June Blogpost: A Tale of Two Thomases: Part 1

Thomas Hollis and Thomas Spence were very different men, but as readers of this blog will be aware, I have recently been exploring the lives and works of them both.

Thomas Hollis by Joseph Wilton, marble bust, c.1862. National Portrait Gallery, NPG 6946. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Hollis was born in London on 14 April 1720. His family had made their fortune in the metalworking industry in Yorkshire and had then established a London branch of their cutlery business. Hollis was an only child and was unfortunate in losing most of his close relatives before the age of eighteen. One consequence of this was that by the time he was thirty he was an extremely rich man. Hollis travelled extensively in Europe in the late 1740s and early 1750s before settling in London. Though he briefly toyed with a political career, he soon turned to pursuing politics via other means. Physically, Hollis was described as being over six-feet tall and very strong. He had 'bright brown eyes, a short nose, and laughing mouth' (Colin Bonwick, 'Hollis, Thomas (1720-1774), political propagandist, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 19 May 2025). Hollis retired to his estate in Dorset in 1770, where he died four years later

Profile of Thomas Spence from the Hedley Papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with kind permission.

Spence was born in Newcastle upon Tyne on 21 June 1750. His father and mother were of Scottish origin and Spence was one of nineteen children. Despite being poor, Spence's father was keen that his sons should learn to read, and by his early twenties Spence was working as a school teacher in Newcastle. He moved to London in early 1788 where he worked as a bookseller for the rest of his life. He produced radical tracts of his own which he sold alongside those by others. The nature of his work got Spence into trouble, and he was arrested on a number of occasions. Physically, Spence was a short man - barely five-feet tall and slightly built. His life-long poverty meant that he was always poorly dressed, and he suffered from both a limp and a speech impediment. Spence was married twice - once in the north east and once in London - but neither marriage was happy. His son William, who moved with him to London, died as a teenager around 1797. Spence himself died in September 1814.

Despite these striking differences in their appearance, backgrounds, and prospects, these two men devoted their lives to very similar activities.

Bern, Universität Bibliothek, ‘Die Hollis-Sammlung’ 64. The Oceana and other works of James Harrington Esq, ed. John Toland (London: A. Millar, 1747). Reproduced with kind permission. Image, Rachel Hammersley, 2025.

Hollis distributed thousands of books to a range of public and university libraries between 1754 and 1774. Some of the books were simply bought by Hollis in London and sent on. Some had gold tooling added to their front cover or spine, others were specially bound for the purpose. In a small number of cases, the edition itself was commissioned by Hollis before being bound and sent. As a bookseller struggling to make a living, Spence disseminated books but was not in a position to give them away for free. Instead, he offered his own variation on Hollis's project in the form of his journal Pigs' Meat which appeared between 1793 and 1795. Here, for the price of just a penny an issue, readers had access to extracts from a range of texts.

There was significant overlap in the works the two men disseminated. Both focused on politics and religion and had a particular interest in the writings of seventeenth-century republicans, as well as in the eighteenth-century commonwealthmen who applied earlier republican ideas to their own circumstances. The importance of these works to Hollis is reflected in his decision to commission new editions of some of these texts - for example Sidney's Discourses - and in the exquisite bindings of the works of Sidney, John Milton, Edmund Ludlow, and James Harrington that he sent abroad. Spence included extracts from works by Sidney and Milton in Pigs' Meat, but it was Harrington who was the most frequently cited author across the three volumes, closely followed by the commonwealthmen John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon.

The title page of the edition of Sidney’s Discourses commissioned by Hollis with the smoke printed image of the pileus at the bottom. The National Library of Scotland: ([Ac]. 1/1.3]). Reproduced with kind permission. Image, Rachel Hammersley, 2022.

The header to Pigs’ Meat.

Hollis's lavish bindings reflect another parallel between the two men: their concern with the appearance - as well as the content - of works, and their use of symbolic images to convey ideas. Hollis claimed that while he did not value bindings himself, he saw the importance of them in rendering texts of interest to others. There appears to have been some truth in this, since the members of the Council of Bern were persuaded to accept Hollis's donation of books because of the beauty of the volumes. The gold tooling that Hollis added to the cover and spines of the volumes he sent had symbolic meaning - the pileus to indicate liberty, the owl for wisdom, and Britannia for works of patriotic value. Sometimes (for example in the case of the Sidney edition commissioned by Hollis) these symbols were also smoke printed onto the page. Once again, Spence's poverty meant he did not have the same opportunities available to him. Yet the pig image used on the title page of the second edition of Pigs' Meat served a similar purpose. Moreover, it too included a pileus or liberty bonnet that closely resembled that used regularly by Hollis.

The Three Thomases coin owned by the author. Image, Rachel Hammersley, 2025.

Both men also conveyed their political messages in metal as well as print. Hollis bought, commissioned, and disseminated medals alongside books. Spence described himself as a 'Dealer in Prints & Coins' and designed his own tokens - including one depicting three Thomases (though sadly Hollis was not one of them). Moreover, while Spence could not afford to give books away, a contemporary claimed that he tossed tokens out of the window and that passers by who picked up a token could then exchange it at his shop for a pamphlet (British Library: Add. MS. 27,808, 184). He also gave away a token free with each copy of the first issue of his final periodical The Giant Killer or, Anti-Landlord.

Despite their differences, then, both Spence and Hollis made extensive efforts to disseminate political ideas to a wide audience. Moreover, they did so because they believed that this would bring wider societal benefits. While there were differences in their political perspectives, they were both committed to ensuring that the public had access to republican ideas and those in support of liberty and rights. This was reflected in the dedication Hollis used in various forms in the works he donated:

Thomas Hollis, an Englishman, a Lover of

Liberty, his Country & its excellent

Constitution as NOBLY restored at the happy

Revolution, is desirous of having the

honor to present Milton's Prose Works to the

Public Library of Harvard College, at

Cambridge in New England.

Pall Mall, oct. 14, 1764 (Bond, p. 135).






An Englishman, a lover of liberty, civil & religious, Citizen of the World, is desirous

of having the honor to present this book to the public library at Berne in

Switzerland.

London jan 1, 1765. (Bern, Universität Bibliothek, 'Die Hollis-Sammlung' 71).

Elsewhere he explained that he sent books on government: 'for, if Government goeth right, ALL goeth right.' (Bond, p. 34).

On the title page to Pigs' Meat, Spence asserted a similar aim. The works collected in the periodical were designed, he explained:

To promote among the Labouring Part of Mankind proper Ideas of their Situation,

of their Importance, and of their Rights. And to convince them That their forlorn

Condition has not been entirely overlooked and forgotten, nor their just Cause

unpleaded, neither by their Maker nor by the best and most enlightened of men in

all Ages. (Thomas Spence, Pigs' Meat, Volume 1. London, 1793, Title page).

There might be a temptation to dismiss both Hollis and Spence as at best naïve and at worst eccentrics or cranks. Yet it is hard to deny that informed citizens are necessary for the preservation of liberty and the successful functioning of democracy. It is especially important to remember this at the present time when education seems to be under threat from all directions - from cuts in school budgets to threats of compulsory redundancies in higher education. I suspect that Hollis and Spence would be appalled.

Liberty as Independence

It is now over thirty years since I was an undergraduate. Even so I remember clearly how impressed I was by Quentin Skinner's ability to fill a large lecture theatre at 9am on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings for his lectures on Liberty. It was clear why he succeeded in doing so; his lectures were rich, thought-provoking, and eloquent.

Skinner's most recent book, Liberty as Independence: The Making and Unmaking of a Political Ideal marks the culmination of almost four decades of his thinking about the topic (though, of course, he has written on many other subjects in the meantime). This blogpost offers my reflections on a recent symposium to celebrate the book, that took place at Cambridge University

The idea of liberty as independence is grounded in the crucial distinction, set out in the Digest of Roman law, between a freeman and a slave. A slave is understood as being dependent on the will of their master and, therefore, constantly subject to that person's arbitrary will, whether or not they are physically constrained. By contrast, a freeman is not dependent on the arbitrary will of anyone else. In political terms, this requires living under the rule of law and having some input into the making of those laws. This understanding of liberty contrasts with what we might think of as the modern 'liberal' view, by which it is defined as an absence of impediments or restraint

Liberty as independence was initially closely linked to the Roman republican tradition - indeed it has often been labelled 'republican liberty'. Yet, as Liberty as Independence articulates, it was broader than that. In the first place, many of its advocates also incorporated into their thinking a crucial element of what Eric Nelson has presented as an alternative Greek tradition in republican thought. From this point of view, it is important to be free not only externally from the arbitrary will of other human beings, but also internally from one's own passions. Skinner presents this in a Roman rather than a Greek guise, citing Cicero's claim that 'A free man' knows how to 'govern his affections and desires' (Quentin Skinner, Liberty as Independence, Cambridge University Press, p. 19). Skinner also clearly demonstrates that this understanding of liberty was widely adopted in early modern Europe, not just by advocates of republicanism but also by monarchomach theorists, ancient constitutionalists, and advocates of theories of natural rights - including John Locke.

Liberty as Independence focuses on Britain in the century or so between the Glorious Revolution and the American and French Revolutions, when this view of liberty was dominant. It was adopted not only by the Court Whigs (who claimed to have transformed it into a reality) but also by many of their real Whig and their Jacobite opponents. The book then examines the process by which liberty as independence came to be eclipsed by the notion of liberty as an absence of restraint. This had been articulated by Thomas Hobbes in the 1650s, but only rose to hegemonic status in the aftermath of the American and French Revolutions. The question Skinner poses at the end of the book is whether this shift marks a moral gain or a loss.

Statue of Jean-Jacques Rousseau outside the Pantheon in Paris. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

James Harris's paper at the Symposium, 'No democracy, no Liberty', centred on a fundamental tension at the heart of the idea of liberty as independence. It requires that the  people have influence on or give consent to the laws by which they are governed, implying a close link with democracy. At the same time, however, to the extent that democracy operates by majority rule, some individuals will find themselves subject to a decision with which they do not agree. And on this account of freedom, that renders them unfree. This tension was explored in Alexis de Tocqueville's writings on America - where democracy is presented as necessarily posing a threat to liberty. It was also addressed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who spoke of the need for individuals to be 'forced to be free' by coming to recognise the general will as their own (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and other later political writings. ed. Victor Gourevitch. Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 53). Yet neither Rousseau's squaring of the circle, nor the Anti-Federalist solution of a bill of rights, seems a satisfactory answer to the problem.

Both Jessica Patterson's paper and my own considered how the theory of liberty as independence might help us to think about the debates over citizen militias that emerged in the late eighteenth century. Jessica highlighted the importance of 1780 for the doctrine of liberty as independence. In the immediate aftermath of the Declaration of Independence - in which the colonists deployed this doctrine to justify separation from Britain - it was also used by advocates of reform in Britain and by opponents of the slave trade. It was particularly salient in the aftermath of the Gordon Riots of June 1780, which saw several days of rioting in London in opposition to the passing of the Papists Act (1778). To quell the disturbance, King George III eventually brought in 10,000 soldiers who fired on the crowd without first reading the Riot Act. While estimates vary, at least 200 people were killed and many others injured. For some at the time, including the Orientalist and reformer William Jones, this demonstrated why it was dangerous to be dependent on the arbitrary will of a ruler. In the aftermath of the Riots he published An Inquiry into the legal mode of suppressing riots with a constitutional plan for future defence, in which he argued that the solution to the threat posed to liberty by this sort of arbitrary power was to arm the citizen body. Jessica went on to highlight the influence of these ideas in the nineteenth century in the writings of Chartists, Owenites and Marxists

Sir William Jones by James Heath, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1799. National Portrait Gallery. NPG D36735. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

My paper too focused on citizen militias, William Jones, and his Inquiry. But where Jessica looked forward to the nineteenth century, I examined these late eighteenth-century arguments in the context of the 'Standing Army debate' of the 1690s. This was sparked by William III's decision to maintain his armed force after the Treaty of Ryswick had brought an end to the Nine Years' War. A number of real Whig commentators objected that a standing army constituted a threat to the liberty of the nation, and argued for the use of a citizen militia as a defensive force. It was these arguments that were revived by William Jones and other members of the Society for Constitutional Information in the 1780s. They reprinted several key tracts from the 1690s debate, as well as producing works of their own on the subject, including Jones's Inquiry and John Cartwright's The Commonwealth in Danger (1795). Jones, Cartwright, and others argued that ordinary citizens should be armed and trained militarily. Moreover this was presented as an essential counterpart to parliamentary reform, including the establishment of universal suffrage. This was, no doubt, an alarming prospect to many, and perhaps contributed to the displacing of liberty as independence by liberty as freedom from restraint at the end of the eighteenth century

Richard Price by Thomas Holloway after Benjamin West, 1793. National Portrait Gallery NPG D5556. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Niall O'Flaherty's paper, 'Against Absolutism: Measuring Liberty in a Constitutional Crisis', also argued that Liberty as Independence sheds light on the political debates of the 1780s and 1790s: both by acknowledging the importance to those debates of natural jurisprudence, and by demonstrating the shared ideology of the Whigs in the eighteenth century. In addition, Niall emphasised the value of Chapter 5 of the book, which draws on novels by Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and Tobias Smollett, focusing on their critiques of the unchecked power exercised by local justices. Niall argued that this highlights the importance of local government at this time, and the fact that the tyranny exercised over the poor was often discussed in political rather than moral terms. Here, the connection between the local and the national, and between the history of political thought and other branches of history, are illustrated. Niall also noted that one consequence of this broad commitment to liberty as independence was a range of views on what constituted 'arbitrary power'. Benjamin Hoadly, in the early eighteenth century, allowed a large degree of discretionary powers for the executive (as necessary to curb the Jacobite threat), whereas later figures, like Richard Price and Thomas Paine, insisted on fewer discretionary powers - or even none at all. Finally, Niall wondered about the motivations behind the shift from liberty as independence to liberty as absence of restraint, and the extent to which late eighteenth-century advocates of the neo-Hobbesian understanding of liberty were motivated by the fact that it offered a more practical means of addressing contemporary problems.

The symposium raised many topics for further exploration. One of the most important is the question of who constitutes 'the people' - i.e. those who are to enjoy independence through consenting to the laws under which they live. For some of the thinkers discussed in the book, the definition seems to be quite broad (Jones and Cartwright, for example, would have said all adult males) but for others it was restricted to those who were educated and held property. Liberty as independence, then, has the potential to be inclusive and emancipatory but it could also be deployed in a more exclusionary fashion. What are the implications of this for its adoption today? Another topic is the relationship between liberty as independence and citizen militias, questions were raised about the differences between the British and continental practices, and about whether being compelled to join a militia could be viewed as an invasion - rather than an extension - of an individual's liberty. Finally, there is perhaps more to be said about how liberty as independence might be applied to other spheres, such as the economy and personal relationships. Even though it was eclipsed by liberty as absence of restraint in the late eighteenth century, it seems that, as Quentin suggested in the conclusion to his book, it does still have 'a great deal to contribute to current debates about the improvement of our moral and political world' (pp. 276-7).

The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought

The author’s copy of Eric Nelson’s book. Image Rachel Hammersley.

I am currently co-teaching a module on 'The Scientific Revolution'. Consequently, Isaac Newton's famous comment to Robert Boyle about 'standing on the shoulders of giants' was already in my mind on 15th February when I attended a symposium at St Andrews. This was organised by Ariane Fichtl to discuss Eric Nelson's important book The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought, which was first published 20 years ago. In his remarks Eric commented that he had wondered beforehand what he would like to hear from those who were gathered to discuss his book. He quickly realised that, while being told 'you were right' would be flattering, it would also be rather disappointing. What he was hoping for, then, was for his book to have provoked thought and discussion and that the conversations inspired by it were still ongoing.

Of course, as Eric would be the first to note, he was himself standing on the shoulders of giants. This point was made explicitly in Quentin Skinner's opening paper in which he presented a useful typology of scholars. There are, he argued, supporters (who champion the work of those who have gone before) and challengers. The challengers can then be divided into contradictors (who insist that those who have come before have got it wrong) and supplementers (who praise past work, while suggesting that something important has been missed). The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought, Quentin suggested, is a good example of this last approach.

Quentin Skinner speaking at the symposium. Image courtesy of Lightbox St Andrews.

Prior to the publication of Eric's book, work on republicanism - including that of Quentin Skinner himself - had tended to emphasise the Roman origins of early modern republican thought. On this account, the ultimate purpose of life was to attain honour or glory. Crucial to this pursuit was a view of liberty as independence, which was grounded in the fundamental Roman distinction between a free person and a slave. What characterised a free person was that they were not dependent on the will of anyone else. This entailed living under the rule of law (not the arbitrary will of a sovereign) and having influence over the making of those laws (whether directly or via representatives). Moreover, those laws ought to protect the life, liberty, and property of the citizens, so that the understanding of justice at the heart of this Roman conception of republican rule involved 'giving each their due'.

