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Participatory Politics in Hanoverian EnglandWhigs and Cities: Popular Politics in the Age of Walpole and Pitt by Nicholas Rogers; Voters,Patrons, and Parties: The Unreformed Electorate of Hanoverian England, 1734-1832 by FrankO'GormanReview by: John A. PhillipsSocial History, Vol. 16, No. 2 (May, 1991), pp. 223-230Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4285931 .

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REVIEW ESSAY

John A. Phillips

Participatory politics in Hanoverian

England

Nicholas Rogers, Whigs and Cities: PopularPolitics in the Age of Walpole and Pitt (I989), xii + 44o (Clarendon Press, Oxford, ?4o.oo).

Frank O'Gorman, Voters, Patrons, and Parties: The Unreformed Electorate of Hanoverian Eland, 734-z832 (I989) xiv + 445 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, ?40.oo). Few books have been more eagerly awaited by students of eighteenth-century England than these two studies of popular politics under the Hanoverians. These unusually complementary studies deal authoritatively with a critical aspect of a field that has been subjected recently to an unusual degree of interest from much further afield than normal. Their joint appearance in the midst of a full-blown reconsideration of the very nature of eighteenth-century England enhances the contribution of each and broadens their appeal substantially.

No one interested in post-medieval England can remain unaware of J. C. D. Clark's suggestion that the eighteenth century (defined broadly) can best be described as an ancien regime.' The outpourings from Clark's prolific pen have been debated so frequently that some, upset by the degree to which considerations of Clark's work have virtually monopolized discussions of the long period between the accession of William III and the death of William IV, have suggested a moratorium. A moratorium would be completely inappropriate in this instance, however, because these two books virtually demand consideration in the context of the current debate. Both Rogers and O'Gorman explore England's unusually inclusive political system that contained, among other things, perhaps a quarter of a million enfranchised men. The presence of this mass of voters is so critical to the assessment of his ancien regime that Clark, unable to disfranchise these men ex post facto, found it necessary to begin English Society with a 'psephological argument' intended to discount them. Otherwise, the political activity of so many voters severely hinders claims that Englishmen were much more like their continental European counterparts than has been realized. The parliament itself posed enough of a problem for

' J. C. D. Clark, The Dynamics of Change (Cambridge, I982); English Society (Cambridge, I985); Revolution and Rebellion (Cambridge, I986).



224 Social History VOL. i6: NO. 2

equations of English and continental politics, but unless a sharp division could be drawn between the small number of parliamentarians and the large number of their constituents, Clark's suggested focus on high politics to the virtual exclusion of England's subaltern classes would seem far less plausible.

Actually, the unreformed electorate has only recently been thought worthy of attention. At the beginning of this century the prevailing image of the unreformed electorate was shaped by the historical accounts of Joseph Grego (I892) and Edward and Annie Porritt (I909), which were in turn based upon contemporaneous Radical and Whig attacks on the unreformed political system.2 These combined efforts did everything possible to besmirch the unreformed electoral system. The I 793 attack on the state of England's representation by the Society of the Friends of the People was followed by T. H. B. Oldfield's multiple volumes (published over the subsequent two decades) condemning nomination boroughs and the use of undue political influence. These exercises in political propaganda might have been sufficiently damning by themselves, but William Cobbett, Henry Hunt, George Wade and others maintained a continuous, highly visible assault on the political system in general and the electoral system in particular over the years leading up to I 832.3 Even after Reform had been achieved, the denigration of the old system continued through the efforts of Joseph Parkes and the Whig-appointed commissioners who, in examining England's municipal corporations, prepared a fresh vilification of the old political order. In the face of so much damning evidence, Grego and the Porritts could hardly be blamed for their sweeping condemnations of the unreformed political system; what else could they have concluded after reading such caustic contemporary judgements? How could they have distinguished at the time between calumny and so many instances of almost equally appalling truth?

