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Political Clubs in Restoration London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

David Allen
David Allen
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Extract

Although Dryden's literary club in Covent Garden is remembered today by the readers of Restoration literature, political clubs in Charles II's metropolis have been litde studied by the historians of his reign. Of these political clubs, it was, of course, the First Whigs' Green Ribbon Club which always made most noise in the world, both at the time of the Popish Plot and Exclusionist agitation as well as in partisan histories of that agitation. Accounts of the Club by chroniclers of the calibre of Roger North or of Sir George Sitwell exist alongside the more recent but tantalizingly, brief description from J. R. Jones. Professor Jones has exploded the myth', writes another modern historian, ‘that the Whig Green Ribbon Club was an all-powerful manipulator of mobs and riots; its importance in this field extended only to financing or helping to finance, the two great 17 November pope-burnings in 1675 and 1680, which North regarded as contrived by the club.’ But other characteristics of this club also merit attention, especially in comparison with less well-known Whig clubs in London.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 1976 , pp. 561 - 580
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 See North, R., Examen (London, 1740), p. 572Google Scholar; Sitwell, G., The First Whig (privately printed, Scarborough 1894), pp. 82, 197Google Scholar; Jones, J. R. ‘The Green Ribbon Club’, Durham University Journal, n.s. XVIII (12 1956), pp. 17–20.Google Scholar

2 Miller, J., Popery and Politics in England 1660–1688 (Cambridge, 1973), p. 183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Jones, J. R., ‘The Green Ribbon Club’, p. 17. In A History of the Tory Party, 1640–1714. (London, 1924)Google Scholar Sir Keith Feiling mentioned the Whig Green Ribbon Club but not the Tory clubs of the Exclusion Crisis.

4 Swift, J., Journal to Stella (ed. Williams, H., Oxford 1948), II, 490.Google Scholar

5 See Allen, R. J., The Clubs of Augustan London (Harvard, 1933), pp. 4–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Throughout this article our concern is never with the phantom-clubs, such as the Calves-Head Club, which were later created in the imagination of Ned Ward and given a spurious history, dating back to the Restoration; on this, see Ward, E., The Secret History of the Calves-Head Club (London, 1703).Google Scholar Likewise, a free-thinking City club of 1747, calling itself The Robin Hood Society, was given a spurious history, dating back to 1660, on which, see Allen, R. J., p. 130.Google Scholar

6 See, for example, Samuel Butler's character of a coffee-man, who ‘admits of no distinction of persons, but gentleman, mechanic, lord and scoundrel mix, and are all of a piece, as if they were resolv'd into their first principles.’ (Characters, ed. C. Daves (Cleve-land, 1970), pp. 256–8.) The cheapness of coffee-houses, contrasting with the expense of taverns, was considered by some to encourage this mixed company; see, for example, The Character of a Coffee-House with the Symptoms of a Town Wit (London, 1673)Google Scholar; The Grand Concern of England Explained (London, 1673)Google Scholar; Coffee Houses Vindicated (London, 1675).Google Scholar

7 See A List of One Unanimous Club of Voters in His Majesties Long Parliament (London, 1679)Google Scholar

8 See Aubrey, J., Brief Lives, ed. Clark, A. (Oxford, 1898), 1, 175;Google ScholarPoems of John Cleveland lien (ed. Berdan, J. M., New York, 1903), pp. 47–8;Google ScholarTimbs, J., Clubs and Club Life in London (London, 1898), p. 30;Google ScholarQuintana, R.‘The Butler-Oxenden Correspondence’, Modern Lanno guage Notes, XLVIII (01 1933), 11.Google Scholar

9 See Burghclere, W., George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham (London, 1903), p. 137Google Scholar.

10 10 See C[alendar of] S[tate] P[apers] D[omestic] 1661–1662, pp. 86, 196–7; CSPD 1663–1664 P. 303.

11 J. R. Jones ‘The Green Ribbon Club’, p. 18; P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice] SP. 29/418/199.

12 Just as today one inn in the Midlands is known to the present writer, which is the ‘local’ both of the county council's Conservative chairman and of the local Labour party!

13 See CSPD 1666–1667 p. 444. The most reliable surviving list of the Green Ribbon Club is in the Pepysian Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge: Pepysian Miscellanies VII, 488–91. I am grateful to R. C. Latham, Pepys Librarian, for permission to consult this source.

