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Inventing Revolution: 1688 and Eighteenth-Century Popular Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Extract

The Revolution, the Glorious British Revolution, which the Americans have rejoiced in, and will ever rejoice in as the pride of the age in which it was brought about, and the admiration and blessing of succeeding times, must be looked up to with reverence as a precedent, the grandest precedent, that modern times have exhibited for the justification of any people insulted, plundered, or in the least manner oppressed by the unfeelingness of arbitrary power; it having legalized the natural right of resistance. [Public Advertiser, November 1, 1788]

Over a decade ago, Tom Nairn alleged that lack of a populist potentially revolutionary nationalism in England was due in large part to the effective co-option of seventeenth-century upheavals by ruling elites. From his perspective, the Revolution of 1688 constituted only an episode in the “long, successful counter-revolution of the propertied classes” against the subversive ideological potential of the first English Revolution that has continued to the present day. This provocative and unrepentant neo-Marxist reading of English history has, ironically, become part of the new orthodoxy on 1688 that has emerged in the revisionist, anti-Whig historiography of the past fifteen years. The series of events once heralded as the foundation of modern parliamentary democracy is now presented as but a troubled and confusing hiatus in patrician politics, unrelentingly “conservationist” in ideological and political effect, in which Whig and Tory leaders managed to rid themselves of an unacceptable monarch without recourse to the political or ideological extremism of Charles I's reign.

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Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1989

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References

1 Nairn, Tom, “The English Enigma,” in The Break-up of Britain, 2d ed. (London, 1981), pp. 295–97Google Scholar.

2 An orthodoxy on which historians of both sides of the political spectrum seem to be able to agree; see, e.g., Clark, J. C. D., English Society, 1688–1832 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 119–98Google Scholar, and Revolution and Rebellion (Cambridge, 1987), passimGoogle Scholar; and Hay, Douglas, “Property, Authority and the Criminal Law,” in Albion's Fatal Tree, ed. Hay, Douglas, Rule, John, Thompson, E. P., and Winslow, Cal (New York, 1975), pp. 1764Google Scholar—although Clark and Hay clearly stress a rather different set of ideological consequences.

3 The leading proponents of the revisionist view are Jones, J. R., The Revolution of 1688 in England (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Western, J. R., Monarchy and Revolution (London, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kenyon, J. P., Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party, 1689–1720 (Cambridge, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The term is from Jones, p. 328.

4 Kenyon, J. P., “The Revolution of 1688; Resistance and Contract,” in Historical Perspectives, ed. McKendrick, Neil (London, 1974), pp. 4369Google Scholar; Miller, John, “The Glorious Revolution; ‘Contract’ and ‘Abdication’ Reconsidered,” Historical Journal 25 (1982): 541–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sachse, William L., “The Mob and the Revolution of 1688,” Journal of British Studies 4 (1964): 2340CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Plumb, J. H., The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1675–1725 (London, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See, e.g., Baugh, Daniel, ed., Aristocratic Government and Society in Eighteenth Century England (New York, 1975), pp. 128Google Scholar; Kenyon, , Revolution Principles, pp. 170208Google Scholar; and Plumb, pp. 31–97.

6 Such as Ashcraft, Richard, Revolutionary Politics and Locke's “Two Treatises of Government” (Princeton, N.J., 1986)Google Scholar; De Krey, Gary, A Fractured Society: The Politics of London in the First Age of Party, 1688–1715 (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar; Goldie, Mark, “The Roots of True Whiggism, 1688–94,” History of Political Thought 1 (1980): 195236Google Scholar; Schwoerer, Lois, The Declaration of Rights, 1689 (Baltimore, 1981)Google Scholar, and Propaganda in the Revolution of 1688–89,” American Historical Review 82 (1977); 843–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Some exceptions are Robbins, Caroline, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthmen (Cambridge, Mass., 1961)Google Scholar; Brewer, John, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dickinson, H. T., “The Eighteenth Century Debate on the Glorious Revolution,” History 61 (1976): 2845CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth Century Britain (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; Pocock, J. G. A., ed., Three British Revolutions (Princeton, N.J., 1982)Google Scholar; and Pocock, , Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, Dickinson and Pocock have assessed the articulation of “Revolution principles” solely in relation to parliamentary elites, Robbins examined their treatment in the writings of a tiny band of “real whig” theorists, while Brewer sees their radicalization in popular political ideology as a product of British radicals' exposure to the ideas of disaffected American colonists. All three views are challenged, at least implicitly, in my argument below.

