Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T22:10:25.609Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Republicanism and Public Virtue: William Godwin's History of the Commonwealth of England*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

John Morrow
John Morrow
Affiliation:
Victoria University of Wellington
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Between 1824 and 1828, the aged William Godwin, who thirty years before had written the speculative but highly successful Enquiry concerning political justice, published a four volume study of the English Republic, the History of the commonwealth of England. Godwin's publisher, Henry Colburn, paid an advance of five hundred pounds for what was originally conceived of as a work in two volumes, and he no doubt did so because he expected that the book would appeal to a public that showed a great deal of interest in the civil war period. One reason for this interest was that historical studies of the seventeenth century, and commentaries upon them in the reviews, played a significant role in contemporary political argument.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , September 1991 , pp. 645 - 664
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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.)

References

1 Godwin, William, History of the commonwealth of England from its commencement to the restoration of Charles the Second (4 vols., London, 1824–1828)Google Scholar. In addition to standard sources, Godwin made extensive use of the Commons' and Lords' Journals, the Order Books of the Council of State and tracts from the King's Collection, later incorporated in the British Museum. He also entered into a considerable correspondence with other writers on matters relating to his study; see Marshall, Peter, William Godwin (New Haven, 1984), p. 357Google Scholar. Marshall's work is one of the few books to offer any account of Godwin's History; see pp. 357–60. There are brief mentions of this work in Fleisher, David, William Godwin. A study in liberalism (London, 1951), pp. 127–31Google Scholar; Locke, Don, A fantasy of reason: The life and thought of William Godwin (London, 1980), pp. 313–15Google Scholar; Richardson, R. C., The debate on the English revolution (London, 1977), pp. 53–4Google Scholar; and Woodcock, George, William Godwin: A biographical study (London, 1946), pp. 228–9Google Scholar.

As was often the case in the closing years of Godwin's life, the immediate motive for producing the History was financial. However, he had long been contemplating a work on this subject and the book, which its author described as the ‘product of’ his ‘mature life’ (Preface), was based on a substantial amount of research.

2 The work was not reviewed in the Edinburgh Review (ER) and received the briefest of mentions in an aside by Southey, Robert in the Tory, Quarterly Review (QR), 37 (1828), 229Google Scholar, but it was reviewed (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) in a large number of other periodical publications; some are referred to below. Marshall, Peter claims that the book ‘sold well’ (William Godwin, p. 360)Google Scholar but provides no evidence for this; in light of Colburn's refusal to undertake publication of further volumes on the Restoration (Locke, , A fantasy of reason, pp. 313, 315)Google Scholarand the fact that the work went through only one edition, it seems unlikely that the work was a financial success.

3 See, for example, Brent, Richard, Liberal anglican politics (Oxford, 1988), ch. 1Google Scholar; Burrow, John, A liberal descent (Cambridge, 1981), ch. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clive, John, Thomas Babington Macaulay (London, 1973), ch. IVGoogle Scholar; Fontana, Biancamaria, Re-thinking the politics of commercial society (Cambridge, 1985), ch. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Karsten, Peter, Patriot-heroes in England and America (Madison, 1978), ch. 6Google Scholar. Large-scale historical studies published in this period which discussed aspects of the English Revolution included Brodie, George, History of the British Empire from the accession of Charles the First to the Restoration (Edinburgh, 1822)Google Scholar; D'Israeli, Isaac, Commentaries on the life and reign of Charles the First, king of England (London, 1932)Google Scholar; Hallam, Henry, The constitutional history of England from the accession of Henry VII to the death of George II (4 vols., Paris, 1827)Google Scholar; Russell, Lord John, An essay on the history of English government and constitution from the reign of Henry VIII to the present time (London, 1821)Google Scholar; Southey, Robert, The book of the church (London, 1825)Google Scholar; Wordsworth, Christopher, Who wrote Eikon Basilike? Considered and answered (London, 1824)Google Scholar. Critical responses to some of these works are referred to below.

4 See [Crocker, J. W. and Lockhart, J. G.], ‘The Revolutions of 1640 and 1830’, QR, XLVII (1832), 261–300Google Scholar; [Crocker, J. W.], ‘Stages of Revolution’, QR, XLVII (1832), 559–89Google Scholar; Southey, , The book of the Church, p. 482Google Scholar and [Southey, Robert], ‘Lord Nugent's Memorials of Hampden’, QR, XLVII (1832), 457–519Google Scholar.

5 For radical uses of figures from the Civil War period see Karsten, , Patriot-heroes, pp. 116–120Google Scholar.

6 Hallam, , Constitutional history, II, 192Google Scholar; on the role of arguments about the seventeenth century in relation to party identification see Clive, , Macaulay, p. 95Google Scholar.