What Eric had noticed was that while this Roman version of republicanism was certainly influential in early modern Europe, it was not the only one. Alongside it there developed an alternative understanding of republican rule that was more indebted to Greek sources. Here the aim was not for citizens to attain honour and glory, but rather to achieve happiness. Consequently, the emphasis was more on the contemplative than the active life. Liberty on this account involved not being enslaved to passion, but being ruled by reason and therefore by individuals who were themselves rational and virtuous. Yet authors in this tradition noted that a threat was posed to this ideal when individuals were able to accumulate wealth, creating a significant gap between rich and poor. Under these circumstances wealth would tend to be valued above virtue, causing corruption. Consequently these authors insisted not on the protection of private property, but rather accepted some measure of redistribution in order to maintain the balance required to ensure the rule of reason and virtue. On the Greek account this balance, or right ordering of the system, was what constituted justice.

Francesco Patrizi. Image taken from Wikimedia Commons.

In his book, Eric identified Thomas More, James Harrington, the baron de Montesquieu and others as exemplifying - and developing - this Greek tradition. As Eric himself noted, one way in which the conversation he initiated has been continued is through additions to the tradition. Several papers adopted this approach, proposing figures who did not appear in The Greek Tradition for inclusion. In other words, there was further supplementation.

James Hankins put the case for Francesco Patrizi of Siena. Patrizi drew on recently translated Greek material and adopted a Greek view of private property in line with the model set out in The Greek Tradition. According to Hankins, Patrizi drew a clear distinction between the social hierarchy, where wealth and ancestry were key, and the political order - which should be organised according to virtue and merit.

The grounds for including Patrizi within the Greek tradition seem relatively straightforward. Filippo Marchetti and I made the case for figures whose inclusion is less so, but who nonetheless pose interesting questions for the tradition. Filippo's paper focused on Alberto Radicati of Passeran. He explored the intertwining of republicanism and deism in Radicati's thought, arguing that he had an ethical preference for democracy. In my paper I considered the late eighteenth-century radical Thomas Spence. Spence was directly inspired by Thomas More and James Harrington, and like them he proposed restrictions on landed property to secure a fairer government and society.

A sketch of Thomas Spence's profile from the Hedley Papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with permission.

Adding new individuals to traditions often highlights new dimensions. The discussion generated by these and other papers emphasised the importance of education, religion, and democracy

In his discussion of Patrizi, James Hankins noted Patrizi's belief that virtue and merit could be stimulated by education in the classics. A similar claim was made by Isabelle Avci in her paper on Thomas More's biography of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Noting that Pico was a controversial figure, and therefore a curious choice for More, she argued that he helped More to address the question of how an individual could maintain virtue while pursuing a political career. For More, as for Pico, education - and, in particular, reading - facilitated the cultivation of virtue through access to the divine. This offered More a means of combining the active and the contemplative life - treating them as complementary - rather than facing a strict choice between the two. Eric had already noted the importance of education in his book and it was crucial to Spence too. In contrast to Patrizi, however, who insisted that all citizens should be taught Latin to break the monopoly of the rich on a classical education and therefore on virtue, Spence and his associates sought instead to render a classical education unnecessary by ensuring that individuals could learn to read, speak, and write just as effectively without this form of learning.

This rejection of the classics could be a reason to exclude Spence from the Greek tradition, along with his democratic bent. As Eric explained, while the Greek tradition does involve the deployment of radical means - in the form of state redistribution of property - it does so in the pursuit of hierarchical ends - namely the rule of those with reason and virtue. Consequently, democracy, despite its Greek roots, was not central to Eric's book - only featuring towards the end in the discussion of a late adaptation of the Greek tradition in Alexis de Tocqueville's reflections on America.

Eric Nelson speaking at the symposium. Image courtesy of Lightbox St Andrews.

Yet several contributors to the symposium explored the theme of democracy, suggesting that it perhaps has more to contribute to the Greek tradition than might initially be thought. In part this is because two types of democracy emerge from the Greek sources. Extreme democracy, which was the focus of Eero Samuel Arum's paper, builds on Aristotle's account of democracy in Book 4 of the Politics, and describes a society in which the multitude has control over the laws. By contrast, restricted democracy draws on Aristotle's notion of politeia. Here sovereignty lies with the people, but virtuous magistrates are chosen by them to rule. The paper demonstrated that Jean Bodin's theory of sovereignty is indebted to this idea. It was also, as Markku Peltonen showed, much discussed by political scientists working in the Holy Roman Empire in the early modern period. Most accepted it as a viable form of government (in contrast to extreme democracy, which they firmly rejected) and some even saw it as the best form. What this tells us, as Markku highlighted, is that representative democracy did not - as was conventionally claimed - emerge fully formed in the age of the democratic revolution, but had its foundations in this tradition. Interestingly, this is also a topic that Eric himself explored in more detail in his Seeley Lectures delivered at the University of Cambridge in 2024.

Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie, c. 1797. National Portrait Gallery, NPG 1237. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Building on this democratic theme, several papers considered how Greek ideas could be deployed to justify a widening of the political nation. Hannah Dawson argued that while the Greek tradition looks on the surface to be hostile to women, some early modern feminists quickly found a loophole that they could exploit to argue their case for inclusion. While the notion that the intellectually and morally superior should rule was widely used to exclude women from politics, figures like Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft questioned whether those men who currently hold power are entirely rational and, therefore, fit to rule. Conversely, on this account, rational women should be equally capable of political participation. Hannah also noted that the Greek idea of the contemplative life also offered something to women who could see their minds as free even when constrained under a patriarchal system.

Eran Shalev also touched on the opening up of politics and education to women in his paper on the democratisation of the American Republic in the nineteenth century. His main point, though, and one which was also emphasised in Becca Palmer's paper on debates in colonial American newspapers in the period 1765-1775, was that Greek ideas - and especially the example of Athens - offered a model for democratisation and empowerment.

Ariane Fichtl speaking at the symposium. Image courtesy of Lightbox St Andrews.

Finally three papers looked more explicitly at how the Greek tradition provided practical tools for use in different times and places. Mishael Knight argued that the enclosure commissioner Sir John Hales used Appian's account of ancient agrarian laws to inspire and justify sixteenth-century English agrarian policy. Hales explicitly rejected the Roman notion that justice required giving each their own, insisting instead that redistribution was justified in order to prevent a great distinction between rich and poor. In her closing keynote, Ariane Fichtl showed how the Greek tradition also offered a tool for abolitionists in their development of strong philosophical arguments against slavery. Aristotle's ambiguity on slavery made it possible for abolitionists to use his notion of legal slavery in the Nicomachean Ethics to condemn slavery as tyranny while firmly rejecting his argument in the Politics about the existence of natural slaves. Moreover, unlike its Roman equivalent, the Greek tradition did not insist on an absolute division between dependence and independence, opening the way for the powerful idea of interdependence. Finally Marijn Nolmans's paper suggested that the Greek tradition might offer an alternative to Rawlsian liberalism today. He argued that a combination of the neo-Roman idea of political liberty, Aristotle's notion of human flourishing, perfectionism, and justice understood as the fair distribution of resources, could produce an ideal political society that would not only be free and just, but could also facilitate the flourishing of citizens and encourage excellence in a wide variety of domains.

As can be seen from this, Eric can be assured that conversations sparked by The Greek Tradition have not been exhausted yet

Some of the speakers from the symposium. Image courtesy of Lightbox St Andrews.

A Twenty-First-Century Spencean

A photograph from one of my early modern runs. Image by Rachel Hammersley (2005).

As regular readers of this blog will know, I enjoy running. I particularly enjoy running along the seafront near to my home. Not surprisingly it is a popular place to run and I regularly spot the same people out enjoying their own early morning exercise. One of the characters who always makes me smile is the man my daughter and I call 'Tories Out Man'. For weeks in the run up to the 2024 General Election he would run along the seafront wearing a black tee-shirt emblazoned with the words 'Tories Out' in large white letters. On being offered any sign of encouragement from those running in the opposite direction he would smile, raise a clenched fist and shout 'Tories Out'. As I worked on my paper for the Radical North conference that I reported on last month, it struck me that this man is adopting a twenty-first-century example of the kind of methods that Thomas Spence used more than two hundred years ago to disseminate political messages.

An original copy of Spence’s lecture ‘Property in Land Every One’s Right’ from the Hedley papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with permission.

While living in Newcastle in the 1770s Spence came to the conclusion that the oppression and poverty that he saw around him could be eradicated if the land was owned not by individual landowners but collectively by local residents. In a lecture that he delivered to the Newcastle Philosophical Society on 8th November 1775, he set out his vision for how this plan could be enacted. Each parish would form a corporation, composed of all adult males who had been resident within the parish for at least a year. The corporation would take ownership of the land within the parish, renting out portions of it for cultivation by local residents. The rents paid for use of the land would replace taxes, providing revenue to cover central government charges and to fund local facilities and services. Having composed this potentially transformative plan, Spence was keen to share it in the hope of having it implemented. For the rest of his life, he deployed various means of sharing his land plan with as wide a public as possible.

Immediately after delivering his lecture Spence had it printed, incurring the anger of members of the Philosophical Society who did not want to be publicly associated with Spence's ideas. Another printed version appeared under the title 'The Real Rights of Man' in Spence's Pigs' Meat periodical in 1795. Yet Spence was not content with simply reprinting the lecture, in addition he produced multiple versions of the plan in a variety of written forms. He incorporated it into works of utopian fiction in A Supplement to the History of Robinson Crusoe (Newcastle, 1782), 'The Marine Republic' - which appeared in Pigs' Meat in 1794, and Description of Spensonia (London, 1795). Several of these works also made use of dialogue form to address potential objections to the plan. He also presented his ideas in A Letter from Ralph Hodge, to his Cousin Thomas Bull (London, 1795), which adopted the epistolary form and concluded with a series of questions and answers. In addition he produced two model constitutions The Constitution of a Perfect Commonwealth (London, 1798) and The Constitution of Spensonia (London, 1803), and he printed two accounts of trial proceedings against him - The Case of Thomas Spence (London, 1792) and The Important Trial of Thomas Spence (London, 1803) both of which again served as vehicles for him to disseminate his ideas. Presenting his plan in different forms - and especially using genres like utopian fiction and dialogue that engaged the imagination - was a way of reaching as wide an audience as possible.

Nor did Spence limit himself to texts that were designed to be read. He also wrote songs which again conveyed his ideas, but which could be shared in political meetings and gatherings, making them more accessible to those who were unable to read. The songs were to be sung to familiar tunes such as 'Hearts of Oak' and 'Derry Down'. Some were even set to well-known patriotic tunes including 'Rule Britannia' ('The Progress of Liberty', 1793 and 'The Liberty of the Press', 1794) and, most provocatively, 'God Save the King' ('Rights of Man', 1793). This was a deliberately subversive act - in which Spence filled an establishment vessel (the tune of the national anthem) with his own radical content.

One of Spence’s counter-stamped coins. Image taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Spence performed a similar act of subversion with coins. After his move to London he began counter-stamping coins of the realm. In this case the establishment vessel was a coin bearing the image of the King's head and Spence's radical content was the subversive slogan which would be stamped across it. The example illustrated here shows a coin from the reign of George III that has the phrase 'NO LANDLORDS YOU FOOLS SPENCES PLAN FOREVER' obscuring the King's head.

A Spence token celebrating the Rights of Man owned by the author. Image Rachel Hammersley.

Spence also produced coins or tokens of his own which he was said to toss out into the street, so that local people could pick them up for free and then exchange them at his shop for a pamphlet. Again the tokens generally reflected Spence's ideas, such as the one bearing the slogan 'Man over man he made not lord'. They were also explicitly used to advertise his pamphlets. The reverse of the token just described advertises Spence's Pigs' Meat while another, which depicts two men throwing title deeds onto a bonfire, bears the label 'The End of Oppression' which was the title of another of Spence's works. Spence also used tokens to commemorate his own experience of oppression or that of others - such as John Thelwall and George Gordon - or to comment on current affairs.

It was not only via paper and metal that Spence conveyed his ideas. He etched his slogans wherever he could. In 1780 he visited a former miner known as 'Jack the Blaster' who lived in a cave at Marsden Rock on the coast between South Shields and Sunderland. The cave or grotto still exists and currently houses a bar. 'Jack the Blaster' had apparently gone to live at Marsden Rock having not been able to afford the rent on a more conventional home. Spence claimed that this inspired him to chalk the following words above the hearth:

The bar inside Marsden Grotto. Image by Rachel Hammersley (2022).

Ye landlords vile, whose man’s place mar

Come levy rents here if you can,

Your steward and lawyers I defy

And live with all the Rights of Man.

(Thomas Spence, 'The Rights of Man for

Me', in his Pigs Meat (London, 1794-5),

Volume 3, p. 250)

On this basis Spence claimed to have coined the phrase 'the Rights of Man' more than ten years before it became associated with Thomas Paine. Decades later, Spence's followers were said to have chalked Spencean phrases on the walls around London. The Home Secretary reported that "Spence's Plan and full Bellies", and other similar messages, had appeared "on every wall in London" and in 1816 William Cobbett wrote to Henry Hunt saying:

We have all seen for years past written on walls in and near London the words

'Spence's Plan' and I never knew what it meant until ... I received a pamphlet from

Mr. Evans ... detailing the Plan very fully. (Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. London,

1820, p. 381).

I cannot help but think that had custom-printed tee-shirts been available in Spence's time, he would have had one printed with a suitable slogan and would have worn it (and urged others to do so) on the streets of London and his native North East.

For those wondering what happened to 'Tories Out Man' in the aftermath of the election, I am pleased to say that he is still running along the seafront. When we saw him in December he was wearing a new tee-shirt which read 'Tories Outed, 2024'!

The Radical North, 1779-1914

The image of a Spence token sent to me by Malcolm Chase. Image Rachel Hammersley.

I start with a marvellous coincidence. At the end of November, I spoke at the symposium 'The Radical North, 1779-1914' which was organised at the University of Leeds, under the auspices of Northern History and with support from the Social History Society, to celebrate the life and work of Professor Malcolm Chase (1957-2020). As I began preparing my talk on Thomas Spence and the political culture of late eighteenth-century Newcastle, I spotted the photograph of a Spence token on the shelf beside my desk and thought I could use it as one of the illustrations. As I removed it from its frame I noticed that there was a message on the back and I realised that the photograph had been sent to me and my then husband, John Gurney, by Malcolm himself in 2007 as a 'New Year's Gift'. Though I have often looked at that photograph while working, I had completely forgotten that it was Malcolm who sent it to us. It seemed highly appropriate that I should have remembered as I began writing the paper, and I felt both Malcolm and John would have approved of my decision to dig more deeply into the life and times of Thomas Spence.

The symposium was a fitting tribute to Malcolm. It included excellent papers on topics ranging from Christopher Wyvill's Yorkshire Association to the legacies of Chartism in Lancashire, and the radical verse of the Pitman Poets. As always, what follows are my own reflections on the papers and the discussions they sparked.

Callum Manchester offered a thoughtful paper on the Yorkshire Association, which reminded us all of the problems associated with using the term 'radicalism', especially for the period before it was coined in 1819. As Callum explained, Christopher Wyvill is especially problematic in this regard because, while he fits neatly with some elements of the definition of a radical - in his sympathy for Dissenters; his staunch opposition to placemen and pensioners in the House of Commons; and his call for parliamentary reform - in other respects he does not. Callum's solution to this problem was to suggest that radicalism is not just about aims but also the methods deployed to achieve them. He argued that Wyvill's methods were moderate rather than radical, and presented him as taking a middle way between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine.

Christopher Wyvill by Henry Meyer, after John Hoppner, 1809. National Portrait Gallery NPG D4946. reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Callum's paper set a helpful framework for what followed, not least in encouraging us all to pay attention to labels and their applicability to particular individuals and groups. One particularly curious label that featured in several papers was 'Tory Radical'. It has been used to refer to 'the Factory King' Richard Oastler, who was the subject of Vic Clarke's paper. Oastler was a staunch campaigner against cheap factory labour and exploitation, and yet he worked closely with the Tory MP Michael Sadler in the General Election campaign of 1837, and even stood as a Tory candidate for Huddersfield himself. As Vic explained, Oastler's apparent political ambiguity was mirrored - and perhaps prompted - by his social ambiguity. His background as a steward at Thornhill made it possible for him to engage with both mill owners and factory workers, and to build networks across class and political lines. Later in the proceedings, Christopher Day noted that the label 'Tory Radical' has also been applied to James Heaton of Clitheroe, who deployed Chartist methods - including mass petitioning, fly posting, and organising public meetings - in resisting the Public Health Act of 1848.