8 For the purposes of simplicity, I use the terms “Revolution” and “1688” inter-changeably, to refer to James's deposition, the accession of William and Mary to the Crown, and the Revolution Settlement (save when clarity demands greater specificity). The terms “popular” and “populist” are used throughout this article to describe language or arguments that champion the rights or roles of “the people,” exclusive of parliamentary elites, in political activities; they are not used as social designations and are not offered as synonyms for “plebeian” but include the middling sort. “Radical” and “dissident” are used to designate political views or practices which challenge the existing oligarchic structure of the post-Revolution state. The context makes it clear whether these challenges are emanating from (to use anachronisms) the “left” or “right.”

9 For the preeminent discussion of this “alternate structure of politics” see Brewer, pp. 139–200. His chronology of the emergence of this wider political world has, however, been challenged by a number of historians, myself included. See Wilson, Kathleen, “Empire, Trade and Popular Politics in Mid-Hanoverian Britain: The Case of Admiral Vernon,” Past and Present, no. 121 (November 1988), pp. 74109Google Scholar, and The Rejection of Deference: Urban Political Culture in England, 1715–1785” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1985)Google Scholar, to be published as “The Sense of the People”: Urban Political Culture in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge University Press, 1990, in press)Google Scholar.

10 As Richard Ashcraft has reminded us for the seventeenth century, political ideas and political ideologies are forms of “social consciousness” that flow through a variety of media, allowing individuals to understand their political world and supplying the standards that make specific political and social action meaningful (pp. 5–6). The consideration of its low as well as high levels in the eighteenth century can help us to recover the meaning of political discourse in its various social contexts.

11 For a discussion of this concept (which is usually used to describe the establishment of conservative, nationalistic political rituals and practices), see Hobsbawm, Eric, “Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 114Google Scholar.

12 Bristol Gazette and Public Advertiser (November 6, 1788).

13 See, e.g., Leeds Mercury (November 11, 1788); Bristol Gazette and Public Advertiser (November 13, 1788); Manchester Mercury (November 11, 18, 1788); Cumberland Pacquet (November 10, 1788); Norfolk Chronicle (November 8, 1788); Morning Chronicle (November 4, 1788); An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Town of Lancaster: Collected from the Best Authorities (Lancaster, 1807), p. 96Google Scholar (thanks to Jan Albers for the last reference).

14 Leeds Mercury (November 11, 1788).

15 I develop this argument about the impact of the American war in “The Sense of the People” (n. 9 above).

16 For a discussion of these themes see Rudé, GeorgeParis and London in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1952), pp. 268–92Google Scholar; Sainsbury, John, “The Pro-Americans of London,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 25 (1978): 454Google Scholar; Christie, Ian, Wilkes, Wyvil and Reform (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Goodwin, Albert, Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 1964Google Scholar; Cannon, John, The Fox-North Coalition: Crisis of the Constitution (Cambridge, 1969)Google Scholar; and Barlow, R. B., Citizenship and Conscience (Philadelphia, 1962), pp. 221–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 See, e.g., [Priestley, Joseph], A Letter to the Right Honourable William Pitt (London, 1787), pp. 53, 8–9Google Scholar. For the 1784 election see Kelly, Paul, “Radicalism and Public Opinion in the General Election of 1784,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 45 (1972): 7388CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In 1785, only two counties and ten boroughs—one-third the number that had rallied to the cause three years earlier—had petitioned for reform.

