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Early Whig Ideology, Ancient Constitutionalism, and the Reverend Samuel Johnson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Melinda Zook
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Extract

In 1833, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, “I do not know where I could put my hand upon a book containing so much sense with sound constitutional doctrine as this thin folio of Johnson's works.” The “Johnson” to whom Coleridge referred was not the celebrated Doctor Samuel Johnson of the eighteenth century but instead the late seventeenth-century Whig clergyman, the Reverend Samuel Johnson. Reverend Johnson's single volume of complete works impressed Coleridge; he scribbled laudatory remarks throughout the margins of a 1710 edition. Coleridge admired the directness of Johnson's style and his persuasive method of argumentation. Johnson would have appreciated Coleridge's comments. They reflected the way he himself understood his work—as sound constitutional doctrine, plainly put.

Yet for all its clarity and consistency, Johnson's political thinking was not always appreciated by England's political elite of the 1680s and 1690s. The implications of Johnson's political ideas—much like those of his contemporary John Locke—were understood as far too revolutionary and destabilizing. However, Johnson's fiery prose and sardonic wit often proved useful to the political opposition: from the Whig exclusionists of the early 1680s, to the supporters of William and Mary in 1688/89, to the radical Whigs and country Tories of the 1690s and early eighteenth century.

Johnson's career as a Whig propagandist spanned 1679 to 1700. Among his contemporaries, he was undoubtedly most renowned for his strident anti-Catholicism and for the brutal punishments that he endured for his radical politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , April 1993 , pp. 139 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1993

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References

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5 I am currently engaged in a study of these propagandists and other Whig ideologues of the late Stuart era, examining their lives, ideas, and interconnections.

6 For information on Johnson's life, see “Some Memorials,” which is prefixed to a complete collection of Johnson's political and religious writings, The Works of the Reverend Mr. Samuel Johnson (1710) (hereafter cited as Works; all of Johnson's tracts mentioned in this article are from his Works); the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB); Greaves, Richard and Zaller, Robert, eds., Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the Seventeenth Century, 3 vols. (London, 1982)Google Scholar (hereafter cited as BDBR); Knight, Samuel, The Life of Dr. John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's (1724), pp. 411–12Google Scholar. The only modern scholar to deal with Johnson at any length is Mark Goldie, “The Roots of True Whiggism.” (When no place of publication is given, London is to be understood.)

7 Ferguson's Whig principles were most fully articulated in his A Brief Justification of the Prince of Orange's Descent into England and of the Kingdom's late Recourse to Arms (1689). For information on his long and colorful career, see Ferguson's, James biography, Robert Ferguson, the Plotter (Edinburgh, 1887)Google Scholar; for his association with Shaftesbury, see Haley, K. H. D., The First Earl of Shaftesbury (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar. Some of Ferguson's political ideas are addressed in Ashcraft, Richard, Revolutionary Politics and Locke's Two Treatises of Government (Princeton, N.J., 1986)Google Scholar, passim. While there is no evidence that Locke and Johnson met, it is highly probable. Locke purchased most of Johnson's political pamphlets published in the early 1690s. and a collection of Johnson's tracts written during his imprisonment under James II. See Harrison, John and Laslett, Peter, eds., The Library of John Locke (Oxford, 1971), p. 162Google Scholar.

8 On Russell's network of friends and supporters, see Schwoerer, Lois G., “William Lord Russell: The Making of a Martyr, 1683–1983,” Journal of British Studies 24 (1985): 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hampden and Johnson spent two years in prison together, and Hampden deeply admired Johnson and espoused similar political views. Speke and Johnson also spent time in prison together; on Speke, see the DNB and the BDBR. Thomas Hunt and Sir William Jones contributed advice to Johnson's first tract, Julian the Apostate (1682). See Calendar of State Papers, Domestic (CSPD), July 1 to September 1, 1683, p. 432Google Scholar. A reference by Johnson to Petyt in his 1692 An Argument Proving that the Abrogation of King James … was according to English Constitution suggests Johnson had personal knowledge of Petyt.