Lewis Namier's influential work effectively removed parties from discussions of England at the accession of George III. With the electorate already executed by the Porritts, Namier's insistence that neither ideology nor party government contributed to parliamentary activity in 176I appeared to be the coup degrace. And when Robert Walcott extended Namier's interpretation backwards into the early eighteenth century and Norman Gash extended it into the post-Reform era, very little stood in the way of an exclusive focus on high politics and the men who scrambled for the spoils of office.4 Even more than the turn of the century, then, the late 1950s would have been a propitious time for the introduction of Clark's ancien regime thesis. Without the impediments of meaningful parliamentary parties, active and interested voters, diverse political and religious principles, and even elements of radicalism, England could more easily have been described as supremely Anglican, aristocratic and monarchical.

Just when all traces of an open political system seemed to have been eradicated, however, Geoffrey Holmes, William Speck, J. H. Plumb and others destroyed the Walcott

2 J. Grego, History of Parliamentary Elec- tions and Electioneering (I892); E. and A. Porritt, The Unreformed House of Comons (2

vols, Cambridge, I909). I T. H. B. Oldfield, The History of the

Boroughs (2 vols, 1794); Representative History

of Great Britain and Ireland (6 vols, i8I6); John Wade, The Extraordinary Black Book (2

vols, I 820). 4 Robert Walcott, English Politics in the Early

Eighteenth Century (Oxford, I956); Norman Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel (I953).



May 991r Politics in Hanoverian England 225

thesis by resurrecting party and popular participation in Augustan England.5 In their view, widespread political participation was the rule rather than the exception in the early years of the century. During the 'rage of party' under Anne, parties and principles engaged the attentions and activities of tens of thousands of Englishmen at a rash of contested elections. According to Plumb, the political frenzy with which the century began gave way to a somewhat protracted hiatus under Walpole because of George I's proscription of the Tories, the passage of the Septennial Act and the Whig assault on the broad franchise, but in many ways Walpole's England was shaped as a response to the dangers posed by such widespread political power. The England described so effectively by Holmes et al. was not an old regime, but a very new one emerging swiftly in the decades following the Glorious Revolution and replacing an old world now lost forever. Continuities could be found between the old and new worlds, but that it was a new world could not be doubted.

Almost simultaneously, and also more or less concurrently with the revision of Augustan England's political history, Frank O'Gorman and Donald Ginter (building on a foundation begun by E. C. Black, George Rude and E. P. Thompson) began an equally important restoration of party, principle and popular politics at the other end of the eighteenth century, a restoration subsequently extended by John Brewer and others.6 In their versions of the later eighteenth century, issues, principles and participation (quite a bit of it extra-parliamentary) re-emerged under George III and continued, albeit possibly on a reduced scale, into the new century. The England described by Ginter and O'Gorman was much like the England revealed by the work of Holmes and Speck. From the frantic attacks on Henry Sacheverell in the years following 1709 to the remarkable celebration of the number 45 in honour of John Wilkes in the years following 1763, this new political world included the many, not just the few. Subaltern studies were essential for an understanding of the political and social reality of the new century.

Indeed, with such a massive bulwark erected against an interpretation of England as an ancien regime, the warm reception of Clark's thesis has surprised many; O'Gorman's first book should have guaranteed that his latest one would not have been published in the midst of such a debate. But Clark was not to be deterred by contradictory evidence. English Society subverted O'Gorman's evidence for its own ends, just as it interpreted the arguments of Holmes, Speck and Plumb in ways that made them appear to denigrate the very behaviour they were heralding. Nor have the considerable post-publication efforts to rain on Clark's parade seemed particularly successful. These two new studies of the eighteenth century, on the other hand, go far beyond mere showers; these are dual torrential downpours that should generate a flood capable of sweeping every cavil from its path. If O'Gorman's first book failed to prevent the formulation of the ancien regime

s Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne (I967); W. A. Speck, Tory and Whig (1970); J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1675-1725 (1967); Geoffrey Holmes (ed.), Britain After the Glorious Revolution (I969); Clyve Jones (ed.), Britain in the First Age of Party, i68o-r750 (I987).

