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DEFOE, DISSENT, AND EARLY WHIG IDEOLOGY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2009
Abstract
The nature of Whig ideology at its formation in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries continues to attract the attention of historians of political thought. This article contends that prevalent understandings of the taxonomy of the subject nevertheless still often remain secular, and do not fully attend to the religious constituencies of the authors involved. One key author was Daniel Defoe, who was credited with several anonymous pamphlets published after the Revolution of 1688. The effect of these attributions is to reinforce a homogenized picture of early Whig political ideology that fails to identify differences between authors who used similar terms such as ‘contract’, ‘resistance’, and ‘natural law’. This article de-attributes certain of these pamphlets, outlines the consequences for the history of political thought of that de-attribution, re-establishes Defoe's own political identity, and proposes that such a taxonomy should give more attention to religious difference.
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References
1 Reflections upon the late great revolution. Written by a lay-hand in the country, for the satisfaction of some neighbours (London: Ric[hard] Chiswell, 1689), p. 1. References in parentheses in the text are to this pamphlet.
2 See especially John P. Kenyon, Revolution principles: the politics of party, 1689–1720 (Cambridge, 1977), chs. 1–3; Goldie, Mark, ‘The Revolution of 1689 and the structure of political argument: an essay and an annotated bibliography in pamphlets on the Allegiance Controversy’, Bulletin of Research in the Humanities, 83 (1980), pp. 473–564Google Scholar (esp. list of sources on pp. 526–7); David Martin Jones, Conscience and allegiance in seventeenth-century England: the political significance of oaths and engagements (Rochester, NY, 1999); Mark Goldie, ed., The reception of Locke's politics (6 vols., London, 1999); Edward Vallance, Revolutionary England and natural covenant: state oaths, Protestantism, and the political nation, 1553–1682 (Woodbridge, 2005); Conal Condren, Argument and authority in early modern England (Cambridge, 2006).
3 John Robert Moore, Daniel Defoe: citizen of the modern world (Chicago, IL, 1958), p. 72; idem, A checklist of the writings of Daniel Defoe (Bloomington, IN, 1960; 2nd edn, Hamden, CT, 1971), no. 6.
4 F. Bastian, Defoe's early life (London, 1981), p. 140.
5 Paula Backscheider, Daniel Defoe: his life (Baltimore, MD, 1989), p. 49.
6 Ibid., pp. 76, 81, 161–3, 168–72; Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary politics and Locke's Two treatises of government (Princeton, NJ, 1986), pp. 222, 565.
7 Maximillian Novak, Daniel Defoe master of fictions: his life and ideas (Oxford, 2001), pp. 91, 112. Novak argues that the more immediate source for Defoe's ideas was his teacher at his Dissenting Academy, Charles Morton, but that this education was still Lockeian, since ‘Morton must have met John Locke during his stay at Wadham College in Oxford.’ This statement strengthens, without evidence, Novak's earlier argument that ‘Morton might well have had some contact with Locke’, p. 47 (italics added). Similarly, Novak reads Defoe's account of 1688 in The true-born Englishman (1701) as a description of a ‘classic bourgeois revolution’ (p. 152).
8 P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, The canonization of Daniel Defoe (London, 1988); idem, Defoe de-attributions: a critique of J. R. Moore's checklist (London, 1994); idem, A critical bibliography of Daniel Defoe (London, 1998), pp. 3–4.
9 Goldie noted: ‘Defoe launches his career as he means to continue: assaults passive obedience, divine right, sycophancy to tyranny; [he employs] contract and salus populi found in Old Testament and English history’: ‘Revolution of 1689’, p. 537, no. 39.
10 See n. 8 above.
11 P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, A political biography of Daniel Defoe (London, 2006).
12 In chronological order, these are: A letter to a dissenter from his friend at the Hague, concerning the Penal Laws and the Test; shewing that the popular plea for liberty of conscience is not concerned in that question (‘The Hague’, [London], 1688); Some short considerations relating to the settling of the government; humbly offer'd to the Lords and Commons of England, now assembled at Westminster (London: ‘Printed for N. R.’, 1689), no licence date given but evidently early in 1689; The advantages of the present settlement, and the great danger of a relapse (London, 1689), licensed 4 July; An answer to the late K. James's last declaration, dated at St. Germains, April 17, S. N. 1693 (London, 1693). The authorship of the last two has been disputed: see Furbank and Owens, Defoe de-attributions, pp. 4, 6–7. Goldie, however, accepted them as Defoe's: ‘Allegiance controversy’, p. 537, nos. 40, 41.