In his paper, Andrew Walker spoke in more general terms about the celebration of 'Old Chartists' in the northern press in the last forty years of the nineteenth century, noting that some of these men had become more conservative over the years leading to them being described by some as 'Tory Chartists'. Finally, something similar is perhaps evident in the life of the pitman poet Lewis Proudlock, who was the focus of Jordan Clark's paper. Though a promoter of the rights of working people, Proudlock took great inspiration from Jacobite myths, not least the story of Amelia Radcliffe. The political status of Jacobitism in different contexts has been of interest to me ever since I came across Jean-Jacques Rutledge (a Franco-Irish Jacobite) who featured prominently in my first book. It was, therefore, interesting to see how this ambiguity played out in a Northumbrian context.

In the discussion, we agreed that rather than dismissing the notion of Tory Radicals as an oxymoron, we ought to take such labels seriously. The figures of the past do not always neatly fit the pigeon-holes into which later scholars want to put them. Paying attention to how they viewed themselves - in all its complexity and ambiguity - may reveal important things about their aims and methods.

Some of these so-called Tory Radicals also share something else in common, in being what we might think of as footnotes to history. Malcolm himself had a fascination for those obscured in the conventional historical narrative, and it was therefore appropriate that several such figures featured in the papers presented at the symposium.

A copy of John Marshall’s The Northern Reformer’s Monthly Magazine from 1823. Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University, Special Collections, Rare Books (RB 941.074 NOR). Reproduced with permission.

John Marshall, who was the focus of Harriet Gray's paper, is a good example of a forgotten radical. Marshall was a printer, bookseller, and librarian who lived and worked in Gateshead and Newcastle around the turn of the nineteenth century. He had links to better known radical figures including Eneas Mackenzie and William Hone, but Marshall himself is not well known and information on him is sparse. Nonetheless, Harriet did an excellent job of piecing together the evidence that does exist. Her paper, which was paired with my own on Thomas Spence, illuminated the political culture of the north east in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and demonstrated the various ways in which Marshall continued to disseminate Spencean ideas - via Spencean methods - long after Spence's own departure to London in the late 1780s.

Though living and working half a century later, and being based in Sunderland rather than Newcastle/Gateshead, Thomas Dixon - who was the focus of Joy Brindle's paper - reminded me a little of Marshall. He too was a disseminator and seller of books, but he also emphasised the importance of moving from thought to action. A distinctive element of Dixon's activity, which Joy explored in detail, was his letter-writing. He built up a large network of correspondents, which included several well-known figures. In his letters, as in his dissemination of books, Dixon's aim was to bring about tangible improvements to the working lives of those living in his locality.

The aim of improving the lives of working people also lay behind the petitions sent to Parliament from the north of England in the late nineteenth century, which were the subject of Henry Miller's paper. Most of the signatories to these petitions are complete 'unknowns', and yet in the words of the petitions we can hear the voices of ordinary people, thereby learning of their grievances and political concerns. Much the same is true of Martin Wright's account of the Northumberland miner's strike of 1887 and its impact on the wider socialist movement.

Richard Oastler, by James Posselwhite, after Benjamin Garside, 1841. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D7845. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Another factor linking many of these obscure figures - and the papers at the symposium - is the important role played by religion in inspiring radical thought and action. Spence, Marshall, and Oastler were all driven by their faith, and referred to religious ideas and arguments directly in their writings. Other papers explored the influence of religious belief in more general terms. Andrew Walker paid attention to the impact of Methodism on the Chartists, while Tobin O'Connor offered a fascinating paper on the Labour Church in the 1890s. He argued that although it only lasted for a short time, and was quickly forgotten, it nonetheless provided an important path into the Labour movement for many working-class northerners.

Several of those who spoke specifically about Malcolm, referred to the importance to him of the connection between education and politics, and his commitment to sharing his knowledge with audiences beyond the academy. This was, of course, reflected in his first job at Leeds University in the Centre for Continuing Education, but he sustained his commitment to it long after transferring to the School of History. Katrina Navickas showed that, for Malcolm, politics and education were integral to each other, while Matthew Roberts and Robert Poole noted that he always wrote in a way that would engage the general reader and adapted his work to the interests and concerns of his audience.

Laura Foster also addressed the relationship between education and politics in her fascinating paper on reading and rambling groups such as the Eagle Street College in Bolton and the Clarion Sheffield Ramblers. Both clubs combined the reading and discussion of literature with walking in the countryside. Laura argued that in organisations such as these, participants created a space of pre-figurative politics in which the friendships and communities that were forged operated as a kind of microcosm of an ideal state.

This sense of creating an ideal politics through 'doing' is something that Malcolm Chase achieved in his own life and work - as was evidenced in the heartfelt testimonies offered by many of the participants. He was, his former colleague Laura King told us, a 'different kind of professor'. Though a talented and productive historian, he did not conform to the conventional academic and institutional hierarchies. He was consistently supportive of students and early career researchers. Pretty much everyone in the room appeared to have had the experience of a conversation with Malcolm about a current research project being followed up with a package of relevant material. In my case, I had simply presented a paper on Jean-Paul Marat's time in England to the History seminar at Leeds, which Malcolm had attended. A week or so later I received in the post a collection of ballads and offprints relating to Marat in Newcastle. I was neither a student nor a colleague of Malcolm's, and yet he treated my research with the same interest and generosity as those with whom he had closer connections.

Nor was it just those within the Academy who reaped the benefits of Malcolm's immense learning and kindness. He regularly spoke to non-academic audiences, ranging from parliamentary MPs to local history associations and adult education classes. Moreover, he genuinely acknowledged and valued the knowledge and expertise of those audiences. Malcolm's commitment to making historical and political knowledge widely accessible echoes the behaviour of many of the figures discussed at the symposium. Spence deliberately employed innovative methods - such as tokens, songs, and graffiti - to spread his ideas widely. Similarly, Marshall used his circulating library to make books available to the people of Gateshead, and Dixon often wrote letters to acquire key books for the people of Sunderland. Malcolm, then, embodied the marriage of scholarship and public engagement - of thought and action - that the figures he wrote about, from Spence to the Chartists, would have recognised and applauded.

Reflections on the NHS 10 years on

One of my purposes when I began this blog was to use history to mediate on death, loss and grief. I have used it to compare my own experiences of bereavement, following the death of my husband John Gurney, with that of figures associated with my research.

December 8th 2024 marks ten years since John's Gurney, from cancer. Every year the weeks leading up to the anniversary are a tricky time in our household. The increasingly dark autumn evenings, accelerated by the switch back to Greenwich Meantime in late October, always seem to have a subconscious effect on us, reviving buried memories of those difficult final weeks. Ten years feels like a significant milestone - especially coming after our Geordie Double in the summer - and I have found myself reflecting a lot on the time when John was dying - including our engagement with the NHS.

We had, of course, had much experience of the NHS throughout the year that John was ill; from our local GP practice, to in-patient and out-patient services at several local hospitals. John had been seen by a range of experts including oncologists, gastroenterologists, radiographers, anaesthetists and dieticians. We felt as though we had walked virtually every corridor of our local hospital. Our experience was overwhelmingly positive. Almost everywhere we went we were treated with care, respect, and kindness.

Reliving John's final day is particularly painful for me, but my experience on that day revealed something else to me about the NHS. Something that I fear we are in danger of losing - or may already have lost.

The morning of 8th December 2014 dawned early for me - in fact, I had been awake all night - but by the early hours I was so worried about John that I phoned 999. When the ambulance came and the paramedics confirmed that John was very sick and needed to go to hospital, I was faced with a dilemma. I wanted to go with my husband in the ambulance, but my two children were still asleep in bed. Our family lived hundreds of miles away and though I knew that my next-door neighbours would look after the children if I asked, I did not want to leave them at this time. The paramedics were kind and thoughtful. They told me to stay with the children until I could drop them at the school breakfast club, promised to take good care of John, and took my telephone number just in case.

Within half an hour one of the paramedics phoned to say they had arrived at the hospital and that John was very poorly. "Get the children up" he said, "and come straight to the hospital with them". He promised that he would wait for me at the entrance to A&E and would make arrangements for someone to be there to look after the children while I spoke to the doctor. We rushed to the hospital and the very kind paramedic kept his word. He was waiting outside in the dark and cold and led us into the A&E department where other staff were waiting with teddy bears and a snack for the children.

That paramedic's willingness to devote time to us that morning was important. His understanding of my dilemma and commitment to finding a solution made it easier for me to cope with the situation. Moreover, knowing that there would be a familiar face on my arrival at the hospital helped me to control the panic that was rising inside me on the drive, allowing me to focus on being strong, calm, and patient with my children.

The doctor I spoke to on arrival at the hospital confirmed that John was very ill indeed and was not expected to survive the day. We again discussed the dilemma I found myself in - wanting to be with my husband during his final hours - but also not wanting to abandon my children at this traumatic time. I phoned my parents and they agreed to travel up, but it would take them around five hours to reach us, so we needed an interim solution.

As it happened, there was a private side room available for John which was next to a small bay housing four beds that were currently unoccupied. The staff arranged for John to be moved to that room, and for a play worker from the children's ward to look after my children in the bay. This was an ideal solution for us. It allowed me to spend time sitting with John and yet still be able to see the children and to be there for them when they wanted to tell or ask me something and when they needed a hug. They had the opportunity to visit their Dad in his room without having to sit by his bedside - which would have been distressing for them. Moreover, given that hearing is said to be the last sense to go, I like to think that John could also hear his children playing in the next room as he lay in the bed and that their voices might have given him a little comfort at that time.

Having a play worker there was also important as it meant that I did not have to be responsible for the children. This was crucial given that one of the things I had to do that morning was to go through the end-of-life paperwork with a member of staff. Acknowledging that this was going to be an upsetting task, the staff member began by offering me a hot drink. I asked for a coffee and was very surprised when she returned not with a plastic cup of instant, but carrying a tray with a cafetière of fresh coffee, a pretty mug, and a jug of milk. It did not, of course, make the questions she went on to ask any easier or the situation any less painful, but the offer of a little luxury at that moment is something that has stuck with me ever since.

There are examples here of what we might think of as 'inefficiency' within the system: a paramedic waiting around, after having handed over a patient, so as to speak to and look after the patient's family; two healthy children occupying a bay which could have housed four patients, and taking up the time and attention of a play worker; a cafetière of freshly ground coffee when a cup of instant (or water) would have been sufficient. But these things were so important for me and my family.

Let me be clear, my argument is not that efficiency within the NHS is unimportant. Of course we need to be careful with public money. And I am certainly not saying that, so that there can be kind treatment, accident victims should be left lying on the street waiting for a paramedic or that patients should remain on trollies in corridors waiting for a bed. But, on that terrible day for me and my family, the little bit of slack in the system made a huge difference to our experience and perhaps to how we coped with our devastating loss. I cannot be sure, but it is possible that being able to stay close to me until their grandparents arrived to look after them had an impact on how my children coped with the death of their father. I do know that it made a huge difference to me being able to be with both John and my children that day. Perhaps those apparent inefficiencies even produced cost savings - in terms of mental health support, for example - further down the line. Presenting efficiency as an absolute and uncomplicated good in the NHS - and in public services more generally - is short-sighted. As I found on that day, a little give in the system can make a huge difference to the experience of patients and their families.

Corruption

There has been much talk in recent weeks of the presence of corruption in British politics. The Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet appear to be relaxed about accepting gifts from wealthy donors. Keir Starmar is said to have accepted £76,000 worth of gifts since 2019 including £16,200 of work clothing from the Labour peer Waheed Alli, as well as corporate hospitality at Arsenal and Taylor Swift concert tickets. (For an in-depth assessment see Peter Geoghegan, 'Labour and the Lobbyists', London Review of Books, 15 August 2024, pp. 10-12).

Image of the Prime Minister’s official residence at 10 Downing Street, taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, such gifts are nothing new, and the perks Labour ministers have accepted pale into insignificance alongside Boris Johnson's Caribbean holiday on the island of Mustique, courtesy of the co-founder of Carphone Warehouse David Ross, and the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat that was paid for by Lord Brownlow. The idea that being in government brings perks way beyond the imagination of most working people seems to be widely accepted, at least among politicians themselves.

However, there is an issue about the gap that this creates between the Government and those it governs and represents. Another concern is the fact that the gift-givers might expect something in return - such as a blue light escort through the capital or favourable deals and contracts.

Corruption is not a new problem in Britain. As long ago as 1701, a pamphlet was published entitled: The Corruption and Impiety of the Common Members of the Late House of Commons. Its author claimed that the government had fallen into decay and observed that even those candidates who before being elected had insisted that they would be 'True-Representatives of the People' - once in office 'have done nothing worthy of the Name of Englishmen' (The Corruption and Impiety of the Common Members of the Late House of Commons. London, 1701).

While what was meant by corruption in the eighteenth century was not necessarily the same as what is meant by it now, understanding how the term was used then and why it was a cause for concern, might illuminate the issues under debate today.

Image depicting Aristotle. Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, concern about the problem of corruption was grounded in the understanding that the British constitution required that the three elements of the system - Crown, Lords, and Commons - needed to be balanced with and against each other, so as to ensure that the whole would operate in the interests of the public good. The notion of balance in government was based on ancient ideas: Aristotle's assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of the rule of the one, the few, and the many; and Polybius's suggestion that a mixed government comprising all three could secure the advantages of each without their disadvantages. This understanding of mixed or balanced government - and of the English parliamentary system as an embodiment of it - was voiced by many on the parliamentarian side during the mid-seventeenth-century Civil Wars. More interesting is the fact that in 1642 it was used by the writers of His Majesties Answer to the Nineteen Proposition to counter the demands made of the King in those Propositions:

There being three kinds of government among men (absolute monarchy, aristocracy,

and democracy), and all these having their particular conveniences and

inconveniences, the experience and wisdom of your ancestors has so moulded this

out of a mixture of these as to give this kingdom (as far as human prudence can

provide) the conveniences of all three, without the inconveniences of any one, as

long as the balance hangs even between the three states (His Majesties Answer to the

Nineteen Proposition, London, 1642).

The pamphlet went on to argue that the demands being made by Parliament in The Nineteen Propositions - such as the requirement that all officers and counsellors be approved by Parliament - if adopted, would disrupt the balance by shifting power from the King to the Commons.

For opposition writers in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was not the Crown that was at risk from the Commons, but rather the Commons that was at risk from the Crown. As the author of The Corruption and Impiety of the Common Members of the Late House of Commons noted:

It hath been a common and known Practice for this Forty Years last past; for Men of

Confidence and ready Elocution, if they could but procure an Election in some little

Mercenary Burrough, and so get into the House, presently to set themselves to

oppose the King and the Court, that they might be bought off by some good

Gratuity; Pension, or Place (The Corruption and Impiety, p. 2).

‘James Murray’, by Pollard, 1770s. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D32123. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

In order to control Parliament, the monarch and ministers would offer money, pensions or positions to elected MPs. From 1706 the term 'placemen' began to be used to denote those implicated in this practice. According to the Oxford English Dictionary a 'placeman' is: 'A person who is appointed (or aspires) to a position, esp. in government service, for personal profit and as a reward for political support; a yes-man.' Placemen remained an issue throughout the eighteenth century. In 1774 the Newcastle minister and political activist James Murray spoke, via a thinly veiled reference to the Biblical state of Moab, of representatives selling out to the crown for 'places, pensions, and perquisites' so that the institution that was supposed to represent and protect the people's interests and liberties became a means of enslaving them. The system of places introduced was 'only to be enjoyed by the friends of the court, or such as wished well to its interests'. By this means, those appointed by the nation 'to guard their liberties in parliament, were corrupted, and sold their constituents for a place under, or a pension from the government.' (James Murray, New Sermons to Asses. Philadelphia, 1774, p. 9).

Not long after, the newly established 'Society for Constitutional Information' noted that the public had been repeatedly warned about the venality of their representatives and called for various changes aimed at expelling 'minions of a court from the temple of public freedom' and restoring 'parliaments to their original purity and people to their rights'. (A Second Address to the Public from the Society for Constitutional Information. London, 1782, pp. 9-10). The arguments of the Society on this point were again grounded in their understanding of the balance of the constitution and the importance of the three elements - King, Lords and Commons - remaining independent of each other: 'The moment that either the Crown, the Lords, or the Commons lose their independence, in that moment our Constitution is violated, our Government is overturned, and our Liberty is endangered.' (An Address to the public, from the Society for Constitutional Information. London, 1780, p. 1).

