¹ Observator in Dialogue (London), 26 April 1681.

² Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 20 February 1826.

³ Cockayne, Emily, Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600–1770 (London, 2007)Google Scholar; Garrioch, David, “Sounds of the City: The Soundscape of Early Modern European Towns,” Urban History 30, no. 1 (May 2003): 5–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a more nuanced approach, see Smith, Bruce R., The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor (Chicago, 1999)Google Scholar.

⁴ Nicholas Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain (Oxford, 1998), 28, 37, 52, 132, 137; Paul Kleber Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788 (Cambridge, 1993), 35, 166, 169, 170, 173, 183, 212; John Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England, 1700–1832 (London, 2014), 129, 290; Robert Shoemaker, The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth–Century England (London, 2004), 115.

⁵ David Cressy, “The Protestant Calendar and the Vocabulary of Celebration in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 29, no. 1 (January 1990): 31–52; Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England, The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1994).

⁶ Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (London, 1992), 371.

⁷ Nicole Eustace, Passion is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 2009); Sarah Knott, Sensibility and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 2009).

⁸ This typology of emotional practices – mobilizing, communicating, and regulating – is drawn from Monique Scheer, “Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and Is That What Makes Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuan Approach to Understanding Emotion,” History and Theory 51, no. 2 (2012): 193–220.

⁹ Joanna Innes and Michael J. Braddick, introduction to Suffering and Happiness in England, 1550–1850: Narratives and Representations. A Collection to Honour Paul Slack, ed. Michael J. Braddick and Joanna Innes (Oxford, 2017), 1–20, at 8.

¹⁰ The most interesting and relevant recent work includes Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford, 2006) 48–62; John Barrell, “Coffee-House Politicians,” Journal of British Studies 43, no. 2 (2004): 206–32; Katrina Navickas, Protest and the Politics of Space and Place, 1789–1848 (Manchester, 2017), 7–8.

¹¹ Kate Lacey, Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age (Cambridge, 2013), 7.

¹² David Garrioch, “Sounds,” 24–25; for a similar shift in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Alain Corbin, Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside (New York, 1998).

¹³ Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham, 2003), 15–16.

¹⁴ Constance Classen, Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Sense in History and across Cultures (London, 1993), 1–3; David Howes, Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory (Ann Arbor, 2003), 15; Alain Corbin, Time, Desire, and Horror: Towards a History of the Senses (London, 1995), 182, 184, 191.

¹⁵ Adam Fox, Oral and Literature Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000); Paula McDowell, The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago, 2017).

¹⁶ Bob Harris and Christopher Whatley, “‘To Solemnize His Majesty's Birthday’: New Perspectives on Loyalism in George II's Britain,” History 83, no. 271 (1998): 397–419.

¹⁷ Nicholas Rogers, Whigs and Cities: Popular Politics in the Age of Walpole and Pitt (Oxford, 1989), 353.

¹⁸ Carolyn Birdsall, Nazi Soundscapes: Sound, Technology and Urban Space in Germany, 1933–1945 (Amsterdam, 2012), 34.

¹⁹ John C. Eisel and Cyril A. Wratten, Change Ringing: The History of an English Art, vol. 2, The Eighteenth Century: An Overview (Morpeth, 1992), 38–39.

²⁰ Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, 2006), 2.

²¹ For some lists of dates, see Cressy, “The Protestant Calendar,” 51–52.

²² Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England, 229, 260.

²³ Hutton, 259.

²⁴ Sally Holloway and Lucy Worsley, “‘Every Body Took Notice of the Scene of the Drawing Room’: Performing Emotions at the Early Georgian Court, 1714–60,” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 40, no. 3 (2017): 443–64, at 443–52.

²⁵ Joanna Innes, “Happiness Contested: Happiness and Politics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” in Braddick and Innes, Suffering and Happiness in England, 87–110, at 102; Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A History (New York, 2006), 312–62.

²⁶ Keith Thomas, The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2009), 139; Sara Lloyd, “‘The Wretch of To-day, May Be Happy To-morrow’: Poverty and Happiness in England c.1700–1840,” in Braddick and Innes, Suffering and Happiness in England, 190–207, at 194.

²⁷ Samuel Johnson, s.v. “happiness,” “joy,” A dictionary of the English language, vol. 1 (London, 1755), 1009, 1182; Adam Potkay, The Story of Joy: From the Bible to Late Romanticism (Cambridge, 2007), 22.