6 Donald Ginter, Whig Organization in the General Election of 1790 (Berkeley, Calif.,

1967); Frank O'Gorman, The Whig Party and the French Revolution (1967); The Rise of Party in England (1975). More recent accounts are contained in Frank O'Gorman, The Emergence of the British Two Party System (I982) and B. W. Hill, British Parliamentary Parties (I985). George Rude, Wilkes and Liberty (Oxford, I962); E. C. Black, The Association (Cam- bridge, Mass., I963) and E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (I963).



2.2.6 Social History VOL. i6: NO. 2

hypothesis, his new study of the entire Hanoverian electoral system should be sufficient independently to render it obsolete. And in a rational world, Nicholas Rogers's magnificent account of urban politics from the Hanoverian succession to the Wilkes affair also should be sufficient by itself to bring Clark's parade to an immediate, permanent conclusion. Their combined impact is utterly compelling.

Yet while Rogers's consideration of politics in London and the provinces lays to rest assumptions about voters being 'too ductile, deferential, and dependent upon upper-class clientage to constitute an independent voice', by showing the degree to which 'cities and large towns were more intractable sources of political support than is conventionally assumed', he is almost equally critical of the view that the Walpolean opposition can be dismissed as 'a crypto-Jacobite or backwoodsman movement' (4-8). Rather than distinguishing sharply between the 'custodial, Country politics of the 1730s, and the open, participatory politics of the Wilkites', Rogers stresses the continuity of popular political activity across the century. His account of the vibrancy of popular political participation in the middle decades of the century attacks more than just the image of England as an ancien regime; it rejects equally the view of the eighteenth century as a curiously reversed sandwich in which all the meat is on the outside and the bread is in the middle. The Walpolean era may have been less dominated by partisan activity than either its predecessor or its successor, but the differences were of degree, not kind. Plenty of life remained in popular politics even at the worst of times; the quality of the middle decades equalled in its own way that of the extremes.

Focusing initially on London, Rogers concludes that 'even in an era of electoral ossification, the City of London remained a vibrant force whose running commentary on government necessarily punctuated the world of high politics and affected its policies' (127). In the struggle for the city during the years before the '45, thousands of Liverymen used parliamentary contests and elections to the Common Council to keep up an active, heterogeneous opposition that was neither 'merely' Country nor Jacobite. In fact, a strong aversion to Jacobitism existed among the rank and file because of its association with 'absolutism and Catholic bigotry and a denial of national identity' (78). The '45 and Pelham's greater co-operativeness engendered a period of greater co-operation between the City and the Ministry, but the Jew Bill and Minorca revealed the fragility of a compromise accomplished largely because of the widely shared residual distaste for anything that had to do with the Jacobite cause. It took the popular magic of William Pitt to reconcile London and the national government. The rare and very transient spirit of harmony that ensued from Pitt's popularity did little to rob London politics of its vitality. And the City was by no means the only forum for public opinion. Broadening his focus initially to Westminster, urban Surrey and Middlesex, Rogers demonstrates the much wider survival of a vibrant strain of popular politics in the metropolis.

Identifiable socio-economic differences underlying these political differences in London occurred not along 'class' lines, but through an affinity of the middling sorts for Tory politics. Nor were politics in Westminster, Surrey and Middlesex driven by economic differences that might be described even loosely as 'class'. Rogers's analysis of surviving manuscript poll books and rate books dismisses as insignificant any economic variations between political groupings. Opposition in London derived in part from rifts over high finance, but throughout the metropolis religious dissent played a more crucial,



May i99i Politics in Hanoverian England 227

albeit declining, role. Metropolitan politics in the decades prior to the accession of George III provided no hint of the Wilkite movement that was to tap a lowlier element of the political nation. The voice of the metropolis was largely the voice of the middling sort.

