Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:57:52.559Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

CHRISTIAN HEROES, PROVIDENCE, AND PATRIOTISM IN WARTIME BRITAIN, 1793–1815*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2015

GARETH ATKINS
GARETH ATKINS*
Affiliation:
Magdalene College, Cambridge
*
Magdalene College, Cambridge, cb3 0ag[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The use by British crowds of victorious admirals to articulate patriotic and libertarian ideas during the wars of the long eighteenth century is well known. But conflict also posed awkward questions about masculinity and issues surrounding it. Was military prowess compatible with politeness, with religiosity? During the 1790s, the fight to the death with revolutionary France made such questions hard to ignore, being compounded by the fact that Britain's most celebrated leader – Nelson – was not a paragon of virtue. This article shows how evangelicals sought to resolve these tensions by advancing a different set of ideals founded on piety and professionalism: by finding heroes of their own. This has crucial consequences for our understanding of how they and the ideas they championed became so prominent in late Hanoverian public life. In contradistinction to recent work suggesting that they exploited causes that were already popular – moral reform, antislavery – this article shows how they advanced a powerful providential narrative in which Christian heroes and godly policy were what made Britain great, a narrative whose veracity was ‘proven’ by wartime successes, especially in the navy, and which would remain highly influential well into the nineteenth century.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 393 - 414
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am indebted to Dr Michael Ledger-Lomas and to the anonymous referees for their suggestions, and am also grateful to audiences in Cambridge, Winchester, London, and Oxford for comments and questions on earlier drafts.

References

1 Daniel Sykes to Marianne Thornton, 26 June 1815, Edinburgh, Royal Bank of Scotland Archives, PT/2/71.

2 Fisher, D. R., ed., The history of parliament: the House of Commons, 1820–1832 (7 vols., Cambridge, 2009), vii, pp. 357–62Google Scholar.

3 Stott, Anne, Wilberforce: family and friends (Oxford, 2012), pp. 74–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Wilberforce to James Currie, 21 Jan. 1794, cited in Pollock, John, Wilberforce: God's statesman (London, 1977), p. 126Google Scholar.

5 R. I. and Wilberforce, S., The life of William Wilberforce (5 vols., London, 1838), iv, p. 261Google Scholar.

6 Thornton, Percy Melville, Some things we have remembered (London, 1912), pp. 29–56Google Scholar.

7 Knight, R. J. B., The pursuit of victory: the life and achievement of Horatio Nelson (London, 2005), pp. 549–50Google Scholar; see also Hayward, Joel S. A., For God and glory (Annapolis, MD, 2003)Google Scholar.

8 Sidney, Edwin, The life of Lord Hill (London, 1845), pp. 225–9, 383–95Google Scholar.

9 Smith, G. C. Moore, The life of John Colborne, Field-Marshal Lord Seaton (London, 1903), pp. vii, 6Google Scholar; Meille, J. P., General Beckwith: his life and labours among the Waldenses of Piedmont, trans. Arnot, W. (Edinburgh, 1873)Google Scholar.

10 Atkins, Gareth, ‘Religion, politics and patronage in the late-Hanoverian Navy, c. 1780–c. 1820’, Historical Research (forthcoming)Google Scholar.

11 Jenks, Timothy, Naval engagements: patriotism, cultural politics, and the Royal Navy, 1793–1815 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 1–26Google Scholar.

12 See Colley, Linda, Britons: forging the nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT, 1992), pp. 237–319Google Scholar; Lincoln, Margarette, Representing the Royal Navy: British sea power, 1750–1815 (Aldershot, 2002)Google Scholar.

13 Jordan, Gerald and Rogers, Nicholas, ‘Admirals as heroes: patriotism and liberty in Hanoverian England’, Journal of British Studies, 28 (1989), pp. 201–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilson, Kathleen, The sense of the people (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 137–205Google Scholar; Conway, Stephen, ‘“A joy unknown for years past”: the American War, Britishness and the celebration of Rodney's victory at the Saints’, History, 86 (2001), pp. 180–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See Semmel, Stuart, Napoleon and the British (New Haven, CT, 2004), pp. 72–106Google Scholar.

