^{page 70 note 01} The Cambridge Chronicle, 23 10 1779Google Scholar, prints a letter from Lord North to the Middlesex election committee which was read at the meeting on 18 October, and in which North says that Tuffnell is not prepared to take the hostile verdict of a meeting in Hackney as the sense of the freeholders of the whole county. North adds: ‘While he persists in his canvas, I do not think it would be right for me to take any step contrary to the declaration I made to Mr. Byng in my letter of the 4th of this month.’ In the Cambridge Chronicle, 18 12 1779Google Scholar, there is a report of the House of Commons debate of 10 December which gives two points omitted in Parliamentary History, xx. 1267–70Google Scholar. North declared that he promised Byng the Chiltern Hundreds if Tuffnell withdrew his demand. Tuffnell declared that he was confident of his power to carry the election in Middlesex, but withdrew because there was a danger of riots if he went forward with his candidature.

^{page 71 note 01} See the account of this meeting in e.g., the Norwich Mercury, 20 11 1779Google Scholar. Wilkes evidently made his reappearance at this meeting, explaining that previously ‘it did not become him to interfere even by advice in their choice’. Mr. Maskall opposed even petitioning, and said ‘we had an accursed House of Commons. Shall we ask of those whose authority we cannot acknowledge? He wished an appeal to the country at large’. The petition is printed in Parliamentary History, xx. 1267–9.Google Scholar

^{page 71 note 02} London Courant, 4 12 1779.Google Scholar

^{page 71 note 03} Ibid., 11 Dec. 1779. Report of proceedings in the House of Commons on 10 December 1779 (the day on which the Middlesex petition was discussed). Not reported in Parliamentary History, xx. 1267–70.Google Scholar

^{page 73 note 01} London Courant, 21 and 28 12 1779Google Scholar. In the Gazetteer, 31 12 1779Google Scholar, is the advertisement of the meeting to be held 7 January 1780.

^{page 74 note 01} E.g., London Evening Post, 5–7 12 and 14–16 Dec. 1779Google Scholar; cf. London Courant, 20 and 30 12 1779 and 5 Jan. 1780.Google Scholar

^{page 74 note 02} An Address to the Freeholders of Middlesex, December 20, 1779Google Scholar. Reprinted from the 4th edn. of 1782 in The Works of John Jebb, ed. by Disney, J. (1787), ii. 453–90Google Scholar; cf. Wyvill, , Political Papers, iv. 505.Google Scholar

^{page 75 note 01} Parliamentary History, xx. 1295–1305Google Scholar; cf. the account of this debate in the London Courant, 31 12 1779Google Scholar. Concerning Thomas Gilbert's project of economical reform, the renewal of which appears to have been anticipated by Burke's announcement at this time, see Parliamentary History, xix. 803, 873Google Scholar; xx. 1304, and a letter to the Public Advertiser, 22 12 1779.Google Scholar

^{page 76 note 01} Wyvill, , Political Papers, iii. 137–8Google Scholar, 138 n. Mason, writing to Walpole on 7 December 1779, was not sure that the meeting would actually take place (The Letters of Horace Walpole and Rev. William Mason, ed. Mitford, (1851), ii. 53–5)Google Scholar. The large number of clergymen taking part in the movement became a subject of comment and satire in prose and in verse (letter of ‘Unus Multorum’ in York Chronicle, 21 01 1780Google Scholar; cf. ibid., 4 Feb., 18 Feb., and York Courant, 15 02)Google Scholar. Cf. also Wyvill, , Political Papers, i. 354.Google Scholar

^{page 77 note 01} Wyvill, , Political Papers, iii. 151.Google Scholar

^{page 77 note 02} Even in November 1779 there still appeared in the newspapers (e.g. York Chronicle, 5 11)Google Scholar an advertisement calling in the subscription which the men of the North Riding, at a general meeting in July, had agreed ‘by a very great majority’ to raise for the purpose of maintaining a regiment to serve during the war.

