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The Anglican Pulpit, the Social Order, and the Resurgence of Toryism during the American Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

James E. Bradley
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“And now the new system of government came into being. For the first time since the accession of the House of Hanover, the Tory party was in the ascendant.” So wrote Lord Macaulay concerning the early years of George III's reign. In Macaulay's essay on the earl of Chatham one can find all the elements of the Whig myth of the reign of George III. Most of these ideas have been safely laid to rest by Sir Lewis Namier and modern research; we now know that there was neither a new system of government at the accession of the king nor anything resembling a Tory party. George III was not the tyrant depicted in the Declaration of Independence, there was no plot in the imagined cabinet of “king's friends” to overthrow the constitution, and when, with respect to the colonies, the king declared that he would abide by the decision of his Parliament, he was taking a stand on the side of Whig principles and the Revolution Settlement.

One element in the putative resurgence of Toryism that Macaulay and other Whig historians emphasized was High-Anglican political theology. G. H. Guttridge, for example, in his English Whiggism and the American Revolution (1942) well understood the differences between the Toryism of the period of the American Revolution and that of the earlier century. Tories had come to accept the Revolution Settlement, the Hanoverian succession, and even “a modicum of religious toleration.” But if they had lost the bloom of monarchical sentiment, they retained the concept of a state unified above sectional and party interests. Guttridge's formulas were admittedly too simplistic and they justly invited criticism, but one of the overlooked merits of his work was that he located the continuity of conservative thought in its religious aspect. He observed that, “Standing for the two great Tory principles, national unity and a religious sanction for the established order, the Church of England was the central institution of Toryism—the state in its religious aspect, and the divine principle in monarchical government.” The demolition of the Whig interpretation, however, has resulted in a thorough-going neglect of political discourse, and several notable examples of this deconstruction bear directly upon Anglican political thought. In his introduction to the History of Parliament John Brooke wrote that during the American Revolution the Anglican clergy in England had no specific attitude toward the war or any other aspect of government policy. When the reprint of G. H. Guttridge's essay appeared in 1963, Ian Christie wrote a vigorous rebuttal to the idea of a revival of Toryism in the early part of George III's reign without a single reference to the Anglican Church.

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Research Article
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Albion , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , Fall 1989 , pp. 361 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1989

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References

1 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, “The Earl of Chatham,” in Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays and Poems, 3 vols. (1844; Philadelphia, n.d.) 3: 186Google Scholar.

2 On a mid-century, two-party system based upon ideology, see SirNamier, Lewis, England in the Age of the American Revolution (London, 1961), pp. 32, 171–179, 195–98Google Scholar; “Monarchy and the Party System,” in Personalities and Powers (London, 1955), pp. 32–35Google ScholarPubMed; and “Country Gentlemen in Parliament, 1750–84,” in ibid. For the idea that there was a revolution in government at the accession of the new king, see The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (London, 1957), pp. 158–73Google Scholar; England in the Age of the American Revolution, p. 154; “Monarchy and the Party System,” pp. 18, 25. Namier rejuvenated the personality of George III in “King George III: A Study of Personality,” in Personalities and Powers, esp. p. 55. See also Carlton, Charles, “Three British Revolutions and the Personality of Kingship,” in Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776, ed. Pocock, J. G. A. (Princeton, 1980), p. 200Google Scholar.

3 Guttridge, G. H., English Whiggism and the American Revolution (Berkeley, 1963), pp. 13–14Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 2.

5 SirNamier, Lewis and Brooke, John, The House of Commons, 1754–1790, 3 vols. (London, 1964). 1: 115Google Scholar.

6 Christie, Ian, “Was There a ‘New Toryism’ in the Earlier Part of George III's Reign?” in Myth and Reality in Late Eighteenth-Century British Politics and Other Papers (London, 1970), pp. 196–213Google Scholar. Christie rightly discounts the importance of the use of the old terms to describe parties, proves that the participation of the king in politics was not a new departure, pleads for a distinction between propaganda and fact, and convincingly shows that there was no actual tendency toward arbitrariness in government (pp. 197, 199, 201–202, 205–212). In response to Brian Hill's recent work, Christie has forcefully reopened the case, but once again, there is little reference to popular ideology; see “Party in Politics in the Age of Lord North's Administration,” Parliamentary History 6 (1987): 47–68Google Scholar. Nothing Christie says alters the fact that there was a perceived threat of arbitrariness, and there were writers who continued to publish Tory ideas. Christie recommends the use of the term “conservative” rather than “Tory,” (“Was There a ‘New Toryism’,” p. 213).