18 See, e.g., Drescher, Seymour, Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective (New York, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Innes, Joanna, “Politics and Morals: The Reformation of Manners Movement in Later Eighteenth Century England,” in The Transformation of Political Culture in Late Eighteenth Century England and Germany, ed. Birke, Adolph and Hellmuth, Ekhart (Oxford University Press, in press)Google Scholar.

19 Public Advertiser (November 1, 1788).

20 The Universal and Everlasting Dominion of God … A Sermon preach'd … the Fourth of November, 1788 (London, 1789)Google Scholar.

21 Bristol Gazette and Public Advertiser (November 13, 1788); Norfolk Chronicle (November 8, 1788); Picton, G. A., Memorials of Liverpool (Liverpool. 1892). p. 22Google Scholar; Newcastle Courant (November 8, 1788).

22 Norfolk Chronicle (November 8, 1788).

23 Manchester Mercury (November 11, 1788).

24 Salisbury Journal (November 10, 1788); see also Public Advertiser (November 4, 1788).

25 Wood, William, Two Sermons preached at Mill-Hill Chapel… in the Celebration of the Hundredth Anniversary of the Happy Revolution (Leeds, 1788), p. 16Google Scholar.

26 Enfield, William, A Sermon on the Centennial Commemoration of the Revolution (Norwich, 1788), pp. 9–10, 1617Google Scholar. Enfield was applying to the political realm what Richard Price had argued for the intellectual realm in his Sermon on the Evidence of a Future Period of Improvement in the State of Mankind ([London, 1787], p. 27)Google Scholar, when he predicted that “the human mind must soon be emancipated from the chains of Church authority and Church establishments, for the Liberality of the times has already loosened their foundations.”

27 See, e.g., Priestley, Joseph, Essay on the First Principles of Government; and on the Nature of Political, Civil and Religious Liberty (London, 1768)Google Scholar.

28 Abstract of the History and Proceedings of the Revolution Society in London (London, 1789), pp. 1013Google Scholar; A List of the Society, Instituted in 1787, for the Purpose of Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (London, 1788)Google Scholar; Black, Eugene, The Association (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 211–15Google Scholar. Many of the rank and file were also members of the SCI; see Black, p. 215.

29 [Priestley], Letter to … Pitt (n. 17 above), pp. 8–9.

30 Public Advertiser (November 6, 1788); Newcastle Chronicle (November 8, 1788); Leeds Mercury (November 11, 1788).

31 Public Advertiser (November 6, 1788); Abstract, p. 7.

32 Abstract, pp. 2–10.

33 In 1782, Towers published a spirited defense of Locke against Josiah Tucker's assault on him, in which he argued that it was the government's repudiation of Lockean principles that had resulted in national degradation and the loss of America; he had also defended in print Lord William Russell against the aspersions cast on him by Sir John Dalrymple, who had revealed that Russell, like Sidney, had been a pensioner of Louis XIV. See Towers, Joseph, A Vindication of the Political Principles of Mr. Locke in Answer to the Objections of the Rev'd Dr. Tucker, Dean of Gloucester (London, 1782)Google Scholar, An Examination into the Nature and Evidence of the Charges brought against Lord W. Russell, and A. Sydney (London, 1773)Google Scholar. Thanks to Lois Schwoerer for this latter reference. Towers also attacked progovernment pamphleteers during the American war; see [Towers, Joseph], A Letter to Dr. Samuel Johnson … With an Appendix, containing some Observations on A Pamphlet lately Published by Dr. Shebbeare (London, 1775)Google Scholar.

34 Goldie (n. 6 above), pp. 214–16.

35 Towers, Joseph, An Oration Delivered at the London Tavern on the Fourth of November, 1788 (London, 1788), pp. 10, 23–25, 27, 3031Google Scholar. See also, Hayley, William, Occasional Stanzas, written at the Request of the Revolution Society, Nov. 4, 1788 (London, 1788)Google Scholar.

