Unitarian Radicalism

Unitarian Radicalism

Also by Stuart Andrews EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM METHODISM AND SOCIETY THE BRITISH PERIODICAL PRESS AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1789 99 THE REDISCOVERY OF AMERICA

Unitarian Radicalism Political Rhetoric, 1770 1814 Stuart Andrews

Stuart Andrews 2003 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-0-333-96925-0 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-42907-3 ISBN 978-0-230-59562-0 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230595620 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Andrews, Stuart. Unitarian radicalism : political rhetoric, 1770 1814 / Stuart Andrews. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-349-42907-3 1. Unitarian churches Great Britain History 18th century. 2. Unitarians Great Britain Political activity History 18th century. 3. Unitarian churches Great Britain History 19th century. 4. Unitarians Great Britain Political activity History 19th century. I. Title. BX9834.A53 2002 289.1 41 09033 dc21 2002026758 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03

To the memory of Reggie Watters

The present silent propagation of truth may be likened to those causes in nature, which lie dormant for a time, but which, in proper circumstances, act with the greatest violence. We are, as it were, laying gunpowder, grain by grain, under the old building of error and superstition, which a single spark may inflame, so as to produce an instantaneous explosion; in consequence of which that edifice, the erection of which has been the work of ages, may be overturned in a moment, and so effectually as that same foundation can never be built upon again. Joseph Priestley, Reflections on the Present State of Free Enquiry in this country (1785) Let not the King, let not the Prince of Wales, be surprised in this manner. Let not both Houses of Parliament be led in triumph along with him, and have law dictated to them by the Constitutional, Revolution and Unitarian Societies. These insect reptiles, whilst they go on caballing and toasting, only fill us with disgust; if they go above their natural size, and increase the quantity, whilst they keep the quality, of their venom, they become objects of the greatest terror. A spider in his natural size is only a spider, ugly and loathsome; and his flimsy net is only fit for catching flies. But, good God! Suppose a spider as large as an ox, and that he spread cables about us; all the wilds of Africa would not procure anything so dreadful. Edmund Burke, Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians (1792)

Contents Preface Acknowledgements ix xii Introduction: Unequal Toleration 1 PART I GRAINS OF GUNPOWDER 11 1. Denying the Trinity 13 2. Opposing Subscription 22 3. Predicting the Millennium 31 PART II PULPIT-POLITICS 41 4. Essex Street: Lindsey, Disney, Belsham 43 5. Old Jewry and Gravel Pit 54 6. Fasts and Thanksgivings 64 PART III UNDERMINING ESTABLISHMENTS 73 7. Censuring Pitt 75 8. Challenging Burke 85 9. Campaigning for Peace 95 PART IV SPARKS OF SEDITION 105 10. National Networks 107 11. Midlands and the North 116 12. Norwich, Bristol and the South West 127 13. Scottish Convict, Irish Exile 136 PART V EXPLOSIVE ECHOES 147 14. Jacobin Journalism 149 15. Confronting Napoleon 158 vii

viii Contents Epilogue: Transatlantic Perspectives 170 Notes 178 Bibliography 208 Index 211

Preface Edmund Burke famously dismissed Richard Price and his fellow- Dissenters as half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern. Yet within a year of Price s death, Burke spoke in Parliament denouncing the Unitarians as a threat to the constitution. Was Unitarian Radicalism significant as a potentially destabilizing force? This study tries to answer that question by examining the confrontational rhetoric of Unitarians and the political establishment, as reflected in pamphlets, published sermons and parliamentary debates. William Godwin s diary records ten Dissenting revolutionists (apart from Price) who attended the London Revolution Society s celebratory dinner on 4 November 1789. All ten were antitrinitarians: Thomas Brand Hollis, Thomas Belsham, John Disney, Andrew Kippis, Theophilus Lindsey, Capel Lofft, Abraham Rees, Robert Robinson, Samuel Rogers and Joseph Towers. The list hardly amounts to a revolutionary army, or even a fifth column. But it is a reminder of the powerful team of Rational Christian polemicists who would challenge Burke and harass Pitt throughout the 1790s and beyond. Godwin s list of antitrinitarians excludes, besides Priestley himself, the Cambridge ex-anglicans (Frend, Garnham and Wakefield), the Unitarian poets (Coleridge, Dyer and Anna Laetitia Barbauld) together with the Aikins (father and sons), Thomas Christie, Joseph Johnson and Richard Phillips, all of whom were active Unitarian publicists. And Godwin s list leaves out the local leaders of provincial Unitarian congregations, linked to London by something approaching a national network centred on Lindsey s Essex Street Chapel. This well-educated, close-knit and highly articulate opposition was all the more formidable for being prolific producers of pamphlets and political sermons, and for wielding editorial control over the New Annual Register and many of the literary reviews. Marginalized they may have been in direct parliamentary influence, and unable to rival the political contacts enjoyed by eighteenth-century commonwealth-men like Thomas Hollis. Yet they shaped the public discourse in ways that are not always recognized. Standing firmly within the Protestant biblical tradition, the Unitarians outspoken hostility to the church establishment inflamed by government refusal to ease their civil disabilities reignited earlier anticlerical ix