7 Lupton, L. F. S. drew fresh attention to conservative ideology in “The Dilemma of the Loyalist Pamphleteers,” Studies in Burke and His Time 18 (1977): 71–84Google Scholar, but he minimized the significance of sermons and had little appreciation for the connections with earlier Tory writers (pp. 78–79). Examination of two government writers led Margaret Avery to conclude that the ghost of Toryism “obstinately refuses to vanish despite all the efforts of the Namierite exorcists” (“Toryism in the Age of the American Revolution: John Lind and John Shebbeare,” Historical Studies 18 (1978–1979): 36Google Scholar. Paul Langford argues that support for the government owed much to the families that were “the very backbone of the Tory squirearchy of George II's reign” (“Old Whigs, Old Tories, and the American Revolution,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 8 [1980]: 123–24)Google Scholar. Lucas, Paul, “A Collective Biography of the Students and Barristers of Lincoln's Inn, 1680–1804: A Study in the ‘Aristocratic Resurgence’ of the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Modern History 46 (1974): 238–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, demonstrates a developing alliance between clergymen and lawyers. See also McGowan, Randall, “‘He Beareth Not the Sword in Vain’: Religion and the Criminal Law in Eighteenth-Century England,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 21 (1987/1988): 194, 210Google Scholar. Colley, Linda, “The Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty and the British Nation, 1760–1820,” Past and Present 102 (1984): 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar. J. A. W. Gunn discovered a thorough-going pa-triarchalism in the writings of George Horne (1769), William Smith (1771), and William Stevens (1777), who all argued that the king was superior to the other two estates of Lords and Commons (Beyond Liberty and Property: The Process of Self-Recognition in Eighteenth-Century Political Thought [Kingston and Montreal, 1983], pp. 167–69, 171, 175Google Scholar). He concluded that the idea of a “Tory revival” during the reign of George III was “perhaps not without foundation” (p. 168). Clark, J. C. D., English Society, 1688–1832 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 216–35Google Scholar. In order to establish the notion of ideological continuity, Clark insists that the duty of obedience to the crown amounts to the same argument as passive obedience (p. 206); however, changes of emphasis from earlier Jacobite doctrine are important and should be drawn out. See also, Christie, , “Party in Politics,” p. 62Google Scholar. Paul Monod brought the study of Jacobite culture to 1788 and fully appreciates the religious side of Jacobitism. He also distinguishes the similarities and the differences between Jacobites and Tories (“For the King to Enjoy His Own Again: Jacobite Political Culture in England, 1688–1788,” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1985), pp. 2, 14–15, 27–28, 33, 665–66Google Scholar. Monod builds on the work of Cruickshanks, Eveline, Political Untouchables: The Tories and the '45 (New York, 1979)Google Scholar, and Colley, Linda, In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party, 1714–1760 (Cambridge, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent bibliographical essay on the topic, see Clark, J. C. D., Revolution and Rebellion: State and Society in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 174–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Lupton, Avery, and Gunn have made it clear that among those who supported coercive measures there was a spectrum of political thought.

9 Spaulding, John G., “Pulpit Publications, 1660–1782, being a new edition of The Preacher's Assistant,” 5 vols., printed privately, 1987Google Scholar, Huntington Library MS no. 52297, lists more than 650 extant published sermons in England in the period 1775–1783, 5:502–32. In his study of both Anglican and Dissenting fast day sermons, Henry P. Ippel found that of the 95 sermons that made specific reference to the war, 79 supported the government (“British Sermons and the American Revolution,” Journal of Religious History 12 [1982]: 197Google Scholar). In addition to the more well known radicals and bishops, there were a few low-Church Anglican ministers that opposed the government's American policy; they deserve a separate study. This article is based upon a sample of approximately one-fourth of the extant fast day sermons that deal with the conflict, in addition to some fifteen sermons preached on a variety of other occasions, such as the annual meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

10 For the literary genre and its importance, see Nye, Robert, ed., The English Sermon, 1750–1850 (London, 1976)Google Scholar; Downey, James, The Eighteenth-Century Pulpit (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar; Gray, James, Johnson's Sermons: A Study (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar; for the early 18th century see Napthine, D. and Speck, W. A., “Clergymen and Conflict, 1660–1763,” in Shells, W. J., ed., The Church and War (Oxford, 1983), pp. 231–51Google Scholar; Deconick-Brossard, Françoise, Vie politique, sociale et religieuse en Grande-Bretagne d'aores les sermons prêches ou publies dans le nord de l'Angleterre, 1738–1760, 2 vols. (Paris, 1984)Google Scholar. For France, see the monographs of Tackett, Timothy, McManners, John, and two articles on sermons in Annales de Bretagne 89 (1982)Google Scholar; see also Allen, Edward A., “The ‘Patriot’ Cures of 1789 and the ‘Constitutional’ Cures of 1791: A Comparison,” Church History 54 (1985): 473–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Colonial sermons have also attracted attention: Stout, Harry S., The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar. Ippel, Henry P. studied English fast day sermons in “Blow the Trumpet, Sanctify the Fast,” Huntington Library Quarterly 44 (1980): 43–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “British Sermons and the American Revolution,” pp. 191–205, but no study of the content of Anglican sermons exists.

11 London Gazette (Jan. 1775).

12 The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, 10 vols., Guttridge, G. H., ed. (Cambridge, 1961), 3: 383Google Scholar, Burke to C. J. Fox, 8 October 1777.

13 Bradley, James, Popular Politics and the American Revolution in England (Macon, Ga., 1986), p. 180Google Scholar.

14 For Lancashire, London Gazette (5–9 Dec. 1775); “A Freeholder of Hants.” London Evening-Post (14–16 Nov. 1775); another account in Salisbury and Winchester Journal (13 Nov. 1775); an article in London Evening-Post (7–9 Nov. 1775) lists the 30 clergy who signed the Hampshire address and begins, “O ye priests of Piety and Humility!” See London Gazette (7–11 Nov. 1775) and London Evening-Post (5–7 Dec. 1775).

15 Home Office Papers in the Public Record Office, 55/11/64 and 55/11/9, cf. Sketchley's Bristol Directory (Bristol, 1775)Google Scholar. The research on Bristol, Newcastle, and Liverpool will appear in my Religion, Revolution, and English Radicalism: Nonconformity in Eighteenth-Century Politics and Society, forthcoming.

