Courts, capitals and cities: the structure of British politics

Gabriel Glickman

‘Political culture’

• Shift in Early Modern historiography away from institutional history or high politics.

• Study of environment and language of politics.• Influence of sociability, art, literature on

political worldviews.• Significance of locations where politics

develops – courts, theatres, intellectual societies, coffeehouses etc.

Structure and culture of C17th British politics

• Significance of aristocratic politics• Significance of social and cultural change –

esp. increased English urbanisation and the growth of London.

English and (Protestant) Irish elites remain close-knit, but cultural changes create gulf between political cultures of England and Scotland.

Aristocratic ascendancy

• Centred on hereditary privileges e.g. title-holders have right to sit in parliaments of Edinburgh, Dublin or Westminster.

• Aristocratic rule important in Scotland and Ireland due to absence of the monarch.

• Reliance on loyal elites to govern the countries and manage the parliaments.

• Cultivation of allies within the Gaelic world – loyal chieftains given aristocratic titles

Ceiling at Drumlanrig Castle – symbol of Bruce’s Heart

Aristocratic politics and instability

• Clashes between monarchs and aristocrats key feature of Early Modern Europe: defence of noble privileges against centralisation programmes.

• Adamson - English Civil War the last ‘Baronial Revolt’.• Explosive combination when threat to aristocratic privileges

combines with threat to national/regional freedoms. - Earls of Kildare lead opposition to Tudor centralisation in

Ireland. - Scottish aristocratic opposition to union exacerbated by threat

to status of the Scottish peerage.

A British aristocracy?

• James VI/I aims to foster aristocratic integration – logic of ‘Calvin’s Case’, 1608.

• Aristocratic unity to lead way towards ‘perfect union’.• Ways to measure extent of British aristocratic

integration: - Court ceremonial office-holding.- Government / diplomatic offices. - Marriages.

Creation of an Anglo-Irish elite

• English marriages for the houses of Ormond, Antrim and Inchiquin.

• Irish office-holders in English court, government and diplomatic service under Charles II e.g. Sir Robert Southwell, Sir William Temple.

• 31 MPs in Westminster = sons of Irish peers.• Retention of English culture among ‘New English’, greater

level of Anglicisation among ‘Old English’ and some Gaelic leaders.

• Ormond calls himself a ‘perfect Englishman’.

Scottish aristocracy – signs of integration

• Scottish entry into household and government of James I – 158 Scottish office-holders.

• 96 marriages of Scots noblemen and English wives 1603-1707.

• Acquisition of English titles in reign of Queen Anne – Duke of Argyll and Greenwich; Duke of Queensberry and Dover.

• Six Scottish Privy Councillors in London under James II.

Scottish aristocracy – limits of integration

• English noblemen not reciprocally acquiring Scottish wives – only three English peers (out of 158) married an Irish or Scots wife 1600-69.

• Only two Scottish ceremonial officers-holders at 1660 Restoration Court.

• Only seven among the 180 men employed overseas by crown 1660-88 are Scots; three under William III, six under Queen Anne.

• Exception to the trend = growing Scottish presence in army under duke of Marlborough.

Scottish aristocracy – cultural separatism

• Separate educational institutions. • Attachment to separate Scottish legal system.• Separate honours system – revival of Royal

Company of Archers (1676), Order of the Thistle (1687).

• Court of Charles II encouraging Scottish elites to remain within Scotland – development of loyal governing force.

1670 – reconstruction of Holyrood Palace

Scotland and Ireland – contrasting elite cultures

• Divergence of Scottish and English architectural styles.• Scottish intellectual culture looks towards northern

and eastern Europe e.g. linkage of Aberdeen University and Tsar Peter I.

• Dublin legal, ecclesiastical, educational systems modelled on England.

• Francis Annesley (Dublin MP, 1699): ‘We are Englishmen... your countrymen, your brothers, your sons... governed by the same king, the same laws, the same religion, the same interest’.

Urbanisation and cultural change

• Scotland only 16th most urbanised country in Europe by 1700.

• England second to the Dutch Republic – 40 per cent lived in towns by 1700.

• London has population of c.575,000 by 1700.• Building boom leads London’s recovery after

Great Fire - John Evelyn, ‘truly there never was a more glorious phoenix upon earth’ .

The London merchant community

• Key institutions – livery companies, overseas trading companies, royal exchange, London common council.

• 1,000 London merchants registered trading with America by 1700.

• 40 private banks established by 1690. • Wealth of London commerce increasingly important

to monarchs as source of long-term loans.• Linkage of crown with merchant community

cemented by financial revolution under William III – creation of Bank of England and National Debt.

Anxiety over the growth of London

Sir Robert Southwell ‘Is there not a tumour in that place... and too much matter for mutiny and Terrour to the Government if it should Burst?.. Is there not too much of our Capital in one stake, liable to the Ravage of Plague and fire?’ • Fear that rising wealth of the London merchant classes would ‘melt

down the order of Superiors among us and bring us all towards Levelling and Republican’

• Tory MP Sir Christopher Musgrave: ‘the corruption of manners which

reigns in this place, has infected the whole nation, and must at length bring both the city and nation to ruin... no regulations of government are sufficient to restrain or correct the manners of so great a number of people living in one place, and exposed to so many temptations from the bad example they give to one another…‘

Creation of a ‘public sphere’

• Politics practised in a new way in an urban environment.• Alternative centres of political sociability e.g.

coffeehouses.• Printing presses disseminate pamphlets, newspapers. • Wider level of political education – John Locke, ‘an

ordinary coffee-house gleaner of the city’ now an ‘arrant statesman’ compared to a country gentleman.

• (Though politics not necessarily more enlightened – party conflict of Whigs and Tories at its most violent in London).

Growth of London widens differences between three kingdoms

• Public sphere has developed faster in London than in Edinburgh and Dublin: the capital has greater centrality in national politics.

• English and Irish aristocracies increasingly drawn within orbit of London.

• Scottish aristocracy cannot afford to live in London – becomes more remote through 1690s.

• Viscount Godolphin to earl of Seafield: Godolphin to earl of Seafield – ‘as to the argument of English influence, how can the Queen [Anne] but bee influenced by her English servants when she has no Scots servants near her person?’