Things that Didn't Happen: Writing, Politics and the Counterhistorical, 1678-1743

296 Pages·2019·7.448 MB·English

by  John McTague

John
McTague
John McTague
D T H I N G S
Counterhistorical writing, fabricating or speculating on what might have happened I
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but in reality did not, tends to cluster around moments of crisis, when writers need
D T H AT
history to make the most sense, but it happens not to. James Francis Edward
Stuart, the Prince of Wales born in 1688, was not an illegitimate child smuggled H
into the queen’s birthing chamber in a warming pan, but it suited many people to N
DIDN’T
say he was. In 1708, the same prince did not quite land on the coast of Scotland
with a force of 5,000 men in order to claim the Scottish crown, but writers busied I
themselves with exploring what would have happened if he had succeeded. ’
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T
This stimulating and original book looks at counterhistorical writing in late Stuart HH AA PP PP EE NN
and early Hanoverian England, a period of social change and political uncertainty,
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when speculation of all kinds fl ourished. This book’s aim is less to determine
what ‘really’ happened than to show how the tension between the factual and the H
counter-factual played out in the changing political culture of S
the period. From the alleged ‘Popish Plot’ of Titus Oates
A
to the South Sea Bubble, McTague draws on a rich
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variety of sources – popular, archival and canonically WWrriittiinngg,,
literary – to investigate the propagandic and literary P H
exploitation of three kinds of things that did not PPoolliittiiccss aanndd tthhee
occur at this time: failures which inspired ‘what if’ P A
CCoouunntteerrhhiissttoorriiccaall,,
narratives, speculative futures which failed to come
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to pass and ‘pure’ fi ctions created and disseminated for E 11667788––11774433
political gain. In a fi nal section, he presents a new reading
of the various versions of Pope’s Dunciad – texts which in their
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cannibalisation and repurposing of the material of political and
literary culture refl ect and deploy the methodologies and strategies
of counter-historical propaganda explored in earlier chapters.
JOHN MCTAGUE is Lecturer in English Literature at the
University of Bristol.
Cover image: details from A Raree Show ([London], [1681]),
British Museum, London © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Cover design: www.stay-creative.co.uk
Things that Didn’t Happen
Studies in the Eighteenth Century
ISSN: 2398–9904
This major series from Boydell & Brewer, published in association with the British Society
for Eighteenth-Century Studies, aims to bring into fruitful dialogue the different disci-
plines involved in all aspects of the study of the long eighteenth century (c.1660–1820).
It publishes innovative volumes, singly or co-authored, on any topic in history, science,
music, literature and the visual arts in any area of the world in the long eighteenth cen-
tury and particularly encourages proposals that explore links among the disciplines, and
which aim to develop new cross-disciplinary fields of enquiry.
Series editors: Ros Ballaster, University of Oxford, UK; Matthew Grenby, Newcastle Uni-
versity, UK; Robert D. Hume, Penn State University, USA; Mark Knights, University of
Warwick, UK; Renaud Morieux, University of Cambridge, UK.
Previously published
Material Enlightenment: Women Writers and the Science of Mind, 1770–1830, Joanna
Wharton, 2018
Celebrity Culture and the Myth of Oceania in Britain, 1770–1823, Ruth Scobie, 2019
British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century: Challenging the Anglo-French C onnection,
edited by Valérie Capdeville and Alain Kerhervé, 2019
Things that Didn’t Happen
Writing, Politics and the Counterhistorical, 1678–1743
John McTague
THE BOYDELL PRESS
Published in association with
© John McTague 2019
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of John McTague to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2019
The Boydell Press, Woodbridge
ISBN 978 1 78327 409 3
The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
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external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guaran-
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To my parents

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgements x
List of Abbreviations xii
Introduction 1
I: Fabrications 25
1 Incorrigibility : The Warming Pan Scandal of 1688–89 27
2 ‘Working in th’immediate power to be’ : The Popish
and Protestant Plots 55
II: Failures 85
3 Travesties : The Assassination and Insurrection
Plots of 1683 87
4 Contingency and Incontinence: The Jacobite
Invasion of 1708 111
III: Speculations 139
5 The Indifference of Number : The South Sea
Bubble, 1720–21 141
6 ‘Some Convenient Order’ : Mandeville, Berkeley,
and the Narration of Ethical Exchange 167
IV: The Dunciads 181
7 Living in Counterhistory : The Dunciads as Mock-
Prophecy 183
8 The Indifference of the Dunces : Agency in the
Dunciads 207
viii Contents
9 Gravitation, Providence, and Theories of History
in the Dunciads 223
Conclusion: Events that Didn’t Happen 249
Bibliography 257
Index 275
List of Illustrations
Fig. 1. Bernard Lens, Mary of Modena with the Prince of Wales,
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. © The Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge. 40
Fig. 2. Satirical print attributed to Pieter Schenk (1688), depicting
Mary of Modena, the infant Prince of Wales and Father
Petre, British Museum, London. © The Trustees of the
British Museum. 41
Fig. 3. Anon., The Two Associations (London, 1681), p. 5, John
Rylands Library, University of Manchester. Copyright of
The University of Manchester. 61
Fig. 4. A Ra-ree Show ([London], [1681]), British Museum,
London. © The Trustees of the British Museum. 65
Fig. 5. Three of Spades, South Sea Bubble playing cards. London:
Printed for Carington Bowles, 1721. Bancroft Collection,
Kress Collection of Business and Economics, Baker
Library, Harvard Business School. 162
Fig. 6. Anon., The Prevailing Candidate, or the Election carried
by Bribery and the Devil ([London], [ca. 1721], British
Museum, London. © The Trustees of the British Museum. 164
The author and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and individuals
listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copy-
right. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies
are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any
necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.