From Sheffield to Raleigh

373 Pages·2015·4.29 MB·English

From Sheffield to Raleigh: a Radical Publishing Network in the Age of Revolution
DALY, Michael James
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From Sheffield to Raleigh:
A Radical Publishing Network in the Age of Revolution

Michael James Daly

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of
Sheffield Hallam University
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

October 2011
Abstract

From Sheffield to Raleigh:
A Radical Publishing Network in the Age of Revolution

Michael James Daly

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

The launch of the Sheffield Society for Constitutional Information in 1791 is recognised
by historians as one of the earliest and most radical expressions of organised working
class calls for parliamentary reform in England. Research for this thesis has shown that
Joseph Gales, the Sheffield publisher, was active in supporting the reform movement
through his newspaper the Sheffield Register, with the help of his wife Winifred, a
novelist, and his assistant, the poet James Montgomery, until the flight of the Galeses to
America in 1794-95. However, existing historical scholarship has not explored the
archival material in depth to reveal the detailed content of their radical journalism and
publishing in the key years 1791-94. There is also a pronounced gap, despite the
presence of a significant archive, in the later activities of the Galeses in North America,
and of Montgomery in Sheffield in 1794-97. This thesis will seek to fill this gap in
historical knowledge by showing in more detail the content and depth of their radical
journalism and writings, their links with national and international reformers, and how
their later claims of moderation are contradicted by the newly available data. This will
be achieved by exploring the letters, poems, and editorials, of the Sheffield Register, the
Sheffield Iris, and the Raleigh Register newspapers, the ―Recollections,‖ letters and
novels of Winifred Gales, and the poems and prose writings of James Montgomery.
There will also be a consideration of their place in the rise of a middling-sort class
awareness, transatlantic radicalism, the role of feminist autobiographical diaries, and the
boosterist activities of the Galeses in North Carolina.
This work is dedicated with love to my wife
Anne
and to my children
Morgan, Jackson, Calvin and Grace
CONTENTS

Page

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction 1

1. ―Recollections" of radical Sheffield, the Gales diary 42

2. Winifred Gales, 1761-1839, a literary woman 86

3. The Sheffield Register, 1791-94 106

4. America and the Raleigh Register, 1795-1832 168

5. James Montgomery and the Sheffield Iris, 1794-97 201

Conclusion 258

Bibliography

Appendix
Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the Evangelical Library, London, for their bursary, which
began this journey in 2005, the invaluable help of Doug Hindmarch of the Sheffield
City Archives in loaning me the microfilms of the Sheffield Register and Sheffield Iris
newspapers, and the British Library newspapers division for digitizing them. The
University of North Carolina for digitizing the Gales diary ―Recollections,‖ and the
North Carolina State Archives for unearthing the photograph of a lost portrait of Joseph
Gales. The Sheffield Hallam University Graduate School for funding my research trip to
North Carolina in April 2009, and my supervisors, Dr. Emma Major (initially), Dr. Sue
McPherson (English), and my Director of Studies, Dr. Antony Taylor (History). My
friend Peter Brown for his judicious help at key moments in clarifying my thinking; but
most of all my wife Anne for her constant support, not least in allowing me to spend our
summers in Spain working on my laptop.

Soli Deo Gloria!
Abbreviations

Iris Sheffield Iris
LCS London Corresponding Society
RR Raleigh Register
SCI Society for Constitutional Information
SR Sheffield Register
SSCI Sheffield Society for Constitutional Information
INTRODUCTION

The 1790s in London and the provinces were a time of great political unrest following
the French Revolution, with growing calls for increased parliamentary representation,
including provincial towns like Sheffield, which were without proper representation.
There was an upsurge in Constitutional societies outside the capital along the lines of
the London Corresponding Society (LCS), which gathered support for petitions for
reform to parliament and caused the Pitt government to be apprehensive about a
possible mass insurrection. In Sheffield the brief flowering of the Constitutional society
(SSCI) in the 1790s, encouraged by local newspaper man Joseph Gales, his wife
Winifred, their assistant James Montgomery, and orator Henry Redhead Yorke, was
soon quashed by the Government and local interests ─ Gales fled the country and Yorke
was imprisoned during which incarceration he (again) changed sides politically.1 As
Donald Read says, ―Sheffield was the strongest centre of English provincial radicalism
in the 1790s.‖2 However, whilst recognising the importance of the Galeses and
Montgomery, the content of their work has not been explored in depth by scholars.3 My
research will show, in detail that the Gales/Montgomery publishing operation was an
important regional source of reform support that was also linked to key national and
international figures and groups active in the reform movement. These three important
figures will thus be raised from the obscurity into which they have sunk and will be
shown to be key individuals in the transatlantic radical reform publishing movement in
the 1790s.
To achieve this, my research will bring together detailed material from Sheffield and
Raleigh (North Carolina), to reveal the extent of the radicalism of these three in much
greater depth and sophistication. This includes the handwritten ―Recollections‖4 of