7 Brent, , Liberal anglican politics, pp. 48–50Google Scholar; Burrow, A liberal descent, ch. 2.

8 [Jeffrey, Francis], ‘Brodie's History of the British Empire’, ER, XL (1824), pp. 92, 98, 133Google Scholar. For Hume's role see Burrow, A liberal descent, ch. II and Forbes, Duncan, Hume's philosophical politics (Cambridge, 1975), passimGoogle Scholar.

9 Hallam, , Constitutional history, II, 254Google Scholar.

10 Ibid. 402.

11 Cited Clive, , Macaulay, pp. 88, 89Google Scholar.

12 Samuel Taylor Coleridge was another exception but he wrote no systematic study of the period; see Morrow, John, ‘Coleridge and the English Revolution’, Political Science, XL (1988), 128–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 ‘Godwin's History of the commonwealth of England’, British Critic, XXII 07 1824), 1Google Scholar. Cf. the review in the Monthly Magazine and British Register, N.S. IV (1827), 13, 81–2Google Scholar and that by Bisset, Andrew (Westminster Review, XVI (1827), 328–51)Google Scholar which stress Godwin's independence of Brodie. Bisset quite correctly points out that Brodie's main aim was to ‘correct’ Hume (329); this was not Godwin's intention – see below pp. 659–60.

14 Godwin, , History, 1, viGoogle Scholar.

15 See the review from The British Critic cited in note 13, and a series of reviews of the various volumes of Godwin's, work in The Monthly Review (I (1824), 244–5, 251; III (1826), 146–7; IV (1827), 288–9)Google Scholarin which it was argued that Godwin's claims to rescue the Commonwealthmen from neglect was particularly absurd given the existence of Brodie's, work and Macaulay's, Catherine very pro-republican eight volume study, The history of England from the accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line (London, 1763–1783)Google Scholar.

16 Burke wrote that Howard had ‘visited all Europe, – not to survey the sumptuousness of the palaces…but to dive into the depths of dungeons;…to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken… The works and correspondence of Edmund Burke (London, 1852), III, 422Google Scholar.

17 Godwin, , History, 1, viGoogle Scholar.

18 Ibid, ix; on Godwin's dating of the Commonwealth from 1647 see p. 428.

19 Ibid, pp. 342–4.

20 Ibid. p. 336. Cromwell, Vane and St John were among this group (ibid, II, 65). The author of a generally favourable review of the first volume of Godwin's, work (The Eclectic Review, XXIII (1824), 202–3)Google Scholar objected to his fusion of the Erastians and Independents.

21 Godwin, William, Enquiry concerning political justice, 3 vols., ed. Priestley, F. E. L. (Toronto, 1969) third edition, I, Bk. IV, II, Bk. VIGoogle Scholar. On the non-utilitarian character of Godwin's political philosophy see Philp, Mark, Godwin's Political justice (Cornell, 1986), p. 82Google Scholar; Stafford, William, ‘Dissenting religion translated into politics: Godwin's Political justice’, History of Political Thought, I (1980), 279–99Google Scholar.

22 Philp, , Godwin's Political justice, p. 40Google Scholar.

23 Ibid. ch. I; Stafford, , ‘Dissenting religion’, pp. 294–5Google Scholar.

24 Godwin, , History, II, 191–3, 392Google Scholarnote m; cf. D'Israeli, , Commentaries, I, ch. XXVGoogle Scholar: ‘Origin of the anti-monarchical principle in modern Europe’.

25 Godwin, , History, II, 445–7; IV, 259.Google Scholar

26 Ibid. I, 77–9; on monarchy see also II, 202. Godwin was less concerned with the fact of non-resistance or passive obedience than with the effects of these doctrines on people's capacity to evaluate critically the behaviour of those in positions of authority. These ideas formed part of the ‘existing prejudices’ in favour of monarchy (Political justice, I, 252).

27 Ibid. I, 78.

28 Ibid, II, 98.

29 Ibid. p. 499.

30 Godwin, , Political justice, II, Bk. VIGoogle Scholar.

31 Godwin, , History, III, 189–90Google Scholar.

32 Ibid, III, 486, 488; III, 2; III, 115; II, 449; II, 499. Of course, an important strand in contemporary thought maintained that the pursuit of collective goals was inappropriate in modern societies. A particularly elegant statement of this argument appears in the writings of Benjamin Constant, a French writer who was greatly influenced by the conception of social progression advanced by thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment; see ‘The liberty of the ancients compared with that of the moderns’ in Fontana, Biancamaria (ed.), Political writings of Benjamin Constant (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 309–28.Google Scholar

33 Ibid. I, ch. i.

34 Ibid, II, 1 ff; III, 46 ff, 175–6.

35 Godwin, , Political justice, I, Bk. II, ch. V; III, ch. viGoogle Scholar.

36 Godwin, , History, I, 90Google Scholar.

37 Ibid, III, 67.

38 Ibid. p. 46.

39 Ibid, II, 221.

40 Ibid. p. 501.

41 Ibid. pp. 501–2. Towards the end of the last volume of the History Godwin related the inability to conceive of an alternative to monarchy to the legal state of mind and the role of the monarch in English law; see IV, 582 ff.