14 See The Pepys Ballads, ed Rollins, H. E. (Harvard, 1930), III, 68;Google ScholarKenyon, J. P., The Popish Plot (London, 1972), pp. 44, 47, 56Google Scholar; Diary of the Reverend John Ward, arranged by Severn, C. (London, 1839), p. 141.Google Scholar

15 See CSPD 1680–1681, p. 221. Doubtless the government's previous inability to suppress coffee-houses in December 1675 warned it not to make a fool of itself again, by persuading justices of peace to close down those taverns where it knew Whig clubs met regularly.

16 See B[ritish] M[useum] Add[itional] MSS 28053, fo. 390; Memoirs of Thomas, Earl of Ailesbury (Roxburgh Club, 1890), I, 64–5.Google Scholar

17 See CSPD 1661–1662, p. 86.

18 See CSPD July–Sept. 1683, p. 217; Dangerfield, T., Narrative (London, 1679)Google Scholar; B. M. Harleian MSS. 6845, fo. 282.

19 See R. North, Examen, p. 574; Pepysian Miscellanies VII, 488–91. It is interesting to note that Pepys's bête noire, Colonel Scott, was admitted a member of the Green Ribbon Club on 16 Dec. 1680, upon the motion of John Trenchard (fo. 487). Was this a further reason for Pepys's interest in transcribing the club's journal, since he collected other information about Scott?

20 See Swift, J., Journal to Stella, I, 241–2.Google Scholar

21 Pepysian Miscellanies, VII, 465–88.

22 See Graves, T. S., ‘Some Pre-Mohock Clansmen’, Studies in Philology, xx (1923), pp. 395–421.Google Scholar

23 See Life and Times of Anthony Wood, ed. Clark, A. (Oxford, 1892), I, 509.Google Scholar

24 See North, R., Examen, p. 572;Google ScholarLuttrell, N., A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs (Oxford, 1857), I, 110–11;Google ScholarSir Lauder, John of Fountainhall, Historical Observes (Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh, 1890), p. 19;Google ScholarHaley, K. H. D., The First Earl of Shaftesbury (Oxford, 1968), p. 412.Google Scholar Apparently female dress did not adjust itself so noticeably to the partisan divisions the of the Exclusion Crisis, unlike the distinctive ribbons worn earlier by ‘Levelling ladies’ or in the manner of High Church or Low Church ladies, later in Queen Anne's reign, on Ion which, see Higgins, P., ‘The Reactions of Women, with special reference to women petitioners’ in Politics, Religion and the English Civil War (ed. Manning, B., London 1973), pp. 179–222;Google ScholarThe Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed.Halsband, R. (Oxford, 1965–1967), I, 70–1.Google Scholar

25 See Swift, J., Journal to Stella, I, 236.Google Scholar

26 See above, note 6 for this contrast.

27 See Life and Times of Anthony Wood, I, 366.

28 See Letters Addressed from London to Sir Joseph Williamson 1673–4, ed. Christie, W. D. (Camden Society 1874), II, 68.Google Scholar

29 See, for example, A Dialogue Between an Exchange, And Exchange-Alley; Or, A Court and City Apprentice (London, 1681)Google Scholar; Autobiography of the Hon. Roger North, ed. Jessopp, A. (Norwich, 1887), p. 173;Google ScholarNorth, R., Examen, pp. 616–17.Google Scholar

30 See Ferguson, J., Robert Ferguson, The Plotter (Edinburgh, 1887), pp. 409–10, 418;Google ScholarRobbins, C. (ed.), Two English Republican Tracts (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 9, 16–17, 41.Google Scholar

31 See CSPD 1682, p. 237.

32 See Burghclere, W., George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham (London, 1903), p. 330.Google Scholar

33 See Diary of Samuel Peps, 4 Nov. 1668; CSPD 1667–1668, p. 238.

34 See Ashley, M., John Wildman (London, 1947), p. 178.Google Scholar Wildman had also been a member of the Rota, for notices of which, see Aubrey, J., Brief Lives, I, 290;Google ScholarDiary of Samuel Pepys, 9, 10, 14 Jan. 1660.

35 See CSPD 1667–1668, p. 89. Probably Wildman was the brains behind Buckingham's show of legal-historical learning, when he had argued in the House of Lords that some statutes of Edward III's reign were relevant to his contention that the long prorogation of the Cavalier Parliament from 1675 to 1677 amounted, in fact, to its dissolution, since ‘statutes of the realm are not like women, for they are not a jot the worse for being old.’ (M. Ashley, John Wildman, p. 213.)