16 Some index of the strength of the clerical turnout in favor of coercion is provided by comparing their response to the clergy's reaction during the agitation over the Middlesex election affair. Rudé counted 80 clergymen in 12 county petitions in favor of the Middlesex electors (Rudé, George, Wilkes and Liberty [Oxford, 1962], p. 144Google Scholar).

17 On Watson, see Bonwick, Colin, English Radicals and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1977), pp. 7, 9, 16, 73–75Google Scholar. On bishops John Hinchliffe and Jonathan Shipley, see Sykes, Norman, Church and State in England in the XVIII Century (Cambridge, 1935), pp. 58, 64Google Scholar.

18 Stebbing, Henry (chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty), A Sermon on the Late General Fast … (London, 1779), p. 5Google Scholar.

19 Murdin, Cornelius (vicar of Twyford and Ouzlebury), The Evil of Rebellion … A Sermon …, 1778Google Scholar, in Three Sermons, Preached on the Three Preceding Fast Days … (Southampton, 1779), p. 21Google Scholar. For references to “rebellious subjects,” see Horne, George (President of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty), A Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons … (Oxford, 1780), p. 4Google Scholar, and most of the sermons listed below. Crime and rebellion is linked in Butler, John (archdeacon of Surrey and Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty; bishop of Oxford in 1777), A Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons … (London, 1777), p. 11Google Scholar; Stebbing, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 4Google Scholar.

20 Cooper, Myles (President of King's College, N.Y., and fellow of Queen's College, Oxford), National Humiliation and Repentance Recommended … in a Sermon … (Oxford, 1777), p. 7Google Scholar; Murdin, , The Evil of Rebellion, pp. 34–35Google Scholar; Apthorp, East (vicar of Croydon), A Sermon on the General Fast … (London, 1776), pp. 6–7Google Scholar. All of the ministers viewed war as providential judgment for a nation's sins; national happiness or misery was directly related to national vice or virtue. I found no instance of pro-government ministers admitting the sinful nature of England's policy; rather, individuals' sins add up to immoral characteristics in society. Yet, the ministers believed that the aggregate vices of the nation were punished in this life by war, and an individual's sins were punished in the next.

21 Markham, William, A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel … (London, 1777), p. 23Google Scholar; Cooper, , National Humiliation, p. 2Google Scholar.

22 Cooper, , National Humiliation, p. 18Google Scholar; Thomas, John (bishop of Rochester), A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel … (London, 1780), p. 17Google Scholar; Murdin, , Liberty When Used as a Cloke of Maliciousness … A Sermon …, 1776Google Scholar, in Three Sermons, p. 15.

23 Vyse, William (rector of Lambeth), A Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons … (London, 1778), p. 13Google Scholar; Murdin, , Liberty a Cloke, p. 5Google Scholar; Murdin, , Great Britain Oppressing America, A Groundless Charge. A Sermon …, 1779Google Scholar, in Three Sermons, pp. 43–45; Butler, John, A Sermon Preached before the House of Lords … (London, 1778), p. 8Google Scholar; Maurice, T. (University College, Oxford) A Sermon Preached at the Parish Church of Woodford … on … the Day Appointed for a General Fast (London, 1779), p. 11Google Scholar.

24 Stebbing put it this way: “Knaves, as well as mechanics, must both have tools to work with, which, when spoiled in the working, they, both, throw by as good for nothing,” A Sermon of the Fast, p. 6. The leaders are knaves; the people, their tools. This notion was the usual grounds for talking about reconciliation. Vyse, , A Sermon before the Commons, pp. 13–14Google Scholar, was willing to say, “The mistaken multitude we must in charity forgive, for they, it may reasonably be supposed, know not what they do.” See also Cooper, , National Humiliation, pp. 12–15Google Scholar; Thomas, , A Sermon before the Society, p. 22Google Scholar; Maurice, , A Sermon On the Fast pp. 10, 12Google Scholar; Murdin, , Liberty a Cloke, 1776, pp. 10, 15Google Scholar; and Apthorp, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 18Google Scholar.

25 Murdin, , The Evil of Rebellion, pp. 29–30Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., p. 30; idem. Liberty a Cloke, pp. 12–14.

27 England had “undoubted rights” to assert (Butler, , A Sermon before the Lords, p. 4Google Scholar). See also idem, A Sermon before the Commons, p. 5; Vyse, A Sermon before the Commons, p. 4; Murdin, , Liberty a Cloke, pp. 8–9Google Scholar, Great Britain Oppressing America, p. 40; Maurice, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 11Google Scholar; and Hurd, Richard (bishop of Lichfield and Coventry), A Sermon Preached before the Right Honourable House of Lords … (London, 1777), p. 6Google Scholar. In more than 40 sermons I found only two allusions to any culpability on the government's part.

28 Cooper, , National Humiliation, p. 1Google Scholar; the war was a Christian nation's “duty” (Horne, , A Sermon before the Commons, pp. 2, 8Google Scholar).

29 Markham, , A Sermon before the Society, p. 14Google Scholar. See also in the same tone, Cooper, , National Humiliation, pp. 18–10Google Scholar; Horne, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 5Google Scholar; Thomas, , A Sermon before the Society, pp. 22–23Google Scholar.

30 Nowell, Thomas (King's Professor of Modern History, Oxford), A Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons …, 30 Jan. 1772Google Scholar. The episode is recounted in Gunn, , Beyond Liberty, p. 170Google Scholar. Nowell was answered by the Dissenting minister, Joseph Towers, who later also attempted to refute the political thought of Josiah Tucker, Dean of Gloucester (Towers, , A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Nowell [London, 1772]Google Scholar).