The kind of corruption at issue today is, of course, different from that condemned by James Murray and the Society for Constitutional Information. For those interested in the complexity and history of the concept I recommend Mark Knights’s book Trust and Distrust: Corruption in office in Britain and its Empire (Oxford, 2021). Today there are many sources of corruption, but the bottom line is the dominance of private interests, including those of the rich and the powerful, over the public interest or the common good.

Memories of the British Revolutions

One of the frescoes from the Peers’ Corridor in the Palace of Westminster. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

In the Peers' Corridor of the Houses of Parliament, which leads from the central gallery to the House of Lords, eight frescoes by the Victorian artist Charles West Cope are mounted on the walls. On one side of the corridor are four pictures that depict events from the mid-seventeenth-century Civil Wars from the Parliamentarian perspective, on the other are four paintings that offer a Royalist account. They were commissioned as part of the refurbishment of the Palace of Westminster following a devastating fire in 1834. The idea behind the paintings, and the way in which they are hung, was to represent the fact that the two sides had fought each other during those wars, but that they were now unified once again and working together for the good of the nation. This scheme, and the careful consideration that went into it, reflects the difficulties involved in commemorating the events of the mid-seventeenth century.

Reconciling ourselves to the history of the British Revolutions (1640-1660 and 1688-1689) is perhaps less of a problem today, since those events are no longer central to British public consciousness or the understanding of our own history. In part this reflects the fact that the mid-seventeenth century features only fleetingly in the school history curriculum. Yet the events of those years still resonate in the way in which we conduct parliamentary politics. The adversarial model of parliamentary debate, the fact that the monarch cannot enter the House of Commons without permission, and the exclusion of Roman Catholics from the line of succession to the throne, all date from the seventeenth-century conflicts.

On 3rd September we held a workshop at Newcastle University on 'Memory of the British Revolutions in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries'. Organised in collaboration with colleagues at the Université de Rouen in France, this was a second workshop aimed at building towards a big grant application 'Memories of the English Revolutions: Sources, Transmissions, Uses (17th-19th centuries)' (MEMOREV). This workshop brought together a number of British and French scholars from different disciplines and career stages to consider how the 1640-1660 and 1688-1689 revolutions were remembered, forgotten, contested and reinvented across the British Isles, Europe, and North America between the mid-seventeenth and the early twentieth century. The aims of the wider project (as set out in the workshop by Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille) involve several elements:

Linking the conflicts of the 1640s and 1650s with those of the late 1680s and early 1690s. These were often linked retrospectively and, as Jonathan Scott has shown, many of the issues that were fought over in the 1640s were unresolved in 1660 and surfaced again at the time of the Glorious Revolution

Taking a broad geographical approach encompassing not just the British Isles but also continental Europe and North America so as to re-examine the impact of these revolutions on European and transatlantic cultures

Exploring the tension between memory and history and the way in which the two impact each other, including the importance of remembering and forgetting in the fashioning of historiography.

In what remains of this blogpost I will explore my own reflections on this stimulating workshop.

While the British Revolutions may no longer hold the place in the public consciousness they once did, episodes from that era still create tensions or problems for those engaged in remembrance, memorialisation, and even historical interpretation. As an historian who regularly teaches the British Revolutions I am acutely aware of this. I know the horrifying fact that the proportion of the population that died in the civil wars was greater than in World War One, and despite my republican sympathies I am uncomfortable discussing - let alone celebrating - the details of the execution of the King.

As several speakers from our workshop highlighted, the violence and the regicide have created difficulties for those remembering the events ever since the seventeenth century. Isabelle Baudino's paper was particularly strong on this. While early visual narratives of the period, such as A True Information of the beginning and cause of all our troubles and John Lockman's New History of England, did present the violence - the latter including an image of the execution of Charles I by Bernard Picart - later versions replaced these images with tableaus that encapsulated the event without actually depicting the brutality. Isabelle focused on two scenes that proved particularly popular as means of presenting the regicide and Cromwell's reign respectively in ways that were not too shocking or distasteful.

‘Charles the First after parting with his children’ by Samuel Bellin, published by Mary Parkes, after John Bridges. 1841 (1838). National Portrait Gallery NPG D32079. Reproduced under a creative commons licence.

Rather than depicting the regicide itself, the authors of narrative histories began alluding to that event by recreating the king's final farewell to his children. As Isabelle noted, the regicide was effectively present in this scene, since the reason Charles was having to take leave of his family was because he had been condemned to death, but the act itself was not shown. That farewell scene became ubiquitous not just in narrative histories but also in other forms, right up to Ken Hughes's 1970 film Cromwell.

The other scene Isabelle discussed also features in that film. It was Oliver Cromwell dissolving the Rump Parliament in April 1653, which became a symbol or shorthand for Cromwell's authoritarian rule. As Myriam-Isabelle Ducrocq noted in her paper, Cromwell as a character has also been problematic for those remembering or offering an historical account of the British Revolutions. This is especially true with regard to his activities in Ireland, but Myriam-Isabelle showed that Cromwell was also a difficult figure for historians such as Frances Wright, whose grand narrative England, the Civilizer appeared in 1848. On the one hand Wright was critical of Cromwell's actions and yet she also sought to exonerate and redeem him, describing him as a wonderful man and a guardian of civilisation.

Plaque at Burford Church. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

Wright saw the Revolution of 1640-1660 as a positive event, advancing the civilising process, yet for her - and for later parliamentarian sympathisers - it could be difficult to identify moments or characters worthy of celebration. Waseem Ahmed's paper addressed this issue from the perspective of the Left in examining 'Levellers Day', a commemoration of the Leveller mutiny which resulted in the execution of three men - Cornet Thompson, Corporal Perkins, and Private Church - at Burford in Oxfordshire in May 1649. Despite the violence of this event, and the fact that it marked the end of the main active phase of the Leveller movement, it is the date that Left-wing activists have chosen as a focus for celebration since the 1970s. In his talk, Waseem provided detail on the background to the annual Levellers Day celebration and drew out some of the complexities and tensions inherent in it. Though effectively a celebration of a moment of defeat it celebrates the bravery of these men who sacrificed their lives for a cause they believed in. Moreover, the event is important in offering an alternative history of the British Revolutions distinct from that offered by the establishment, and is part of a wider argument (encouraged by the Communist Party Historians’ group in the 1950s and 1960s) that England does have a revolutionary tradition.

A second theme that cropped up in several of the papers was the importance of networks - both familial and political - to the preservation of memories (especially more hidden or controversial memories). Cheryl Kerry's paper highlighted this in relation to the 'regicides' who had signed the death warrant for Charles I. She showed both that there was a great deal of intermarrying among regicide families and that a number of descendants of the regicides were involved or implicated in later plots and were prominent among the supporters of William III in 1688-89.

Interestingly, Stéphane Jettot demonstrated that the situation was very similar for a group on the other side of the political divide - the descendants of Jacobites. Again there is evidence of intermarriage and Stéphane particularly highlighted the role played by female family members in maintaining memories through the preservation of documents and artefacts.

Lucy Hutchinson by Samuel Freeman, C. 1825-1850. National Portrait Gallery NPG D19953. Reproduced under a creative commons licence.

Returning to the civil wars, Lucy Hutchinson, who was the focus of David Norbrook's paper, played a crucial role in preserving the memory of her husband, the parliamentarian Colonel John Hutchinson. David demonstrated how important members of her family then were in controlling the publication of the manuscript of her Memoirs and the format in which it appeared.

Gaby Mahlberg also touched on the importance of networks, this time of those with similar political views, in her paper on the dissemination of texts and images relating to the regicide Algernon Sidney in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany. Gaby noted the important role played by Thomas Hollis and his circle in the creation and circulation of key images. Members of that circle included the Italian painter and engraver Giovanni Battista Cipriani, the German engraver Johann Lorenz Natter, and the Baron Stolzh.

Giovanni Battista Cipriani’s engraving of Algernon Sidney for the 1763 edition of Sidney’s works commissioned by Thomas Hollis. National Portrait Gallery NPG D28941. Reproduced under a creative commons licence.

Hollis and his circle worked hard to keep the memory of the British Revolutions alive in Britain and abroad in the late eighteenth century and saw connections between the events of the mid-seventeenth century and their own times. The third theme that stood out to me from the workshop papers was the importance of reverberations and feedback loops both in preserving memories (by ensuring that events remained relevant) but also in distorting the way in which particular events were remembered.

Several participants highlighted the fact that in nineteenth-century France, discussing the English Revolutions was a subtle way of commenting on the French Revolution and contemporary events in France. In his paper on nineteenth-century French school textbooks, Pascal Dupuy explained that parallels between the Stuarts and the Bourbons were especially common in the Restoration period and that discussions of the Stuarts could be read as comments on the contemporary French monarchy.

Another obvious parallel for the French was that between Napoleon Bonaparte and Oliver Cromwell. As Isabelle Baudino explained, Bonaparte's coup added a new urgency and relevance to the image of Cromwell dissolving the Rump Parliament. It was not only for the French that Cromwell was a striking character. As Maxim Boyko demonstrated in his paper, Cromwell was interpreted by some Italians through a Machiavellian lens. Maxim noted that the Italians also tended to understand the period of the commonwealth and free state between 1649 and 1653 through the lens of the Italian city states, not least Venice.

These ideas have been very much in my mind as I returned to teaching. In my first week back I encouraged undergraduate students on my special subject 'The British Revolutions, 1640-1660' to think about some of the resonances of that period today. I also engaged in a lively discussion with MA students on British values and citizenship and the extent to which these are rooted in history. I hope the MEMOREV project will offer further opportunities to explore the symbiotic relationship between the past and the present, memory and history.

The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow

In the vast manuscript 'A Voyce from the Watch Tower', the former regicide Edmund Ludlow left advice about what should happen to it after his death:

If the Lord please to put a period to my pilgrimage, before I have brought this

narrative to its perfection, it's my desier, that my deare wife, if liveing, if not, those

of my deare friends, and relations, into whose hands by providence it shall fall, will

take care that if it, or any part of it, bee thought of use unto others, it may not bee

made publique, before it hath ben perused, rectifyed, and amended by some one, or

more judicious friends, who have a fluent style, and of the same principle with

mee, as to civill, and spirituall governement, the liberty of men, and Christians, and

well acquainted with the transactions of the late times, to whome I give full power

to deface what hee, or they conceive to be superfluous, or impertinent, or what they

know to bee false, to change and alter what they find misplaced in respect of time,

or other circumstances, to adde what they conceive to bee deficient, or may conduce

to render it more usefull, and agreable, and to that end to cloth it with a more full,

and liquid stile, and to illustrate what is therein asserted with such reasons,

similes, examples, and testimonys, as they shall thinke fit. Provided that in the

maine, they make it speake noe other then my principle (which as I judge is

according to the minde of the Lord) in relation to the gouvernement of church, and

state, and Christ's ruleing... (Edmund Ludlow: A Voyce from the Watch Tower, ed. Blair

Worden. London, 1978, pp. 54-5).

Ludlow's request that something be done with his manuscript was soon fulfilled. An edition, entitled The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, was published in 1698, one of several civil war-related tracts to be produced by John Toland and John Darby. It proved popular, going through at least four editions by the end of the eighteenth century and being translated into French and Dutch. Moreover, as Professor Blair Worden reminded us in his opening presentation at our workshop on 'Edmund Ludlow - The Memoirs of a Regicide in Exile', the text was used to teach generations of history undergraduates and future historians.

Yet Ludlow's other stipulations were ignored. This was revealed by Blair himself after he analysed the Ludlow manuscript, which was discovered at Warwick Castle in the 1970s, and compared it to the published version of the Memoirs. In the latter, Ludlow was, as Blair put it, 'taken to a literary barber'. The alterations changed the text from the work of a deeply committed protestant to that of an admirer of ancient republicanism.

In 1978 Blair produced an edition of the portion of the text covering the period 1660-62, which has remained a crucial source for historians ever since. He is, then, an editor of the text as well as an historian of the period. Given the complex history of the text, the role of editors was one key theme of our discussions.

The various editors of Ludlow's manuscript have exerted control over how Ludlow and his text have been understood by future generations. Yet the situation has been complicated by the fact that we only have the manuscript for the period 1660-77, both the later portion (covering 1677-85) and the earlier part - on the civil wars themselves - have been lost. In his paper, Ted Vallance paid particular attention to one important episode that is treated rather perfunctorily in the Memoirs, but which one might have expected Ludlow to dwell on more deeply - the regicide. The account of the trial and execution of Charles I in the Memoirs is very brief and, as Ted noted, this is at odds with later portions of the manuscript where Ludlow frequently returns to that event and expresses his views on it. Moreover, the account does not follow other known primary sources, raising the possibility that elements of it were invented.

Later editors and translators of the work were equally influential. As Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille noted in her paper, the 1794 French edition of the Memoirs published as Histoire de la République d'Angleterre d'après les Mémoires d'Edmond Ludlow turned Ludlow into a French republican and his opponents, the Cavaliers, into French-style aristocrats. C. H. Firth, who produced an edition of the Memoirs in 1894, was equally influential in his insistence that the text accurately reflected Ludlow's views.

Edmund Ludlow by Giovanni Battista Cipriani, after Thomas Simon. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D28923. Reproduced under a creative commons licence. This is one of several images of Civil War figures commissioned by Thomas Hollis.

Of course, in some respects, these editors were simply doing their job in framing or shaping the text to suit their audience. This point was brought home to me by our discussions at the end of the day about the possibility of producing a new edition of the Ludlow manuscript. Our colleague (and experienced editor) Ruth Connolly insisted that our first step must be to establish what people currently read Ludlow for and what we think they ought to read him for. Our answers to these questions, she said, would dictate all our editorial decisions. Toland and Darby no doubt began by asking themselves the same questions and acting in the same manner. While we might argue that the invention of key passages took their actions beyond editing to rewriting, the question of exactly where that boundary lies is not clear.

In the past, the mid-century civil wars were generally seen as a purely English affair. When I was an undergraduate in the 1990s, even the notion that they should be understood in a wider British context was novel. Now, thanks to the work of various historians including Jonathan Scott and Gaby Mahlberg, the idea that the British civil wars should be viewed in a European - even a global - context is shaping and directing research. Analysis of the manuscript allows us to see Ludlow as a European - not just an English - figure. Exploring this wider European context constituted a second theme of our workshop.

Geneva in 1630. Image Rachel Hammersley.

Gaby's paper offered a sense of Ludlow's daily life in Switzerland: how he kept in touch with people in England and his knowledge of current affairs. She identified some of his key contacts in Switzerland including the Genevan politician and minister Charles Perrot, the chief minister of Bern, Johann Heinrich Hummel, and the Bernese politician Sigmund von Erlach. She also pointed out that Ludlow had religious contacts that stretched right across Europe. Vivienne Larminie's paper complemented Gaby's in deepening the exploration of the Swiss context and reinforcing the point that contacts between England and Switzerland were complex. For example, she showed that some of Ludlow's ties to Swiss figures came via his neighbours in Wiltshire the Earls of Pembroke and their involvement with the French Church in Westminster. Anglo-Swiss connections are being explored on a larger scale via the SwissBritNet project that Ina Habermann introduced to us at the end of the day.

In his paper, Jason Peacey, broadened our sense of the context beyond Switzerland to the wider Protestant world and, in particular, the Dutch Republic. His account of the experience of English exiles in the Netherlands shed light on the probable experience of those in Switzerland. Jason noted how the complexities of the Dutch system meant that the authorities were often more willing to offer help in capturing the regicides than to take concrete action. His paper also highlighted interesting (and topical) questions around the status of refugees in relation to their home country and country of residence.

Claire's paper addressed the European context from a different perspective in exploring the reception of Ludlow's Memoirs in nineteenth-century France. The historian and politician François Guizot included Ludlow's text in a series entitled Collection des Mémoires relatif à la Révolution d'Angleterre. These effectively acted as sources for his Histoire de la Révolution d'Angleterre (1826-7). Guizot's belief that these were valuable works to publish in French at this time tells us something about the place of the British revolutions within European history.

The third theme that was highlighted for me during the workshop was intertextuality. Gaby drew our attention to the Ludlow manuscript's status as a composite text. While published as a Memoir, it not only drew on Ludlow's own experiences and memories, but also on a range of sources including letters, newsletters (both manuscript and print), official documents (including Acts of Parliament and proclamations), and pamphlets (in English, French and Latin). While not all the sources are acknowledged, many are still visible within the text. This theme was deepened by Verônica Calsoni Lima, who concentrated on a set of pamphlets used not only in the manuscript but also in Ludlow's printed pamphlet on the regicides, Les Juges Jugez. Many of these were produced by a group of radical stationers in London which included Livewell Chapman, Thomas Brewster, and Giles Calvert. In this way the sources out of which the manuscript is woven tell us something not only about Ludlow's reading habits, and the sources of information available to him in Switzerland, but also about his networks and connections.