²⁸ Francis Hutcheson, An essay on the nature and conduct of the passions and affections […] (Glasgow, 1769), 50.

²⁹ The history of Will Ramble, a libertine […], vol. 1 (London, 1755), 55; Jonas Hanway, Virtue in humble life […], vol. 2 (London, 1774), 670; Isaac Watts, The Doctrine of the Passions Explain'd and Improv'd […] (London, 1737), 88; William Wood, Sermons on social life (London, 1775), 107.

³⁰ William Cowper, Poems, vol. 2 (London, 1786), 106; Edward Young, The complaint: or, night-thoughts on life, death, and immortality […] (London, 1802), 183.

³¹ On the Restoration, see Anthony Walker, God save the King: or Pious and loyal joy […] (London, 1660); Richard Baxter, Right rejoycing: or The nature and order of rational and warrantable joy […] (London, 1660); for the 1680s, see Paul Slack, “The Politics of Consumption and England's Happiness in the Later Seventeenth Century,” English Historical Review 122, no. 497 (2007): 609–31, at 623.

³² A journal of first thoughts, observations, characters, and anecdotes, which occured in a journey from London to Scarborough in MDCCLXXIX (London, 1781), 58–59; Charles Churchill, An epistle to William Hogarth (London, 1763), 26.

³³ Miss Stockdale, The effusions of the heart: Poems (London, 1798), 60; The Christian's magazine, or A treasury of divine knowledge 1, no. 1 (1767): 285–86; Colley Ciber, The careless husband (Dublin, [1704], 1793), 109.

³⁴ Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London, 2000), 43.

³⁵ Alfred Gatty, The Bell: Its Origin, History, and Uses (Sheffield, 1848), 86–87.

³⁶ Jan Plamper, “The History of Emotions: An Interview with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns,” History and Theory 49, no. 2 (2010): 237–65, at 243; Rob Boddice, The History of Emotions (Manchester, 2018), 68–69; William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge, 2001), 331.

³⁷ Inscription, first bell, St. Peter and St. Paul's, Alfred Cocks, The Church Bells of Buckinghamshire (London, 1897), 99.

³⁸ Inscription, second bell, St. Mary, Luton; see T. North, Church Bells of Bedfordshire (London, 1883), 169.

³⁹ Inscription, fifth bell, St. Margaret's, Lynn; see John L'Estrange, The Church Bells of Norfolk […] (Norwich, 1874), 158.

⁴⁰ John Bunyan, A book for boys and girls; or, Country rhymes for children (London, 1686), 36.

⁴¹ English Currant (London), 14–19 December 1688; St. James's Evening Post, 19–22 November 1715; Reads Weekly Journal (London), 27 October 1733; General Evening Post (London), 5–8 February 1780.

⁴² Royal Cornwall Gazette, Falmouth Packet & Plymouth Journal, 18 November 1820.

⁴³ For these anxieties, see Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 2004), 265–6; for their political implications, see Amelia Faye Rauser, Caricature Unmasked: Irony, Authenticity, and Individualism in Eighteenth-Century English Prints (Newark, 2008), 87; Marilyn Morris, Sex, Money and Personal Character in Eighteenth-Century British Politics (London, 2015), 8–9, 65.

⁴⁴ Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer (London), 13 August 1720 (emphasis mine).

⁴⁵ Similar phrases occur in Post Boy (London), 29 May–2 June 1697; Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, Saturday, 5 November 5, 1720; E. Johnson's British Gazette and Sunday Monitor (London), 31 May 1795; Derby Mercury, 27 April 1825.

⁴⁶ Leeds Mercury, 7 January 1815 (emphasis mine).

⁴⁷ Norfolk Chronicle, 24 December 1774.

⁴⁸ John O'Keefe, The World in a Village: A Comedy in Five Acts […] (Dublin, 1794), 71; Edward Holland, A poetical miscellany (Cork, 1794), 72. Descriptions of joy as “resounding” occur most prominently in hymns and poems from the 1740s onward, influenced by the description of autumn's “Joy resounding Fields” in James Thomson, The Seasons (London, 1746), 152.

⁴⁹ A less free-flowing understanding than that offered by other authors, who have failed to think through the metaphor of contagion and its wider place in eighteenth-century culture; for example Adela Pinch, Strange Fits of Passion: Epistemologies of Emotion, Hume to Austen (Stanford, 1996), 3, 7.