15 Snape, Michael, The Royal Army Chaplains’ Department (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 15–56Google Scholar; Blake, Richard, Evangelicals in the Royal Navy, 1775–1815: blue lights and psalm-singers (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 69–139Google Scholar.

16 Anderson, Olive, ‘The growth of Christian militarism in mid-Victorian Britain’, English Historical Review, 86 (1971), pp. 46–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Gregory, Jeremy, ‘Homo religiosus: masculinity and religion in the long eighteenth century’, in Hitchcock, Tim and Cohen, Michèle, eds., English masculinities, 1660–1800 (London, 1999), pp. 85–110Google Scholar; Reyk, William Van, ‘Christian ideals of manliness in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’, Historical Journal, 52 (2009), pp. 1053–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Roberts, M. J. D., Making English morals (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 17–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown, Christopher Leslie, Moral capital (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), pp. 333–89Google Scholar.

19 Hoock, Holger, Empires of the imagination: politics, war and the arts in the British world, 1750–1850 (London, 2010), pp. 172–5Google Scholar.

20 Aston, Nigel, Christianity and revolutionary Europe, c. 1750–1830 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 211–96Google Scholar; Brown, Stewart J. and Tackett, Timothy, eds., The Cambridge history of Christianity, vii: Enlightenment, reawakening and revolution, 1660–1815 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 497–595CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Carl, Horst, ‘Religion and the experience of war’, in Forrest, Alan, Hagemann, Karen, and Rendall, Jane, eds., Soldiers, citizens and civilians (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 222–42Google Scholar.

22 Broers, Michael, The politics of religion in Napoleonic Italy: the war against God, 1801–1814 (London, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark, Christopher, ‘The Napoleonic moment in Prussian church policy’, in Laven, D. and Riall, L., eds., The Napoleonic legacy (Oxford, 2000), pp. 217–36Google Scholar.

23 Hole, Robert, Pulpits, politics and public order in England, 1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 95–173CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Pratt, J. H., ed., Eclectic notes (London, 1865), pp. 87–8, 236–7, 299–300Google Scholar.

25 See, among others, Newton, John, The imminent danger (London, 1794)Google Scholar; idem, Motives to humiliation and praise (London, 1797); Goode, William, Mercies in judgment (London, 1797)Google Scholar; Venn, John, Reflections in this season of danger (London, 1798)Google Scholar; idem, The ground of encouragement (London, 1803).

26 [Smith, Sydney], ‘Styles on Methodists and missions’, Edinburgh Review, 14 (Apr.–July 1809), pp. 40–50Google Scholar, at p. 48. See also Coffey, John, ‘Tremble, Britannia!: fear, providence, and the abolition of the slave trade, 1758–1807’, English Historical Review, 127 (2012), pp. 867–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 See Claydon, Tony, Europe and the making of England, 1660–1760 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 125–219Google Scholar for some of the ways in which such rhetoric played in the century after the Restoration.

28 Pratt, Eclectic notes, p. 330.

29 Wilberforce to William Hey, n.d., [1798], ibid., p. 86n.

30 Wilberforce to Hannah More, 4 Oct. 1798, Wilberforce, Life, ii, p. 312.

31 Pratt, Eclectic notes, p. 86n.

32 John Venn to Marianne Thornton, 8 Nov. 1805, Birmingham, University Library, Church Missionary Society papers, Venn MSS, C20, fo. 216; Christian Observer (1805), p. 11.

33 Redford, George and James, John Angell, The autobiography of the Rev. William Jay (2nd edn, London, 1855), p. 367Google Scholar.

34 Roberts, William, Memoirs of the life and correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More (4 vols., London, 1834), iii, p. 232Google Scholar; Christian Observer (1805), pp. 260, 711; ibid. (1806), pp. 747–50.

35 [Marks, Richard], Nautical essays (London, 1818), pp. 157–61Google Scholar; see also Simpson, Thomas Brown, A sermon preached…on Thursday December 5, 1805 (London, 1805)Google Scholar; Styles, John, A tribute to the memory of Nelson (London, 1805)Google Scholar.