That voice was heard by the government, and heard loudly on occasion, but it was not alone; provincial towns and cities often either echoed the sounds coming from the metropolis, or generated cries of their own. By examining the strength of party voting in a variety of English urban constituencies, by looking at the surprising resilience of the Tory party at the contested elections of the period, by chronicling the national response to Admiral Vernon's exploits and by looking at the Instructions for political reform issued formally by constituents to their MPs during the 1730S and 1740s, Rogers points to the persistence, even under Walpole, of meaningful, surprisingly sophisticated public opinion in the provinces. Whether through demotic celebrations of Vernon (who personified incorruptible, valorous patriotism as well as contempt for foppery and servility) or through instructions to their representatives on national political issues, middling and lesser sorts across the country continued to have a say in England's governance. If they chose to press the issue, as they did in 1734 and 1741, their voices could not be ignored.

Rogers's section on provincial politics reveals that as sure a guide as he is to eighteenth-century London and its environs, he is no less informed, no less illuminating, no less persuasive when he ventures into the hinterland. While Namier conceded that even at the time of the parliament of 1761 Whig/Tory terminology 'in a good many constituencies . . . still corresponded to real divisions' Namier believed nevertheless that there could be no party system in England until the electorate thought in terms of 'nation-wide parties'.7Namier's four local vignettes (Bristol, Nottingham, Newcastle and Canterbury) were intended to reveal the absence of electoral thought of that sort. In Namier's eyes, Bristol politics by mid-century were, as Rogers nicely summarizes it, 'intrinsically oligarchical, with a level of electoral morality and political consciousness that approximated a rotten borough' (301). Rogers tackles Namier on his own ground, and through a rigorous, thorough and insightful analysis of Bristol and Norwich shows the degree to which Namier was mistaken about provincial politics.

Merchant-traders, influential families and political clubs aside, Bristol was 'always subject to popular pressures' (266), based largely upon sectarian and political rather than socio-economic differences in the electorate. Indeed, the very volatility of Bristol politics enhanced the power of the local White Lion and Independent clubs as every effort was made by the local elites to temper the popular pressures to which they were periodically exposed. Although Bristol politics were occasionally dominated by merchants, a persistent popular partisanship (typically more than 8o per cent of the voters cast party ballots, even in mid-century), combined with a strong leavening of sectarian difference and an abiding interest in 'national' as opposed to purely local issues, led to a volatility that left Bristol subjected to pressures not unlike those found in the metropolis.

Norwich serves as a useful foil for Bristol's persistently bipartisan politics because the Norwich Tories, reaching their zenith in I710, failed to prosper as their Bristol

' Lewis Namier, Monarchy and the Party System (Oxford, 1952), 24-9; The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (reprinted

edn, 196I), 82-134; England in the Age of the American Revolution (reprinted edn, I96I), 190-2.




counterparts. Maintaining a strong presence into the 1730s, their political fortunes then declined and finally deteriorated into a rout in the 1740s. Initially, Norwich was the scene of even more demotic politics than was common in Bristol, partly as a result of Norwich's open corporation. In this partisan context, better than nine-tenths of Norwich's many voters cast strictly party ballots even in the I730s. Norwich's Tories, however, failed to maintain the sort of support among the middling sort that Tories had managed both in the metropolis and in Bristol. They also failed to shed their rigidly High Church garb, making it impossible to broaden the party's appeal sufficiently to withstand the overwhelming reaction against Jacobitism in 1745. The result was an oligarchic phase in Norwich that lasted more than two decades. Yet rather than lending support to Plumb's model of electoral ossification under the first two Georges, the rich and subtle texture of Norwich politics recounted by Rogers with the rare skill that has become the hallmark of his London essays reveals the residual strength of popular participation. The Norwich consensus, coming after decades of active electoral struggle, was a 'working arrangement' in which the bourgeoisie and the county families were allowed to wield political control as long as they assiduously tended the economic welfare of the town's inhabitants. Public opinion might not have been loudly voiced during the years of the compact, but the local wielders of power were unlikely to forget its potential weight in the context of the previous decades of persistent popular activity.