13 Backscheider, Daniel Defoe, provides a detailed chronicle of the fortunes of Defoe the businessman. The expiration of the Licensing Act in 1695 coupled with the rise of party politics revolutionized England's print culture: J. A. Downie, Robert Harley and the press: propaganda and public opinion in the age of Swift and Defoe (Cambridge, 1979); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian moment: Florentine political thought and the Atlantic republican tradition (Princeton, NJ, 1975), pp. 423–505.
14 John Dunn, ‘The politics of Locke in England and America in the eighteenth century’, in J. W. Yolton, ed., John Locke: problems and perspectives (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 45–80; Thompson, Martyn P., ‘The reception of Locke's Two treatises of government, 1690–1705’, Political Studies, 24 (1976), pp. 184–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James Moore, ‘Theological politics: a study of the reception of Locke's Two treatises of government in England and Scotland in the early eighteenth century’, in Martyn P. Thompson, ed., John Locke und/and Immanuel Kant: historische Rezeption und gegenwärtige Relevanz (Berlin, 1991), pp. 62–82.
15 Conal Condren, George Lawson's Politica and the English revolution (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 166–9. Condren points out similarities between arguments in George Lawson's Politica sacra & civilis (1660; reprinted 1689) and Defoe's The original power of the collective body of the people of England (1701), for which see below.
16 For their ‘congregating around the deist John Toland’ and their republicanism, see Goldie, Mark, ‘The roots of true Whiggism, 1688–94’, History of Political Thought, 1 (1980), pp. 195–236, at pp. 196–7.Google Scholar
17 Katherine Clark, Daniel Defoe: the whole frame of nature, time and providence (London, 2007).
18 Defoe claimed to have angered Whig friends by writing a pamphlet denouncing the Turks for their conduct during their siege of Vienna in 1683 (so placing the safety of Christendom before the defeat of a Catholic alliance between the Empire and France), but no text has been discovered: Defoe, An appeal to honour and justice (London, 1715), p. 223.
19 [Daniel Defoe] Jure divino: a satyr. In twelve books. By the author of the true-born-Englishman (London: no printer, 1706), pp. iv, xix–xx. Defoe listed the doctrinal points on which ‘all Orthodox Christians agree’; those who denied those doctrines ‘ought not to be suffered, that is, Tolerated’, p. xxi.
20 Clark, Daniel Defoe, p. 55.
21 Goldie, ‘Revolution of 1689’, p. 508. In the bibliography, however, Goldie emphasizes that arguments in Reflections are historically based.
22 Clark, Daniel Defoe, passim.
23 [Defoe], The Review, 10 Sept. 1706; cf. 15 Aug. 1705.
24 Clark, Daniel Defoe, passim.
25 Furbank and Owens, Critical bibliography, p. 4.
26 A collection of state tracts, publish'd on occasion of the late revolution in 1688. And during the reign of king William III (3 vols., London, 1703–5), i, list of contents.
27 Moore, A checklist of the writings of Daniel Defoe (1971), no. 6.
28 Robert Eyre published under his own name: A discourse concerning the nature and satisfaction of a good and inoffensive conscience. In a sermon preach'd in the cathedral church of Winchester, at the assizes held there April 11. 1693 (London, 1693); The sinner a traitor to his king and country. In a sermon [on 1 Sam. 12.25] preach'd in the cathedral-church of Winchester, at the assizes held there, July 24. 1700 (London, 1700), in which he praised William III as ‘our Great Deliverer, and the happy Instrument of his Providence’, p. 18, and expounded again the Scriptural text that was prominent in the Reflections; and A sermon preach'd before the honourable House of Commons, at St. Margaret's Westminster, on Friday Jan 30. 1707/8 (London, 1708), in which he showed knowledge of Grotius, p. 2. Eyre matriculated at New College, Oxford, in 1676, became a fellow of the college, and took the degree of DD in 1697; in 1700 he became a canon of Winchester Cathedral: Anthony à Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis, ed. Philip Bliss (4 vols., London, 1820), iv, p. 558. Another possible candidate, William Eyre, author of Vindiciae justificationis gratuitae (2nd edn, London, 1695), was evidently a Dissenter, and so unlikely as the author of a pamphlet, Reflections, which commended episcopacy.
29 Furbank and Owens, Critical bibliography, pp. 7–8; Moore, John Robert, ‘Defoe's “lost” letter to a Dissenter’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 14 (1951), pp. 299–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
30 It was reprinted in Fourteen papers (London, 1689), but there is no evidence that this was Defoe's compilation. The volume is a reprint of fourteen pamphlets, by various hands, issued without any editorial introduction and licensed on 21 Dec. 1688, in the heat of the revolution. It was probably a money-making venture by its publisher, Richard Baldwin.