31 Cooper, , National Humiliation, pp. 7, 13, 23Google Scholar. For Cooper's praise for the present Monarch, see pp. 2, 16, 17. A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Cooper, on the Origin of Civil Government; in Answer to his Sermon … (London, 1777), pp. 5–7Google Scholar. On the authorship of this pamphlet, see Vance, Clarence H., “Myles Cooper,” Columbia University Quarterly 22 (1930): 267Google Scholar. Cooper's sermon created such a stir that the bishop of London wrote an open letter signed “A Friend of Locke” in which he distanced himself from Cooper's opinions, and Horace Walpole sought to make a public example of Cooper in Parliament. One should note the constant reference to “subjects” in Anglican sermons, whereas Dissenting sermons often refer to “citizens.”

32 Markham, , A Sermon before the Society, pp. 13, 19, 23–25Google Scholar.

33 Maseres, Francis, A Paraphrase on a Passage in a Sermon Preached by the Most Reverend Dr. Markham … (n.p., 1777), pp. 3, 8, 10Google Scholar. An Adieu to the Turf: A Poetical Epistle from the E—l of A——n to his Grace The A——p of Y—k (London, 1778). p. 21Google Scholar; also p. 17. The sermon provoked Two Letters, treating his “Grace of York's Notions of Civil Liberty,” by “Mystagogus Candidus” (London, 1777)Google Scholar, which reveal the high-Anglican dimensions of his thought (pp. 16, 20).

34 Fletcher, John, The Bible and the Sword … In an Address to the Common People Concerning the propriety of Repressing Obstinate Licentiousness … (London, 1776), pp. 11, 18–19, 20, 22Google Scholar; “A Vindication of the Rev. Mr. Wesley's ‘Calm Address to our American Colonies’”: in Some Letters to Mr. Caleb Evans (London, n.d), p. 43Google Scholar; American Patriotism Further Confronted with Reason, Scripture, and the Constitution (Shrewsbury, 1776), p. 36Google Scholar; Evans, Caleb, A Reply to Fletcher's Vindication (Bristol, 1776), pp. 26, 28, 82Google Scholar; Political Sophistry Detected, or Brief Remarks on the Rev. Mr. Fletcher's Late Tract (Bristol, 1776), p. 11Google Scholar; Gunn, , Beyond Liberty, pp. 170–71Google Scholar.

35 The strongest statement concerning the Crown that Horne makes is that we should contend for only one thing: “who shall stand first, and do most service, in the cause of their King, and their Country” (A Sermon before the Commons, p. 17). See also A Sermon Preached before the University of Oxford, at St. Marys … (Oxford, 1781), p. 24Google Scholar. Gunn describes Horne's views on monarchy as comparable to those of Filmer (Beyond Liberty, pp 168–69). Richard Hurd was probably not revealing his deepest convictions when he mildly applauded George III's reliance on God (A Sermon before the Lords, p. 16).

36 Gunn, , Beyond Liberty, pp. 169, 171, 184Google Scholar. Gunn astutely observes that “the same factors that account for the incorrect impression that Filmer had long ceased to be relevant also apply to the status of Locke” (p. 173). That is, an occasion such as the colonial revolt was needed to elicit a public discussion of people's political presuppositions. This notion tends to be overlooked by Clark, who downplays the relevance of Locke, except in the revolutionary setting when he was explicitly appealed to. On Clark's view that patriarchy is behind the Anglican understanding of order, hierarchy, and civil stability, see English Society, pp. 74, 76, 78–79.

37 Coleridge, John, Government not Originally Proceeding from Human Agency … Shewn in a Sermon … on the Fast Day (London, 1777), pp. 6, 8, 9–10Google Scholar. “Paternal hereditary right and claim” based on divine command was required because of the “vicious passions” of the human race after the Fall. Coleridge totally rejects “government by compact.” Darwall, John, Political Lamentations Written in the years 1775 and 1776 … to which is Annexed a Political Sermon Preached at Walsall …, London, 1776, pp. 4, 8Google Scholar. Here, as elsewhere, a high view of monarchy goes hand-in-hand with ridicule heaped on the idea of consent (p. 9).

38 Tucker, Josiah, Four Tracts, Together with Two Sermons, on Political and Commercial Topics (Gloucester, 1774)Google Scholar; “Sermon 1. On the Connection and Mutual Relation between Christian Morality, good Government, and National Commerce,” pp. 17–18. In Tucker's, Four Letters on Important National Subjects, addressed to the Right Honourable, the Earl of Shelburne … (Dublin, 1783)Google Scholar, he discussed in Letter 2, “The evil Consequence of debasing the regal Influence, and exalting the aristocratical or the popular beyond their due Proportion” (p. 14). Towers, Joseph, A Vindication of the Political Principles of Mr. Locke … (London, 1782)Google Scholar, acknowledged that Tucker did not espouse the doctrine of absolute monarchy (p. 95).

39 Stebbing, (A Sermon on the Fast, pp. 8–9)Google Scholar speaks of “the supreme power” as if he means the monarch, and he calls the monarch “Majesty,” and hence he might be more properly classed with Horne than with Tucker. Gerard, Liberty the Cloke, p. 19.