⁵⁰ “On the Social Duties of Man,” Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure [London], nos. 14–15 (1754), 266.

⁵¹ William Henry Pinnock, The Laws and Usages of the Church and Clergy (Cambridge, 1855), 496–97.

⁵² Berrow's Worcester Journal, 1 February 1761; Owen's Weekly Chronicle and Westminster Journal, 23–30 June 1770; Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (London), 24 May 1780; Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 9 September 1805.

⁵³ C. M., Campanalogia Improved; or, The art of ringing made easy […] (London, 1733), 201–2.

⁵⁴ Amy B. Oberlin, “‘Share with Me in My Grief and Affliction’: Royal Sorrow and Public Mourning in Early Eighteenth-Century England,” Parergon 31, no. 2 (2014): 99–120; Julie Ellison, Cato's Tears and the Making of Anglo-American Emotion (London, 1999), 1–17.

⁵⁵ The Norwich Election Budget (Norwich, 1831), 48.

⁵⁶ Gatty, The Bell, 87–88.

⁵⁷ London Chronicle, 4–6 November 1760.

⁵⁸ “Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter Nov 30th, 1759,” in A Series of Letters between Mrs Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot from 1741 to 1770, vol. 2 (London, 1809), 304.

⁵⁹ “Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson June 28, 1815,” The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, vol. 3, The Middle Years. Part 2, 1812–1820, 2nd. ed., Ernest de Selincourt, rev. Mary Moorman and Alan G. Hill (Oxford, 1970), 242.

⁶⁰ On the mathematics of change ringing, see Katherine Hunt, “The Art of Changes: Bell-Ringing, Anagrams, and the Culture of Combination in Seventeenth-Century England,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 48, no. 2 (2018): 387–412.

⁶¹ Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies, 1580–1800: The Origins of an Associational World (Oxford, 2000), 48, 52, 72.

⁶² See Cyril A. Wratten and John C. Eisel, eds., Order and Disorder in the Eighteenth Century: Newspaper Extracts about Church Bells and Bellringing (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2010).

⁶³ See “Marshfield Company of Bell-Ringers, c.1808–1853,” P213/CW/4/1, Gloucestershire Archives; “Ringing Club General Register, Cirencester Ringing Club, c.1794–1850,” P86/1/SP/1/1, Gloucestershire Archives.

⁶⁴ “The Merry Bells of England,” London, 1828, John Johnson Collection, Harding B 16 (148b), Bodleian Library, Oxford.

⁶⁵ William Cobbett, Rural Rides (London, 1830), 201.

⁶⁶ January 1752, trial of William Williams (t17520116-10), Old Bailey Papers Online; December 1762, trial of Joseph Derbin (t17621208-5), Old Bailey Papers Online; November 1808, trial of John Puplett Robert Brown, alias Briggs, (t18081126-5) Old Bailey Papers Online; May 1822, trial of James Butler (t18220522-79), Old Bailey Papers Online. For a sense of the density of bells in London, see Loftis Lawlar, An Alphabetical List of all the Parochial Churches in London and Westminster […] (London, 1722).

⁶⁷ St. James's Evening Post, 3 March 1733; London Packet or New Lloyd's Evening Post, 10–12 September 1800; Liverpool Mercury, 1 December 1820.

⁶⁸ For birthdays, see Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer (London), 2 January 1720; Northampton Mercury, 27 December 1756; Morning Chronicle (London), 26 January 1805. For coming-of-age, see Daily Journal (London), 25 June 1725; London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 14 October 1740; York Herald, and General Advertiser, 3 September 1825. For presence in localities, see Post Boy (London), 25 July 1710–27 July 1710; London Chronicle or Universal Evening Post, 31 December 1760–2 January 1762; Morning Post (London), 5 October 1820.

⁶⁹ London Gazette, 31 May–4 June 1683; London Evening Post, 12–14 September 14, 1765.

⁷⁰ Morning Post and Gazetteer (London), 14 January 1800.

⁷¹ West Briton (Truro), 25 January 1828.

⁷² For some rare examples that mention this, see Weekly Journal, or, British Gazette (London), 15 June 1717; Northampton Mercury, 1 June 1741; Norwich Mercury, 20 August 1794; Morning Post (London), 29 August 1801.

⁷³ Jackson's Oxford Journal, 31 December 1825; for further references, see “Disbursements etc. 1663–1689 and purchases,” PO3, fol. 42, Bedfordshire Archives; Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (London), 30 June 1790.