36 See CSPD 1682, pp. 356–8; Wildman, J., ‘A brief discourse concerning the businesse of intelligence and how it may be managed to the best advantage’, in English Historical Review, XIII (1898), 532Google Scholar.

37 See Diary of Henry Townsend, ed. Bund, J. W. Willis (Worcestershire Historical Society, 1920), part 11, pp. 96–7.Google ScholarRemarkable Passages in the Life of William Kiffin (London, 1823), pp. 41–2.Google Scholar

38 See CSPD 1682, pp. 495, 237; Robbins, C. (ed.), Two English Republican Tracts (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 16, 18.Google Scholar

39 See H[istorical] M[anuscripts] C[ommission] 36: Ormonde. N.S. IV, p. 561; CSPD 1679–1680, p. 296.

40 See Pepysian Miscellanies VII, 465, 474; CSPD 1682, p. 494; CSPD July–Sept. 1683, pp. 166, 296, 303. Of the ‘ancient’ members of the Green Ribbon Club, John Trenchard was most forward in sponsoring new members.

41 See Life and Times of Anthony Wood, III, 42. This support for Monmouth by the town youth of Oxford was one expression of their hostility to the youth of the University, who tended to support Charles II and the Tories. Yet it is worth noting that the town youths had also cheered the king, when he entered Oxford for the meeting of Parliament there, in March 1681, on which, see Anthony Wood, III, 526.

42 See B.M. Add. MSS 28051, fo. 189; 28053, fo. 390.

43 The scandal in Dunblane's wooing of Bridget Hyde was that she was already married to her cousin, John Emerton, who appealed to the Ecclesiastical Courts to uphold his marriage; the subsequent legal delays encouraged both Emerton and Dunblane to take the law into their hands and so made a cause célèbre.

44 See Calendar of State Papers Relating to Ireland, 1666–1669, pp. 139, 604, 628.

45 See B.M. Add. MSS 28053, fos. 390, 116; 28051, fo. 49.

46 See Life and Times of Anthony Wood, I, 201, 241–2; III, 451.

47 See B.M. Add. MSS 28051, fo. 189; Swift, J., Journal to Stella, I, 294.Google Scholar What Swift called The Brothers was known by other members of the club as The Society. I am grateful to David Nokes, of King's College, London, for sharing with me his knowledge of political and literary clubs in Augustan London.

48 See Pett, P., The Happy Future State of England (London, 1680), pp. 241, 159, 170, 139–54, 266.Google Scholar

49 See B.M. Add. MSS 28053, fos. 390–1; Essex Papers, Volume One (ed. Airy, O., Camden Society, 1890), p. 319;Google ScholarGrey, A., Debates in the House of Commons 1667–1694 (London, 1763), VII, 287;Google ScholarBrowning, A. and Milne, D., ‘An Exclusion Bill Division List’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XXIII (1950), p. 215;Google ScholarFoxcroft, H. C., The Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, 1st Marquis of Halifax (London, 1898), I, 272.Google Scholar

50 See North, R., Examen, p. 544.Google Scholar

51 Cf.Allen, D., ‘TheRole of the London Trained Bandsin the Exclusion Crisis, 1678–1681’, English Historical Review, LXXXVII (04 1972), p. 290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 See Luttrell, N., A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs (Oxford, 1857), I, 114.Google Scholar

53 Diary of John Evelyn, 26 Sept. 1672; 18 Nov. 1679.

54 See P.R.O. SP. 29/417/147; Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, ed. Browning, A. (Glasgow, 1936), p. 244;Google ScholarNorth, R., Examen, p. 597.Google Scholar

55 Cf. Allen, D., ‘The Political Function of Charles II's Chiffinch’, Huntington Library Quarterly XXXIX, 05 1976.Google Scholar

56 See Memoirs of Thomas, Earl of Ailesbury, I, 64–5; Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, p. 244; North, R., Examen, pp. 597, 616–17.Google Scholar Sir John Moore's decision in this respect was not too dissimilar from that of the Whig Lord Mayor, Sir Robert Clayton, to refuse to identify his mayoralty too closely with the Whig petitioning lords in the winter of 1679–80.

57 For notices of Cleveland's club, see above note 8. On Charles II's habit of dining privately with his political opponents, see B.M. Add. MSS 36988, fos. 153–4; Allen, D., ‘The Political Function of Charles II's Chifinch’, Huntington Library Quarterly, xxxix, 05 1976.Google Scholar