Reinforcing this powerful image of metropolitan and provincial political vitality is Rogers's separate portrait of the crowd. In a segment that successfully treads the path between Rude's eager anticipation of revolutionary journees and Le Bon's pathological evaluation of popular unrest and mob behaviour, Rogers exhibits his complex understanding of the heterogeneity of the crowd. Crowds neither inevitably bolstered nor consistently challenged oligarchic power. English crowds were not invariably anything; they were, on the other hand, virtually ubiquitous. They were also generally susceptible to national issues. Whether in Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle, Northampton or Bath, crowds could be equally determined to censure or celebrate a minister, a soldier, a government or an issue. Crowds could take on a variety of forms for a wide array of purposes, from the carnivalesque to the catastrophic. Crowd behaviour in the first half of the century blended older forms with newer interests in the semi-autonomous, often unmistakeably plebian activity that shaped the provincial and the national political world. The crowd was central to Hanoverian politics even before its transformation in the 176os as a result of the furore over Wilkes. As Rogers demonstrates through diverse examples, 'governments and parties had to live with the crowd, and with crowds they helped to politicize' (36I). It could be argued that this widespread, extremely diverse, often extra-legal, popular activity reveals as much about the participatory nature of the eighteenth century as the more formalized behaviour of Englishmen at local and national elections.

On the other hand, any and all attempts to downplay the importance of formalized electoral behaviour should be squelched effectively by Frank O'Gorman's remarkably comprehensive study of the Hanoverian electorate. Though nominally overlapping, O'Gorman's study really gets under way just as Rogers's study ends. O'Gorman casts a few glances at the early eighteenth century and strays occasionally past I832, but from the start he is interested in Namier's decade and the sixty years that followed. While the demands created by O'Gorman's principal focus on four counties and twenty-three boroughs would



May 1991 Politics in Hanoverian England 229

overwhelm most people, he casts his net even further and manages, at least briefly, to consider all forty English counties, most Welsh counties and virtually all English and Welsh boroughs as well. In doing so, he has asked for trouble; beyond the fairly simple division of counties and boroughs, English and Welsh constituencies comprised a labyrinth that makes Daedalus's seem comparatively simple. Undaunted, O'Gorman assuredly weaves his way through this image and captures the essentials of the system while never ignoring its complexity.

Perhaps even more than Rogers's, O'Gorman's success depends upon his subtlety. As O'Gorman notes, 'the study of electoral politics becomes the study of local communities' (9-i). Yet O'Gorman always keeps in view the electoral system that is his concern. By eschewing broad strokes in favour of pointilism, O'Gorman manages to convey his image effectively without losing the specifics that are essential to his study. His points of colour fuse into an overview of this enormously complex system. Counties posed relatively few problems; they possessed a uniform franchise and shared much in common. Each borough, however, seemed to derive self-esteem from idiosyncracy. O'Gorman deals with these almost endlessly variable borough constituencies initially in five categories based upon the nature of their electoral systems (ranging from venal to open). He then examines their electoral processes according to broadly similar franchise types. This dual categorization succeeds in describing the operation of the system without losing the sense of variety so integral to an understanding of it.

At every turn O'Gorman is careful to stress the limitations of the electoral system. Elections often involved venality, corruption and a variety of influences that seem indefensible to modern eyes. Moreover, contested elections often signified disputes among local elites, ineffectual or rejected patrons, ambitious families or the changing fortunes of a particular MP rather than anything resembling a more modern political contest. Candidates were most often younger sons of aristocratic families or the local gentry. The great majority of constituencies could not be considered 'open' even by the most generous interpretation of that term. Even worse, the amount of electoral activity declined over the century in the counties as well as in most boroughs, reaching truly abysmal levels in many kinds of constituencies by i8oo.

