular because of his liberalism during the American war, his approval of the French Revolution aroused an intense furor, from the full consequences of which he was probably saved only by his death in 1791.¹¹

If anything, Priestley aroused even more antipathy. His radical views in theology and politics might have been tolerated by his fellow citizens, but unfortunately Priestley was an abrasive and indiscreet publicist in circumstances that called for considerable delicacy and tacrical subtlety. In particular, his polemical writings in support of relief for Dissenters could all too easily be construed as leading to an immediate root-and-branch attack on the established church. Priestley’s sympathy for the French Revolution increased his unpopularity to such an extent that he felt himself in danger of prosecution for sedition or treason; ultimately he decided that voluntary emigration to the United States in 1794 was preferable to the possibility of enforced transportation to Botany Bay. Even in America, Priestley’s political views sometimes made his life stormy, but the closing years of his life were ones of happiness.

Dissenting radicalism was strong in London but by no means confined to the metropolis. The greatest Baptist polemicist, Robert Robinson, lived in Cambridge. Unlike the Presbyterian ministers, Robinson was a poor, self-educated man. He was active both in the parliamentary reform movement and in the campaign for Dissenters’ relief; his literary style was vigorous and earthy, sometimes bawdy, and often offensive. In the west another Baptist, the Calvinist Caleb Evans, was prominent in Bristol as minister of the Broadmead Chapel, and Joshua Toulmin represented the Unitarian strain of Baptist theology in Taunton. Other Dissenters further afield included Micaiah Towgood in Exeter, Newcome Cappe in York, William Turner in Wakefield, George Walker in Nottingham, and James Murray (by origin a Scottish Presbyterian) who had a chape...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. English Radicals
• 2. A Transatlantic Community
• 3. Liberty and Union
• 4. American Independence
• 5. Liberty and Reform
• 6. The New Republic
• 7. Religious Liberty
• 8. Middle Way
• 9. Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index