Skip to main content Accessibility help
×

Maintenance Message

Cambridge Core ecommerce is unavailable Sunday 08/12/2024 from 08:00 – 18:00 (GMT). This is due to site maintenance. We apologise for any inconvenience.

Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-08T15:57:42.759Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - The Political Consequences of the Cuckoldy German Turnip Farmer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2020

Get access

Summary

On 31 October 1718, a group of Berkshire Whig JPs met to celebrate the anniversary of George I's coronation. They apparently had a good deal to drink and when they were ‘mellow’ decided they would light a bonfire to signal to the world how much they loved their king. At that point the local ‘bumpkins’, being a ‘very waggish and very insolent’ lot, decided to have some fun at the expense of their betters. They accordingly,

got a huge turnip and stuck three candles, and went and placed it at the top of a hill just over Chetwynd's house… near Wattleton. When they had done they came and told their worships that to honour King George's Coronation day a blazing star appeared over Mr. Chetwynd's house. Their worships were wise enough to take horse to go and see this wonder, and found, to their no little disappointment, their star to end in a turnip.

The significance of the humble root was, of course, that it was an unflattering allusion to George I. Everyone, even the Berkshire ‘bumpkins’, knew that a turnip signified poverty and was a reference to George's allegedly threadbare German origins, and one with candles stuck in it to suggest horns added injury to insult by proclaiming his humiliating status as a cuckold.

So why should we care if some English plebeians mocked their masters one autumn evening? They were a famously unruly people and incidents like it were commonplace by 1718. But therein lies its significance: it was a tree in a rather large wood. It is precisely its everyday quality that is so striking. Since 1714 plebeian English crowds had regularly and publicly mocked their king. For all the pomp and circumstance with which the new order carried itself in public, and despite the dreadful majesty of the law which made such seditious acts fraught with danger, the Hanoverian succession had brought on a crisis in social authority that implicitly undermined the power of the British state. The monarchy was the symbolic heart of that British state and, as Douglas Hay argued in 2002, ‘once Jacobite ritual became public it eroded both the legitimacy and dignity of the Hanoverian line’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×