Public Life and the Propertied Englishman 1689-1798: The Ford Lectures Delivered in the University of Oxford 1990

678 Pages·1994·13.011 MB·English

by  Paul Langford

Title Pages
Public Life and the Propertied Englishman 1689–
1798: The Ford Lectures Delivered in the
University of Oxford 1990
Paul Langford
Print publication date: 1994
Print ISBN-13: 9780198205340
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205340.001.0001
Title Pages
(p.i) Public Life and the Propertied Englishman 1689–1798
(p.ii) (p.iii) Public Life and the Propertied Englishman 1689–1798
(p.iv)
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Title Pages
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Preface
Public Life and the Propertied Englishman 1689–
1798: The Ford Lectures Delivered in the
University of Oxford 1990
Paul Langford
Print publication date: 1994
Print ISBN-13: 9780198205340
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205340.001.0001
(p.v) Preface
THIS book results from an invitation to give the 1990 Ford Lectures in English
History, an honour of which, in my own university I am deeply aware. But the
work on which it is based started a good many years ago, with research into the
relationship between politics at Westminster and Whitehall on the one hand, and
the wider community implied by appeals to ‘public opinion’ and the ‘political
nation’ on the other. In the lectures, and much more fully in this book, my aim
has been to describe some of the ways in which that relationship evolved
between the revolution of the rights of Englishmen in 1688 and the revolution of
the rights of man a century later.
No student of eighteenth-century life can safely ignore the immense changes
which affected it, or contemporary awareness of those changes. The political
processes set in motion by the defeat of Stuart absolutism, the strategic and
commercial implications of competition for trade and empire, the social
consequences of demographic growth, urbanization, and industrialization, and
the intellectual strains imposed by the impact of scientific enlightenment on
conventional patterns of belief, all contributed to the sense of a society in
turmoil. Yet the resulting transformation had to be accommodated by a mentality
instinctively hostile to the concept of evolution, let alone revolution, in its
modern, progressive sense, and thoroughly self-conscious about its veneration
for the past. This veneration involved certain assumptions about the theory and
practice of politics, which, however determinedly challenged, were not
superseded until much later. One of these assumptions was a hierarchical
concept of civil rights and duties, rendering most Englishmen the pawns of their
social superiors, bestowing severely limited responsibilities in a parochial
setting on men of modest means, and reserving a full part in the business of
government and legislation to a narrow élite. With this assumption went another,
whose attractions were positively enhanced by the defeat of divine right
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Preface
monarchy in 1688, and which made property the sole, rightful basis of authority.
This was a radical doctrine, more radical than many of those who subscribed to
it liked to admit. Property could come to men and women who did not accept
traditional views of the use to which they should put it, let alone traditional
notions about the kind of State they supported. More important still, property
itself could be defined in diverse ways, some of them potentially subversive of
established authority. Above all, rapid economic growth and diversification
ensured that instability of this kind would increase rather than diminish.
(p.vi) Uncovering the motors of historical change and revealing the make-up of
historical structures requires as much as anything else a sense of balance about
the relative importance of forces which are difficult to compare and evaluate.
Most of the differences about eighteenth-century politics, and at least since
Namier wrote there have been many such, result from a natural tendency to
exaggerate some forces at the expense of others. It is all too easy to claim that
the answer offered to a particular question will do as an answer to all kinds of
other questions, or to assert that one question is more ‘important’ and its
solution therefore more ‘significant’ than others. What constitutes historical
importance and significance is, of course, itself a highly subjective matter,
affected by fashionable ideas, cultural context, and individual idiosyncrasies. It
is all the more necessary, then, to specify the question being asked. My own
question is this: how did propertied society respond to the demands made by
economic growth, commercial competition, and social change, in respect of the
exercise of public responsibilities and powers? I have used the expression
‘public life’ to describe the latter partly because it is a neutral term with much
the same meaning today as it had in the eighteenth century, partly because it
was itself effectively a creation of that century. Like its sister ‘public opinion’ it
had sometimes been used earlier but did not achieve common currency until
about 1750.1 It was employed both to distinguish the individual's public role
from his private affairs, and to describe numerous concerns beyond, but often
including, the activities of the Crown, the government and the State in the
narrow sense in which these were generally defined. Many of these concerns
were carried on under chartered or statutory authority, others merely by means
of voluntary association. What they had in common was the ambition of some
public good, usually of a kind covered by that most characteristic of eighteenth-
century commendations, ‘improvement’. Public life also comprehended the
relationships which linked propertied people involved in these activities with the
central organs of government, especially as they affected parliamentary
legislation, the evolution of local institutions, the levying of taxation, and the
maintenance of order.