40 Porteus, Beilby, A Sermon Preached at the Anniversary Meeting of the Sons of the Clergy … (London, 1776), p. 12Google Scholar; A Sermon Preached before the Lords Spiritual and Temporal … Being the Day … observed as the Day of the Martyrdom of King Charles I (London, 1778), pp. 14–15Google Scholar. Butler, John, A Sermon before the Commons, p. 16Google Scholar; A Sermon before the Lords, p. 9; A Sermon Preached Before the House of Lords … Being the Anniversary of the Martyrdom of King Charles I (London, 1787), pp. 12–14Google Scholar. Butler had established his Whig credentials early in the reign of George III with several influential pamphlets. He is one of the creators of the “Bute myth,” and in An Address to the Cocoa-Tree From a Whig (London, 1762), p. 6Google Scholar, he claims to discern “the present revival of Tory-Maxims”; for his suspicion of the power of the crown as a positive political virtue, see Serious Considerations on the Measures of the Present Administration (London, 1763), p. 11Google Scholar. But during the American Revolution he went over to the government side, though he seems to have remained moderate. John Hinchliffe is not far from Butler and Porteus; he is clearly on the side of government in 1773, but moderate on monarchy. A Sermon Preached before the Lords Spiritual and Temporal … Being the Day … Observed as the Day of the Martyrdom of Charles I (London, 1773), pp. 3–6Google Scholar. See his handling of the Puritan revolution and the martyrdom of Charles I (pp. 9–11). When he went over to the opposition in 1776, he came down a little more forcefully on the side of “the rights of our fellow subjects.” A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel … (London, 1776), p. 16Google Scholar.

41 Thomas, , A Sermon before the Society, pp. 20, 25Google Scholar; Dampier, Thomas (prebendary of the Cathedral Church of Durham), A Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons … (London, 1782), pp. 22, 23Google Scholar; Apthorp, , A Sermon on the Fast, pp. 8, 17, 19Google Scholar; Maurice, , A Sermon on the Fast, pp. 6, 8, 13Google Scholar; Burnaby, Andrew (Vicar of East Greenwich, Kent), A Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons … (London, 1781), pp. 13–14Google Scholar; Murdin, , Liberty a Cloke, p. 6Google Scholar. Penrose, Thomas (curate of Newbury) Public Tranquility the Object of Every Individual's concern: A Sermon … (London, 1776), p. 13Google Scholar.

42 Langford, , “Old Whigs, Old Tories,” p. 124Google Scholar.

43 Closer scrutiny of the sermons of Peter Peckard, James Smith, James Ford, and John Duncombe may reveal Tory ideas with respect to monarchy.

44 Cooper, , National Humiliation, p. 7Google Scholar; Gunn is correct to ground the survival of a High-Tory political tradition and its “self-conscious continuity” with its predecessors in part on “the nourishment afforded by those institutions, the law and the Church, that had never fully assumed the garb of Whiggism” (Beyond Liberty, p. 192). Langford found that the loyal addresses of 1775 “provided glimpses of that obsession with the unchanging and unchangeable virtues of the constitution in church and state which was to be the hallmark of Toryism under Pitt and Liverpool” (“Old Whigs, Old Tories,” p. 128). Avery recognizes the difficulty in defining “Toryism,” since it is neither a consistent body of thought nor a coherent political party; she argues that Toryism is a “collection of attitudes, prejudices and loyalties, comprising a great diversity of views within a very broad consensus” (“Toryism in the Age of the American Revolution,” p. 24; also, p. 36). She describes crucial differences between Lind and Shebbeare but distills a number of common characteristics, including a “deep fear” of disorder, a “profound hostility” to the claims of the colonists, and a “fierce antagonism” to political arguments based on natural law or natural rights. Both pamphleteers refused to accept conflict or diversity in the state and insisted instead on unity and harmony grounded in man-made law and enforced by strong government. Shebbeare was insistent on the centrality of the Established Church for inculcating morality (p. 35).

45 Apthorp, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 19Google Scholar; Burnaby, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 21Google Scholar; Dampier, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 12Google Scholar; Tucker, , Four Tracts, Together with Two Sermons, p. 202Google Scholar; Vyse, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 15Google Scholar. Several clergy mention the potential of advancement in society, “open wide to talents and merit” (Cooper, , National Humiliation, p. 8Google Scholar); Porteus, , A Sermon before the Lords, p. 18Google Scholar).

46 “A nice adjustment and exact counterpoise of all its … parts” (Porteus, , A Sermon before the Lords, pp. 12, 16Google Scholar; Murdin, , Liberty a Cloke, p. 14)Google Scholar. Gunn, , Beyond Liberty, p. 143Google Scholar.

47 Markham, , A Sermon before the Society, p. 19Google Scholar.

48 For these two phrases, see Vyse, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 15Google Scholar, and Hurd, , A Sermon before the Lords, p. 14Google Scholar. For other similar appeals, Porteus, , A Sermon before the Lords, pp. 12, 18–19Google Scholar; Murdin, , Liberty a Cloke, pp. 6–7Google Scholar; The Evil of Rebellion, p. 22: Markham, , A Sermon before the Society, p. 22Google Scholar; Cooper, , National Humiliation, p. 22Google Scholar; Thomas, , A Sermon before the Society, p. 21Google Scholar. Not surprisingly, the truth of the Gospel is described as a law (York, James, A Sermon Preached Before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel … [London, 1779], p. 22Google Scholar. Dissenting sermons often observe that the king is subject to the law: this idea is hardly ever mentioned in the Anglican sermons.

49 Murdin, , Liberty a Cloke, p. 8Google Scholar; Great Britain Oppressing America, pp. 41–42 (Murdin is unclear whether the freedom of conscience is a right or a privilege); Vyse, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 6Google Scholar; Horne, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 15Google Scholar; Burnaby, , A Sermon before the Commons, pp. 12–13Google Scholar; Maurice, Sermon on the Fast, dedication page; Stebbing, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 11Google Scholar.