1 J. G. Alger, ―Henry Redhead Yorke (1772-1813)," rev. Peter Spence, in Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, accessed September 8, 2009, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30241.
2 Donald Read, The English Provinces c.1760-1960: a Study in Influence (London: Arnold, 1964), 46.
3 For example, E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 2nd ed. (London: Penguin,
2002), 144, 150n, 166, only briefly mentions Gales, even calling him ―John,‖ 197.
4 Winifred Gales, ―Recollections,‖ Gales-Seaton Papers 2652, Southern Historical Collection, University
of North Carolina; see appendix, picture 1.
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Winifred Gales; her letters to the Unitarian leader and scholar the Rev. Jared Sparks;5
and her two novels, The History of Lady Emma Melcombe, and Her Family,6 and,
Matilda Berkely, or, Family Anecdotes.7 Political letters, poetry and editorials from the
Sheffield Register (SR), Sheffield Iris (Iris), and the Raleigh Register (RR) newspapers.
James Montgomery‘s, The History of a Church and a Warming-Pan; 8The Whisperer,
or Hints and Speculations, by Gabriel Silvertongue, Gent.; 9Prison Amusements, and
Other Trifles: Principally written during Nine Months of Confinement in the Castle of
York, by Paul Positive;10 his reform poems and hymns published in their newspapers;
and the seven volume Memoirs of the life and writings of James Montgomery by John
Holland and James Everett.11 As Emma Macleod has noted, this recovery of primary
source material is in line with the recent rapid increase in the release of print and
electronic publishing collections from the period.12
The Galeses have variously been interpreted as assiduous publishers, civic and
community leaders in Sheffield, publishing entrepreneurs, provincial literati in the UK
and the US, and as successful migrants who ‗boosted‘ local civic society in North
Carolina and the public profile of the burgeoning new town of Raleigh. This thesis is an
attempt to reclaim and reappraise the material evidence of their activities in these twin
situations, returns to the literary survivals of their work, and locates them in their
contemporary context. It also seeks to peel away later accretions of piety and Victorian

5 Correspondence between Winifred Gales and Rev. Jared Sparks, Gales Papers, 1794-1864, PC. 146,
Southern Collection, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.
6 Winifred Gales, The History of Lady Emma Melcombe, and Her Family, by a Female, in Three Volumes
(London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1787).
7 Winifred Gales, Matilda Berkely, or, Family Anecdotes (Raleigh: J. Gales, 1804).
8 James Montgomery, The History of a Church and a Warming-Pan (London: H. D. Symonds, 1793).
9 James Montgomery, The Whisperer; or, Tales and Speculations. By Gabriel Silvertongue (London: J.
Johnson, 1798).
10 James Montgomery, Prison Amusements, and Other Trifles: Principally written during Nine Months of
Confinement in the Castle of York, Paul Positive (London: J. Johnson, 1797).
11 John Holland and James Everett, Memoirs of the life and writings of James Montgomery, 7 vols.
(London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1854-56). See also a portrait in the appendix.
12 Emma Vincent Macleod, ―British Attitudes to the French Revolution,‖ Historical Journal 50, no. 3
(2007), 690, accessed July 15, 2011, doi: 10.1017/S0018246X07006310.
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notions of self-help and respectability from what were actually very troubled,
troublesome and radical careers in the fiery and fragmented provincial culture of the
1790s. This was a turbulent decade, and a reappraisal of their role, forces a re-
examination of the situation in Sheffield during this period, and the reasons for their
migration and exile to the American colonies. These issues constitute the main matter of
the thesis.
The rediscovery of this material has forced a re-evaluation of the place of these three
individuals within the reform movement, has shown that there is much more to be
revealed about them, and that they are more important than previously recognised. The
research undertaken here will show that there was a clear connection between these
Sheffield publishers and the international reform network in Britain, Europe and
America. The geographical distance, the passage of time, the inaccessibility of the
primary material and their relative obscurity today has dimmed our awareness of their
importance to the radical reform movement at a crucial time. Now, however, my
research will show that they are three important individuals whose roles in local events
deserve greater notice as part of national and international events. For they are of
interest not just to our understanding of the political reform movement but also for their
involvement in publishing, writing, social concern, nonconformist Christianity, the rise
of the middling classes, and the emergence of the voice of strong, cultured, literary
women within the public realm.
When E. P. Thompson wrote, ―There has been no systematic research into the extent
of such provincial prosecutions‖ in England during the 1790s, including that of Joseph
Gales and James Montgomery at Sheffield, he could also have rightly included the lack
of in-depth investigation into their radicalism.13 For, whilst historians have
acknowledged the role of the Galeses and, to a lesser extent, Montgomery in the
Sheffield reform movement, they have not analysed their published material in depth to
reveal its radical content.14 In addition, to argue that theological radicalism fuelled
political radicalism in the period, as Eileen Groth Lyon and Stuart Andrews suggest, is

13 Thompson, The Making, 150n; Frida Knight, The Strange Case of Thomas Walker: Ten Years in the
Life of a Manchester Radical (London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd., 1957), foreword.
14 See the appendix for my analysis of letters, poems and editorials in the SR, for the crucial years 1791-
94; and poems, various editorials, letters, articles, and advertisements in the Iris for 1794-1800.
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