36 Barlow (n. 16 above), pp. 221–29; Priestley (n. 27 above), p. 9.

37 Priestley, Joseph, The Importance and Extent of Free Inquiry into Matters of Religion (London, 1785)Google Scholar; Money, John, Experience and Identity: Birmingham and the Westmidlands (Montreal, 1977), p. 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Price (n. 26 above).

38 Abstract, p. 14.

39 Gunn, J. A. W., in Beyond Liberty and Property (Montreal, 1983), pp. 242–51Google Scholar, provides a lucid discussion of this point, which was first made by Joseph Priestley in his Essay on the First Principles of Government (n. 27 above). For contemporary radical arguments, see Cartwright, John, Take Your Choice! (London, 1776)Google Scholar, and his Declaration of the Rights of the Commonalty of England [1782].

40 See, e.g., Cartwright's Take Your Choice! and Declaration. It is noteworthy that Cartwright believed in maintaining property qualifications for M.P.s (Take Your Choice! pp. 58–59, 69).

41 Such as Priestley, , Essay on First Principles of Government, p. 17Google Scholar.

42 General Evening Post (November 4/6, 1788).

43 Public Advertiser (November 7, 1788). For examples of the articulation of these views in provincial commemorative celebrations, see Public Advertiser (November 12, 1788); Newcastle Chronicle (November 8, 1788); Felix Farley's Bristol Journal (November 15, 1788; cited hereafter as Farley's Journal); Money, pp. 219–21.

44 Brewer, John, A Polity Transformed: War and the English State, 1688–1763 (London, in press)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Professor Brewer for allowing me to read the typescript of this study. See also, Gunn, pp. 7–42.

45 Toland, John, The Art of Governing by Partys (London, 1701), p. 56Google Scholar; Cato's Letter no. 17, London Journal, February 18, 1721. Newspaper citations prior to 1752 retain old style dating, save that the new year is taken to begin on January 1.

46 [Hume, Hugh, earl of Marchmont], A Serious Exhortation to the Electors of Great Britain (London, 1740), p. 22Google Scholar.

47 An Impartial Enquiry into the Properties of Places and Pensions, as they Affect the Constitution (London, 1740), pp. 910Google Scholar.

48 BolingbrokeHenry St. John, Viscount Henry St. John, Viscount, Dissertation on Parties, in The Works of Lord Bolingbroke (London, 1841), 2:7075Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Works).

49 Norwich Gazette (August 6, 1726).

50 Newcastle Courant (November 12, 1737); see also Leeds Mercury (November 13, 1739) for a similar commemoration of November 5.

51 Newcastle Courant (December 1, 1733).

52 Craftsman (April 20, 1734); see also Norwich Gazette (April 13, 1734).

53 Quoted in Newcastle Courant (August 8, 1730).

54 The Freeholder's Political Catechism (London, 1733)Google Scholar.

55 Langford, Paul, The Excise Crisis: Society and Politics in the Age of Walpole (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar; Wilson, “Empire, Trade and Popular Politics” (n. 9 above), pp. 89–90.

56 Jones, J. R., The First Whigs (London, 1961), pp. 20–33, 115–55Google Scholar; Kelly, Paul, “Constituents' Instructions to Members of Parliament in the Eighteenth Century,” in Party and Management in Parliament, 1660–1784, ed. Jones, Clyve (Leicester, 1984), pp. 170–73, esp. 170–71Google Scholar.

57 See, e.g., Trenchard and Gordon (as “Cato”) on the right to petition, in The English Libertarian Heritage, ed. Jacobson, David L. (Indianapolis, Ind., 1965), pp. 100, 106–15Google Scholar.

58 Daily Gazetteer (July 6, 1738); A Letter to William Pulteney Esq., Concerning the Administration of Affairs in Great Britain for Several Years Passed (London, 1733)Google Scholar; E[dinburg]h's Instructions to their Member (London, 1741)Google Scholar.