One of the first decisions we need to make if we are to produce a new edition of the Ludlow manuscript is whether it should be print or digital. Print is more durable as it is not at risk of obsolete technology rendering it inaccessible. Yet the potential offered by the digital is enticing. In a digital edition it would be possible to highlight the intertextuality of the text, perhaps even offering direct links to original sources. Visualisations of Ludlow's networks of European contacts, and the locations of editions and translations of the Memoirs, could be produced to accompany and contextualise the text. Of course, in producing a more interactive edition, and taking advantage of the possibilities provided by the latest digital technology, we would be transforming the text into something way beyond Ludlow's original vision and perhaps highlighting elements of it that he would have preferred to keep hidden. Would this, I wonder, make us as guilty of transgressing Ludlow's wishes as the editor of the Memoirs.

[Gaby Mahlberg has produced her own excellent report on the workshop, which can be read here.]

Team Gurney's Bank Holiday Walks

A photograph from Team Gurney’s first August Bank Holiday walk in 2015. Image Rachel Hammersley.

At the end of this month my family and I will undertake our 10th annual August Bank Holiday walk. We will hike the Hadrian's Wall Path from Bowness-on-Solway to Wallsend (in fact we plan to continue on to the sea at Tynemouth). When we began this ritual in 2015 my children were 9 and 6. That year we walked part of the Hadrian's Wall route (from Housesteads to Newburn) over three days. When I think back I marvel at my bravery - or recklessness - in embarking on such an adventure. Though we were not walking the entire route, we did some pretty long days and, as the only member of the party over the age of 10, the navigation and motivation were entirely down to me. Yet it was far from my biggest challenge that year.

Just over a year earlier in May 2014 my husband, John Gurney, was diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer. He died before the year was out, cutting his life short, making me a widow and single-parent at the age of 40, and leaving my two young children without their wonderful Dad.

A photograph of my late husband John Gurney from 2014. Image Rachel Hammersley.

The impetus for the walk was twofold. In the first place, John and I had always enjoyed walking and had tried to instil the same love in our children. Embarking on a Bank Holiday walk, then, felt like a way of maintaining a sliver of continuity when so much of our lives had been turned upside down. In planning the walk, I recalled a trip John and I had made several years earlier to Linhope Spout in Northumberland. I was carrying our one-year-old son in a baby backpack and as we reached the waterfall we saw a family with slightly older children skipping along ahead of their parents. We exchanged hopes that one day that would be us with our son - and perhaps a little sibling - running ahead of us, and pledged that we would keep going for walks and would try to make the experience of doing so fun for our children. It did not occur to me at that time that it would be one parent, rather than two, walking behind.

A photograph from 2017 when we walked part of the route on the beach bare foot. Image Rachel Hammersley.

Secondly, the walk addressed a deep need I felt to do something positive in response to our loss, and to ensure that my children were defined by their achievements rather than by the absence of their Dad. Delivering a cheque for £850 (raised through sponsorship for the walk) to the Oncology Day Unit at North Tyneside Hospital, where John had been treated, certainly felt like the kind of positive achievement I had been hoping for.

The money we have raised over the years for cancer-related charities has certainly been important, but alongside this we gained far more from our walks than I could ever have imagined back in 2015. In the years that followed we traversed two reservoirs (Rutland and Kielder) and walked (in three stages) from our front door north to Scotland - an achievement about which we all boast - and (in two stages) from our front door south to Scarborough. We have got lost (on more occasions than I care to remember), walked along a precipice with an alarming drop to our left, encountered fields of bulls, and faced personal demons on numerous occasions, but we have always kept on walking.

The unexpected finds are the best. We spotted this painted stone in the village of Drummore in Galloway in 2020 and felt as though it was left there for us. Image Rachel Hammersley.

Walking, I have discovered, is both a metaphor for - and an excellent means of coping with  - grief. Walking means moving at human pace through the landscape. You cannot move any faster than your body will allow, but if you just keep putting one foot in front of another (without thinking too much about what is ahead) you can cover considerable distances. Grief too is a human process, which operates at its own pace and cannot be rushed. Sometimes it feels impossibly hard, but if you just keep inching forward you do make progress. Walking also forces me to slow down from the frenetic pace of my normal life, and to take in and appreciate what is around me in the present. That too is crucial when dealing with grief.

Team Gurney's August Bank Holiday Walks

2015 Hadrian's Wall Housteads to Newburn

2016 Rutland Water

2017 North Shields to Dunstanburgh Castle

2018 Dunstanburgh to Berwick

2019 Berwick to Eyemouth, Fenham to Lindisfarne, College Valley

2020 Rhins of Galloway Coastal Path

2021 Kielder Water

2022 North Shields to Teeside

2023 Redcar to Scarborough

2024 Hadrian's Wall Bowness on Solway to Tynemouth

Our shoes after a day walking Rutland Water in 2016.

Our Bank Holiday walks also served to remind me that despite being thrust kicking and screaming into single-parenthood, I was not alone. The success of the walks has always relied on a small band of loyal family and friends who not only made them possible, but also supported me and my children in so many ways all year round. Central among Team Gurney's support team have been my parents who have driven us to starting points and collected us from end points on multiple occasions. They have been our cheerleaders, our most generous donors, and have listened patiently when - fuelled on adrenalin - we told, and retold, the stories of our exploits. Our first walk also could not have been completed without the kindness and support of my then colleagues and friends Keith and Claire who volunteered to put us up for two nights en route. This not only involved providing us with comfortable beds and delicious meals, but also collecting us from our end point in the evening and dropping us back the next day, and - on our second day - walking over an hour to meet us bringing water and tons of moral support when my poor navigation skills had resulted in a rather long detour. The following year it was my Aunty Cathy and Uncle Stewart who offered to provide bed, breakfast, and evening meal for our walk around Rutland Water. They also walked with us on our final day. On later walks we have been joined by my new partner (now husband) who, as an honorary member of Team Gurney, has completed several walks alongside us.

Bereavement and grief can be a very lonely process. The back-up teams for our walks are representative of how fortunate we have been in the support we have received from family and friends over the last ten years (including John's wider family with whom we have remained close).  Without all those people who have stood shoulder to shoulder with us we would have struggled much more than we have.

Walking part of the Yorkshire coast in 2023. Image Rachel Hammersley.

Finally, walking annually has been a means of charting our progress. This came home to me very strongly last year when we were walking part of the Yorkshire coast between Staithes and Whitby. At the far end of Runswick Bay we had to climb up a small waterfall and I was struggling a bit. My daughter turned and instinctively held out her hand to help me up. In that moment I realised that the tables had turned. It was no longer me leading the way, navigating, and motivating the children. I had become the slow one at the back needing inspirational talk and a hand to guide and support me.

Much may have changed since Team Gurney set off on the first walk ten years ago, but there is also much that remains constant - not least my, perhaps reckless, desire for a challenge. This year the Bank Holiday walk is not the only big event in Team Gurney's summer diary. We are doing what we are calling the 'Geordie Double'. Less than two weeks after completing our Hadrian's Wall Walk we will be running the Great North Run (my daughter as a junior and my son and I in the half marathon). I have a feeling that on both the walk and the run I will be relying heavily on the other members of Team Gurney to keep me going.

[This year we are raising money for Maggie's. It is an amazing organisation for people living with cancer and their families, which did so much to support me in those early months after John had died. If you want to sponsor us you can do so at Just Giving: https://www.justgiving.com/page/team-gurneys-geordie-double-2024?utm_medium=fundraising&utm_content=page%2Fteam-gurneys-geordie-double-2024&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=pfp-share]

The Petyt Library

A shelf of books from the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

As an undergraduate I loved to scan the office shelves of the academics who taught me to see what books they owned. Later, I think the sight of my future husband's amazing collection of early modern books (stuffed into a small bedroom in a shared house in North London) was one of the things that attracted me to him. Part of this was of course library envy, but I think I always had a sense that the books a person displays on their shelves reveal something about who they are as a person.

The libraries of people from the past - especially scholars or political figures - can also provide insight into the influences on them and the development of their ideas. I currently have a PhD student who is reconstructing the library of King James VI and I, which is yielding fascinating information about his interests, contacts, and ways of working. Beyond royalty and the aristocracy it is rare to find much detailed information about the libraries of early modern figures. Some valuable reconstruction projects do exist. These include 'Hooke's Books' (https://hookesbooks.com), a database of books owned by the scientist Robert Hooke based on Bibliotheca Hookiana, the auction catalogue produced after he died, and incorporating other surviving books that bear marginal annotations by him. It is, of course, much rarer for the bulk of the books still to be held together, though we do have Samuel Pepys' Library at Magdalene College in Cambridge and Edward Stillingfleet's collection at the Marsh Library in Dublin.

Portrait of William Petyt holding a copy of Magna Carta (c.1690) by Richard van Bleek from the collection at the Tower of London. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

Consequently, the Petyt Library is a treasure for those interested in early modern books, scholarship, and reading habits. This library was transferred on long-term deposit from Skipton (where it had been held since the early eighteenth century) to the University of York in 2018. It is the library of not one but two individuals, the brothers Sylvester and William Petyt, both of whom were born and educated in Skipton before becoming lawyers in London. Sylvester became Principal of the Society of Barnards Inn in 1701. As well as being Keeper of the Records in the Tower of London between 1689 and his death in 1707, William was also the author of several works including The Antient Right of the Commons of England Asserted. Published in 1680 at the height of the Exclusion Crisis, this book justified the moves by Parliament to try to prevent James, Duke of York, from acceding to the throne on account of his Catholic beliefs.

Both men took care over what happened to their books. William requested in his will that his be preserved and kept 'safe and entire for publick use' (The National Archives: PROB 11/497/15). Some of his collection (in particular his manuscripts) went to the Inner Temple when he died and there is also a collection of pamphlets owned by him in the Middle Temple, but a number of his books were among those that Sylvester sent to Skipton.

William Petyt, The Antient Right of the Commons of England Asserted (London, 1680) in the volume Jane Anglorum facies nova, or, Several monuments of antiquity touching the great councils of the kingdom… Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University. Special Collections: Bradshaw 342. 42 ATW. Reproduced with permission.

The library comprises approximately 4,600 books and pamphlets published between 1480 and 1716. As might be expected in a collection forged at this time, religious debates, political and legal controversies, and scientific treatises are all areas well-represented. The historical value of the collection is further enriched by the presence of a catalogue and manuscript notes telling the history of the library and its various movements. Having been sent to Skipton by Sylvester in the early eighteenth century, many of the books were housed in Skipton parish church. From there they were moved to the town's grammar school in 1881 and then to Skipton Public Library in the early twentieth century.

The Petyt Library offers valuable insight into the minds of these late seventeenth-century legal experts and the turbulent times through which they lived, and a revealing window onto the history of book ownership and libraries. Both aspects were reflected in the papers presented at the symposium held at the University of York on 20th June 2024. Yet, perhaps not surprisingly, thinking more deeply about the collection (as the excellent papers prompted us to do) tended to raise more questions than answers and to complicate rather than clarify. As Brian Cummings rightly commented in his closing remarks, there is a paradox in that the Petyt Library offers a wealth of material and yet it is difficult for us to make sense of it.

A central problem, hinted at in the introductory remarks by those at York who have been working with the Petyt Library and raised explicitly by Giles Mandelbrote in the first panel on early modern libraries and collecting practices, is whose library we have here. Not only does the collection now held at York include books that were once owned separately by William and Sylvester, but, as noted above, William's library was divided between the Inner and Middle Temple and Skipton. Moreover, the collection sent to Skipton was, at its origin, two libraries not one, since it was divided between the church and grammar school with the records suggesting that books were deliberately sent to one or the other.

There is also the question of purpose. Jessica Purdy noted that parish libraries are far from uniform, since they tend to reflect the aims and interests of the individuals who founded them. Moreover, there is a sharp distinction between a working library that was left in situ or to an institution after the owner's death, and an endowment library designed to suit the needs of those for whom it was constructed. In the case of the Petyt Library, the books sent to the grammar school do seem to have been primarily pedagogical but the origins and purpose of the books sent to the church may have been more complex.

The Petyt Library also highlights the complex relationship between a library as a list or catalogue and as a collection of books. As Sarah Griffin discovered when the books started arriving at York, there are far more books in the collection than the catalogue suggested and yet, as Anouska Lester explained, 26% of the books in the catalogue are not now in the Library. Moreover, thanks to a major rebinding project in the 1950s, the books are no longer in their original bindings, and books that were originally bound together in Sammelband volumes have been separated (though Mark Jenner did offer the exciting prospect that it may be possible to reconstruct what was in them). The importance of seeing books as physical objects is something I have been exploring in my own research. I touched on this in my paper on the different approaches to the Exclusion Crisis reflected in the responses to Robert Filmer's Patriarcha written by William Petyt, Henry Neville, and James Tyrrell. Those approaches are evident not just in the distinctive use of vocabulary and sources, but also in the typeface deployed and the layout of the words on the page. Moreover, these elements complement - and in some case are even integral to - the arguments being made.

William Petyt, The Antient Right of the Commons of England Asserted, as above. This image shows one of the historical documents appended to the work.

The other set of reflections raised for me by the papers and subsequent discussion, centred on the themes of history and memory. In our panel, Mark Goldie and I explored the political languages deployed in the Exclusion Crisis debate. While the natural law approach - reflected in works by Tyrrell, John Locke, and Algernon Sidney - is often seen as having been dominant, William Petyt's more historically-minded approach, which drew on the language of the ancient constitution, was significant and influential at the time. History, and historical sources, lay at the heart of Petyt's argument (indeed he included copies of several historical documents at the end of The Antient Right). Mark reflected on Petyt's role in that volume as a keeper and curator of records - deciding and enacting which should be presented, how they should be interpreted, and which should be hidden from view. He noted that this mirrored both William's status as a collector of manuscripts himself - since there is evidence that he made them available to others - and his official position as Keeper of the Records in the Tower.

Curation determines not only history but also memory, and the question of memory and myth-making loomed large in the final panel as well as being raised explicitly by Laura Stewart in her closing remarks. The Petyt brothers grew up in Skipton during the Civil Wars. As Andy Hopper explained to us, Skipton Castle was a royalist garrison and saw much violence (including a siege in 1645 and the slighting of the castle in January 1649). These events left scars on the landscape, on buildings, and - as the Civil War Petitions project demonstrates - on local people. This gives significance to the large number of civil war pamphlets within the Petyt collection. Moreover, it was noted that just as Lady Anne Clifford's rebuilding of Skipton Castle, and her construction of a tomb to her ancestors in Skipton parish church, reflect her attempt to stamp her mark on the town (following a long legal battle to secure her property), so the Petyts' donation of the library was perhaps designed to serve as an equivalent or counterpoint to her acts of memorialisation.

There is another parallel, both Lady Anne and the Petyts used books and paintings as part of their memorialisation. Lady Anne's 'Great Picture' is a fascinating image that depicts her at different stages in her life, alongside carefully chosen books and portraits. This took me back to the case study that Hannah Jeans had presented to us at the beginning of the day. Among the manuscripts relating to the library, she explained, is a list of portraits that were sent alongside the books. It is not clear whether these were intended to be hung with the books, or even whether they were destined for the church or school. What the list does provide is a distinct sense of the circles in which the Petyts moved. It includes paintings of national figures, representatives from London's legal world, and leading figures from Skipton, and ends with portraits of the two brothers themselves. Significantly Lady Anne Clifford and her father George are included on the list, but not her uncle Francis nor her cousin Henry. The list, therefore, endorses her claim to the Skipton lands, and effectively erases her uncle and cousin from their title and history. As this suggests, history and memory are malleable and subject to reconstruction. In this context, documents and books are powerful tools and those who curate them, as the Petyts did, wield great power over what is remembered and what is consigned to oblivion.

Waking up the 90 percent

I began writing this blogpost on 2nd May, having just returned home after voting in the local council elections. The turnout for local elections is never high. The national figure this time was just 32%, so 68% of eligible citizens chose not to exercise their democratic right, even in this most basic sense. In thinking about these elections, and voter apathy, I was reminded of this provocative poster

Waking up the 90% was the underlying aim of the Society for Constitutional Information (SCI). In an Address to the Public published in 1782 the Society expressed its concern that a small number of individuals were effectively disenfranchising their constituents (A Second Address to the Public from the Society for Constitutional Information, London, 1782, p. 9). In this context, the Society claimed to have undertaken the task of 'rousing their countrymen to the defence of their hereditary rights'

Convinced, that those who wish to enslave mankind will always attempt to divert

their attention from the danger which threatens their liberty, till the mortal wound

has been received, they present an antidote to the poisons which have been so

industriously diffused. (Second Address, p. 13).