36 More to Wilberforce, 2 Jan. 1806, Durham, NC, Duke University, Wilberforce papers, box 2 folder 2.

37 Cecil, Richard, The pageant is over! (London, 1852), p. 12Google Scholar.

38 White, Colin, ‘“His dirge our groans – his monument our praise”: official and popular commemorations of Nelson in 1805–1806’, in Hoock, Holger, ed., History, commemoration and national preoccupation: Trafalgar, 1805–2005 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 23–48Google Scholar, at p. 27; Hoock, Empires, pp. 132–61.

39 Ibid., pp. 163–7.

40 Ibid., pp. 172–5.

41 Hervey, James, Meditations among the tombs (London, 1746), p. 44Google Scholar.

42 Curnock, Nehemiah, ed., The journal of the Rev. John Wesley (8 vols., London, 1909–16), v, p. 46Google Scholar.

43 Cobbett's parliamentary debates, viii (1807), cols. 978–9. For later discussions of Wilberforce as a providential agent, see Elliott, H. V., Horae apocalypticae (3 vols., 3rd edn, London, 1847), iii, pp. 430–9Google Scholar.

44 Tennant, Bob, Corporate holiness: pulpit preaching and the Church of England missionary societies (Oxford, 2013), pp. 125–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Church Missionary Society Annual Report (1811), pp. 187–9.

46 Gregory, ‘Homo religiosus’, pp. 90–8.

47 Steele, Richard, The Christian hero (London, 1755), p. 3Google Scholar.

48 Ibid., pp. 5–59.

49 Hanway, Jonas, Thoughts on the duty of a good citizen (London, 1755), p. 29Google Scholar.

50 Hanway, Jonas, Three letters (London, 1758), letter i, p. 4Google Scholar. For more on Hanway, see Lloyd, Sarah, Charity and poverty in England, 1680–1820 (Manchester, 2009), pp. 57–61Google Scholar.

51 McCormack, Matthew, ‘The new militia: war, politics and gender in 1750s Britain’, Gender and History, 19 (2007), pp. 483–500CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Wilson, Kathleen, ‘The island race: Captain Cook, Protestant evangelicalism and the construction of English national identity, 1760–1800’, in Claydon, Tony and McBride, Ian, eds., Protestantism and national identity (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 265–90, at pp. 270–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Carey, Eustace, Memoir of William Carey (London, 1836), p. 18Google Scholar; Sivasundaram, Sujit, ‘Redeeming memory: the martyrdoms of Captain James Cook and Reverend John Williams’, in Williams, Glyndwr, ed., Captain Cook: explorations and reassessments (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 201–29, at pp. 205–6Google Scholar.

54 Hayley, William, ed., The life and letters of William Cowper (London, 1835), pp. 224, 231Google Scholar.

55 Sivasundaram, ‘Redeeming memory’, pp. 205–6.

56 Gisborne, Thomas, An enquiry into the duties of men in the higher and middle classes of society in Great Britain (London, 1794), p. 198nGoogle Scholar.

57 Conway, Stephen, The British Isles and the American War of Independence (Oxford, 2000), pp. 239–66Google Scholar.

58 Gibbon, Edward, The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire (6 vols., 2nd edn, London, 1781), iii, pp. 632–3Google Scholar.

59 Fordyce, James, Addresses to young men (2 vols., London, 1777), ii, pp. 224, 230Google Scholar; Milner, Joseph, Gibbon's account of Christianity considered (York, 1781), p. 261Google Scholar.

60 Doddridge, Philip, Some remarkable passages (2nd edn, London, 1748), pp. 107–11Google Scholar.

61 Ibid., pp. 201–3.

62 Ibid., p. 132.

63 Cited in Snape, Michael, The redcoat and religion (Abingdon, 2005), p. 80Google Scholar.

64 See Rivers, Isabel, ‘Philip Doddridge's New Testament: The Family Expositor (1739–56)’, in Hamlin, Hannibal and Jones, Norman, eds., The King James Bible after 400 years (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 124–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 See, for instance, Ramsay, James, Sea sermons, or a series of discourses for the use of the Royal Navy (London, 1781)Google Scholar; Malham, John, Sixteen sermons on the most interesting subjects to seamen (London, 1792)Google Scholar; Clarke, James Stanier, Naval sermons preached on board his majesty's ship the Impetueux (London, 1798)Google Scholar; Burder, George, Sea sermons (London, 1822)Google Scholar.