59 See, e.g., The Right of British Subjects, to Petition and Apply to their Representatives, Asserted and Vindicated (London, 1733)Google Scholar; Freeholder's Political Catechism; Craftsman (August 17, 1740, January 10, 1741); see also Historical Manuscript Commission, Egmont MSS (London, 1920), 2:38, 5557Google Scholar.

60 Boyer, Abel, ed., The Political State of Great Britain (1733), 45:440–41Google Scholar. Both the Craftsman and the Champion, however, took a more equivocal view of the binding nature of instructions: see Craftsman (March 17, 1733) and Champion (September 23, 1740) (thanks to Nick Rogers for these references). Compare Kelly, “Constituents' Instructions,” pp. 171–73.

61 Craftsman (March 17, 1733, December 22, 1739, August 16, 1740); Political State of Great Britain, 45:331–35Google Scholar; Champion (November 4, 1740); for instructions stressing the same themes, see Great Britain's Memorial (London, 1740)Google Scholar, and The Second Part of Great Britain's Memorial (London, 1742)Google Scholar.

62 Craftsman (April 21, 1733).

63 An Impartial Enquiry into the Properties of Places and Pensions, pp. 9–10, 37. See also [Hume] (n. 47 above); and Freeholder's Political Catechism (n. 54 above), which champion the “Natural Rights “ of liberty and an uncorrupted House of Commons.

64 Salisbury Journal (November 20, 1739); see also Great Britain's Memorial (n. 61 above), passim.; and Worcester Journal (March 12, 19, April 2, 1742).

65 Salisbury Journal, February 5, 1740.

66 See, e.g., such tracts as The History of Twenty-Nine Years of Rebellion and Usurpation [1717], which agrees fulsomely with the Whigs that the Revolution had inaugurated a period most recently “completed “ by the Hanoverian Succession—a period characterized in the title.

67 Robin's Last Shift (March 10, 31, 1716); The Shift Shift'd (June 23, 30, July 7, 14, 1716); Mist's Weekly Journal (February 3, 1722).

68 [Adams, Elizabeth], Manchester Vindicated (Manchester, 1747), pp. vii–viii, 231Google Scholar. The most famous Jacobite taunting of Whig pretensions, of course, was Vox Populi, Vox Dei, published in 1719.

69 Monod, Paul, “For the King to Enjoy His Own Again: Jacobite Political Culture in England, 1688–1788” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1985), pp. 5965Google Scholar.

70 Fog's Weekly Journal (December 25, 1731) (thanks to Nick Rogers for this reference); see also ibid. May 6, 1732.

71 Fog's Weekly Journal (March 25, 1732).

72 The Liveryman: or, Plain Thoughts on Publick Affairs (London, 1740), pp. 13, 632Google Scholar. Perhaps the Liveryman was exceptional in the rigor with which he drew out the populist implications of the Revolution, but he was fine-tuning ideas and arguments that the opposition campaign had done much to sustain.

73 Bolingbroke, , Letters on the Study and Use of History (1735/1736)Google Scholar, in Works (n. 48 above), 2:237Google Scholar.

74 Craftsman (May 23, July 25, 1741). Bolingbroke had broken his connection with the paper in 1736.

75 Bolingbroke, , Dissertation on Parties, Works 2:89Google Scholar.

76 The apostate patriot Whig leaders were lambasted for their betrayal on their return to office after Walpole's fall. See Norwich Gazette (September 4, October 9, 1742).

77 The Norwich Mercury, e.g., provided running commentary on the ways in which opposition tactics and arguments were undermining the constitutional balance by giving undue political weight to “the People” out-of-doors, a strategy which, the Mercury claimed, aimed “at changing the Constitution into a Republick.” See Mercury (March 31/April 7, 1733; July 20/27, August 17/24, 1734). See also Daily Gazeteer (July 6, 1738).