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12 Jovian, p. 202.

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14 The struggle between Burnet, Tillotson, and Johnson is recounted in Birch, Thomas, The Life of Doctor John Tillotson (1752), p. 115Google Scholar; The Speech of the Late Lord Russel, to the Sherriffs: Together with the Paper deliver'd by him to them, at the Place of Execution, on July 21, 1683 (1683); Dover, George James Welbore Agar-Ellis, first baron, ed., The Ellis Correspondence: Letters Written during the Years 1686, 1687, 1688, and Addressed to John Ellis, esq. Secretary to the Commissions of His Majesty's revenue in Ireland, 2 vols. (1831), 1:190–91Google Scholar.

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23 The Autobiography of Sir John Bramslon, K.B., (London, 1845). p. 249Google Scholar. Johnson's defense of himself and his tract were copied down by Roger Morrice, who collected every tidbit of news concerning Johnson's trial, punishments, and recovery (Morrice, Roger, “The Ent'ring Book, Being an Historical Register of Occurrences from April, Anno, 1677 to April 1691.” 4 vols., 2:31–33Google Scholar. Dr. Williams's Library). I have used a photocopy from the library of the late Douglas R. Lacey, now in the possession of Lois G. Schwoerer.

24 Commons Journals, 10:193–94Google Scholar; “Some Memorials,” p. xii; J. Wickham Legg described the irregularities at Johnson's degradation that later made it easier to reverse the sentence; see his “The Degradation in 1686 of the Rev. Samuel Johnson,” English Historical Journal 113 (1914): 723–42Google Scholar.

25 “Some Memorials,” p. xii; Macaulay, Thomas Babington, History of England from the Accession of James II, ed. Firth, C. H., 6 vols. (London, 1913–1915), 2:761Google Scholar.

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27 Goldie, Mark, “The Revolution of 1689 and the Structure of Political Argument,” Bulletin of Research in the Humanities 83 (1980): 501Google Scholar.

28 Macaulay, 2:761; Morrice reported that Johnson told the crowd that he heard a voice in his ear and cried “He endured the cross and despised the shame!” (“Ent'ring Book,” 2:33).

29 British Library, Sloane MS 1731a, no. 107, political poems.

30 Dr. Sherwood's Two Kings of Brainford … in a Congratulatory Letter to Mr. Johnson (1691), p. 4Google Scholar. Goldie attributed this tract to Atwood, William (“True Whiggism,” p. 228)Google Scholar.

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35 L'Estrange, Roger, in the Observator (September 15 and 17, 1684)Google Scholar; Also see L'Estrange, Roger, Heraclitus Ridens: Or, a Discourse Between Jest And Earnest, 2 vols. (1713) 2:212–16Google Scholar.

36 Dryden, John, The Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel (1682)Google Scholar, lines 368–69.

37 The Canonical-Statesman's Grand Argument Discuss'd (1694), pp. 3 and 7Google Scholar.

38 Ibid, p. 3. This satire is particularly concerned with Johnson's most infamous tract, discussed later, An Argument Proving.

39 During the debates in the House of Commons in June 1689, concerning the sentences of Titus Oates and Johnson, Sir Robert Howard called Johnson “one of the greatest persons of the nation.” Grey, Anchitell, Debates in the House of Commons, 1667–94, 9:289Google Scholar; also see the Commons Journals, 10:193–94Google Scholar. The example of the cruel treatment of Johnson and Titus Oates was instrumental in the formulation of Article 10 (“no cruel and unusual punishment”) of the Bill of Rights. See Schwoerer, Lois G., Declaration of Rights, 1689 (Baltimore, 1981), p. 273Google Scholar.

40 Ferguson hoped for a bishopric; he was converted to Jacobitism by 1690. Goldie, , “The Revolution of 1689” (n. 27 above), p. 507Google Scholar. Speke received £500 from William but thought he deserved much more. He portrayed himself as a principal architect of the Revolution in his Some Memoirs of the Late Revolution (Dublin, 1709)Google Scholar and The Secret History of the Happy Revolution in 1688 (n. 19 above).