⁷⁴ Public Advertiser (London), 29 June 1790; St. James's Evening Post, 15 December 1724; T. North, Church Bells of Bedfordshire (1883), 138–39, 166–67.

⁷⁵ B. D., letter to the editor, World (London), 19 June, 1755.

⁷⁶ “Rutland's Bounty: or, Baslow Bells,” 1760, Roxburghe, 3.413, C.20.f.9.413, British Library.

⁷⁷ Respectively represented by Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1989); J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1688–1832: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice during the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, 1985).

⁷⁸ Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer, 22–25 February 1755; London Evening Post, 3 June 1755; London Chronicle, 10–12 July 1760.

⁷⁹ London Chronicle or Universal Evening Post, 31 December 1760; General Evening Post (London), 5–8 February 1780; London Evening Post, 18–21 August 1750.

⁸⁰ Maidstone Journal, 2 January 1827.

⁸¹ Wakefield and Halifax Journal, 13 December 1816; Bury and Norwich Post, 28 June 1826; Bath Chronicle, 31 December 1795; Kentish Gazette, 29 January 1802.

⁸² Northampton Mercury, 17 August 1793.

⁸³ Heather Kerr, David Lemmings, and Robert Phiddian, “Emotional Light on Eighteenth-Century Print Culture,” in Passions, Sympathy and Print Culture: Public Opinion and Emotional Authenticity in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Heather Kerr, David Lemmings, and Robert Phiddian (Basingstoke, 2016), 3–19, at 12.

⁸⁴ Navickas, Protest and the Politics of Space and Place, 1–6; Steve Poole, “‘Till Our Liberties Be Secure’: Popular Sovereignty and Public Space in Bristol, 1780–1850,” Urban History 26, no. 1 (1999): 40–54; Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1982).

⁸⁵ For an earlier rural example of the role of bells in community formation, see Stephen Mileson, “Sound and Landscape,” in The Oxford Handbook of Later Medieval Archaeology in Britain, ed. Christopher M. Gerrard and Alejandra Gutiérrez (Oxford, 2018), 713–27; Victor Morgan, “A Ceremonious Society: An Aspect of Institutional Power in Early Modern Norwich,” in Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society, ed. Anne Goldgar and Robert Frost (Leiden, 2004), 133–63, at 148–51.

⁸⁶ Protestant (Domestick) Intelligence, 25 February 1681; Morning Chronicle (London), 31 March 1825.

⁸⁷ J. Noble and J. Clark, A Sketch of the Boston Election (Boston, 1830), ix, xii, xvi, xvii; Frank O'Gorman, “Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies: The Social Meanings of Elections in England, 1780–1860,” Past and Present, no. 135 (1992): 79–115, at 86, 95; London Evening Post, 24–27 May 1735; Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, 3 April 1780.

⁸⁸ Post Boy (London), 19–22 August 1710; St. James's Chronicle, 7–9 March 1775; Morning Post (London), 17 March 1820.

⁸⁹ Post Boy (London), 6–8 February 1701.

⁹⁰ St. James's Chronicle, 1–3 February 1780; General Evening Post (London), 20–23 September 1735; London Evening Post, 19–22 January 1740; Public Advertiser (London), 10 January 1770.

⁹¹ London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 10 May 1740; Morning Post (London), 13 July 1815; Trewman's Exeter Flying Post or Plymouth and Cornish Advertiser, 13 July 1820.

⁹² Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer (London), 27 August 1720; Daily Journal (London), 7 October 1730; London Chronicle or Universal Evening Post, 31 December 1760; London Chronicle or Universal Evening Post, 27–29 April 1775; Lancaster Gazette and General Advertiser, 1 June 1805.

⁹³ Daily Journal (London), 3 March 1725; London Evening Post, 22–25 November 1735; General Evening Post (London,) 22–24 November 1750; Public Ledger or The Daily Register of Commerce and Intelligence (London), 31 March 1760; General Evening Post (London), 12–15 February 1785; Examiner (London), 5 August 1810.

⁹⁴ Owen's Weekly Chronicle and Westminster Journal, 23–30 June 1770; Lincoln, Rutland, and Stamford Mercury, 10 June 1803; Norfolk Chronicle, 21 August 1813.

⁹⁵ Daily Gazetteer (London), 30 July 1735.

⁹⁶ Morning Chronicle (London), 13 March 1820.

⁹⁷ Gloucester Journal, 9 June 1817.