78 Cato's Letter no. 59, London Journal (January 6, 1721).

79 Newcastle Courant (October 20, 1733).

80 Murray, James, ed., The Contest (Newcastle, 1774), p. 12Google Scholar.

81 Salisbury Journal (March 12, 1764).

82 Farley's Journal (July 1, 1769); KILLING NO MURDER: A Discourse approving it Lawful to Kill a Tyrant according to the Opinion of the Most Celebrated Authors (London, 1775)Google Scholar.

83 Compare the important, but, in my view, oversimplified argument by Kramnick, Isaac (“Republican Revisionism Revisited,” American Historical Review 87 [1982]: 629–64)CrossRefGoogle Scholar that the revival of contract and resistance theory in this period was due to a sudden “rediscovery” of Locke by bourgeois radicals.

84 Wilson, “Rejection of Deference” (n. 9 above), chap. 3; Rogers, Nicholas, “Popular Disaffection during the '45,” London Journal 1 (1975): 527CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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87 Burgh, James, Political Disquisitions (London, 1774)Google Scholar, 1:bk. 4, chaps. 1–3; for the localities, see Wilson, “Rejection of Deference,” chaps. 4, 6, and 8.

88 See Eversley, D. E. C., “The Home Market and Economic Growth in England, 1750–1780,” in Land, Labour and Population in the Industrial Revolution, ed. Jones, E. L. and Mingay, G. E. (London, 1967), pp. 206–59Google Scholar.

89 Such as the tendency to organize themselves into a welter of clubs and societies that embodied, in their internal regulation or purpose, the egalitarian principles they saw as desirable in the political realm. See Brewer, John, “English Radicalism in the Age of George III,” in Pocock, , ed. (n. 7 above), pp. 334–36Google Scholar, and Clubs, Commercialization and Politics,” in The Birth of a Consumer Society, ed. Brewer, John, McKendrick, Neil, and Plumb, J. H. (London, 1982), pp. 197262Google Scholar; and Kathleen Wilson, “Urban Culture and Political Activism in England: The Example of Voluntary Hospitals,” in Birke and Hellmuth, eds., (n. 18 above).

90 Macaulay, Catherine, Observations on a pamphlet, entitled, Thoughts on the Present Discontents, 3d ed. (London, 1770)Google Scholar; Almon, John, Political Register, vol. 2, no. 12 (March 1768): pp. 224–25Google Scholar; Whisperer (August 10, 1771). See also, London Evening Post (August 5/7, 1773). Gerald Newman notes the identification of the Revolution as an “unBritannic oppression “ in radical literature of the 1760s. See Newman, Gerald, The Rise of English Nationalism (New York, 1987), pp. 175–76Google Scholar. For the Chathamite view of the Revolution, see Brewer, , Party Ideology (n. 7 above), pp. 262–63Google Scholar.

91 Hill, Christopher, “The Norman Yoke,” in his Puritanism and Revolution (London, 1955)Google Scholar; [Hulme, Obadiah], An Historical Essay on the English Constitution (London, 1771), pp. 47Google Scholar; Dickinson, , Liberty and Property (n. 7 above), p. 198Google Scholar.

92 Kramnick (n. 83 above).

93 George, M. D., ed., Catalogue of Personal and Political Satires in the British Museum (reprint, London, 1978), 4:179, 54–64, 114–15, 298–99, 183Google Scholar.

94 George, M. D., English Political Caricature (Oxford, 1959), pp. 143–45Google Scholar.

95 Middlesex Journal (April 21, 1770); An Essay Towards a Catalogue of Patriots, Real and Pretended (London, 1769)Google Scholar.