Concentration on this forum of opinion and arena of activity carries obvious
dangers. It neglects the central ground of much ministerial and some
parliamentary politics, for politics in this very broad, often local sense was
something for which governments and parliaments had limited enthusiasm. To
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Preface
that extent it underplays the aristocratic control and oligarchical influence
which many have seen as typical of the age. On the other hand, I hope in some
measure to have provided a corrective to the view that Georgian politics was
overwhelmingly controlled by its (p.vii) aristocracy, as conventionally defined.
If this was indeed an oligarchy, it was one which operated within a restricted
framework and on a consensual basis; it accepted the priorities of a broadly
bourgeois society. A second danger is that in stressing the middle-class drive to
social control and political pre-eminence that public life displayed, it is easy to
ignore the politics of protest, the resistance of those who lacked property and
who did not always acquiesce in what was handed down by their masters. But
again I have sought to show that fears of such resistance, however exaggerated,
were themselves a powerful stimulus to consensus politics. A third danger is that
in emphasizing what propertied people had in common when they pursued their
personal and collective ambitions, I may have paid insufficient attention to the
forces, ideas, or interests which divided them. Here too, my aim has been to
rectify what seems to me an imbalance in the literature, one which makes it easy
to neglect how much united bourgeois Englishmen even when they differed. In
short, I do mean to argue that our perception of eighteenth-century life has been
dictated rather too much by the patronage preoccupations of the gentry, by the
retrospective appeal of plebeian revolt, and by the long-standing English
obsession with party politics. But I do not mean to argue that these should be
ignored, let alone that the relatively open, self-consciously tolerant political
community which I seek to describe was one without hypocrisy and a strong
sense of the potential for social conflict.
The presentation and organization of the argument are determined by my
decision to concentrate on the sources and implications of change. The first,
introductory chapter expounds the views of property which were entertained by
ordinary Britons, often in a homely setting and with little regard for logic or
consistency. The emphasis is on the ways in which commercial development
complicated definitions of property and the political priorities which were
supposed to flow from respect for property. Chapter 2 examines the growing
reluctance to conceive of the State in terms which could impede the
accumulation of property and the competition of propertied interests, especially
in relation to religious allegiance and party politics. The three following chapters
display the resulting imperatives. In Chapter 3 Parliament is transformed from
the heroic defender of individual rights and liberties into the pawn of interest-
groups, not so much imposing its legislative will as providing its legislative
services. In Chapter 4 legislators are revealed employing the favourite safeguard
of the age, the property qualification, to expand the governing class while
restricting the rights of the governed class, in the process giving free play to the
vested interests of business and professional people. Chapter 5 focuses on the
accommodations made by the gentry, in terms of the governing responsibility,
tax liability, and distinctive economic interests of the landowning class. Chapters
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Preface
6 and 7 examine, respectively in a rural and urban setting, (p.viii) the response
of propertied people to what they considered their social duties, especially as
they bore on the exercise of authority and as they involved the participation of
newcomers to active political life. Chapter 8 finds a seemingly powerful
aristocracy adapting itself to a society in which even inherited rank and title
were expected to submit to the requirements of the propertied classes at large.
I have tried not to presuppose knowledge of the major themes, partly because
existing coverage of much of my subject-matter is so patchy. On many of the
topics discussed there is very little systematic research from which to
generalize. Even where there are substantial studies, they are often concerned
with rather different questions from that which I have posed. The colossal
labours of the Webbs loom large over what they called local government, but
their perspective was that of the Fabian archaeologist disinterring a bizarre and
irrational structure, rather than the historian recapturing the spirit of a once
flourishing organism. Eighteenth-century Parliaments are as well known as any
in terms of their personnel and the means by which they were elected. Yet
research into Parliament as a legislative institution is in its infancy. The
municipal corporations of the eighteenth century, which have left very rich
materials, have been the subject of few detailed studies, despite the emergence
of a vigorous school of urban history. Even the county community, so long the
preoccupation of seventeenth-century historians, has featured only erratically in
eighteenth-century studies, and then primarily with reference to electoral
politics or to the social policies which were to become so controversial in the
nineteenth century. And on major questions concerning the way that central
politics related to local communities, including the incidence of taxation and the
use of statute to bestow powers on propertied élites, suggestive hints have yet to
be followed up by intensive study.