⁹⁸ Matthew McCormack, “Rethinking ‘Loyalty’ in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 35, no. 3 (2012): 407–21.

⁹⁹ Flying Post or The Post Master (London), 11–14 June 1715; change ringing failed to take hold in Scotland until later in the eighteenth century, partly due to the dimmer view taken of bells by the kirk. Instead the “musick bells” were chimed; General Evening Post (London), 9–12 November 1745.

¹⁰⁰ Inscription, fifth Bell of St. Mary Islington, 1808; see John Nelson, The History, Topography, and Antiquities of the Parish of St Mary Islington (London, 1811), 311.

¹⁰¹ For examples, see William Dodd, An account of the rise, progress, and present state of the Magdalen Charity […] (London, 1763), 99; Benjamin Victor, Original letters, dramatic pieces, and poems, vol. 1 (London, 1776), 53; William Windham, A plan of discipline, composed for the use of the militia of the county of Norfolk (London, 1759), vii; John Wilkes, The life and political writings of John Wilkes (Birmingham, 1769), 339.

¹⁰² This builds on Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh, 2004), 225.

¹⁰³ Emotional communities are therefore about more than the agreed ways of feeling suggested by Rosenwein in Emotional Communities, 25.

¹⁰⁴ Observator (London), 23–26 May 1705, 6–9 June 1705.

¹⁰⁵ London Evening Post, 24–26 April 1770; On the significance of forty-five more generally, see John Brewer, “The Number 45: A Wilkite Political Symbol,” in England's Rise to Greatness, 1660–1763, ed. Stephen B. Baxter (London, 1983), 349–75; for further examples of Wilkesite ringing, see Middlesex Journal or Chronicle of Liberty, 5–8 May 1770; Public Advertiser (London), 2 May 1770; London Evening Post, 26–28 April 1770.

¹⁰⁶ General Evening Post (London), 10–13 February 1770; for similar, see London Evening Post, 20–22 March 1770.

¹⁰⁷ Independent Chronicle (London), 27–30 April 1770; Public Advertiser (London), 2 May 1770; Middlesex Journal or Chronicle of Liberty, 21–24 April 1770; London Evening Post, 21–24 April 1770; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 18 March 1769.

¹⁰⁸ Bury and Norwich Post, 22 November 1820; Liverpool Mercury, 1 December 1820.

¹⁰⁹ York Herald, and General Advertiser, 25 November 1820; Morning Chronicle (London), 11 December 1820.

¹¹⁰ Bristol Mercury, 27 November 1820, 23 December 1820; Examiner (London), 10 December 1820.

¹¹¹ Pinnock, The Laws and Usages, 500–501.

¹¹² John Ambrose Williams, Trial of John Ambrose Williams, for a Libel on the Clergy […] (Durham, 1823), 33.

¹¹³ Williams, Trial of John Ambrose Williams, 40.

¹¹⁴ The notion of popular culture as a resource to be variously appropriated by different groups derives from Roger Chartier, “Culture as Appropriation: Popular Cultural Uses in Early Modern France,” in Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, ed. Steven L. Kaplan (Berlin, 1984), 229–54, at 233.

¹¹⁵ Lacey, Listening, 7.

¹¹⁶ Flying Post or The Post Master (London), 28–31 October 1699.

¹¹⁷ Observator (London), 7–10 February 1705.

¹¹⁸ Observator (London), 23 August 1704.

¹¹⁹ T. B. Howell, Cobbett's Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason […], vol. 17, 1726–1743 (London, 1813), 765–66.

¹²⁰ Thomas Hearne's Diaries, Rawlinson MS 169, 71–77, Bodleian Library; Private Accounts of Thomas Hearne, Rawlinson MS 186a, 10–13, Bodleian Library.

¹²¹ Jonathan Oates, “The Rise and Fall of Jacobitism in Oxford,” Oxoniensia no. 68 (2003): 89–111, at 94, 99.

¹²² Listening was a tactic in the sense described by Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven F. Rendall (London, 1984), 96; this is contrast to the more Durkheimian dominance described by Birdsall, Nazi Soundscapes, 62, 191n100.

¹²³ Post Master (London), 18–21 June 1715; Norwich Gazette or Loyal Packet, 13 July 1717; John Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England 1700–1832 (London, 2014), 27.

¹²⁴ Flying Post or The Post Master (London), 18–21 June 1715, 28–30 June 1715, 2–5 July 1715, 9–12 July 1715, 12–14 July 1715.