^{page 77 note 03} Wyvill, 's circular letter of 29 11 1779Google Scholar (Political Papers, iii. 116)Google Scholar mentions ‘the apprehension of an additional land-tax’. In his circular letter to members of Parliament on 29 Nov., Wyvill speaks more plainly (ibid., iii. 151) of ‘the general apprehension of a heavy addition to the land-tax in the North’. The reply to the former from Nathaniel Cholmley, 5 Dec. (ibid., iii. 131) says that ‘what is called an equal Land-Tax’ would not be just, ‘as the great difference that appears to be from the unequalness of it at present, proceeds from the great expences and trouble the distant parts of the Country from the Metropolis have been at to improve and cultivate their Lands, which those nearer the Metropolis have been enjoying, with the great advantage of plentiful Markets over the others, those lands being sufficiently cultivated before the Land-Tax was first laid in 1696’. The proposal to equalise the Land-Tax is mentioned in Four Letters to the Earl of Carlisle from William Eden (1780), p. 107Google Scholar. The York Courant, 30 11 1779Google Scholar, says: ‘A Plan has been laid before the Lord of the Treasury for raising the Supplies for the Service of the ensuing Year by a more equal Assessment of the Land-Tax, and also a Poll-Tax’, and a letter from ‘A Freeholder of Yorkshire’ in the same issue, as also in York Chronicle, 3 12 1779—Google Scholarundoubtedly one of the anonymous letters from promoters of the petitioning-movement—attempts to awaken the interest of the people by stating that ‘the North in particular is threatened with a double Land-tax, which under pretence of greater equality in that tax will leave not a shilling in this county’. In the south the enemies of the petitioning-movement attempted to turn the indignation of the over-burdened tax-payer against the Northerner who failed to carry his due share of the burden (York Courant, 1 02 1780).Google Scholar

^{page 78 note 01} This account of the preparation of the Yorkshire meeting is largely based on the materials in Wyvill, , Political Papers, iii. 107–49Google Scholar, and the notices, correspondence, etc., in the contemporary York Chronicle, York Courant and Leeds Mercury.

^{page 78 note 02} The account as sent to the newspapers is in Wyvill, , Political Papers, i. 9–40Google Scholar, and pp. v–viii. of the same volume give some notes on this. It is interesting to see that great pains were taken to reproduce in extenso a long opposition speech by Leonard Smelt, who put out all the doctrines of the Patriot King, but Wyvill was content to condense very greatly the speeches in favour of the petition, some of which were long, while at the same time toning down their violence or extravagance in certain cases. Smelt produced his own version of what he had said, An Account of some Particulars relating to the Meeting held at York. P. Johnson wrote to W. Eden on 1 Jan. 1780 a hostile but detailed account of the proceedings, which is in Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 34,417, fos. 1–2. Further light on the course of the meeting can be gathered from letters of Henry Goodricke to the York Chronicle, 7 Jan. and 28 Jan., and York Courant, 18 Jan. 1780, together with other information relative to this correspondence in York Courant, 11 Jan., also The Correspondence of Horace Walpole and Rev. William Mason, ed. Mitford, (1851), ii. 6–1Google Scholar; and The Yorkshire Question or Petition and Address (1780).Google Scholar

^{page 79 note 01} Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 34,417, fos. 1–2; letter of Henry Goodricke to York Chronicle, 28 01 1780Google Scholar; Wyvill, , Political Papers, iii. 173 and 177.Google Scholar

^{page 79 note 02} Ibid., i. 52–5; iii. 203. In the York City Library are the copies (made at the time) of the signatures to the petition. The list is of 8,407 signatures, of which 652 were from the region circulated by Wyvill, , 341Google Scholar on the copy at the Tavern, York, 437Google Scholar in Bradford and something over 300 in Leeds. I have to thank the York City Librarian for enabling me to examine these and other documents connected with the Association and for procuring local newspapers.

^{page 80 note 01} Substance of the Speech of the Rev. Mr. Walker at the General Meeting of the County of Nottingham held at Mansfield on 28 Feb. 1780 (1780).Google Scholar

^{page 80 note 02} Wyvill, , Political Papers, iii. 156, 203–4, 223 and especially 236–8.Google Scholar

^{page 80 note 03} Yorkshire, Hampshire, Middlesex, Cheshire, Cumberland, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Sussex, Surrey, Dorset, Bedfordshire, Essex, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Devonshire, Norfolk, Berkshire, Derbyshire, Brecon, Nottinghamshire, Buckinghamshire, Kent, Suffolk, Northumberland, Flintshire, Herefordshire, Cambridgeshire adopted the petition, but Northamptonshire declined it, preferring to instruct its representatives in Parliament to promote economy, and not all the counties agreed to form Committees (e.g. Suffolk, Northumberland, Hereford and Derby declined; Annual Register, 1780, p. 88)Google Scholar. In Kent one section of the county sent in a petition and formed a Committee while the other section merely petitioned. Cities and boroughs, like York, London, Nottingham, Newcastle, Westminster, Reading, Gloucester, Bristol joined in the movement. A letter in the Morning Chronicle of 29 March reproached Lancashire for being ‘almost singularly silent’. In the case of Huntingdonshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Surrey and Sussex protests were drawn up by sections of the county.