In the following pages I have endeavoured to give full credit to what has been
written on such subjects, much of it in local and antiquarian journals. But the
deficiencies of the secondary literature have largely to be supplied from primary
sources. Some of these consist of printed materials, like the Commons Journals,
which have been used surprisingly little for this kind of purpose. But the great
majority are manuscript records preserved principally in the archives of local
authorities. They vary hugely in character, abundance, and arrangement. My
main attention has been concentrated where contemporary polemic and
comment suggest a significant awareness of change, with due caution for the
possibility that such comment can be both partial and misleading. I have also
followed where the adventitious survival of certain categories of archive
dictates; when the materials are particularly rich, I have employed some
elementary sampling techniques. I am conscious that this strategy is open to
obvious methodological objections. But to answer these conclusively across the
range of questions (p.ix) considered in this book would require several
lifetimes of research, not the twelve years over which I have conducted it. If my
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Preface
temerity in suggesting answers on the basis of selected evidence stimulates
more scientific probing on a narrower front it will have a sufficient justification.
Writing a work of this kind, it is impossible not to be aware of the diversity and
vitality of eighteenth-century studies, whatever the gaps that remain. As a
political historian concerned primarily with relationships of power and influence,
with the ways in which individuals and groups obtained and exercised authority,
I know how much I owe to social historians who often illuminate such
relationships even when they least suspect that they are doing so. Much
research into the eighteenth century has been driven by a desire to place the
social relations of the period in the context of longer-term class relations, but in
the process a great deal that is uncovered says as much about the peculiar
character of Georgian society as about the concepts and constructs employed in
modern historiography. In recent years it has sometimes seemed that political
history would be left stranded by the flow of research into other, newer
channels. In desperation some have fled to the lower reaches of popular politics,
others have sought to shore up the defences of‘high polities’. My own belief is
that the study of politics in its fullest and authentically ‘highest’ sense, as the
means by which communities organize themselves for what they perceive to be
the public good, is enriched rather than threatened by the diversification of
modern historical scholarship. I certainly know how much the research that has
gone into this book has gained by it.
I also owe a considerable debt of gratitude to individuals who have given freely
of their advice and assistance. Joanna Innes has been an invariably stimulating
source both of constructive criticism and detailed advice; Susan Brigden with
characteristic generosity read and criticized the book in its lecture form. Friends
and colleagues who have made valuable suggestions include Jonathan Barry,
Christopher Cunliffe, David Eastwood, Austin Gee, Peter Ghosh, Lionel Glassey,
John Spurr, Patrick O’Brien, and John Walsh. John Styles and John Cookson
kindly allowed me to read unpublished papers.
This book has taken me to many libraries and archives. I am grateful not only for
the use of their facilities but also for the advice which I have frequently sought
and obtained from their staff. They include the Bodleian Library, the British
Library, Cambridge University Library, the Huntington Library at San Marino,
the Guildhall Library, London, and York Minster Library, and the following
county record offices: Berkshire, Bristol, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire
(Cambridge and Huntingdon), Derbyshire, Devon (Exeter and Plymouth), Dorset,
Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Hereford and Worcester, Hertfordshire,
Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, (p.x)
Northumberland, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk
(Bury St Edmunds and Ipswich), Surrey (Kingston and Guildford), East and West
Sussex, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, North Yorkshire.
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Preface
P.L.
Lincoln College, Oxford
April 1990
Notes:
(1) J. A. W. Gunn, Beyond Liberty and Property: The Process of Self-Recognition
in Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Kingston, 1983), ch. 7.
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Illustrations
Public Life and the Propertied Englishman 1689–
1798: The Ford Lectures Delivered in the
University of Oxford 1990
Paul Langford
Print publication date: 1994
Print ISBN-13: 9780198205340
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205340.001.0001
(p.xiv) Illustrations
Between Pages 306 And 307
1
(a). The Liberty of the Subject
(b). Old England, Great Britain
2
(a). Special Pleaders in the Court of Requests
(b). The Country Justice
3. The Inside of a Newly Reformed Workhouse with the Abuses Removed
4
(a). Tax on Receipts
(b). The Income Tax
5
(a). Public Influence or a Scramble for Coronets
(b). The New Peerage
6
(a). The Couch of Adultery
(b). The Two Patriotic Duchesses
7. The Noble Sans Culotte
8. Vices overlooked in the New Proclamation
Photographs by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum
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Illustrations
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