¹²⁵ E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act (London, 1975), 165.

¹²⁶ Daily Advertiser (London), 14 June 1745.

¹²⁷ “James Collier to John Collier, 18 June 1745,” SAY/2/5/1/1864/1867, East Sussex Record Office.

¹²⁸ Flying Post or The Post Master (London), 29 September –1 October 1715.

¹²⁹ London Evening Post, 14 August 1755; Middlesex Journal or Chronicle of Liberty, 14–17 April 1770; General Evening Post (London), 21–23 August 1770; York Courant, 21 August 1770.

¹³⁰ “Achievements of Admiral Hawke,” Gentleman's Magazine, no. 30 (1760): 52–53.

¹³¹ Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (London), 15 June 1785, 2 August 1785.

¹³² Whitehall Evening Post, 23–25 June 1785, 5–7 July 17, 9–12 July 1785.

¹³³ General Advertiser (London), 2 July 1785.

¹³⁴ Scots Magazine, no. 25 (1763): 293.

¹³⁵ Jeffereyes Hamett O'Neale, “An exact representation of a certain wise body without a head in the East going to pay a visit to a certain great body in the West,” London, 1763, etching on paper, no. 31512i, Wellcome Library.

¹³⁶ London Chronicle, 12 May 1763.

¹³⁷ Public Advertiser (London), 14 May 1763.

¹³⁸ London Chronicle, 14 May 1763.

¹³⁹ Gazeteer and London Daily Advertiser, 14 May 1763.

¹⁴⁰ General Evening Post (London), 3 November 1770.

¹⁴¹ Berrow's Worcester Journal, 12 May 1763.

¹⁴² London Evening Post, 11–14 October 1740; St. James's Evening Post, 5 March 1728; Norwich Gazette, 19 November 1743.

¹⁴³ London Evening Post, 6 June 1767.

¹⁴⁴ For another example in Preston, see Lloyd's Evening Post (London), 4 October 1769.

¹⁴⁵ Brighton Gazette, 5 May 1831.

¹⁴⁶ Leicester and Nottingham Journal, 4 January 1772; The mottos upon the eight bells for St. John's Church, Manchester […] (London, 1768).

¹⁴⁷ Engraved on the fifth bell at Rye in 1775. See William Holloway, The History and Antiquities of the Ancient Town and Port of Rye […] (London, 1847), 513.

¹⁴⁸ Worcester dumb-bells (London, 1710).

¹⁴⁹ Weekly Journal or British Gazeteer (London), 6 June 1719.

¹⁵⁰ St. James's Evening Post, 4 March 1732.

¹⁵¹ Gebhard Friedrich August Wendeborn, A View of England towards the Close of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 2 (London, 1791), 342.

¹⁵² Minister of the Church of England, An Endeavour after further union between conforming & nonconforming Protestants in several particulars (London, 1692), 6–7.

¹⁵³ My thanks to Jonah Miller for this reference. “Consistory Court Depositions Book,” DL/C/0250, fols. 166–77v, London Metropolitan Archives.

¹⁵⁴ Weekly Journal or Saturday's Post (London), 11 February 1721.

¹⁵⁵ The Dissenters Conciencious Objections Against the Episcopal Church […] (London, 1705), 9.

¹⁵⁶ T. Drummond, Letters to a young dissenter on the general principles of nonconformity […] (London, 1812), 27–31, quotation at 30.

¹⁵⁷ Potkay, The Story of Joy, 89–91.

¹⁵⁸ W. H. Gatty, “A Sketch of the History of the Parish of St. Mary-in-Arden, and the Township of Marker Harborough,” Transactions of the Leicestershire Architectural and Archaeological Society, no. 3 (1874):153–71, at 167–68.

¹⁵⁹ “Answers to enquiries from Denton concerning nonconformists and church bells, 1706,” DN/MSC 2/19, Norfolk Record Office; “Letter from John Elliott, Minister of Randwick, Gloucestershire, 30 May 1826,” P263/IN/4/2, Gloucestershire Archives.

¹⁶⁰ A Lover of Concord, “Legality of Dissenting Bells,” Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature, no. 20 (1825): 533.

¹⁶¹ “Religious Intelligence,” Congregational Magazine, no. 1 (1825): 330–31.