Yet in the face of all these qualifications and limitations, the electoral system, like Rogers's crowd, played far more than a marginal role politically. Local elites may have been in control more often than not, but the electoral system was never really closed. And if most electoral contests tended to be expressions of local conflicts, national issues could and did make themselves felt at almost any time. Using a computer-assisted analysis of six towns over thirty-three contests and a manual examination of voting behaviour in a number of other constituencies (including one county), O'Gorman initially examines the forms of electoral behaviour through useful measurements of turnout, size and occupational composition. Like Rogers, O'Gorman is not a quantitative historian, and like Rogers's occasional bouts with figures, O'Gorman's foray into computer-assisted quantitative analysis is not a complete success. O'Gorman relies much more on figures than Rogers, and the novelty of the venture is sometimes too apparent (I 74). Some of his statistical analyses might best be described as quaint, but the overall experiment with numbers is successful in the sense that it conveys a reasonably accurate general picture of the electorate.




When O'Gorman turns to the more serious question of content, assessing the role of ideology and party in the constituencies, his statistical arguments again cause some difficulty. He never ventures beyond simple percentages, and even percentages are not always used effectively. Nevertheless, as with the descriptive statistics in Chapter 4, the overall analysis of voting preferences is sufficiently convincing to uphold most of O'Gorman's arguments. From the accession of George III to the passage of the Reform Act, the press, local parties and political organizations, and petition movements served to inform the electorate of national issues that at times overshadowed parochial concerns. The general elections of 1784, I 807, i 8 i 8 and I 83 I exercised many political imaginations in the counties, and many more general elections resulted in debates over national issues in a wide range of boroughs, both open and influenced. Electors were capable of much independence of thought and action, and the 'depersonalization of influence', to use Kishlansky's term, that occurred over the eighteenth century enhanced that freedom.

Electoral politics were not informed by socio-economic anatagonisms. More controver- sially, O'Gorman also believes that religious affiliation did not necessarily determine political behaviour. O'Gorman's evidence on the absence of religiously motivated voting is less persuasive than most of the rest of his argument, particularly in the light of contrary evidence.8 Rogers confidently and explicitly links Nonconformists and Whigs earlier in the century, but O'Gorman perceives religion as just another interest, most notable perhaps by the infrequency with which it was mobilized. More crucial for voters were local rifts that generated intense partisan loyalties early in the century and organizational efforts that led to the re-emergence of party voting in the years just before and during the war against first Jacobin and then Napoleonic France. By the end of those wars, 'the day of party, and, indeed, of party, and not merely partisan, voting was dawning', based on neither 'republicanism or fundamental disaffection', but on straightforward political issues and party organization (383, 388). Put broadly, 'before I832 party attachments may have been less formal and more intermittent than they later became, but they were not noticeably less assertive nor less popular' (357).

During the recent prolonged debate over high politics, those who might be tempted to forget H. T. Dickinson's dictum that 'eighteenth-century politics can only be fully comprehended by reference to the role of the press and the public and by an appreciation of the influence of principles and prejudice' will be powerfully reminded of its truth by both of these studies.9 Plumb pointed to 'a political nation whom Namier and his followers have almost entirely ignored'.'0 Nicholas Rogers and Frank O'Gorman have now ensured that the members of that political nation will not suffer such slights again.

University of California, Riverside

8James E. Bradley, 'Religion and reform at the polls', Journal of British Studies, XXIII, I (1984); 'Nonconformity and the electorate in eighteenth-century England', Parliamentary History, VI, 2 (I987).

9 H. T. Dickinson, 'Party, principle, and

public opinion in eighteenth century politics', History, LXI, 202 (1976), 237.

'? J. H. Plumb, 'Political man' in J. Clifford (ed.), Man vs. Society in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, I968), 12.