That antidote was very simple. All it required was the diffusion of political information so as to revive in the minds of the British public 'knowledge of their lost rights' (Address to the public from the Society for Constitutional Information, London, 1780, p. 2). In particular, the SCI wanted to alert the public to the fact that the balance of the British constitution was under threat. The three elements of the constitution - King, Lords, and Commons - were supposed to be in balance, but this required them to be independent of each other. Yet what was increasingly happening, according to reformers, was that the independence of the Commons was being threatened by encroachment from both the King and the House of Lords. This was achieved by various means, including the existence of rotten boroughs and the restriction of the franchise - both of which often gave members of the aristocracy undue influence over the election of MPs. By reviving knowledge among citizens of their lost rights, the Society hoped to restore 'Freedom and Independency to that branch of the legislature that originates from, represents, and is answerable to them' (Address to the public, p. 2). I focused in a previous blogpost on the key elements of the reform agenda. This post will instead explore some of the methods adopted by the SCI to wake up the 90%.

Capel Loft by William Ridley. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D5102. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Central to their approach was the reprinting of tracts analysing the British constitution and setting out the case for reform. In the second meeting of the Society, which was held on 2 May 1780, a resolution dictated details of the font, page size, and paper quality to be used in the tracts reprinted by the Society, and another required the printer to produce for the next meeting a specimen page with an estimate of the cost of printing 1,000 copies (The National Archives (TNA), TS 11/1133). Ten days later it was resolved 'unanimously' that Capel Lofft was to be requested 'to compile a Tract or Tracts, consisting of Extracts' from the works of various authors:


as may clearly define, or describe in few Words the English Constitution; and

particularly what relates to the Rights of the Commons to an equal and complete

Representation in Parliament; to their Independency as the Third Estate of the

Realm; to the Powers delegated to their Representatives, and the Limitations of the

same; and to the Abuses of those Powers.

These principles - and the authors who were explicitly named at that meeting - were reflected in the works that were identified at subsequent meetings as suitable for publication by the Society. In the first two years of the SCI's existence approximately 30 tracts were singled out for printing (with many others being entered into the books of the society). Those identified for printing included: the Society's own publications (such as their two Addresses to the People); works by members such as Major John Cartwright and Dr Joseph Towers; letters, speeches and reports central to the reform campaign; but also older texts identified as relevant to the cause such as John Trenchard's 'The History of Standing Armies' and Bishop Poynet's 'Treatise on Politick Power'.

As well as printing copies of entire tracts and distributing them for free, the Society also selected extracts from key texts to be printed in London newspapers such as the General Advertiser. During the year 1782, at least 23 extracts were selected by the Society for this treatment. Some of these were among those already identified for printing - such as Jeremiah Batley's 'Letter addressed to the people of England &c.' And Mr Bennett's 'Letter to the people of Great Britain', but others - including extracts from James Burgh's Political Disquisitions, Lord Bolingbroke's Dissertation on Parties, and Marchamont Nedham's The Excellency of a Free State - were not. During 1782 The General Advertiser included a regular column reporting SCI business which usually provided an extract from the minutes along with the text selected for inclusion. As time went on, the pages of that publication also became the location for debates concerning the decisions and activities of the Society, for example over its controversial resolution 'on money for ship building' from September 1782.

In addition to covering the costs of printing and attending to the distribution of texts, members of the SCI were also alert to the formats that were most likely to be accessible to members of the general public. In August 1781 the Society asked its members:

to consider of an Address to the Commonalty by way of Dialogue, or in some other

familiar and interesting Form showing how deeply and universally they are

concerned in the Question of equal Representation and new Parliaments every

Session. (TNA: TS 11/1133, 66, 3 August 1781).

Sir William Jones by James Heath, after Sir Joshua Reynolds. National Portrait Gallery. NPG D36735. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

It is not clear whether it was explicitly designed as a response to this request, but William Jones's Dialogue on the Principles of Government Between a Scholar and a Peasant, was seized upon by the Society for this end. On 26 July 1782 the Society ordered 'That Mr Jones's dialogue be entered into the Books of this Society' and on 9 August that it be 'printed in the publick papers' (TNA: TS 11/1133, 98, 100). The full text duly appeared in The General Advertiser on 15 August. The title page acknowledged Jones's membership of the Society (he had been elected an honorary member in March 1782 and regularly attended meetings between 10 May and March 1783) and the Society continued to support both Jones and his brother-in-law William Shipley, the Dean of St Asaph after he was prosecuted for disseminating the work in Wales.

One aspect of dialogue form is that it invites the audience into the narrative, thereby encouraging active engagement over passive reading. The premise behind this dialogue is the circulation of a reform petition that the peasant is reluctant to sign, admitting: 'It is better for us peasants to mind our husbandry, and leave what we cannot comprehend to the King and Parliament.' (William Jones, The Principles of Government; in a dialogue between a Scholar and a Peasant. London, 1782, p. 3). Over the next five pages the scholar succeeds in demonstrating to the peasant that he does have the understanding to engage with the issues surrounding reform. Central to this act of persuasion is the parallel that is drawn between the village friendly society - of which the peasant is a member - and a free state. The peasant already understands what is required for the friendly society to run effectively - including having clear rules to which everyone agrees; removing officers who betray the trust of members; and dealing with offenders who threaten the good of the society, with force if necessary. The scholar explains: 'That a free state is only a more numerous and more powerful club' and as a result the peasant realises that he has 'been a politician all my life without perceiving it' and therefore has all the knowledge required to sign the petition (Jones, The Principles of Government, p. 8). While the approach might seem patronising, the advantage of adopting dialogue form in this context is that readers could be convinced alongside the peasant, while reformers could use the specific arguments deployed by the scholar to persuade others - thereby spreading the desire for reform.

There is not space here to explore in detail the controversy that Jones's pamphlet prompted, but it is worth noting that the concern it aroused was largely due to the audience at which it was directed. In response to the high sheriff of Flintshire's verdict that it was a 'seditious, treasonable, and diabolical' work, the advertisement to a subsequent edition declared that in that case 'Lord Somers' 'was an incendiary' and Locke 'a traitor', the difference, of course, being that these works were not generally read by ordinary people. Shipley's circulation of the work in Wales (which included translating it into Welsh) was a deliberate attempt to broaden its audience. In the end the attempt by the authorities to contain it backfired, since the prosecution and trial drew attention to the work. The SCI reprinted not just the text itself, but also the court proceedings (TNA: TS 11/961) and both were presented as an 'interlude' to be performed at fairs and markets - thereby making it accessible even to those who were illiterate (Michael J. Franklin, 'Jones, Sir William (1746-1794), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

Dialogue is not a common format for political literature today, yet we do have a recent example of a television dramatisation provoking political action, in the case of 'Mr Bates vs The Post Office'. Perhaps those wanting to reverse modern day voter apathy in the forthcoming General Election would do well to follow the SCI's example and to think not just about the content of manifesto promises, but also about how to present them in an engaging fashion to the electorate.

Civil Religion

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London, 1651). Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University Special Collections (Bainbrigg, Bai 1651 HOB). Reproduced with permission.

This month I've been teaching my British Revolution students about the political thought of the period - including that of Thomas Hobbes. I use the frontispiece to Hobbes's Leviathan as a means of allowing the students to work out the key arguments of that text for themselves. The figure rising out of the sea always generates interesting discussion. Is it Charles I? Oliver Cromwell? They always seem disappointed when I explain that it is the embodiment of the state. The fact that the scales on the figure's body are little people also prompts debate. The significance of the objects the figure is holding, and their relationship to the two columns on either side of the bottom half of the image, are usually easier for the students to decipher. The sword in the figure's right hand represents civil power and corresponds to the five images on the left: a castle or fortification, a crown, a cannon, a battle, and a battlefield. The crozier in the figure's left hand symbolises ecclesiastical or religious power and beneath it are images reflecting the religious equivalents of those on the left: a cathedral, a bishop's mitre, divine judgement, theological disputation, and convocation. Hobbes's point, as my students quickly discern, is that the state should command both civil and religious power within the realm, and therefore should dictate the laws and the form of religious worship. For Hobbes this imposition of clear rules from above was the only way to prevent the chaos and destruction of civil war.

In this way, the frontispiece offers a visual depiction of the idea of civil religion. This is the topic of a collection of essays entitled Civil Religion in the Early Modern Anglophone World, 1550-1700, due out later this month, which I have edited together with my colleague Adam Morton. The book, and a special issue of the journal Intellectual History Review edited by Katie East and Delphine Doucet, are the main outputs of a project that dates back to 2016. In September of that year we established a small reading group involving staff and postgraduate students. We met regularly for about two years discussing texts ranging from Strabo's Geography to Ethan Shagan's The Rule of Moderation, with the aim of coming to a deeper understanding of the slippery concept of civil religion - particularly in an early modern context. We held a workshop with various invited speakers in September 2017 and hosted several guest speakers at our reading group. Finally, in October 2019 we held a conference 'Civil Religion From Antiquity to the Enlightenment' which we coupled with a public facing event at Newcastle's Literary and Philosophical Society on the theme of 'Politics and Religion: Past and Present'. It is papers from the conference which have been revised for publication in our book and the journal special issue.

The book focuses on the English-speaking world in the period between the mid-sixteenth and the end of the seventeenth century. It argues that this period - and more specifically issues raised then by the Reformation and the British Revolutions about the place of religion in society - played an important role in developing the idea of civil religion. This challenges the conventional understanding of civil religion as an Enlightenment concept. It also contests the view that it was a cynical ploy to undermine religion. Instead, it is demonstrated that, for many who advocated these ideas, the issue was priestcraft not religion itself; and the aim was to purify the church rather than to undermine religion.

Taking this last point first, Mark Goldie's opening chapter in the book presents the idea of a 'Christian civil religion' which was indebted to the magisterial reformation of the sixteenth century but also to late medieval Catholic conciliarism. These debts have been neglected because of the tendency to see Christianity as constructed in opposition to civil religion, but Goldie's account shows what can be gained from looking at the early modern period from this perspective. That picture is deepened and complicated in other chapters, not least those by Charlotte McCallum and Jacqueline Rose. McCallum's chapter focuses on 'Nicholas Machiavel's Letter to Zanobius Buondelmontius in Vindication of Himself and His Writings', which appeared in John Starkey's 1675 edition of Machiavelli's works, but was probably written by Henry Neville. It presents a powerful example of a form of civil religion that was anti-clerical but was aimed at the eradication of priestcraft not religion itself. This was Neville's own position, but the letter also raises interesting questions about Machiavelli's views and his place within the conventional narrative of civil religion. Rose's chapter complicates the story presented here. She notes that Anglo-Saxon history offered an obvious model of a church free from Popish and priestly corruptions. Yet, as she explains, it was never taken up as a model of civil religion by early modern thinkers. Despite the similarities between Reformation languages of godly rule and Royal Supremacy and the ideas associated with civil religion, there were also important differences that restricted its value as an appropriate model.

Other chapters explore the debates concerning the relationship between religion and politics, church and state, that occurred between the 1590s and the late seventeenth century. Polly Ha's chapter focuses on the debates sparked by the Admonition controversy in the 1590s and the ways in which this led to a reconfiguring of the relationship between church and state, with figures like Richard Hooker advocating an extension of the state's right to determine the religion of its subjects. Esther Counsell examines the reaction to the rise of Laudianism within the Anglican Church in the 1620s and 1630s, showing how Alexander Leighton saw the revival of an ancient form of civil religion as the best means of protecting the Reformed church by securing the civil supremacy of parliament over the church. The chapters by John Coffey and Connor Robinson consider the contested period of the 1650s, when the rise of Independents challenged any notion of public or formal religion, further reshaping the relationship between church and state. Where Coffey focuses on republicans and independents, Robinson considers the debate between Henry Stubbe and Richard Baxter over the nature of a godly commonwealth, challenging the conventional interpretation of Stubbe that presents him as an advocate of a novel form of Enlightenment civil religion. Finally, Andrew Murphy and Christy Maloyed's chapter, along with that by John Marshall, take the story on to the later seventeenth century, and beyond England to the American colonies. Murphy and Maloyed argue that William Penn attempted to enact a form of civil religion - combining civil interests with general religious beliefs - in Pennsylvania. Marshall presents John Locke as working out the appropriate relationship between church and state and highlights the complications brought to these debates when thinking about the colonial context and how toleration and liberty were conceived there.

Overall, then, the volume reflects on the complexity of early modern debates over the relationship between church and state. It also demonstrates the flexibility of the ideas involved, with arguments for state control over religion being deployed by individuals and groups with a range of different views and sometimes even on both sides of an argument.

For Hobbes, civil religion offered a means of securing peace and stability in a world in which individuals hold divergent opinions, preferences and beliefs. We may baulk at his authoritarian solution, but the problem of how to live peacefully despite our differences continues to confound us today.

John Pocock's Life, Legacy, and Languages of Historical and Political Thought

When I was invited in 2019 to tweet a book a day for a week I had no hesitation as to what my first book would be. John Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment was probably the single biggest influence on me as a student, directly affecting the direction my research has taken. For this reason I was thrilled later that year when, just before the publication of my Intellectual Biography of James Harrington, I received one of John Pocock's beautiful handwritten letters expressing his interest in my forthcoming book, which initiated a brief correspondence between us. Following Pocock's death at the age of 99 in December 2023, I was honoured to be invited by John Marshall to contribute to 'John Pocock's Life, Legacy, and Languages of Historical and Political Thought', which was held simultaneously at Johns Hopkins University and online on Tuesday 5th March 2024.

Having initially reassured John Marshall that I relished the challenge of saying something meaningful about 'Pocock's Harrington and the history of republicanism' in less than five minutes, I did subsequently question my initial enthusiasm. The reality of drafting something worthwhile that did not breach the time constraint was tough. It was, though, very illuminating to hear the other speakers perform equally impossible tasks of summarising Pocock's thoughts on a range of topics including the Italian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Edward Gibbon, and Edmund Burke in less than five minutes each. Papers were presented by scholars at all levels, from PhD students to Emeritus Professors; and the event closed with three excellent questions by graduate students currently studying at Johns Hopkins. The organisation of this event was largely down to John Marshall (though with a supportive team around him). His vision for the event and his dedication to making it a success were impressive. What follows, provides a taste of what I gained from this ambitious celebration. Anyone who missed the event, and would like access to the recording, can contact John Marshall directly.

What came across more than anything else was John Pocock's phenomenal intelligence and the breadth and depth of his scholarship. Eliga Gould, speaking on behalf of Pocock's students, put it well when he referred to the capaciousness of his work and vision. During the course of his lifetime, Pocock offered groundbreaking insights on a whole host of individual figures while also making significant contributions to broader fields of study. These included the Enlightenment - where he put a persuasive case for thinking in terms of a plurality of Enlightenments rather than a single Enlightenment. He also contributed to the transformation of British History by challenging the dominant Anglocentric emphasis, calling for the inclusion of the histories of Scotland and Ireland, but also Wales, Cornwall, the Channel Islands, America (pre-1776) and, of course, his native New Zealand. Equally important was his stress on the tensions and interplay between metropolitan zones of law and marcher zones of war. In addition, Pocock set the terms for the study of the history of republicanism: emphasising and unpicking the ancient legacy; highlighting the centrality of the conception of time to republican thinking; and prioritising the vocabulary or language of republicanism over institutions.

Despite the breadth, it is possible to identify consistent threads that run throughout Pocock's thought. One was his robust approach to historical research, which - as was noted by David Bromwich (in relation to Burke) and John Marshall - involved reading all the works available by a particular author in order to enter into the thinking of those who interested him. He also adopted a broad approach to sources, consulting manuscripts as well as printed material, treating style as important (David Womersley commented on this in relation to Gibbon), and recognising that political 'sources' could take a variety of forms including literature and - as Anna Roberts noted - even artefacts.

Central among the sources Pocock himself deployed were histories. His first work The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law was a major achievement in the field of historiography. As Colin Kidd explained, it documented ideological uses of the past, treating historical thinking as political thinking. For Kidd this exposed a space between politics and the history of political thought in the form of the history of political argument. Pocock returned to this territory in the magnum opus of his later years, the multi-volume account of the thought of Edward Gibbon, Barbarism and Religion. Both here, and in his works on other individual thinkers, Pocock sought to identify and understand the political and intellectual battles in which those thinkers were engaged.