41 Both Tillotson and the earl of Sunderland reported that William III was “well inclined” toward Johnson; see The Letters of Lady Rachel Russell (1854), p. 146Google Scholar, and the HMC, Downshire Ms. 1, pt. 1:528Google Scholar. Tillotson wrote to Lady Russell (September 24, 1689) that “a good bishopric in Ireland” might silence Johnson, (Letters, p. 153)Google Scholar.

42 Luttrell, Narcissus, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1857), 3:559Google Scholar. In 1697, Johnson's son was given “a king's waiters place at the custome house” (Luttrell, 4:296).

43 HMC, Downshire Ms, 1, pt. 1:519Google Scholar.

44 In November 1692, five men entered Johnson's home and cruelly beat him “for the book he wrote.” See A True and Faithful Relation of the Horrid and Barbarous Attempt to Assassinate the Reverend Mr. Samuel Johnson (1692); “Some Memorials,” p. xvii; The Ellis Correspondence (n. 14 above), 1:190Google Scholar; Luttrell, 2:627.

45 Johnson, Samuel, An Essay Concerning Parliaments at a Certainty (1693)Google Scholar, and Notes upon the Phoenix Edition of the Pastoral Letter (1694).

46 Johnson, Samuel, A Confutation of a Late Pamphlet intitled A Letter Ballancing the Necessity of keeping a Land Force in time of Peace … (1698)Google Scholar, and The Second Part on the Confutation of the Ballancing Letter, being An Occasional Discourse in Vindication of Magna Carta (1700).

47 An Essay Concerning Parliaments, p. 293.

48 Johnson was also against the naturalization of the French Protestant refugees. He believed that foreigners would not understand or appreciate “the birthright of England and the inheritance of Magna Carta” (A Confutation, pp. 335–38).

49 Wood (n. 11 above), 3:19.

50 The Judgement and Decree of the University of Oxford, puss'd in their Convocation, July 21, 1683 against certain Pernicious Books and Damnable Doctrines … The other tract was Hunt, Thomas, Mr Hunt's Postscript for rectifying some mistakes in some of the inferior clergy (1682)Google Scholar. Thomas Hunt's Postscript first suggested the parallel between popery and paganism elaborated by Johnson in Julian the Apostate. Hunt, who advised Johnson and “perused” Julian the Apostate in manuscript, probably had a great deal of influence on Johnson's early polemical career. Royalists certainly thought so; John Northleigh referred to Johnson as Hunt's “managed mongrel.” See his Remarks upon the Most Eminent of Our Late Antimonarchical Authors (n. 11 above); Hickes learned that Hunt had perused Julian the Apostate (Jovain [n. 10 above], p. 2).

51 Julian's Arts, p. 53.

52 J. P. Kenyon believes Filmer was “the most influential thinker of the age” (Revolution Principles [n. 4 above], p. 63). Schochet, Gordon states, “The Filmerian position very nearly became the official state ideology” (Patriarchalism and Political Thought [Oxford, 1975], p. 193)Google Scholar. James Daly challenged orthodox views on Filmer in his interesting, but problematic, study, Sir Robert Filmer and English Political Thought (Toronto, 1979)Google Scholar.

53 Hunt, Thomas, Great and Weighty Considerations Relating to the Duke of York or the Successor to the Crown (1680)Google Scholar and, Mr. Hunt's Postscript (1682); Robert Ferguson, A Brief Justification (n. 7 above): Tyrrell, James, Bibliotheca Politico (1694)Google Scholar.

54 See Ashcraft (n. 7 above), chap. 5, “The Formation of Whig Ideology.”

55 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge, 1960)Google Scholar.

56 Höpfl, Harro and Thompson, Martyn, “The History of Contract as a Motif in Political Thought,” American Historical Journal 84 (1979): 941Google Scholar.