96 Newcastle Journal (June 11, 1774); Virginia Gazette (March 30, 1769).

97 Middlesex Journal (April 21, 1770); Whisperer (May 25, 1771). Seventeenth-century tracts on the right of resistance were also reprinted: see John, Lord Somers, The Judgement of Whole Kingdoms and Nations, Concerning the Rights, Power and Prerogative of Kings, and the Rights, Privileges and Properties of the People (London, 1771)Google Scholar. Even the most “respectable” dissidents seemed to have absorbed the language and world view of radical whiggism into everyday discourse, as evinced in the correspondence of the gentleman merchant and Wilkite, Crisp Molineux of King's Lynn. See Norfolk Record Office (RO) Bradford-Lawrence MSS, Molyneux letter book, fols. 160, 190, 262–63, 199–200.

98 Public Advertiser (December 19, 1769).

99 Middlesex Journal (September 10, 1772).

100 Goldie, “Roots of True Whiggism” (n. 6 above), p. 221; Norfolk Chronicle (March 30, 1771, January 29, 1780); [Murray], (n. 80 above), p. 7; Whisperer (August 10, 1771).

101 Freemen's Magazine, or Constitutional Repository (1774), 2:60Google Scholar, Burgh, , Political Disquisitions (n. 87 above), 1:200Google Scholar; see also Norfolk Chronicle (October 29, November 11, 1769).

102 Newcastle Journal (January 3, 1771).

103 Newcastle Courant (January 7, 1769); A Charge to Englishmen (London, 1768), p. 12Google Scholar.

104 Norfolk Chronicle (December 16, 1769, August 5, 1769); Salisbury Journal (July 25, 1763).

105 Such as in the demonstration that occurred on Wilkes's reelection at Brentford: processioners carried flags inscribed “Freedom, Liberty!” in front of a coach and six, on top of which demonstrators carried huge flags inscribed “BILL OF RIGHTS, MAGNA CHARTA.” Middlesex Journal (April 11, 1769).

106 Middlesex Journal (April 24/26, 1770); Farley's Journal (July 22, 1769); Freemen's Magazine (1774) 1:10Google Scholar; Society for Constitutional Information, Minutes (London, 1782)Google Scholar; see also A Constitutional Answer to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley's Calm Address (London, 1775)Google Scholar. And, of course, it was the Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights, formed in 1769 for the dauntingjob of paying Wilkes's debts, who took the first steps to broaden the issue of the Middlesex election into a demand for comprehensive reform: see Brewer, , Party Ideology (n. 7 above), pp. 163200Google Scholar.

107 Newcastle Journal (January 3, 1771); Bristol Gazette and Public Advertiser (October 5, 1774).

108 Middlesex Journal (April 21, 1770); Newcastle Journal (July 9, 30, October 8, 1774); Freeholder's Magazine (April 1770); Innocent Blood Crying in the Streets of Boston (London, 1770)Google Scholar.

109 Leeds Mercury (November 7, 1775); Newcastle Burgesses against the American War, Public Record Office, Home Office (HO) 55/28/19, November 1775; Bristol Contest (Bristol, 1780)Google Scholar; Norfolk Chronicle (January 21, 1775); Annual Register (1778), pp. 130–31Google Scholar.

110 Bewick, Thomas, A Memoir, ed. Bain, Iain (Oxford, 1979), pp. 9495Google Scholar; Norfolk RO, Neville MSS, J. W. to S. N., June 8, 1777; Society for Constitutional Information (SCI), Address to the Public (1780)Google Scholar; Electioneering Journal (February 28, March 6, 1777).

111 Black, Association (n. 28 above), pp. 31–82, 174–212; Lofft, Capel, Summary of a Treatise by Major Cartwright (London, 1778)Google Scholar; Cartwright, Declaration (n. 39 above).

112 Burgh, , Political Disquisitions (n. 87 above), 1:3788Google Scholar; Reflexions on the Representation in Parliament (London, 1766), p. 15Google Scholar; and Cartwright, Take Your Choice! (n. 39 above). For a fuller account of the radical reform platforms see Brewer, , “English Radicalism” (n. 89 above), pp. 351–55Google Scholar; and Cannon, John, Parliamentary Reform, 1640–1832 (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 7297Google Scholar.