50 Natural rights are “wild visionary, enthusiastic notions” (Cooper, , National Humiliation, p. 22Google Scholar); Americans' heads are filled with “airy dreams” (Murdin, , The Evil of Rebellion, p. 24Google Scholar; Great Britain Oppressing America, p. 46). See also Stebbing, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 8Google Scholar, and Hurd, , A Sermon before the Lords, p. 8Google Scholar, and Stillingfleet, James (prebendary of Worcester), The Duty of Faith, Righteousness of Life and Obedience to the Civil Power … recommended in a Sermon (Worcester, 1781), p. 5Google Scholar.

51 Murdin, , The Evil of Rebellion, pp. 23–24, 33Google Scholar; Cooper, , National Humiliation, p. 22Google Scholar; Porteus, , A Sermon at the Anniversary, p. 13Google Scholar; Stebbing, , A Sermon On the Fast, p. 8Google Scholar. On the text of Scripture, “cloak of maliciousness” (1 Peter 2:26), see Murdin, , Liberty a Cloke, p. 3Google Scholar; Tucker, Sermon 1, p. 18.

52 Thomas, , A Sermon before the Society, pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

53 Richard Hurd, A Sermon preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts … (London, 1781), p. 12. Hinchliffe, A Sermon before the Lords, pp. 3, 5.

54 Porteus, , A Sermon at the Anniversary, p. 7Google Scholar; Tucker, , Four Tracts, p. 5Google Scholar; Tucker, Sermon 1, pp. 9–10; Butler, , A Sermon before the Lords, p. 14Google Scholar; Markham, , A Sermon before the Society, pp. 12, 18Google Scholar; Thomas, , A Sermon before the Society, p. 24Google Scholar.

55 See, for example, Markham, , A Sermon before the Society, pp. 5, 7, 16–17Google Scholar, who in his vagueness was actually very threatening; and Maseres' response, A Paraphrase, p. 29–32; Horne, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 13Google Scholar; Thomas, , A Sermon before the Society, pp. 17, 22Google Scholar; Stebbing, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 13Google Scholar; Murdin, , Liberty a Cloke, p. 16Google Scholar.

56 Apthorp, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 19Google Scholar; Horne, , A Sermon before the Commons, pp. 2–3Google Scholar; Burnaby, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 11Google Scholar. Horne understands England as the new Israel, 1780 (p. 4), as does Dampier, (A Sermon before the Commons, pp. 7, 12, 16)Google Scholar. But often when England is not called Israel, the parallel to Israel is drawn. See Butler, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 3Google Scholar; Maurice, , A Sermon on the Fast, pp. 6–7, 16–17Google Scholar; Fletcher, , The Bible and the Sword, pp. 12–14Google Scholar; Cooper, , National Humiliation, pp. 4–5Google Scholar; Adkin, Lancaster (minister at Belaugh and Scottow), A Sermon, Preached at the Parish Churches of Belaugh and Scottow … (Norwich, 1782), pp. 20–21Google Scholar; Stillingfleet, , The Duty of Faith, pp. 10–11Google Scholar. For a providential interpretation of English history, see Porteus, , A Sermon before the Lords, p. 5Google Scholar.

57 Apthorp, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 20Google Scholar.

58 The Low-Church position, from the time of Hoadly forward, called the union of church and state into question.

59 Generally, the circumstances under which resistance to government is justified are severely circumscribed by the Anglican clergy. True religion only authorizes the subjects' taking up arms in a case of “extreme necessity”—a situation that cannot subsist under “a Protestant and free Government” (Apthorp, , A Sermon on the Fast, pp. 20–21Google Scholar). For similar views, see Cooper, , National Humiliation, p. 12Google Scholar, Murdin, , The Evil of Rebellion, p. 26Google Scholar, Horne, , A Sermon before the University, p. 24Google Scholar.

60 Clarke sees Anglicanism as largely triumphant in the 18th century and gives little attention to the reality of “insubordination and disrespect” (English Society, p. 104). He observes that Anglicans like John Gordon, George Horne, and William Jones espoused their views in response to their perception of rapid social and political change (prosperity, growing literacy, increased leisure, self-interest, pp. 214, 225, 227), and he acknowledges in passing that the revolutionary periods elicited a “frenzied tone” from the defenders of the Establishment (pp. 227, 230). But these themes remain largely unexamined, and the importance of radicalism and Low Church Anglicanism during the 18th century (pp. 229, 247, 279, 289,) is generally minimized.

61 “Deep distrust” of forces in society that were undermining authority and hierarchy was one of the characteristics Gunn discerns in John Hutchinson and those of his persuasion (Beyond Liberty, p. 166).

62 Only rarely did the term connote personal infidelity or libertinism.

63 McGowen, , “He Beareth Not the Sword,” pp. 195–96Google ScholarPubMed.

64 Ibid., p. 196.

65 Hurd, , A Sermon before the Lords, pp. 13–15Google Scholar; Moral and Political Dialogues: Being the Substance of Several Conversations between Diverse Eminent Persons of the Past and Present Age … (London, 1759], p. 289Google Scholar.

66 Hurd, , Letters on Chivalry and Romance (London, 1762)Google Scholar, for his regret that rationalism is replacing mystery and wonder (p. 119).