31 ‘What can the Repeal of the Penal Laws and Test do for you which the King's Declaration hath not done?’: A letter to a Dissenter, pp. 1–2.
32 Some short considerations relating to the settling of the government, p. 5.
33 Bastian, Defoe's early life, p. 138.
34 Utrum horum? Tyranny, or liberty. Oppression, or moderation … By G[uy] M[iege] (London, 1705), p. 30.
35 Vivienne Larminie, ‘Pierre Allix’, Oxford dictionary of national biography, does not notice the attribution to him of The advantages; Furbank and Owens, Defoe de-attributions, p. 4.
36 The following were all printed by Richard Chiswell and have been attributed to Pierre Allix: Some considerations touching succession and allegiance (London, 1689), licensed 9 Apr.; An examination of the scruples of those who refuse to take the oath of allegiance. By a divine of the Church of England (London, 1689), licensed 16 Apr.; An account of the private league betwixt the late king James the second, and the French king (London, 1689), licensed 2 May; A letter from a French lawyer to an English gentleman, upon the present revolution (London, 1689), licensed 27 May; Reflections upon the opinions of some modern divines, concerning the nature of government in general, and that of England in particular (London, 1689), licensed 29 June.
37 Elizabeth Lane Furdell, ‘James Welwood’, Oxford dictionary of national biography; Furbank and Owens, Defoe de-attributions, pp. 6–7.
38 The following have all been attributed to James Welwood: Reasons why the parliament of Scotland cannot comply with the late k. James's proclamation (London: Dorman Newman, 1689); A vindication of the present great revolution in England; in five letters pass'd betwixt James Welwood and John Marsh (London: R. Taylor, 1689); An answer to the late king James's declaration to all his pretended subjects in the kingdom of England, dated at Dublin-Castle, May 8. 1689 (London: Dorman Newman, 1689; repr. 1693); An answer to the vindication of the letter from a person of quality in the north (London, s.n., 1690); A modest enquiry into the causes of the present disasters in England (London: Richard Baldwin, 1690); Mercurius reformatus: or, the new observator: containing reflexions upon the most remarkable events, falling out from time to time in Europe, and more particularly England (London, 1689–?93: initially printed for Dorman Newman, but after vol. 4 no. 1 by Richard Baldwin); An appendix to Mercurius reformatus or the new observator (London: Richard Baldwin, 1692).
39 Furbank and Owens, Critical bibliography, p. 9.
40 Backscheider, Daniel Defoe, pp. 50–61.
41 Clark, Daniel Defoe, passim.
42 Furbank and Owens, Critical bibliography, nos. 1–16.
43 Moore, Daniel Defoe, pp. 70–3; Bastian, Defoe's early life, pp. 7, 225.
44 Furbank, P. N. and Owens, W. R., ‘Defoe and King William: a sceptical enquiry’, Review of English Studies, 52 (2001), pp. 227–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Downie, J. A., ‘Daniel Defoe: King William's pamphleteer?’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 12 (1988), pp. 105–17.Google Scholar
45 The original power of the collective body of the people of England, examined and asserted (London, 1702 [for 1701]), partly reprinted in Some remarks on the first chapter in Dr. Davenant's essays (London, 1704 [for 1703]).
46 Some remarks, pp. 13, 20–3. This pamphlet was, in the spurious context denied here, interpreted by Bastian, Defoe's early life, p. 136, as a radical Whig one. In its proper context, it becomes a moderate Whig position.
47 [Defoe], Jure divino, pp. i, iii, vi–vii, x–xi, xiv, Bk ii, p. 2.
48 Goldie, ‘Revolution of 1689’, p. 489.
49 Kenyon, Revolution principles, p. 25. Subsequent scholarship has recovered the Providential dimension of early modern thinking, e.g. John Spurr, ‘“Virtue, religion and government”: the Anglican uses of providence’, in Tim Harris, Paul Seaward, and Mark Goldie, eds., The politics of religion in Restoration England (Oxford, 1990), pp. 29–47; Michael Winship, Seers of God: Puritan providentialism in the Restoration and early Enlightenment (Baltimore, MD, 1996); Alexandra Walsham, Providence in early modern England (Oxford, 1999); Johnston, Warren, ‘The patience of the saints, the Apocalypse, and moderate nonconformity in Restoration England’, Canadian Journal of History, 38 (2003), pp. 505–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Revelation and the Revolution of 1688–1689’, Historical Journal, 48 (2005), pp. 351–89.
