Down with the Crown': British Anti-monarchism and Debates about Royalty since 1790

298 Pages·1999·45.68 MB·English

by  Antony Taylor

'Down with the Crown'
I
PICTURING HISTORY
Series Editors
Peter Burke, Sander L. Gilman, LudmillaJordanova, Roy Porter,
tBob Scribner ( 1995- 8)
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A Mask without a Face Photography and the Visualization of
LUTHER LINK the British Empire
JAMES RYAN
Reading lconotexts
From Swift to the French Revolution Pictures and Visuality in Early
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CRAIG CLUNAS
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JOHN HARVEY Mirror in Parchment
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Men's Bodies, Britain and the Great War
MICHAEL CAMILLE
JOANNA BOURKE
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Eyes of Love
DAVID MATLESS
The Gaze in English and French Painting
and Novels 1840-1900 The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel
STEPHEN KERN Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in
Medieval and Renaissance Europe
The Destruction of Art
MITCHELL B. MERBACK
Iconoclasm and Vandalism since
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DARIO GAMBONI
The Feminine Ideal
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Maps and Politics
JEREMY BLACK
'Down with the Crown'
British Anti-monarchism and Debates
about Royalty since 790
I
Antony Taylor
REAKTION BOOKS
To my parents, John and Nora Taylor
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
79 Farringdon Road, London EC IM 3JU, UK
First published I999
Copyright© Antony Taylor I999
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publishers.
Series design by Humphrey Stone
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd,
Guildford and King's Lynn
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Taylor, Anthony.
'Down with the crown': British anti-monarchism and debates
about royalty since 1790.-(Picturing history)
I. Monarchy- Great Britain- Public opinion 2. Monarchy-
Great Britain- Public opinion-History 3· Republicanism-
Great Britain 4· Republicanism- Great Britain- History
I. Title
32I.8'io94I
ISBN I 86I89 049 4
Contents
Acknowledgements 7
List of Abbreviations 9
Introduction I I
Equivocations of Liberty I 8oo-I 837 20
2 Republicanism Reappraised: Anti-monarchism and
the English Radical Tradition I830-75 52
3 'What Does She Do With It?': Radicalism, Republicanism
and the 'Unrespectable' I87o-8o 8o
4 The Crown, the Radical Press and the Popular
Anti-jubilee I87fr--98 I IO
5 Anti-monarchism in the Colonies: Anglo-Australian
Dimensions I87o-I90I I44
6 'Lords of Misrule': Liberalism, the House of Lords
and the Campaign Against Privilege I87o-I9I I I74
7 The Labour Party and the Failure of English
Republicanism I9I9-<J9 209
Conclusion: The Future of the Monarchy? 239
References 249
Select Bibliography 286
Photographic Acknowledgements and Picture Sources 29 I
Index 293

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all those who have helped me in the preparation of
this volume. I first undertook some of the research that led to this book
as part of a broader project on the structural differences between
London and Manchester radicalism in the post-Chartist period. This
was subsequently presented at Manchester University for the degree
of Ph.D. in 1992. I would particularly like to thank lorwerth Prothero
for supervising this early stage of my research, and for his inex-
haustible supply of references on mid-century British politics. A
special mention must also go to John Breuilly for his advice on compar-
ative history, which I hope I have followed in chapter 5.
Early on I encountered some scepticism about the validity of a study
of ideas commonly held to play only a tiny part in the popular politics
of the nineteenth century. I am particularly grateful to James Vernon
for encouraging me to persevere in an understanding of mid-century
opposition to the monarchy, and to Michael Bush for pointing out the
value of an entire study devoted solely to this subject. His enthusiasm
for and knowledge of many of the books and authors cited has
contributed substantially to the final form of the volume. I would also
like to thank Luke Trainor, formerly of the University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand, for insights into Australian/British
comparisons during the nineteenth century, and his unparalleled
patience with a relative novice in Australian history. Subsequently, he
has enriched my ideas on subjects as diverse as Blairism and
Antipodean voting systems. My thanks, too, to those who have
commented on some of the ideas in this book, either at conferences or
in correspondence. I am particularly indebted to David Nash, Owen
Ashton, Rohan McWilliam, Martin Hewitt, Nicky Richards and Mark
Hampton for their suggestions for improvements. I would also like to
thank the University of Warwick for financial support from the
Research and Innovations Fund and the Institute of Education OSIS
account, without which much of the research in this volume would
have been impossible.
7
This study grows out of my recent published work in this area. It
draws particularly on my articles' Reynolds's Newspaper, Opposition to
Monarchy and the Radical Anti-Jubilee: Britain's Anti-Monarchist
Tradition Reconsidered', Historical Research, LVVIII (1995), pp. 318-
37 and 'Republicanism Reappraised: Anti-Monarchism and the
English Radical Tradition I85o-1872, in Re-reading the Constitution:
New Narratives in the Political History of England's Long Nineteenth
Century, ed. James Vernon (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 154-78. Chapters 4
and 2 are extensively revised versions of these earlier draft pieces. I
thank the publishers concerned for permission to reproduce extracts
from the earlier articles here.
This is above all a Manchester book. I would especially like to thank
the staff of the Social Science Room, Manchester Central Library for
their constant support and good humour, and their willingness to
tackle the most obscure references and requests. Unparalleled techni-
cal guidance, bibliographic expertise and friendship has been provided
throughout by Nick Weaver and Fergus Wilde. A special mention must
also go to Laurence and Keren for their unfailing enthusiasm for my
early journalistic exploration of some of the ideas expressed in the
following pages.
My greatest debt must be to my partner, Marsha Healy; she knows
how much I owe her.
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