^{page 81 note 01} E.g. Parl. Hist., xx. 1352Google Scholar (Lord Hillsborough: ‘They were set up as another estate, unknown to the constitution. They would, if not timely suppressed, lead to anarchy …’); xxi. 80 (Lord Mulgrave: ‘The associations had as much as declared, that if parliament did not grant the prayer of the petition, other means would be taken than those the petitioners had used …’); xxi. 107 (the Attorney-General: ‘A very great judge … had given it as his opinion, that associations of every kind, though for legal purposes, were in themselves illegal’). The protests of Sussex and Surrey were directed not against the petitions but against the Committees of Correspondence, and what the Sussex Protest (London Chronicle, 3–5 Feb. 1780) calls ‘General Associations apparently tending to over-rule the Legislature’. Cf. § 6 of the Protest, Hertfordshire, York Courant, 8 02 1780.Google Scholar

^{page 81 note 02} London Evening Post, 18–21 12 1779.Google Scholar

^{page 81 note 03} Wyvill, , Political Papers, iii. 204.Google Scholar

^{page 81 note 04} A Letter from the Rt. Hon. Lord Carysfort to the Huntingdonshire Committee (1780), p. 7Google Scholar. Cf. p. 15, where an association in the time of Henry III, a.d. 1223, is declared to have led to Magna Carta; The Associators Vindicated and the Protestors Answered (1780), p. 13Google Scholar; Burgh, J., Political Disquisitions, iii. 297–8, 430–1Google Scholar. Cf. the letter under the signature of , J. A. in Public Advertiser, 4 12 1779.Google Scholar

^{page 82 note 01} Joint Letter of the Peers, to Chaloner, W., 30 12 1779Google Scholar, in Wyvill, , Political Papers, i. 45–6Google Scholar. Protest of the Peers, , 8 02 1780Google Scholar (Parliamentary History, xx. 1369).Google Scholar

^{page 82 note 02} A Letter from the Rt. Hon. Lord Carysfort to the Huntingdonshire Committee (1780), p. 7.Google Scholar

^{page 82 note 03} Cambridge Chronicle, 15 01 1780Google Scholar; Leeds Mercury, 25 01 1780.Google Scholar

^{page 84 note 01} Burgh, J., Political Disquisitions, iii. (1775), 426–35Google Scholar. In the Dedication to Crito (1766), p. 18Google Scholar, Burgh had noted that the time was peculiarly favourable for associating, ‘as being near the end of a parliament’.

^{page 84 note 02} Cartwright, J., Take your Choice (1776), pp. 89–97Google Scholar; e.g. p. 89: ‘As soon as leaders worthy of such a cause shall have made themselves known to the public (and such I have reason to believe will soon appear)’; Sharp, G., The Legal Means of Political Reformation, Part IGoogle Scholar; ‘Equitable Representation’, pp. 20–23Google Scholar: ‘No Reformation however can be safely made respecting a more equal representation of the Commons until the mode of doing it hath been first adopted and approved by the majority of the ELECTORS themselves in each county.’

^{page 84 note 03} E.g. The duty of a Freeman, addressed to the Electors of Great Britain by ‘Anglo-Saxon’ (4 09 1780), p. 9Google Scholar: ‘We can only be saved by people at large exerting themselves at this awful moment and demanding the restoration of rights and renovation of the whole frame of government’; Constitutionalist's Letter to the Electors and People of England … (1780), p. 4Google Scholar: ‘forming a pretty serious beginning of a national and universal association … to restore … this our once happy constitution to its former purity’; The Associators Vindicated and the Protestors Answered (1780), p. 11Google Scholar: ‘The fundamental principle is a natural controul residing in the people at large over those to whom for convenience they have entrusted their legislative powers, which latent right must never be called into action before the trustees have actually swerved or are likely to deviate from the primary cause of their creation.… The people must necessarily judge for themselves when and in what manner to exercise and put in force this dominant principle … from the humble Petition and peaceable Association to the last and awful appeal to Heaven’; London Courant, 4 01 1780Google Scholar, letter of ‘Junius Brutus’: ‘My opinion is this, that there be immediately established a Grand National Association … to procure … the passing of an act to recover and preserve to the people a true and efficient representation in parliament’; The Works of John Jebb, ii. 469Google Scholar, ‘Address to the Freeholders of Middlesex’: ‘That solemn hour, when the delegates of a state, chosen according to forms which not law and custom but necessity or expedience shall prescribe … shall sit in awful judgment’; ibid., ii. 507 (‘A Letter to … the Chairman of the Huntingdonshire Committee’): ‘Is there any absolute necessity for having recourse to the House of Commons … and would not an act of delegates, freely chosen by the people, assented to by the King and hereditary nobility, be sufficient for this purpose?’; Speech of Thomas Day to the Meeting of the Freeholders of Essex, 25 04 1780, p. 15Google Scholar: ‘The House of Commons has but a subordinate existence … we have the right to chuse in what degree, under what modification, we will delegate our inalienable rights’; Report of the Sub-committee of Westminster, 27 May 1780, Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 38,593, fos. 38–44, printed in Wyvill, , Political Papers, i. 228–43Google Scholar: ‘No effectual reformation of the abuses in question can take place unless the people exercise their inherent and undoubted right of reviewing the whole plan of delegation’; Address of the Committee of Association of the County of York, January 1781, Wyvill, , Political Papers, i. 306Google Scholar: ‘Let it be acknowledged then that this deputation is an uncommon appointment.… When new dangers arise to public liberty, new modes of defence, adapted to resist the attack, are … absolutely necessary.…’ Cf. Burgh, J., Political Disquisitions, iii. 6Google Scholar: ‘In planning a government by representation, the people ought to provide against their own annihilation. They ought to establish a regular and constitutional method of acting by and from themselves, without, or even in opposition to their representatives, if necessary.