42 Hallam, , Constitutional history, II, 402Google Scholar.

43 This criticism was expressed most forcefully by Hallam (see above, p. 647 and notes 9 and 10) and great play was made of the ambivalence of his position in the very hostile review of the Constitutional history which Southey, Robert (with some help from Edward Edwards) contributed to the Quarterly (Qr, XXXVII (1828), 194–260)Google Scholar. It also appeared in a number of other reviews of Godwin's History; see British Critic, LX (1824), 2–3Google Scholar; The Cambridge Quarterly Review and Academical Register, I, (1824), 189 ffGoogle Scholar; Monthly Review, III (1826), 155 ffGoogle Scholar, and VI (1827), 291 ff. At this time Macaulay was generally sympathetic towards the commonwealthmen, so much so that two modern scholars have described his views as ‘radical’ – see Brent, , Liberal anglican politics, p. 48Google Scholar, note 75, and Clive, , Macaulay, pp. 94–5Google Scholar. However, while this may be an accurate reflexion of Macaulay's, review of Hallam in the ER (1828)Google Scholar, his essay on Milton was more critical and far closer to Hallam's view. The republicans ‘were desirous to appropriate to themselves a power, which they held only in trust, and to inflict upon England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy’ (Macaulay, , Critical and historical essays contributed to the Edinburgh Review (London, 1895), I, 45)Google Scholar.

44 This point was made implicitly in the reviews cited in note 43, but there was a full rehearsal of this argument in Bisset's, article, Westminster Review, XVI (1827), 339ffGoogle Scholar. In this case, the republicans were not taken to task for being republicans, but for failing to be early nineteenth-century philosophic radicals.

45 Godwin, , History, IV, 597–8; I, ch. iGoogle Scholar; see also the review of this volume in the Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review, CDXXIV (30 06 1827), IGoogle Scholar.

46 Godwin, , Political justice, II, 211–12Google Scholar.

47 Godwin, , History, III, 118–19Google Scholar.

48 Ibid, IV, 409; III, 118–19.

49 Philp, , Godwin's Political justice, p. 40Google Scholar.

50 See above, p. 646.

51 See Forbes, Hume's philosophical politics. Richardson, (The debate on the English Revolution, p. 54)Google Scholar comments that Godwin's work was ‘insufficiently Whiggish in the orthodox sense to overshadow Hume's History’.

52 Godwin, , History, II, 497–8Google Scholar.

53 See for example, [Francis Jeffrey] ‘Brodie's History of the British Empire’; Macaulay, , ‘Hallam's Constitutional history’ (1828)Google Scholar, Critical and historical essays, I, 154–6; see also Burrow, , A liberal descent, pp. 21 ffGoogle Scholar.

54 Godwin, , History, I, 5–6Google Scholar.

55 For the self-image of the English republicans, see Scott, Jonathan, Algernon Sidney and the English republic, 1623–1677 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 102 ffGoogle Scholar.

56 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, On the constitution of the church and state (1829)Google Scholared. Colmer, John, The collected works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 10 (Princeton, 1976), p. 96Google Scholar; see also Morrow, ‘Coleridge and the English Revolution’. On Godwin's elitism, see the work cited in note 23 above.

57 Godwin, , Political justice, I, Bk. IV, ch. iiGoogle Scholar.

58 Paul, C. Kegan, William Godwin: His friends and contemporaries (2 vols., London, 1876), II, 263Google Scholar.

59 Ibid. p. 265.

60 See Bisset, , ‘Godwin's History’, p. 342Google Scholar; [Redding, Cyrus], ‘Godwin's History’, The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, I, (1829), 127Google Scholar.

61 Godwin, , History, II, 221Google Scholar.

62 For an account of this aspect of republicanism see Pocock, J. G. A., The machiavelian moment. Florentine political thought and the atlantic republican tradition (Princeton, 1975), pp. 158–9Google Scholar. I am particularly grateful to Colin Davis for drawing my attention to this relationship.

63 Godwin, , History, III, 296Google Scholar; IV, 606–8.