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58 Johnson, Samuel, The Four Chapters (1688), p. 153Google Scholar, and Remarks on Dr. Sherlock's Book (1689), p. 244Google Scholar.

59 Julian the Apostate, p. 16; Remarks, p. 241. Johnson wrote in An Argument Proving that so much did Charles I insist “that he was accountable only to God, where-upon … they [Parliament] sent him to God to give an Account” (p. 263).

60 The Four Chapters, p. 152; Remarks, p. 241.

61 The Four Chapters, p. 152.

62 Julian the Apostate, p. 83. The only example Johnson gave of a case where God spoke “clearly and distinctly” is when Abraham was told to sacrifice his son, Isaac, (An Argument Proving, p. 263)Google Scholar.

63 Johnson, Samuel, A Sermon Preach'd Before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen at Guildhall-Chappel on Palm-Sunday, 1679, pp. 124–25Google Scholar.

64 In The Way to Peace amongst all Protestants (1688), Johnson asked Protestants to look past the trivial differences that set them apart: “The Agreement there is amongst Protestants in the main matters of Religion, should drown and extinguish all lesser Differences” (p. 205).

65 An Argument Proving, p. 272.

66 Greenberg (n. 3 above), p. 612.

67 An Argument Proving, p. 271.

68 The Second Part, pp. 340–41. While Johnson asserted that William I was no conqueror, he did not enter the debate over the Norman Conquest and feudal law. He may have simply anticipated a sympathetic audience. Clearly, the historical controversy was far from mute. James Tyrrell went to great lengths to refute the Conquest in the Tenth Dialogue of his Bibliotheca Politica (1694). On Tyrrell's version of medieval English history, see Earl, W. E., “Procrustean Feudalism: An Interpretation in English Historical Narrative,” Historical Journal 19 (1976): 33–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Johnson, Samuel, Phoenix Edition, p. 321Google Scholar.

70 Remarks, pp. 238–39.

71 Tyrrell, James, A Brief Enquiry into the Ancient Constitution and Government of England (1695), p. 24Google Scholar.

72 Remarks, p. 239.

73 A Confutation, p. 372

74 Ibid., p. 337; Remarks, p. 237; Phoenix Edition, p. 297.

75 Johnson, Samuel, Reflections on the History of Passive Obedience (1689), p. 257Google Scholar.

76 A Confutation, p. 325.

77 An Argument Proving, p. 262.

78 Ibid., pp. 271 and 262.

79 Ibid., pp. 267, 264, and 270. On the debate over the right of conquest, see Thompson, M. P., “The Idea of Conquest in Controversies over the 1688 Revolution.” Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (1977): 33–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 Burnet, Bishop, A Pastoral Letter writ by the Right Rev. Father in God, Gilbert, Lord Bishop of Sarum (1689)Google Scholar.

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82 An Argument Proving, pp. 270 and 264; Phoenix Edition, p. 301.

83 Julian the Apostate, p. 30; Reflections, p. 257; Remarks, p. 239; Julian's Arts, p. 108.

84 The Four Chapters, p. 156; Julian the Apostate, p. 31.

85 The Four Chapters, p. 153; Julian's Arts, p. 94.

86 Phoenix Edition, p. 309; Julian the Apostate, p. 30.

87 Julian's Arts, p. 96.

88 The Four Chapters, p. 153; A Confutation, p. 325.

89 An Argument Proving, p. 264; Phoenix Edition, p. 301; Remarks, p. 244.

90 Johnson, following the Mirror of Justices, believed that the first annual parliaments met in King Alfred's time. See An Essay Concerning Parliaments, p. 282.

91 “It was a slight of hand, to give a new turn to the People's delivering themselves, and call it King James's own Desertation” (An Argument Proving, p. 260).

92 Hopkins, William, Animadversions of Mr. Johnson's Answer to Jovian (1691), p. 1Google Scholar; CSPD, 1700–1701, app., pp. 565–66.