While The Ancient Constitution and Barbarism and Religion are the works that most obviously treat historical writings as political thought, the preoccupation with history and time also lay at the heart of Pocock's other major work The Machiavellian Moment. In the first place, the conception of time is presented as crucial to republics in that they exist in time and are, therefore, subject to corruption and decay. This was what Pocock meant by the 'Machiavellian Moment'. He argued that Machiavelli was particularly concerned with 'the moment in which the republic confronts the problem of its own instability in time' and explored how this idea played out in the writings of others in Renaissance Italy, seventeenth-century England, and eighteenth-century Britain and America. In adopting this broad chronology, the book also examines the survival - and transformation - of ideas over time. While there is continuity in terms of the central problem being confronted and the vocabulary deployed to address it, the republican language at the heart of the book was adapted to fit different circumstances and Pocock was sensitive to the particular historical contexts that prompted the production of specific texts. The adaptations are especially evident in the case of James Harrington. He drew on Machiavellian ideas to construct an immortal commonwealth - which Machiavelli would have declared an impossibility - and his ideas were in turn deployed by those Pocock labelled 'neo-Harringtonians' in ways directly contrary to Harrington's intentions.

Pocock's intelligence, and the breadth of his scholarship, could make him appear intimidating, yet he tempered this with a deep humanity - and this also came out strongly in the presentations. Again and again, contributors spoke of the personal impact he had had on them and commented on the fact that, while he was challenging, he was also generous, encouraging, and fun (the last being exemplified by the fact that his sons Hugh and Stephen chose to begin their contribution with a song). Eliga Gould spoke of him having a personal and unique relationship with each of his graduate students, but it is clear that his intellectual relationships extended well beyond those who had the special privilege of being taught by him. Indeed, it was striking that one of the older contributors, Orest Ranum, who had been on the committee that appointed Pocock to his position at Johns Hopkins in 1974, described him as a constant teacher - instructing not just students but all those with whom he came into contact. Another Johns Hopkins colleague, Christopher Celenza spoke for many when he described the privilege of being taken seriously by Pocock - even when this meant disagreement. The possibility that polite disagreement could co-exist alongside friendship and respect, was also highlighted by perhaps Pocock's closest intellectual companion, Quentin Skinner, who admitted in his talk that he never succeeded in convincing Pocock on the subject of liberty. He was, then, as Jamie Gianoutsos articulated, not only a careful student of republican vocabulary, but also a model citizen himself.

I hope I have conveyed the fact that this event was deeply moving, instructive, and inspiring. I was, though, left with a slight sense of regret. Skinner recalled that in 1973 Pocock announced that he had a plan for a huge new project. It would explore all of British historical and political thought from Bede to Bertrand Russell. The scale and ambition of such a project reflects the massive breadth of John Pocock's vision and the strength of his drive, but perhaps also explains why it never came to fruition. I don't suppose I was the only person at the event who took a moment to lament this fact. I would have loved to read it.

The Society for Constitutional Information

In our household we are hoping for a late election. My son turns 18 in the summer, so the timing will determine whether or not he can vote in the forthcoming general election. This approaching milestone makes my current work on citizenship education all the more pertinent. Alongside this, in my classes on early modern history at Newcastle University I have been exploring with my students the development of political institutions between 1500 and 1800. In discussing the constitutional changes that occurred during the Civil Wars, or the proposals put forward by reformers in the late eighteenth century, some students have commented that they do not feel they have a good understanding of the workings of our political system today and that school did little to prepare them for their role as adult citizens.

The members of the Society for Constitutional Information (SCI), which was established in 1780, were equally concerned about the lack of an understanding of the constitution among residents of Britain in the late eighteenth century. Of course, the circumstances then were very different. In 1780 it is estimated that only 3% of the population of the United Kingdom had the vote. Today the percentage is approximately 68%. The main activity of the SCI was to disseminate knowledge of the British constitution among the population as a means of gaining support for the campaign for parliamentary reform.

In their first Address to the Public, the Society set out the fundamental belief that underpinned their commitment to reform:

LAW, TO BIND ALL, MUST BE ASSENTED TO BY ALL (An Address to the public,

from the Society for Constitutional Information. London, 1780, p. 1).

Statue of John Cartwright in Cartwright Gardens, Bloomsbury, London. Image by Rachel Hammersley

This reflects an understanding of liberty that insists that people are free if they are subject only to laws that they (or their representatives) have made. The idea was outlined more fully in the Declaration of Rights written by one of the SCI's founding members Major John Cartwright:





Fourthly, That they who have no voice nor vote in the electing of Representatives, do

not enjoy liberty; but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes, and to their

Representative: for to be enslaved, is to have Governors whom other men have set over

us, and to be subject to laws made by the Representatives of others, without having had

Representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.

Fifthly, That a very great majority of the Commonalty of this Realm are denied the

privilege of voting for Representatives in Parliament; and consequently, they are

enslaved to a small number, who do now enjoy this privilege exclusively to

themselves (John Cartwright, A Declaration of the Rights of Englishmen. London, no

date, p. 2).

This reflects the concept of Neo-Roman liberty analysed by the eminent historian Quentin Skinner, which has its origins in the Roman law distinction between those who are free and those who are slaves. Judged according to this principle, the members of the SCI concluded that the vast majority of the population of the United Kingdom were not free. Indeed they went so far as to argue that a small number of individuals without 'virtue' or 'abilities' were effectively disenfranchising their electors (A Second Address to the Public from the Society for Constitutional Information. London, 1782, p. 9).

They went on to outline three reform proposals that would need to be enacted to remedy the situation. First, they called for a redistribution of parliamentary seats.

This issue was summarised in the Report of the Sub-Committee of Westminster produced in March 1780. That committee included a number of members of the SCI and its reports were printed by the SCI for distribution:

That it appears to this Sub Committee, that many towns and boroughs, formerly

intitled "for their repute and population," to send members to Parliament, have

since fallen into decay, yet continue to have a representation equal to the most

opulent counties and cities; while other towns and places, which have risen into

consideration, and become populous and wealthy, have no representatives in

Parliament (Westminster Committee. King's Arms Tavern, March 20, 1780. Report of

the Sub Committee, appointed to enquire into the state of the representation of this country.

1780, p. 2).

Nine years later, the SCI declared that their 'most immediate object' was to gather and then publish 'a compleat State of the representation of the people in Parliament' and to this end they invited people to report on the situation regarding voters and elections in their local constituencies (The National Archives: TS 11/961. SCI Minutes for Friday 29th May 1789). The results appear in one of the SCI volumes held at the National Archives.

Concern at the unequal distribution of parliamentary seats was not a new idea in the late eighteenth century. In the Agreement of the People that was presented by an alliance of soldiers and civilian radicals to the General Council of the Army at the Putney Debates in October 1647 it was asserted:

That the People of England being at this day very unequally distributed by

Counties, Cities, & Boroughs, for the election of their Deputies in Parliament, ought

to be more indifferently proportioned, according to the number of the Inhabitants:

the circumstances whereof, for number, place, and manner, are to be set down

before the end of this present Parliament. (An Agreement of the People, for a firme and

present Peace, upon grounds of Common-Right. London, 1647, p. 2).

Secondly, the SCI advocated universal manhood suffrage, which set them apart from some of the more conservative reform societies at the time. As Cartwright declared in the second article of his Declaration of Rights:

That every man of the Commonalty (excepting infants, insane persons, and

criminals) is of common right, and by the laws of God, a freeman, and entitled to the

full enjoyment of liberty. (Cartwright, A Declaration of the Rights of Englishmen, p. 1).

Universal manhood suffrage was also not a completely new idea in 1780. At the Putney Debates, Colonel Thomas Rainsborough voiced the stirring line (now recalled in a plaque in Putney Church): 'for really I thinke that the poorest hee that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest hee'. He went on:

and therfore truly, Sir, I thinke itt's cleare, that every man that is to live under a

Government ought first by his owne consent to putt himself under that

Government; and I doe thinke that the poorest man in England is nott att all bound

in a stricte sence to that Government that hee hath not had a voice to putt himself

under (The Clarke Papers, ed. C. H. Firth. London, 1992, p. 301).

Engraving of the quotation from Thomas Rainsborough in St Mary’s Church, Putney. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

In those debates the alternative view was expressed by Colonel Henry Ireton (Oliver Cromwell's son-in-law) who insisted that only those with landed property should be allowed to vote, since only they had a fixed interest in the country and could, therefore, be trusted to make decisions in the common good. The SCI turned Ireton's assumption on its head, insisting:

The poor man has an equal right, but more need, to have representatives in the

legislature than the rich one (An Address to the Public, p. 7).

The third demand made by the SCI was for more frequent - ideally annual - parliaments. Major Cartwright's Declaration asserted it is 'the right of the Commonalty of this Realm to elect a new House of Commons once in every year, according to ancient and sacred laws of the land' (Cartwright, A Declaration, p. 2). If elections were held less frequently, he argued, those people who had recently arrived in an area would be deprived of their right. Moreover, longer parliaments would be more susceptible to corruption and undue influence.

Once again the roots of this concern can be found in the seventeenth century. Between 1629 and 1640 Charles I ruled without calling parliament. In theory there was nothing wrong with this since it was up to the monarch to call Parliament when (s)he wanted (usually when they needed money). But Charles's behaviour prompted anger and when Parliament met in 1640 one of the first actions it took was to institute a Triennial Act which required Parliament to be called at least once every three years. Some at the time felt that even this did not go far enough and called for annual parliaments as a crucial mechanism to mitigate the corrupting effects of power. As John Streater explained:

A Free State, governed by Annual Representatives, is Naturally good, it cannot be bad;

for that no one can obtain in such a Government opportunity to do Hurt: and it

behoveth every one of them to do all the good they can, in regard that they must

Return to a private state and Condition, in which they shall participate and be

sharers of the good they have procured, or been parties in ordaining (J. S. [John

Streater], A Shield Against the Parthian Dart. London, 1659, pp. 16-17).

If we compare the SCI demands to how things are today, we see that one demand - universal manhood suffrage - has not only been achieved, but surpassed. Today it is not only adult men who have the vote, but women too. This is especially interesting given that this was seen as the most extreme demand in the eighteenth century and one that not all supporters of reform at that time were willing to endorse. A second demand - an equal distribution of parliamentary seats - is recognised as important and the distribution is continually updated. A local election leaflet that came through my front door this week explains:

Following a review by the Boundary Commissions, changes have been made in the

coming elections for electing your Ward Councillors and member of Parliament

(MP). The changes aim to rebalance the number of electors in each area and ensure

that they are represented effectively by the candidates you elect.

Yet the third demand - annual parliaments - has neither been put into practice, nor is widely advocated today. There are, perhaps, good reasons for this, in that annual elections would be costly and would risk encouraging even greater short-termism in politics than is currently the case. On the other hand, as the Streater quotation suggests, more frequent elections would ensure that MPs have to live under the laws they make and would strengthen the sense of their accountability to their constituents. It would also ensure that whatever is decided in the next few months, my son wouldn't have to wait another five years before being able to express his political voice in a General Election.

Encountering Political Texts at the NLS II

The exhibition poster. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

On 8th December 2023 the exhibition 'Encountering Political Texts 1640-1770' - the final event of the Experiencing Political Texts project - opened at the National Library of Scotland. I offered an appetiser for the exhibition in my last blogpost by discussing the various books bound by Thomas Hollis that were donated to the Advocates Library in Edinburgh, some of which appear in the exhibition. This month I offer a taste of some of the other items on display - focusing on the themes of materiality, genre and the debating of issues in print.

Materiality

Opening graphics on the wall of the exhibition. Image by Rachel Hammersley

The Hollis editions are interesting because of their elaborate bindings and handwritten marginalia, which reflect Hollis's own reading of the texts. Other items on display in the exhibition also reflect the importance of texts as material objects. At the other end of the spectrum from the lavish Hollis volumes are the examples of unbound pamphlets. Reading 'original' pamphlets today generally involves going to a Special Collections reading room and identifying the pamphlet within a volume of such material that was bound together in book form at a later point in time. This experience of encountering early modern pamphlets is very different from that of their original readers. Pamphlets would have been sold on the streets by hawkers. They will have varied in size and quality, but many will have consisted of just a few pages of text printed on flimsy paper, their ephemerality reflecting the fact that they were often interventions in specific (and sometimes fleeting) events - a bit like a social media post today. They were not really intended to last - and it is important that we remember this when reading them.

Other material from the seventeenth century takes a more elaborate physical form. A prime example here are the three volumes of Eikon Basilike that appear in the exhibition. This important work was published in the immediate aftermath of the execution of Charles I in January 1649. Said to be based on Charles's own thoughts and writings during his imprisonment, this was a powerful work which sought to transform the failed king, who had been executed by some of his subjects, into a martyr worthy of veneration. The frontispiece image reflects this aim in its depiction of Charles discarding his earthly crown and seeking instead the heavenly crown of martyrdom. (A more detailed analysis of the image is available here). I have seen at least one version of this image that has been hand-coloured, with the King's robe light pink and his sleeves a deeper maroon. (In fact, the striking pink colour scheme of our project - which is reflected in the NLS exhibition - was inspired by this). While the version of the image in our exhibition is in black and white, the title page of the work, which is also on display, includes red ink, which was more costly to produce and so again an indicator of quality. The NLS also holds a small version of Eikon Basilike which has an embroidered cover. Whereas the red type was the work of the printer, this cover was probably produced by the owner of the work, reflecting its importance and significance to them.

Infographic produced by Nifty Fox reflecting the reading group discussion on ‘Books as Physical Objects’ as displayed in the Encountering Political Texts exhibition. Image by Rachel Hammersley

This beautiful little book reminded me of the Reading Group session we held earlier in 2023, to which each member brought a book that was special to them. One participant bought along a book with a handmade cover, like the copy of Eikon Basilike on display. Others had marginalia or material pasted or tipped in by the owner - and again we have an example of this in the exhibition. One of several pamphlets on display that engages with the debate over the union between England and Scotland in 1707, Parainesis Pacifica; or, A perswasive to the union of Britain has a letter tipped in at the back.

Genres

Another theme of our project that is reflected in the exhibition is the variety of genres used to convey political ideas. While pamphlets that engaged directly with contemporary debates, and presented the argument or viewpoint of the author, were common at this time, political ideas could also be conveyed through texts originally intended for oral delivery, such as proclamations and sermons (which would be preached from the pulpit and then printed). We have a number of these relating to the Union debate on display in the exhibition. Fictional forms such as utopias, invented travel narratives, and imagined dialogues were also popular ways of conveying political ideas in the early modern period. In addition, humour could be deployed to convey an argument in a more forceful way, as in the case of The comical history of the mariage betwixt Fergusia and Heptarchus - a humorous take on the union debate - which is included in the exhibition.

For many years newspapers were a key vehicle for transmitting up-to-date political news and information. At the present time when these are shifting online and are at risk of being overshadowed as a news source by social media, it is interesting to look back to their origins. While newspapers as we know them are generally seen as emerging in the eighteenth century, the mid-seventeenth-century crisis in the British Isles prompted the publication of newsbooks which served a similar purpose. Like modern newspapers they took different political stances (there were both royalist and parliamentarian newsbooks) and often included an editorial as a preface to the account of current affairs. At the NLS exhibition there are examples of several seventeenth-century newsbooks including Mercurius Politicus, Mercurius Britanicus, and The Publick Intelligencer.

Debates in Print.

Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, by Andrew Birrell, published by Robert Wilkinson, after William Aikman, line engraving, 1798. National Portrait Gallery NPG D30937. Produced under a Creative Commons Licence.

As well as conveying and spreading knowledge of recent events, print could also be the site for political debate. The Union debate in the early eighteenth century generated a huge amount of printed material. Various examples are on display in the exhibition (some of which have already been mentioned). Sometimes individual authors would produce multiple responses and counter-responses to each other in print. In the exhibition are pamphlets attributed to Andrew Fletcher and James Webster produced in 1706-7. The initial pamphlet attributed to Fletcher did not explicitly oppose the idea of union, but suggested that a more equal union would be secured if each nation retained its own Parliament. On the other side, Webster, a Presbyterian minister who had previously been imprisoned for his religious opinions, argued against union on any terms, largely because of the impact it would have on the Scottish Kirk. Reading all the pamphlets in the debate gives a sense of how it unfolded and the different views it generated. We have to be careful too about authorship. Recent scholarship, as reflected in the article on Fletcher in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, suggests that although the pamphlet State of the Controversy betwixt United and Separate Parliaments was attributed to Fletcher, it was probably not written by him (John Robertson, 'Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun (1653?-1716)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

While this exhibition is the final element of our Experiencing Political Texts project, this first blogpost of the year is an opportunity to look forward as well as backward. We are already planning to explore the themes of the exhibition with audiences in Edinburgh at two workshops linked to the exhibition that will be held on Tuesday 27 February and Tuesday 9 April 2024. It should be possible to sign up for these events via Eventbrite soon. In addition, we are already exploring how we can develop the ideas generated by the Experiencing Political Texts project in a new project focusing on Political Education. We are holding an initial exploratory workshop for this project in Newcastle on 17 January 2024. I hope to provide further updates as the year progresses.