66 The Christian officer's panoply (London, 1789) was by the same anonymous author, Andrew Burn.

67 Gisborne, Enquiry, pp. 79–80, 84.

68 Ibid., pp. 200–1.

69 Ibid., pp. 194n., 202n.

70 Blake, Evangelicals, pp. 114–24.

71 P. Campbell to Gambier, 15 July 1794, Georgiana, Chatterton, Lady, ed., Memorials, personal and historical of Admiral Lord Gambier (2 vols., London, 1861), i, pp. 248–9Google Scholar.

72 Rodger, N. A. M., The command of the ocean: a naval history of Britain, 1649–1815 (London, 2004), p. 549Google Scholar; Chatterton, ed., Gambier, ii, pp. 92–4. Wilberforce, Life, iii, p. 344; Spencer Perceval to Wilberforce, 26 Aug. 1807, Duke University, Wilberforce papers, box 2, folder 2; Christian Observer (1807), p. 757.

73 More to Gambier, 14 Nov. 1807; Porteus to Gambier, 3 Dec. 1807, Chatterton, ed., Gambier, ii, p. 88.

74 See Blake, Evangelicals, pp. 190–6.

75 Gurney, W. B., Minutes of a court martial holden on board His Majesty's ship Gladiator (Portsmouth, 1809)Google Scholar; Chatterton, ed., Gambier, ii, pp. 328–9.

76 [Marks], Nautical essays, pp. 160–1.

77 Sir William Hotham, cited in A. B. Sainsbury, ‘Saumarez, James, first Baron de Saumarez (1757–1836)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography.

78 He should, of course, have said St Paul's. Raikes, Henry, Memoirs of the life and services of Vice-Admiral Sir Jahleel Brenton (London, 1846), p. 401Google Scholar.

79 Ibid., pp. 411, 423.

80 Sidney, Edwin, The life of the Rev. Rowland Hill (London, 1834), p. 111Google Scholar.

81 Byrn, John D., Crime and punishment in the Royal Navy: discipline on the Leeward Islands station, 1784–1812 (Aldershot, 1989)Google Scholar; Rodger, Command, pp. 492–4.

82 Blake, Evangelicals, pp. 35–68, 153–73.

83 Follett, Richard R., Evangelicalism, penal theory and the politics of criminal law reform in England, 1808–30 (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 67–89Google Scholar.

84 Tosh, John, A man's place: masculinity and the middle-class home in Victorian England (New Haven, CT, 1999), p. 4Google Scholar.

85 Cavell, Janice, Tracing the connected narrative: Arctic exploration in British print culture, 1818–1860 (Toronto, 2008), pp. 101–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 Rodger, N. A. M., ‘Honour and duty at sea, 1660–1815’, Historical Research, 75 (2002), pp. 425–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 Wilberforce, William, A practical view (4th edn, London, 1797), pp. 219–20Google Scholar.

88 Hamilton, C. I., ‘Naval hagiography and the Victorian hero’, Historical Journal, 23 (1980), pp. 381–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Snape, Redcoat, pp. 67–89; Blake, Evangelicals, pp. 82–4; Tennant, Holiness, p. 140.

90 Christian Observer (1805), pp. 726–7; The first Bible Society (London, 1874).

91 An account of the Naval and Military Bible Society (NMBS) (London, 1804), p. 4.

92 Led by the lawyer William Cardale (1777–1826), the bankers Ambrose Martin (c. 1744–1826) and W. H. Hoare (1776–1819), and three Eclectic clergymen, Josiah Pratt (1768–1844), William Goode (1762–1816), and Basil Woodd (1760–1831).

93 Report of the Proceedings of the NMBS (1806), pp. 13–14.

94 NMBS reports (1806–15), passim.

95 Account of the NMBS, p. 6.

96 NMBS report (1815), pp. 18–19.

97 Christian Observer (1810), p. 186.

98 Wolfe, R. B., English prisoners in France (London, 1830), p. 89Google Scholar.

99 E.g. Reports of the British and Foreign Bible Society…volume the first, for the years 1805, to 1810, inclusive (London, 1810), p. 139.