x Preface debates and was more politically significant than all the compliments that Price and Priestley heaped on the French Revolution. To claim that Pitt and Burke played the patriotic card against Unitarian publicists whom they feared for other reasons, is perhaps to claim too much. Priestley s millennialist rhetoric could be seen as potentially subversive, as could his incautious use of Guy Fawkes imagery. But the effect of much of my analysis is to show how wildly inappropriate the smear of Jacobin is, when applied to men whose arguments were rooted in Scripture, and who were primarily concerned with questions of Christology and eschatology. Apart from the early scene-setting chapters, I have tried not to cover already well-worked ground. I have not retraced James Bradley s steps in his patient tracking of politically motivated Dissent in the 1770s, notably in his Religion, Revolution and English Radicalism (1990). I have perhaps been less successful in avoiding overlap with James Cookson s The Friends of Peace (1982). I have certainly leant heavily on the published and unpublished work of Grayson Ditchfield, especially on the role of Essex Street. My debt to other authorities is acknowledged in the endnotes, but I have been particularly motivated by Jonathan Clark s groundbreaking work in de-secularizing the so-called Age of Reason. Tom Paine s work of that title so alarmed Priestley that he published his response within weeks of setting foot in America. The American thread runs through this story, which starts and ends with an American war. By extending my account to encompass the War of 1812 and the final passing of the Unitarian Relief Bill (1813), I have sought to show that the Unitarians distinctive Christian anticlericalism (and the political opposition to which it gave rise) did not evaporate when Priestley and many of his coreligionists emigrated to the United States. The patriotic demands of defeating the imperial Jacobin meant that Unitarian criticism became more muted, but there was nevertheless a continuity of anti-government rhetoric between Price of the 1770s and Belsham of the early 1800s. There has been no full-length study of the political impact of the Unitarians since Anthony Lincoln s Prince Consort Dissertation of 1938 (Some Political and Social Ideas of English Dissent 1763 1800), though Knud Haakonssen has edited an important collection of essays (Enlightenment and Religion, 1996). Lincoln wrote: Perhaps England never witnessed so prominent a minority...priestley, Price and Robinson were quoted by indignant orators in Parliament; and every government poet strove to immortalize their damnation. Marxist historians have tended to write them out of history, but 30 years after E. P. Thompson s

Preface xi best-selling Making of the English Working Class came the posthumous publication of his Witness against the Beast. Despite his antipathy to Unitarianism and to his own Methodist tradition, Thompson documents the political impact of theology in the subterranean strata of Protestant Dissent. I must record my personal thanks for the assistance I received from the resources of Dr Williams s Library, and from the longsuffering staff of Bristol Reference Library; and also for the interest shown by Ronald Wendling of St Joseph s University, Philadelphia. But I owe a particular debt to John Walsh for his friendly encouragement over almost 50 years, for his shrewd suggestions for improving the present work and for his readiness to believe that this was a story worth telling. Stuart Andrews

Acknowledgements The jacket illustration of Priestley as Dr Phlogiston is reproduced by permission of the British Museum. I am grateful to Dr G. R. Ditchfield for permission to reproduce extracts from his 1968 Cambridge PhD thesis, Some Aspects of Unitarianism and Radicalism, 1760 1810. Quotations from other copyright material are fully acknowledged in the endnotes, but Jenny Graham s The Nation, The Law and The King: Reform Politics in England 1789 1799 (University Press of America: 2000) was a particular help in tracing connections between radical reformers, not least through her excellent index. xii