¹⁶² Colin M. Haydon, “Samuel Peploe and Catholicism in Preston, 1714,” Recusant History 20, no. 1 (May 1990): 76–80, at 78 (emphasis mine).

¹⁶³ 31 Geo. III C.32.6.9.

¹⁶⁴ Margaret M. Turnham, Catholic Faith and Practice in England, 1779–1992: The Role of Revivalism and Renewal (Woodbridge, 2015), 26.

¹⁶⁵ Quoted in Françoise Deconinck-Brossard, “‘We Live So Far North’: The Church in the North-East of England,” in The National Church in Local Perspective: The Church of England and the Regions, 1660–1800, ed. Jeremy Gregory and Jeffrey S. Chamberlain (Woodbridge, 2003), 223–242, at 233.

¹⁶⁶ Flying Post or The Post Master (London), 12–14 July 1715.

¹⁶⁷ Luke Tyerman, The Life of the Rev George Whitefield, vol. 2 (London, 1877), 82, 73, 110, 111. For similar, see Joseph Butterworth Bulmer Clark, ed., An Account of the Infancy, Religious and Literary Life of Adam Clarke (London, 1833), 222.

¹⁶⁸ Phyllis Mack, “The Senses in Religion: Listening to God in the Eighteenth Century,” in A Cultural History of the Senses in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Anne C. Vila (London, 2016), 85–108, at 94–97; David Hempton, Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750–1850 (London, 1984), 93; Joseph Entwistle, Memoir of the Rev. Joseph Entwistle [… ] (Bristol, 1846), 133, 211.

¹⁶⁹ Michael Francis Snape, “Anti-Methodism in Eighteenth-Century England: The Pendle Forest Riots of 1748,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 49, no. 2 (1998): 257–81, at 264–65.

¹⁷⁰ John Wesley, An extract of the Rev. Mr. John Wesley's Journal, vol. 10, From February 15 1755 to June 16 1758 (London, 1788), 122.

¹⁷¹ “Proceedings in Law Relating to Protestant Dissenters,” Methodist Magazine no. 41 (1818): 386–87; W. M. Jacobs, Lay People and Religion in the Early Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 2002), 71.

¹⁷² Flying Post (London), 13–16 August 1715.

¹⁷³ An Authentic Account of the Riots in Birmingham […] (Birmingham, 1791), 20.

¹⁷⁴ Observator (London), 5–8 April 1710; Abel Boyer, Quadriennium annæ postremum […], vol. 1 (London, 1718–19), 505.

¹⁷⁵ Observator (London), 18–21 October 1710.

¹⁷⁶ Worcester dumb-bells.

¹⁷⁷ John Whitehead, The life of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A. [… ] (London, 1793), 175.

¹⁷⁸ General Evening Post (London), June 8–10 1780; London Chronicle, 4–6 July 1780.

¹⁷⁹ London Chronicle, 20–22 June 1780.

¹⁸⁰ Derby Mercury, 18 March 1735–36; for similar, see World (London), 10 March 1790.

¹⁸¹ A Letter to the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, Esq., from a Dissenting Country Attorney […] (Birmingham, 1791), 65.

¹⁸² “Letter from Mary Burrough, Carleton Hall, Drigg, Cumberland to John Frewen,” 27 June 1807, FRE/1757, East Sussex Record Office.

¹⁸³ Morning Post (London), 26 May 1825; Trewman's Exeter Flying Post or Plymouth and Cornish Advertiser, 26 May 1825; Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 23 May 1825; Ipswich Journal, 21 May 1825; Coventry Herald, 20 May 1825.

¹⁸⁴ Morning Chronicle (London), 26 May 1825.

¹⁸⁵ Morning Chronicle (London), 27 May 1825.

¹⁸⁶ Liverpool Mercury, 2 December 1825.

¹⁸⁷ Leeds Mercury, 15 August 1829.

¹⁸⁸ Derby Mercury, 10 November 1830; Standard, 6 November 1833; Berrow's Worcester Journal, 7 November 1833; Liverpool Mercury, 8 November 1833; York Herald and General Advertiser, 12 November 1842; Manchester Times and Gazette, 9 November 1844; Morning Post (London), 7 November 1849; Preston Guardian, 9 November 1850; “Saffron Walden, Bell Ringer's bills, 1821–1848,” D/B 2/PAR13/37, Essex Record Office.

¹⁸⁹ Leonard Lovechurch [George Smith], Letter to the inhabitants of Sheffield […] (Sheffield, 1798), 4, 13.

