8 - The Press and the Pulpit: Prosecuting Preaching

Summary

In the midst of the trial of Henry Sacheverell, an anonymous author published the Judgment of the Whole Kingdoms and Nations. The tract repurposed material from Vox Populi, Vox Dei (1709), which had in turn used material from Robert Ferguson's Brief Justification for the Prince of Orange's Descent into England (1689). The multiple editions of the book freed it from direct association with Ferguson (d.1714), a notorious Whig plotter who had championed Monmouth's invasion in the 1680s. An extended and digressive account of the Glorious Revolution, the Judgment summed up the Whig understanding of politics in the previous twenty years, taking in the origins of government, the evidence for the ancient constitution and the right to popular resistance. But, applied to the trial of Sacheverell, the tract tells a different story from merely a repetition of Whig political thinking. On the frontispiece, the book issued a challenge to ‘Dr Hicks, Dr Atterbury, Dr Welton, Mr Milbourne, Mr Higgins, Mr Lesley, Mr Collier, Mr Whaley and Mr Tilly of Oxford and the great Champion Dr Sacheverell or any other person to answer this book’. In its challenge, the Judgment acknowledged a key factor of religious politics of the last few years. After their initial hopes for Anne's succession, High Churchmen – at least in the eyes of their Whig opponents – had formed a formidable coterie of preachers and pamphleteers, challenging ecclesiastical policy and promoting their positions from the press and the pulpit. Indeed, George Ridpath, author of The Observator after the death of John Tutchin, was keen to point out that Sacheverell could be included in the ‘unchristian Opinions of our Dodwell’s, Hick’s, Lesley’s, Higgins's and Sacheverell’s’.

The last two chapters have demonstrated the intellectual thrust of the High Church campaign against the press and why certain churchmen and politicians considered unfettered publication to be so dangerous. They also demonstrated that attitudes to the press were not ideological with political parties in post-revolutionary England dividing along simple lines of promoting freedom or censorship. This much is certainly suggested by the proclamation outlawing the cry of Church in Danger; which demonstrates Whig politicians’ commitment to controlling public expression when they considered the intellectual foundation of the Glorious Revolution was threatened.