50 Moore, Daniel Defoe, p. 72.
51 Thompson, Martyn P., ‘A note on “reason” and “history” in late seventeenth-century political thought’, Political Theory, 4 (1976), p. 497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
52 [Defoe], A letter to Mr. How (London, 1701), reprinted in [Defoe], A true collection of the writings of the author of the true born English-man. Corrected by himself (London, 1703), p. 330. For the earlier history of Presbyterian claims of divine right for their form of ecclesiastical polity, see Jeremy Goring, ‘Introduction’, and C. G. Bolam and Jeremy Goring, ‘English Presbyterian beginnings’, in C. G. Bolam et al., English Presbyterians (London, 1968), pp. 20, 29–72; Peter Lake, ‘Presbyterianism, the idea of a national church and the argument from divine right’, in Peter Lake and Maria Dowling, eds., Protestantism and the national church in sixteenth-century England (London, 1987), pp. 193–224.
53 Manuel Schonhorn, Defoe's politics: parliament, power, kingship and Daniel Defoe (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 22–3 (in other places, Schonhorn's argument points as much to Defoe's Presbyterian identity as it does to any Anglican persona); Bastian, Defoe's early life, p. 140.
54 [Defoe], Jure divino, Bk ii, p. 4; Samuel Puffendorf [sic], An introduction to the history of the principal kingdoms and states of Europe [trans. Jodocus Crull] (London, 1695).
55 [Defoe], Jure divino, Bk i, pp. 3 (Raleigh), 5, Bk ii, p. 20; [Defoe], The political history of the devil (London, 1726), pp. 146–57.
56 For Defoe's search for a Protestant hero, see Schonhorn, Defoe's politics, p. 4. Defoe's admiration for warrior kings has often been ignored by those who wish to depict him as a radical Whig or republican: Ashcraft, Richard and Goldsmith, M. M., ‘Locke, revolution principles, and the formation of Whig ideology’, Historical Journal, 26 (1983), pp. 773–800Google Scholar; Laurence Dickey, ‘Power, commerce and natural law in Daniel Defoe's political writings, 1698–1707’, in John Robertson, ed., A union for empire: political thought and the Union of 1707 (Cambridge, 1995); Peter Earle, The world of Defoe (London, 1976).
57 Schonhorn, Defoe's politics, p. 112: Schonhorn sees Saul as the key to understanding Defoe's politics. On the significance of ambiguity in political argument, see Condren, Lawson's Politica, pp. 83, 114–15, 193; ‘what matters here is how Defoe's argument illustrates the differing patterns of ideas that can come from a common terminological legacy’, p. 167.
58 [Defoe], Jure divino, Bk ii, pp. 23–4, 27.
59 Ibid., pp. 2, 5, 16. This was Defoe's basic position, although somewhat modified in his account of Saul.
60 Grotius, Rights of war & peace (1682), p. 40; Condren, Lawson's Politica, pp. 71–5; Defoe, The original power of the collective body of the people of England (1702 [for 1701]), in [Defoe], A true collection, i (2nd edn, 1705), pp. 134–7, 146, and passim.
61 [Defoe], Jure divino, Bk x, p. 11.
62 Ibid., Bk iv, p. 23.
63 Ibid., Bk iii, p. 20.
64 Available in William Evats (trans.), The most excellent Hugo Grotius his three books treating of the rights of war & peace. In the first is handled, whether any war be just. In the second is shewed, the causes of war, both just and uujust [sic]. In the third is declared, what in war is lawful; that is, unpunishable. With the annotations digested into the body of every chapter (London, 1682), pp. 42, 44, 63–4.
65 [Defoe], Jure divino, Bk iii, pp. 26–7.
66 ‘Nor had it been any Question, but that had King James left a Son in England behind him a Protestant, and claiming the Crown, he would have had it – But had the birth of his Son been unquestion'd here, his carrying him away into France certainly depriv'd him as effectually as it did his Father’: ibid., p. vii.
67 Ibid., pp. vii, x.
68 Of authors in defence of the Revolution, only some 16 per cent used contract to justify deposition: Goldie, ‘The revolution of 1689’, p. 490.
69 On Protestant resistance theory, see Robert M. Kingdon, ‘Calvinism and resistance theory, 1550–1580’, in J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie, eds., The Cambridge history of political thought, 1450–1700 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 193–218.
70 [Defoe], Jure divino, Bk viii, p. 30, Bk ii, p. 18, Bk v, pp. 6–7, Bk ii, pp. 18–19.
71 Goldie, ‘Revolution of 1689’, p. 490.
72 Ibid.
73 For a similar re-contextualizing of Locke within debates on religious toleration, see John Marshall, John Locke, toleration and early Enlightenment culture (Cambridge, 2006).
74 Goldie, ‘Revolution of 1689’, pp. 211–12, 214.
75 For other proposed revisions, see Condren, Lawson's Politica, pp. 151–65.