67 Markham, , A Sermon before the Society, pp. 20–21Google Scholar.

68 Stebbing, , A Sermon on the Fast, pp. 12, 10Google Scholar.

69 Dampier, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 18Google Scholar; Burnaby, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 14Google Scholar; Apthorp, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 12Google Scholar, see also p. 28; Vyse, , A Sermon before the Commons, pp. 7–8Google Scholar; Murdin, , Great Britain Opposing America, p. 47Google Scholar; Adkin, , A Sermon at Belaugh, p. 6Google Scholar; Cooper, , National Humiliation, pp. 11, 22Google Scholar. Forster, Nathaniel (rector of All-Saints, Colchester), Evil Providentially Good: A Sermon … (Colchester, 1781), p. 13Google Scholar, lamented the spirit of discord at home: “Much of the misery, we now feel, may, I fear, but too justly be ascribed to this wretched spirit.”

70 Horne, , A Sermon before the University, p. 19Google Scholar; Coleridge, , Government not Proceeding, p. 12Google Scholar; Stillingfleet, , The Duty of Faith, pp. 27, 31, 22–23Google Scholar; Darwall, , Political Lamentations, p. 10Google Scholar; Penrose, , Public Tranquility, pp. 10–11Google Scholar.

71 Maurice, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 14Google Scholar; Porteus, , The Necessity of National Reformation; A Sermon Preached before the Lords Spiritual and Temporal on the General Fast, February 10, 1779, in Sermons on Several Subjects (Hertford, 1806), pp. 140–41Google Scholar; Butler, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 12Google Scholar. Butler mentioned no unrest in England in his sermon of 1778 either (A Sermon before the Lords, pp. 7, 9–11). Stebbing, in 1776, said he thought there was no reason to fear an actual rebellion in England (A Sermon on the Fast, p. 8). Typically, the more authoritarian the tone of the sermon, the more likely the minister would emphasize the prevalence of disrespect for law.

72 Here is one of the sources of the theory that heresy is the parent of radicalism (Hurd, , A Sermon before the Lords, p. 11Google Scholar). The teachers of infidelity have also taught us “to dignify the most unbridled licentiousness with the sacred name of liberty” (Dampier, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 18–19Google Scholar). He also calls infidelity “foul parent of them [vices] all” (p. 15).

73 Darwall, , Political Lamentations, pp. 8–9Google Scholar; also Stillingfleet, , The Duty of Faith, pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

74 On the authority of Bishop Sherlock, who wrote in 1750, Cooper said that books that ridicule Christianity had received a welcome audience in America (National Humiliation, p. 9); Horne refers to “the dregs of Socinianism” (A Sermon before the Commons, p. 14), and Apthorp to “immoral Deism” (A Sermon on the Fast, p. 11).

75 Apthorp, , A Sermon on the Fast, pp. 8, 11–12Google Scholar; he defines luxury at great length, p. 13.

76 Murdin, , The Evil of Rebellion, p. 29Google Scholar; Great Britain Oppressing America, pp. 49; Hurd, , A Sermon before the Lords, pp. 11–12Google Scholar. Henry, Ellis (rector of Cranford, Derby), National Calamities the Necessary Effects of National Wickedness: A Sermon … (London, 1781)Google Scholar, found the same pattern, somewhat simplified: decline of religion, decline of morals, disrespect for laws (p. 16).

77 Stebbing, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 9Google Scholar; Burnaby, , A Sermon before the Commons, pp. 20, 18Google Scholar; Burnaby noted that in these societies “a thousand ideas, a thousand doubts, affecting the dearest interests, the very vitals, of religion, of morals, and of civil polity, are suggested to the ductile mind, solely calculated to mislead and pervert it” (p. 18). Dampier worried about the attack on Christian doctrine in the press, where such “noisome weeds” have been circulated “with industry” and read “with eagerness” (A Sermon before the Commons, pp. 16–17). Henry laments “the avidity with which every publication is received and read” (National Calamities, p. 12).

78 Markham, , A Sermon before the Society, p. 21Google Scholar; he inveighs against the “artifice of faction” (p. 18). Murdin, , Liberty a Cloke, pp. 10–11Google Scholar; The Evil of Rebellion, pp. 27–29, 33–34. On faction as a cause of colonial rebellion, see Cooper, , National Humiliation, pp. 23–24Google Scholar; Stebbing, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 8Google Scholar; and Henry, , National Calamities, p. 17Google Scholar.

79 Horne, , A Sermon before the University, 1781, p. 19Google Scholar.

80 Hinchliffe, , A Sermon before the Lords, pp. 773, 12Google Scholar. Avoid “all extravagance of party,” says Hinchliffe (p. 16). Hurd believed that the notion of the opposition that the people were ill-governed was designed “to draw the people into a scheme of resistance to an established government.” The “credulous multitude” have too easily given an ear to such ideas A Sermon before the Lords, p. 7).

81 Stebbing, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 11Google Scholar; Porteus, , The Necessity of National Reformation, p. 141Google Scholar, also pp. 137–38. For other references to the prevalence of divisions ruining government, see Dampier, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 19Google Scholar; Vyse, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 11Google Scholar; Adkin, , A Sermon at Belaugh, pp. 6, 17Google Scholar.

82 Burnaby, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 19Google Scholar. Henry castigates the “uniform undistinguishing Opposition” that have by their “seditious Speeches and inflammatory Libels” infused a “Spirit of Discontent and Disobedience” into their followers (p. 17).