¹⁹⁰ See the much-reprinted “The Merry Bells of England,” London, 1828, John Johnson Collection, Harding B16 (148b), Bodleian Library, Oxford; “The Factory Bells of England,” Leeds, 1855, John Johnson Collection, Harding B16 (83b), Bodleian Library, Oxford.

¹⁹¹ A more comprehensive study is one subject of my current research and current book project, “The Untimely Death of an Urban Soundscape.”

¹⁹² For good examples, see the essays in Feeling Things: Objects and Emotions through History, ed. Stephanie Downs, Sally Holloway, and Sarah Randles (Oxford, 2018).

¹⁹³ William M. Reddy, “Against Constructivism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions,” Current Anthropology 38, no. 3 (1997): 327–51.

¹⁹⁴ Julie Park, The Self and It: Novel Objects in Eighteenth-Century England (Stanford, 2010), xii; Ileana Baird, “Introduction. Peregrine Things: Rethinking the Global in Eighteenth-Century Studies,” in Eighteenth-Century Thing Theory in a Global Context: From Consumerism to Celebrity Culture, ed. Ileana Baird and Christina Ionescu (Farnham, 2013), 1–16, at 11.

¹⁹⁵ For the relationship between representatives’ places of residence and parliamentary seats, see Paul Langford, “Property and ‘Virtual Representation’ in Eighteenth-Century England,” Historical Journal 31, no. 1 (1988): 83–115.

¹⁹⁶ Inscription on the third bell of All Saints, Northampton, 1782; see The History of the Town of Northampton (Northampton, 1847), 101.

¹⁹⁷ On independence, see Matthew McCormack, The Independent Man: Citizenship and Gender in Georgian England (Manchester, 2005).

¹⁹⁸ Bell-ringing might therefore be understood as another of the theatrical modes of authority described in E. P. Thompson, “Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture,” Journal of Social History 7, no. 4 (1974): 382–405, at 389; Douglas Hay, “Property, Authority and the Criminal Law,” in Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, by Douglas Hay et al. (London, 2011), 17–63, at 26–31.

¹⁹⁹ England had been described as such since the seventeenth century. For an early instance, see Abraham Markland, Poems on His Majesties birth and restauration […] (London, 1667), 53.

²⁰⁰ For political theory and the passions, see Albert O. Hirshman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, 1977), 15; Victoria Kahn, Neil Saccamano, and Daniela Coli, eds., Politics and the Passions, 1500–1850 (Princeton, 2009).

²⁰¹ For similar observations from the perspective of the courtroom, see Amy Milka and David Lemmings, “Narratives of Feeling and Majesty: Mediated Emotions in the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Court Room,” Journal of Legal History 38, no. 2 (2017): 157–78.

²⁰² Joanne Innes, Inferior Politics: Social Problems and Social Policies in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2009), 5, 17; Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation, 347; David Lemmings, Law and Government in England during the Long Eighteenth Century (Basingstoke, 2011), 184–85.

²⁰³ George Woodward, “‘A thinking club!!,’” 1796, London, hand-colored etching, 1895,0617.449, British Museum; Geoffrey GAG-’EM-ALL, The Free-born Englishman deprived of his seven senses by the operation of the six new Acts of the boroughmongers (London, 1819).

²⁰⁴ The importance of sensory access in understanding the public sphere has been discussed by Ari Adut, “A Theory of the Public Sphere,” Sociological Theory 30, no. 4 (2012): 238–62; Lacey, Listening Publics.

²⁰⁵ G. L. Apperson, Dictionary of Proverbs, rev. Martin H. Manser, and Stephen Curtis (Ware, 2006), 211.

²⁰⁶ Steedman, Carolyn, “Inside, Outside, Other: Accounts of National Identity in the 19th Century,” History of the Human Sciences 8, no. 2 (1995): 59–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 60–61; Kennedy, Catriona, Narratives of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: Military and Civilian Experience in Britain and Ireland (Basingstoke, 2013), 2–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰⁷ For example, see Conway, Stephen, “War and National Identity in the Mid-Eighteenth-Century British Isles,” English Historical Review 116, no. 468 (2001): 863–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 887.

²⁰⁸ Segal, Lynne, Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy (London, 2018)Google Scholar; for the contemporary politics of schadenfreude, see Smith, Tiffany Watt, Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another's Misfortune (London, 2018), 113–27Google Scholar.