^{page 85 note 01} See above, p. 81, n. 1; cf. the Bishop of Peterborough on the danger of religious associations. Parliamentary History, xx. 1054–6.Google Scholar

^{page 86 note 01} E.g. Public Advertiser, 2 11 1779Google Scholar; Leeds Mercury, 18 01 and 1 02 1780Google Scholar. Cf. ‘Amicus Patriae’ in London Courant, 13 12 1779Google Scholar; also ibid., 5 Jan. 1780.

^{page 86 note 02} Jebb, , ‘Letter to … the Chairman of the Huntingdonshire Committee’ in Works, ii. 508 n.Google Scholar; cf. ibid., ii. 481 n.; Leeds Mercury, 1 02 1780Google Scholar; cf. London Evening Post, 14–16 12 1779Google Scholar, and Gazeteer, 15 05 1780Google Scholar. Fox and the Duke of Richmond appear to have threatened something of this kind in May and June 1780.

^{page 86 note 03} The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Toynbee, (1904), xi. 177.Google Scholar

^{page 87 note 01} Burgh, J., Political Disquisitions, i. 130; letter by ‘Alfred’ to London Courant, 30 03 1780.Google Scholar

^{page 87 note 02} The Associators Vindicated and the Protestors Answered (1780), p. 13.Google Scholar

^{page 87 note 03} E.g. Peers, ' Protest, 8 02 1780Google Scholar, Parliamentary History, xx. 1369Google Scholar: ‘And if it be asked what farther is to be done if these petitions are rejected, the best answer is that the case cannot be supposed … it is not possible to conceive that so wise an assembly [the House of Commons] will ever be rash enough to reject such petitions and by that means cause this dangerous question to be broached and agitated, whether they have not broke their trust?’

^{page 87 note 04} General Evening Post, 16–18 12 1779Google Scholar; the Yorkshire newspapers of 18 Jan. 1779. Cf. Wyvill, to Hunter, , 7 01 1780Google Scholar, in Wyvill, , Political Papers, iii. 175–6Google Scholar. Cf. McDowell, R. B., Irish Public Opinion 1750–1800 (1943), p. 25Google Scholar. Members of the Freeholders Society pledged themselves in 1757 to support candidates free from ministerial influence.

^{page 88 note 01} Transmitted ‘on good authority’ to London Evening Post, 5–7 07 1774Google Scholar: ‘Advertisement of a Constitutional Association to be established early in the ensuing winter on True Revolution Principles to remove from the presence and caresses of the best of Kings those insidious tyrannical and profligate ministers and minions.…’

^{page 88 note 02} London Chronicle, 23–5 03 1779.Google Scholar

^{page 89 note 01} E.g. Speech of Thomas Day … Essex, 25 04 1780Google Scholar: ‘The ostensible object of your meeting was a petition for a reform of public expenditure.… But however necessary might be the measure I must here publicly confess that had I bounded my hopes with the mere objects of the first petition I should no more have intervened myself in its fate than in a project, for a turnpike road or a navigable canal.’

^{page 90 note 01} For the resolutions of the Deputies and the accompanying Memorial by Bromley, see Wyvill, , Political Papers, i. 116 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 90 note 02} Ibid., i. 109–12; iii. 179–81.

^{page 91 note 01} Ibid., i. 127–8; cf. Rockingham Memoirs, ii. 395–400.Google Scholar

^{page 91 note 02} Rockingham Memoirs, ii. 395–406Google Scholar; Burke, , Works, (1812), ix. 316–22Google Scholar, ‘Letter to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Committee, 13 April, 1780.’ The counter-activity of Shelburne and his followers is illustrated in letters from Lord Mahon to Shelburne, 1, 4 and 7 April 1780 in the Stanhope Papers at Chevening, and from Shelburne, to Mahon, , 7 04Google Scholar, in Fitzmaurice, , Shelburne, iii. 74–5Google Scholar; cf. Walpole, H. to Rev. Mason, W., 13 04 1780Google Scholar, in The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Toynbee, (1904), xi. 157.Google Scholar