93 A Confutation, p. 376.

94 Pocock, J. G. A., “The Myth of John Locke and the Obsession with Liberalism,” in John Locke: Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar (William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles, Calif., 1980), pp. 3–5Google Scholar. See Ashcraft's, Richard contrary opinion in the same volume, “The Two Treatises and the Exclusion Crisis,” pp. 27–114Google Scholar. Mark Goldie noted that five pamphlets other than the Two Treatises “articulated a natural law theory of resistance” during the allegiance controversy of 1689. Of those five, Political Aphorisms (1690) plagiarized large sections of the Two Treatises. See his “The Revolution of 1689” (n. 27 above), p. 489.

95 Both Pocock and Greenberg have warned against this case of mistaken analogy. See Pocock, , The Ancient Constitution (n. 2 above), pp. 357–58Google Scholar; and Greenberg (n. 3 above), pp. 612–13.

96 Resnick, David, “Locke and the Rejection of the Ancient Constitution,” Political Theory 12 (1984): 97–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quote on 100.

97 Thompson, Martyn, “The Reception of Locke's Two Treatises of Government, 1690–1705,” Political Studies 24 (1976): 184–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Swift, Jonathan, A Preface to the Bishop of Sarum's Introduction to the Third Volume of the History of the Reformation of the Church of England (London, 1713), p. 15Google Scholar.

99 Steele, Richard, The Englishman, no. 27, October 10, 1715Google Scholar.

100 See Blanchard, Rae, ed., The Englishman: A Political Journal by Richard Steele (Oxford, 1955), p. 468Google Scholar.

101 Defoe wrote contemptuously of the “old abdicated doctrine” (quoted in Kenyon [n. 4 above], p. 115). He popularized Lockian political ideas in both prose and verse. Bishop Benjamin Hoadly powerfully defended contractarian theory in his The Original and Institution of Civil Government Discussed (1709). The deist John Toland wrote strident antimonarchical, proresistance tracts. John Trenchard wrote several anti-standing-army tracts and the Whigite Cato's Letters. John Tutchin, Whig journalist, poet, and pamphleteer could also be added to this list, although he died in 1707. He began the Whig periodical the Observator in 1702, which lasted until 1712.

102 The list of subscribers is found on pp. xxv–xxviii of Works. Of the fourteen peers, only Lord Raby (created earl of Strafford in 1711) was a Tory with perhaps even Jacobite sympathies, although he had served in various positions under William III. The earls of Shaftesbury and Stamford were removed from their positions by Anne. The duke of Roxburghe and the earl of Haddington both fought in the Fifteen (the Jacobite rising in Scotland, 1715–16). The 1713 edition of Johnson's complete works contains an additional 109 subscribers.

103 For information on the Cavendish and Russell families and their interconnections, see Schwoerer, Lady Rachel Russell (n. 32 above), passim.

104 Bradbury was a man of colorful character and controversial behavior. He wrote various political tracts, including The Lawfulness of Resisting Tyrunnts (1714). and his sermons were often violently critical of kingship. On hearing the news of Queen Anne's death, he supposedly preached on 2 Kings 9:34: “Go, see now this cursed woman and bury her, for she is a King's daughter” (DNB).

105 Richard Blackmore also wrote volumes of epic poetry and a history of the assassination attempts on the life of William III (DNB). William Benson was famous for his polemic against divine right kingship, A Letter to Sir Jacob Bankes (1711) (DNB).

106 For the connections between Collins, Churchill, Shute, and Locke, see the eighth volume of De Beer, E. S., ed., The Correspondence of John Locke (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar.

107 Lee, Francis, The Life of John Kettlewell (1718), p. 331Google Scholar. Kettlewell was the dowager-countess of Bedford's chaplain; she was the mother of Lord William Russell, and hence Kettlewell was probably well acquainted with Johnson, which explains the favorable portrait of him by his biographer, Francis Lee. See Carter, T. T., The Life and Times of John Kettlewell (1895), pp. 21–23Google Scholar.

108 Coleridge, marginalia in Johnson's 1710 Works in the British Library, p. 305 (emphasis his).