Encountering Political Texts at the National Library of Scotland 1: An Appetiser

The National Library of Scotland. Image by Rachel Hammersley

Next week the exhibition 'Encountering Political Texts' opens at the National Library of Scotland (NLS). This is the second exhibition related to the 'Experiencing Political Texts' project (an account of the first, which was held at Newcastle University's Philip Robinson Library last summer, can be found here). It is also our final Experiencing Political Texts event. Though the general themes are similar to those in the Newcastle exhibition, the focus of each cabinet and the items on display are different. Next month's blog will offer a full account of the exhibition, this month I provide a quick taster, discussing what are perhaps my favourite items in the exhibition - the volumes produced by Thomas Hollis.

I have discussed Hollis in previous blogs, and so will not repeat those details here. Instead I will focus on the volumes in the NLS collection, some of which feature in our exhibition. These volumes originally formed part of the Advocates Library of Edinburgh. This was a law library that was officially opened in 1689. From 1710 it became a legal deposit library, meaning that it received a copy of every book published in the United Kingdom. Between 1752 and 1757 the Keeper of the Advocates Library was the philosopher and historian David Hume. In 1925 the National Library of Scotland was created by an Act of Parliament

Hollis made donations to the Advocates Library at various points during the 1760s and 1770s, at a time when he was also sending books to Oxbridge college libraries and to public and university libraries in Europe and North America. Many of the NLS Hollis volumes include a dedication, written in Hollis's hand. Though the messages vary slightly from copy to copy the basic formula is this:

Henry Neville, Plato Redivivus, or a dialogue concerning government (London, 1763). National Library of Scotland: ([Ad]. 7/1.8). Image credit: National Library of Scotland.

An Englishman, a lover of liberty, citizen of the world, is desirous of having the

honor to present this to the Advocate's Library at Edinburgh.

Henry Neville, Plato Redivivus, or a dialogue concerning government (London, 1763). National Library of Scotland: ([Ad]. 7/1.8). Reproduced here under a Creative Commons License with permission from the Library

Most of the Hollis volumes at the NLS are bound in red Morocco with symbols added to the cover in gold tooling and stamped in black ink on the inside pages. They were the work of John Matthewman, who was Hollis's main bookbinder until around 1769 when he absconded due to a debt.

Henry Neville, Plato Redivivus, or a dialogue concerning government (London, 1763). National Library of Scotland: ([Ad]. 7/1.8). Image credit: National Library of Scotland.

Among the volumes sent to the Advocates Library were several works from the commonwealth tradition. These include Henry Neville's Plato Redivivus, which had first appeared in 1681 at the time of the Exclusion Crisis. It sought to apply the principles set out by Neville's friend James Harrington in The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) to the very different political situation of the 1680s. The work was republished by Andrew Millar in 1763. Hollis seems to have been quick to call for a second edition since an entry in Hollis's diary for 15 November the following year records a conversation Hollis had with Millar in which he 'Engaged him to reprint, that master-work intitled "Plato Redivivus. Or a Dialogue concerning Government", written by Harry Neville the friend of James Harrington, and like him ingeneous.' (The Diary of Thomas Hollis V from 1759 to 1770 transcribed from the original manuscript in the Houghton Library Harvard University, ed. W. H. Bond. Cambridge, Mass., 1996. 15 November 1764). The dedication in the Neville volume is a little fuller than the basic version reproduced above, with Hollis declaring himself a lover not merely of liberty but also of 'the Principles of the Revolution & the Protestant Succession in the House of Hanover'. The tools on the cover of this volume are a cockerel on the front and an owl on the back, with a Pilius (liberty cap) on the spine. The cockerel symbolises alertness or vigilance, the owl - wisdom, and the Pilius - liberty. Inside the volume is a stamp depicting Athena (the Greek goddess of wisdom) and one of Britannia (NLS: [Ad].7/1.8).

Also in the collection, though not in an original Hollis binding and probably not donated by Hollis himself, is a copy of Algernon Sidney's, Discourses Concerning Government. First published in 1698 by John Toland, the volume was reprinted several times during the eighteenth century with additional material being added each time. The copy in the NLS is a 1772 reprint of the 1763 edition printed by Andrew Millar that was edited by Hollis and which marked the high point of the work in terms of size, incorporating a biography of Sidney, additional works by him, and letters taken from the Sidney papers. This version includes an Advertisement signed by J. Robertson and dated 21 October 1771, which explains that various corrections (not previously picked up) had been made regarding the names old English names and places. The volume also includes the famous engraving of Sidney that Hollis commissioned from Giovanni Cipriani in which Sidney is dressed in armour and enclosed within a laurel wreath. Below that image, and repeated on the title page and later in the work, is a small Pilius, highlighting Sidney's commitment to liberty.

John Milton, The Life of John Milton (London, 1761). National Library of Scotland, Dav.1.2.10. Image credit: National Library of Scotland.

As well as publishing the first version of Sidney's Discourses, Toland had also published the works of John Milton in 1698. To accompany this, he wrote and printed The Life of John Milton which was then reprinted by Millar in 1761. This was another of the works that Hollis sent to the Advocates Library in the 1760s. It is particularly interesting because it has not one but three gold tools on both the front and the back. On the front is Athena with a branch on one side of her and a feather on the other. On the back the cockerel, Britannia, and the owl. The proliferation of gold tooling perhaps reflects the particularly high esteem in which Hollis held Milton. Hollis referred to Milton as 'divine' and 'incomparable'. And as well as collecting and disseminating Milton's works, Hollis had a picture of him in his apartment and even managed, in 1760, to purchase 'a bed which once belonged to John Milton, and on which he died'. This he sent as a present to the poet Mark Akenside, suggesting that if 'having slept in that bed' Akenside should be prompted 'to write an ode to the memory of John Milton, and the assertors of British liberty' it would be sufficient recompense for Hollis's expense (Memoirs of Thomas Hollis. London, 1780, pp. 93, 104, 112).

Following J. G. A. Pocock, a sharp distinction has tended to be drawn between the commonwealth writers (including Milton, Sidney and Neville) and John Locke. Now much questioned, this distinction also does not appear to have existed for Hollis who felt quite able to celebrate Locke as well as Milton. Several copies of Locke's works appear among the Hollis volumes in the NLS. One of these (a copy of the 1764 edition of Two Treatises of Government produced by Millar) resembles the commonwealth works in depicting Athena on the front and the Pilius on the back (with stamps of a Harp and Britannia on the fly leaves). Another emphasises the association of Locke's works with liberty by repeatedly using the Pilius image (NLS: [Ac].4/1.7).

Finally, several of the volumes donated by Hollis to the Advocates Library focus on religious rather than political matters, including several by the clergyman and religious controversialist Francis Blackburne (1705-1787). Born, like Hollis himself, in Yorkshire, Blackburne lived most of his life in Richmond. Though he became a clergyman in the Church of England, Blackburne subsequently refused to subscribe again to the Thirty-nine Articles, the defining statement of the doctrines and practices of that Church. His best known work The Confessional (which Hollis had persuaded him to publish and to which he gave his commendation 'Ut Spargum' - that we may scatter them) engaged with the history of the Church of England and the controversies over subscription. It was a text that prompted a fierce pamphlet exchange, allegedly amounting to ten volumes worth of material (B. W. Young, 'Blackburne, Francis', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). The presentation copy of The Confessional that Hollis gave to the Advocates Library bears a stamp of Athena inside the front cover and one of an owl in the back. The front bears a gold tool of Caduceus or staff of Hermes, a symbol of peace and rebirth, and the back a gold-tooled branch with leaves (NLS: Nha.Misc.32).

Francis Blackburne, Considerations on the present state of the controversy between the Protestants and Papists of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1768). National Library of Scotland: Nha.Misc.31. Image credit: National Library of Scotland.

Hollis also presented a copy of Blackburne's Considerations on the present state of the controversy between the Protestants and Papists of Great Britain and Ireland (1768) which, like the Milton volume, bears more than one emblem on the front and back covers. In the centre of the front cover is a gold-tooled Britannia, with a cockerel placed in the bottom left corner. The back depicts Athena centrally with an owl bottom right. The spine features the Caduceus (Nha.Misc.31).

Though he remained within the Church of England, Blackburne had close family connections to Theophilus Lindsey and John Disney who were involved in the establishment of Unitarianism, suggesting a link to Hollis's own Dissenting position. Moreover, just as Hollis devoted his life to preserving the memory of great thinkers of the past and present, so Blackburne played a crucial role in preserving the memory of Hollis himself. Following his friend's death, Blackburne produced a two-volume account of Hollis's life, which has been described as a 'memorial to Hollis's radical tradition' (Young, 'Blackburne, Francis', ODNB).

A number of the Hollis volumes described in this blogpost will be on display at the 'Encountering Political Texts' exhibition at the National Library of Scotland between Friday 8th December 2023 and Saturday 20th April 2024.

The Swinish Multitude

In his influential and prescient early assessment of the French Revolution, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke revealed his contempt for ordinary people - describing them as a 'swinish multitude' and, in the eyes of some, questioning their right to education. If the natural social hierarchy was challenged, Burke argued - 'learning', together with its natural protectors and guardians the nobility and the clergy would be 'cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude' (Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. 8th edition. London, 1791, p. 117). The phrase hit a chord. As this Google Ngram illustrates, there was a huge spike in its usage following the publication of Burke's text, and it continued to be deployed well into the nineteenth century. The popularity and persistence of the phrase prompts several questions. Where did Burke get the idea from? What was the response to it? And why did it continue to be used for so long?

The origins of the phrase can be traced back to the Bible. In the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew Chapter 7 Verse 6, Jesus declared:

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you (King James Bible).

‘A Swinish Multitude’, by John (‘HB’) Doyle, printed by Alfred Duôte, published by Thomas McLean. Lithograph. 7 October 1835. National Portrait Gallery: NPG D41349. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

The reference not just to pigs, but also to trampling good things under foot, makes clear that this was the source of Burke's phrase (interestingly the conceit also appears in William Langland's poem 'Piers Plowman' and in John Milton's 'Sonnet XII', where the 'hogs' are condemned for failing to properly understand the nature of liberty). Moreover, the notion of 'pearls of wisdom' enhances the connection with learning. Burke's opponents in the 1790s were quick to subvert his jibe and turn it to their advantage.

Early responses simply expressed hostility to Burke's sentiment. As, for example, William Belsham's reference in one of his Essays, philosophical, historical and literary of 1791 and Charlotte Smith's in her novel Desmond. Commenting on the calmness of the French people on the King's return to Paris Lionel Desmond asserts, in a vein that perhaps also alludes and responds to Milton's use of the term:

This will surely convince the world, that the bloody democracy of Mr Burke, is not a combination of the swinish multitude, for the purposes of anarchy, but the association of reasonable beings, who determine to be, and deserve to be, free. (Charlotte Smith, Desmond. A novel, in three volumes. London, 1792, Volume 3, p. 89).

Around the same time there appeared a song entitled 'Burke's Address to the "swinish" Multitude', to be sung to the tune 'Derry, down down', which satirised  Burke's position.

More substantial responses to Burke's argument about learning also began to appear. One of the earliest of these was A reply to Mr Burke's invective by the radical Thomas Cooper. Cooper was defending himself and his associate James Watt against an attack made by Burke in Parliament on 30 April 1792 concerning their presentation to the Jacobins on behalf of the Constitutional Society of Manchester. In the course of his defence, Cooper reflected on the relationship between knowledge and freedom. He condemned Burke for presenting national ignorance as a means of maintaining the position of the privileged orders and called instead for the dissemination of political knowledge so that the people could understand and secure their rights and freedoms:

Thus we find that public Ignorance is the Cement of the far famed Alliance between Church and State; and that Imposture, political and religious, cannot maintain its ground, if Knowledge and Discussion once finds its way among the Swinish Multitude. (Thomas Cooper, A Reply to Mr Burke's Invective. Manchester, 1792, p. 36).

Portrait of Thomas Cooper by Asher Brown Durand, after Charles Cromwell Ingham. Line engraving, 1829. National Portait Gallery: NPG D10570. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

This whole section of Cooper's work was inserted, unacknowledged, into the Address published by the Birmingham Constitutional Society soon after its establishment in November 1792. This is perhaps not surprising since the raison d'etre of these societies was precisely to spread political knowledge, and it was partly the actions of the London Society for Constitutional Information (alongside those of the Revolution Society) that had provoked Burke in the first place.

Around the same time, works began to appear that were presented as being written by 'one of the "Swinish Multitude"'. One of these was entitled A Rod for the Burkites. It was printed in Manchester and perhaps again emerged from the circles around the Constitutional Society. Sonnet for the Fast-Day. To Sancho's Favourite Tune by one of the swinish multitude was another satirical song to the tune 'Derry, down, down'. James Parkinson, writing under the pseudonym Old Hubert, published An Address, to the Hon. Edmund Burke, from the Swinish Multitude in 1793. Parkinson, a successful palaeontologist and surgeon who gave his name to Parkinson's Disease, was also an active radical with a sharp concern for the poor. Parkinson's Address argued that since men are all alike, they must all be swinelike. The difference, then, was between 'Hogs of Quality' who enjoy the luxuries of the stye and the poor swinish multitude who have to work hard to survive and are obstructed at every turn:

Whilst ye are chewing the greatest dainties, and gorging yourselves at troughs filled with the daintiest wash; we, with our numerous train of porkers, are employed, from the rising to the setting sun, to obtain the means of subsistence, by turning up a stray root or two, or perhaps, picking up a few acorns. But, alas! of these we dare not partake, untill, by the laws made by ye Swine of quality, we have first deposited by far the greatest part in the store house of the stye, as rent for the light of heaven and for the air we breathe. (James Parkinson, An Address, to the Hon. Edmund Burke, from the Swinish Multitude. London, 1793, pp. 17-18).

Moreover, Parkinson also argued that keeping the poor ignorant was a deliberate means of keeping them down:

it would be no more than justice, if these lordly Swine would enable us to instruct our young, so that they might be capable of comprehending the innumerable laws which are laid down for their conduct; and which should, they, even through ignorance, transgress, they are sure immediately to be sent to the county pound, or perhaps delivered over to the butcher. (Parkinson, Address, p. 19).

Title page of Spence’s Pigs’ Meat. Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University. Special Collections: Rare Books (RB 331.04 PIG). Reproduced with kind permission.

A further move by the radicals built on this point. In September 1793 two new periodical publications appeared that again commandeered the porcine language on the part of the poor. Thomas Spence's One Pennyworth of Pigs' Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude was swiftly followed by Daniel Isaac Eaton's Hog's Wash; or, a Salmagundy for Swine (subsequently retitled Politics for the People). These works not only spoke to and on behalf of the so-called 'swinish multitude', as Parkinson had done, but were designed to provide them with useful political knowledge. They offered short extracts from a range of texts that were 'Intended' as Spence explained:

To promote among the Labouring Part of Mankind proper Ideas of their Situation, of their Importance and of their Rights, and to convince them That their forlorn Condition has not been entirely overlooked and forgotten nor their just Cause unpleaded, neither by their Maker nor by the best and most enlightened of Men in all Ages. (Thomas Spence, Pigs' Meat, title page).

Similarly, the full title of Eaton's publication explained that it consisted:

Of the choicest Viands, contributed by the Cooks of the present day, AND of the highest flavoured delicacies, composed by the Caterers of former Ages. (Daniel Isaac Eaton, Hog's Wash, 1793).

Title page of Eaton’s Politics for the People. Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University. Special Collections: Friends (Friends 336-337). Reproduced with kind permission.

The extracts presented for the enrichment of the swinish multitude were eclectic. They included passages from: popular radical authors of the day such as William Frend, Joel Barlow, and John Thelwall; previous generations of radicals including John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, James Harrington and Algernon Sidney; but also more mainstream authors like Jonathan Swift, John Locke and Samuel Pufendorf. Moreover, the Bible was also a fundamental source for both editors, with quotes from various books of the Old and New Testaments being deployed to demonstrate that God favoured support for, rather than oppression of, the poor.

Though politically they were polar opposites Spence and Eaton endorsed what they saw as Burke's sense of the connection between ignorance and oppression and, therefore, between knowledge and resistance. Their hope was Burke's fear; that by providing the poor with political nourishment - feeding their minds as well as their bodies - they would be led to see and acknowledge both the oppression under which they suffered and the justice of their right to overthrow it. This, it was hoped, would provoke them into action. It did not, of course, but both the hope and the fear remain to this day.