Lord Churchill's Coup: The Anglo-American Empire and the Glorious Revolution Reconsidered

426 Pages·1995·16.054 MB·English

by  Stephen Saunders Webb

L C ’ C
ord hurchill s oup

L
o r d
C ’
h u r c h i l l s
C
o u p
The Anglo-American Empire and the
Glorious Revolution Reconsidered
S S W
t e p h e n a u n d e r s ebb
Alfred A. Knopf New York 1995
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
Copyright © 1995 by Stephen Saunders Webb
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York,
and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Webb, Stephen Saunders.
Lord Churchill’s coup : the Anglo-American empire
and the Glorious Revolution reconsidered /
by Stephen Saunders Webb.—ist ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical reference and index.
ISBN 0-394-54980-5
i. Marlborough, John Churchill, Duke of, 1650-1722.
2. Great Britain—Colonies—North America---History—17th century.
3. Great Britain—Politics and government—1660-1714.
4. Imperialism—Great Britain—History—17dl century.
5. Great Britain—History, Military—17th century.
6. Great Britain—History—Revolution of 1688.
I. Title.
DA462.M3W5 1995
941.06—dc2o 95-22815
C I P
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition
For Jane N. Garrett
Editor, Priest, Friend

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 3
book 1: A So l d i e r ’s S chools
Chapter One: The “Handsome Englishman”: 1667-1679 13
Chapter Two: In James Stuart’s Service: 1675-1683 37
book 11: L ord C h u r c h i l l ’s I n g r a t it u d e
Chapter Three: Rebellion and Empire: 1683-1687 77
Chapter Four: Lord Churchill’s Coup: 1686-1688 124
book h i : A rmy and R evolution
Chapter Five: The Coup in the Colonies: 1689-1690 171
Chapter Six: A Decade of Dissent: 1689-1698
Part One: From Walcourt to Kinsale 226
Part Two: The Seven Lean Years 245
Epilogue 266
Appendix: Inglorious Revolution: The Channel Fleet in 1688 271
Note on Dates 287
Note on Documentary Citations 289
Notes 291
Index 383
Illustrations follow pages 48,112, and 240.

Preface
Armies were the agencies of modem European statehood. Navies trans­
ported them across the Atlantic (and around the world) to conquer colonies
and command empires. The Governors-General depicted the military nation­
alization of England and the militant organization of its emerging empire,
from the royal arquebusiers’ defeat of the northern earls’ tribesmen in 1569
down to the imperial compromise between the armed executive and the
civilian legislatures in 1681. The central finding of The Govemors-General—
that Anglo-America was an empire and, like all modem empires, was ad­
ministered by the army officer corps—has been called “the most
provocatively revisionist interpretation of the British Empire to appear in
this century, so sweeping that if it is finally accepted, even the history of the
realm will have to be restructured to give greater weight to the army and
much less to the county community.” In Lord Churchill's Coup, that restruc­
turing moves toward the eighteenth century to recast the so-called “Glori­
ous Revolution” of 1688 (in England) and 1689 (in America) as a military
coup and the beginning of a hundred years of war for American empire.1
In the age of European empire, war was the adjustor of competing colo­
nial claims. In centuries of endemic imperial conflict, war drove the cycles
of both economics and politics. In the new states mobilized for empire, war
recruited, educated, and culled the new bureaucratic, meritocratic, milita­
rized elite. War, therefore, ought to provide the narrative thread and the
analytical impulse of overarching accounts of the Anglo-American empire.
Yet only recendy has i 6j 6 The End ofA merican Independence been credited
:
with “the rediscovery of war” as the driving force in the western world dur­
ing the century prior to American independence. Lord Churchill's Coup finds
war and warriors at the center of the public life of Anglo-America as our
ancien régime begins.2
As this set of subjects suggests, much of what follows is a narrative of
Anglo-American events (there were no distinct “English” or “American”
histories until the American revolution eventuated in Jacksonian democ­
racy). Only extended narrative can convey that depth of detail which au­
thenticates historical rediscovery. The same reviewer of 1676 who
applauded “the rediscovery of war” invoked the name of Francis Parkman,
X Preface
the master narrator of England and France in North America. Parkman has
never had an equal as a history painter, but if the composition, the excite­
ment, and the humanity of our past are to be recovered for the enlighten­
ment and enjoyment of the present, he should have more emulators. What
Parkman never forgot is that personality is the lifeblood of history.
Events, tendencies, and ideas were personified in 1676. “17th century
practitioners of Realpolitik,” such as James, duke of York, were “unex­
pected.” Others, like Garacontié of Onondaga, are “fascinating.” New to
the American story is the protagonist of Lord Churchill’s Coup, John
Churchill. These figures embody a conviction that individuals matter in
history. As responsibility is personal, so change and consequence can be
ascribed to persons, both as types and as actors. The unlikely alliance of the
English absolutist, the Iroquoian aristocrat, and the Anglican officer to de­
fend the American frontier against Louis XIV’s aggression defined the
boundaries of American empires until 1794. The alliance of the sovereign,
the sachem, and the soldier, extended beyond the Restoration Empire by
the greatest general of the age, also imposed centuries of anglican cultural
hegemony on North America
.3
Both the Iroquoian sphere and the Anglo-American empire were essen­
tially religious regimes. These confessional cultures pursued the goal of
perpetual peace by unending war. Such was the unity of transatlantic cul­
ture by the second half of the seventeenth century, that both the league of
the Longhouse and the empire of the English were riven by the counter­
reformation of European Catholicism. Religious rivalry motivated empire
and incited war. In underdeveloped polities, then and now, religion and
force prevail in public life, churches and armies are dominant institutions.
Anglo-America was just such a primitive polity in 1688. Where priests and
soldiers prevailed, “sugar and tobacco” could not be more important than
“politics, war, and religion.” Yet this is the mercantile mirage of the pre­
vailing historical paradigm.*
In its place Lord Churchill’s Coup places the hierarchies of the army and
the chinch. These ordered institutions prevailed both in the politics of
Stuart court and in the administration of the American colonies. The au­
thoritarian alliance of the episcopacy and the officers with the Stuart mon-
archs was execrated by traditional elites—landed aristocrats and urban
patriciates—in their parliaments and assemblies, as well as by religious dis­
senters and republican rebels. As the violent presages of lord Churchill’s
coup proved, however, the opponents of absolutism were helpless to resist a
modem monarchy so long as the king could rely upon “the black coats and
the red coats.” But uniformed support for the king was conditional upon his
preservation of the Anglican monopoly of office. When a bigoted Catholic
sought absolute sovereignty in order to impose the counterreformation on
an Anglican empire, the priests defected and the soldiers deserted. A reli-