100 Christian Observer (1813), p. 60.

101 Ibid. (1815), p. 123.

102 Brown, Ford K., Fathers of the Victorians (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 351–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ross, John, Memoirs and correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez (2 vols., London, 1838)Google Scholar, ii, pp. 298–9.

103 Notwithstanding the Mary Anne Clarke affair, the duke of York appears to have been retained as a philanthropic patron.

104 ‘Court martial of Admiral Harvey, 22 May 1809’, The National Archives, ADM 1/5396.

105 Christian Observer (1812), p. 539.

106 Canton, W., The history of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) (5 vols., London, 1904–10), i, pp. 50–1Google Scholar.

107 Innes, Joanna, ‘State, church and voluntarism in European welfare, 1690–1850’, in idem and Cunningham, Hugh, eds., Charity, philanthropy, and reform from the 1690s to 1850 (Basingstoke, 1998), pp. 15–65Google Scholar.

108 Allen, John, ed., Memoirs of the life of the late Major-General Andrew Burn (2 vols., London, 1815)Google Scholar, i, ‘list of subscribers’.

109 Pedersen, Susan, ‘Hannah More meets Simple Simon: tracts, chapbooks and popular culture in late eighteenth-century England’, Journal of British Studies, 25 (1986), pp. 84–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

110 Marks, Richard, The seaman's friend (London, 1850), pp. 50, 83Google Scholar.

111 Ibid., pp. 85–116.

112 [Marks], Nautical essays, passim.

113 Kverndal, Roald, Seamen's missions: their origins and early growth (Pasadena, CA, 1986)Google Scholar.

114 Henry Thornton to John Bowdler, 16 Feb. 1812, Cambridge, University Library, Thornton MSS, ‘Family letterbook and recollections’, Add. 7674/1/N, fos. 238–9.

115 Canton, BFBS, i, p. 1.

116 Christian Observer (1816), p. 729.

117 Ibid. (1811), pp. 824–5.

118 See, for example, Chalmers, Thomas, Thoughts on universal peace (Glasgow, 1816)Google Scholar.

119 Semmel, Napoleon, pp. 83–100.

120 Naval Chronicle (1813), p. 476.

121 Samson, Jane, Imperial benevolence (Honolulu, HI, 1998)Google Scholar; Blake, Richard, Religion in the British Navy, 1815–1879: piety and professionalism (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 173–272Google Scholar.

122 Severn, Derek, ‘The bombardment of Algiers, 1816’, History Today, 28 (1978), pp. 31–9Google Scholar; Bartlett, C. J., Great Britain and sea power, 1815–1853 (Oxford, 1963), pp. 61–5Google Scholar.

123 Christian Observer (1816), pp. 616–18; Times, 16 Sept. 1816, p. 3.

124 Oldfield, J. R., ‘Chords of freedom’: commemoration, ritual and British transatlantic slavery (Manchester, 2007), pp. 8–32Google Scholar; Huzzey, Richard, Freedom burning: anti-slavery and empire in Victorian Britain (Ithaca, NY, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

125 Brenton, L. C. L., ed., Memoir of Vice Admiral Sir Jahleel Brenton (new edn, London, 1855), p. lviiGoogle Scholar.

126 Ibid., p. ccxxiv.

127 Church Missionary Society annual report (1811), pp. 187–9.

128 The British Review and London Critical Journal (1824), p. 24; Cavell, Connected narrative, p. 114.

129 Gurney, J. H., God's heroes and the world's heroes (London, 1855), p. 328Google Scholar.

130 For an important summary of that distinction, see Hilton, Boyd, The age of atonement: the influence of evangelicalism on social and economic thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 7–35Google Scholar.

131 Marshman, J. C., Memoirs of Major-General Sir Henry Havelock (London, 1860), p. 42Google Scholar; Aylen, W. H., The soldier and the saint; or two heroes in one (London, 1858), p. 10Google Scholar.

132 Huxley, Leonard, ed., Scott's last voyage (2 vols., London, 1914), i, pp. 605–7Google Scholar.

133 Roberts, English morals, pp. 17–48; Brown, Moral capital, pp. 333–89.