83 Butler, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 8Google Scholar. Vyse said the same: the people are not capable of “forming plans to overturn a settled establishment, and to invent a new system” (A Sermon before the Commons, p. 14). Similarly, Markham, , A Sermon before the Society, p. 20Google Scholar; Darwall, , Political Lamentations, p. 10Google Scholar; Penrose, , Public Tranquility, pp. 10–11Google Scholar.

84 Hinchliffe, , A Sermon before the Lords, p. 15Google Scholar.

85 Apthorp, , A Sermon on the Fast, p: 9Google Scholar; Butler, , A Sermon before the Lords, p. 7Google Scholar; Vyse, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 14Google Scholar; Hurd, , A Sermon before the Lords, p. 7Google Scholar; Maurice, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 3Google Scholar.

86 Dampier, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 21Google Scholar. It was precisely the alternative to an absolute monarch that pushed Charles Leslie to elevate the role of the sovereign: “To cure the tyranny of a king, by setting up the people, is setting 10000 tyrants over us instead of one. It is hell broke loose and worse than the worst of devils” (cited in Monod, , “For the King to Enjoy His Own Again,” p. 31Google Scholar). See also Gunn, , Beyond Liberty, p. 135Google Scholar.

87 Stebbing, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 11Google Scholar; Burnaby, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 17Google Scholar; Dampier, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 21Google Scholar.

88 Hinchliffe, , A Sermon before the Lords, pp. 13, 16Google Scholar; Hurd, , A Sermon before the Lords, p. 15Google Scholar; Apthorp, , A Sermon on the Fast, p. 26Google Scholar. We are to keep to “the particular station allotted to each in social life” (p. 24). Let every man “be contented with his station, and faithfully discharge its attendant duties” (Cooper, , National Humiliation, p. 23Google Scholar). See also Markham, , A Sermon before the Society, p. 23Google Scholar; Porteus, , The Necessity of National Reform, p. 141Google Scholar; Carlyle, , The Justice of War, pp. 48–49Google Scholar; Murdin, , The Evil of Rebellion, p. 33Google Scholar; Darwall, , Political Lamentations, pp. 9–10, 20Google Scholar; Horne, , A Sermon before the University, pp. 2, 26Google Scholar; Coleridge, , Government not Proceeding, p. 14Google Scholar; Stillingfleet, , The Duty of Faith, pp. 24–26Google Scholar.

89 Burnaby, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 21Google Scholar; Dampier, , A Sermon before the Commons, p. 22Google Scholar; Vyse, , A Sermon before the Commons, pp. 15–16Google Scholar.

90 Clark tends to depict the Anglican emphasis upon order as a description of fact (English Society, pp. 78–79, 82, 164, 226, 279, 289). He equates the divine origins of monarchy (a commonplace observation even among Low-Churchmen) with divine right understood as passive obedience and nonresistance, pp. 123–24, 126, 130, 150, 174–77. He provides no evidence for the Whig acceptance of passive obedience and slips in the superficially similar, but vastly different phrase, “total obedience.” See p. 260 for his downplaying of the ultra-conservative aspects of some clergy's sermons.

91 There was surprisingly little reference to anticlericalism in the sermons, though see Porteus, , A Sermon at the Anniversary, p. 15Google Scholar; Maurice, , A Sermon on the Fast, pp. 3–4Google Scholar; and Henry, , National Calamities, p. 13Google Scholar.

92 See the variety of issues, particularly economic, raised by Innes, Joanna, “Jonathan Clark, Social History and England's ‘Ancien Regime,’” Past and Present 115 (1987): 165–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the response by Clark, , “On Hitting the Buffers: The Historiography of England's Ancien Regime. A Response,” Past and Present 117 (1987): 195–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 For Great Yarmouth, Cambridge, and Southampton, see Bradley, , Popular Politics, p. 189Google Scholar; the work on Bristol, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Colchester will appear in Religion, Revolution, and English Radicalism.

94 Sainsbury, John, Disaffected Patriots: London Supporters of Revolutionary America, 1769–1782 (Kingston and Montreal, 1987)Google Scholar.

95 Monod properly used the idea of political culture as distinct from political ideology to get at the expression, behavior, and attitudes of the Jacobites, (“For the King to Enjoy His Own Again,” pp. 14–16).

96 Harris, Michael and Lee, Alan, eds., The Press in English Society from the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1986), p. 81Google Scholar. For a view that misjudges the radical provincial press and the changes in the 1760s and 1770s, see Black, Jeremy, The English Press in the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1987), pp. 268–73, 281, 289, 303–304Google Scholar.

97 See “Political Ideology in the Metropolitan and Provincial Press” in my Popular Politics, pp. 91–119, and Dickinson, H. T., “The Precursors of Political Radicalism in Augustan Britain,” in Jones, Clyve, ed., Britain in the First Age of Party, 1680–1750: Essays Presented to Geoffrey Holmes (London, 1987), pp. 71–76Google Scholar.

98 Lucas, , “A Collective Biography,” p. 239Google Scholar. He finds a “consolidation of the top personnel in law, church, government, university, wealth, and social prestige into an upper class with a renewed, if not heightened, taste for privilege” (p. 238).

99 Every, George, The High Church Party, 1688–1718 (London, 1956), pp. 169–81Google Scholar.

100 Cited in Greene, Donald J., The Politics of Samuel Johnson (New Haven, 1970), p. 14Google Scholar.

101 Macaulay, , Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays, 3:164Google Scholar. See Himmelfarb, Gertrude, “Who Now Reads Macaulay?” in The New History and the Old (Cambridge, Mass, 1987), pp. 143–54Google Scholar.