Introduction

Summary

Charles Whitworth had been busy throughout the summer of 1719. As minister plenipotentiary to Berlin, he had been involved in protracted negotiations with Frederick William I, the Prussian monarch. Whitworth had returned to Hanover several times to consult his master, George I, who was visiting his electoral domains. Early in August, Whitworth informed James Craggs, one of the secretaries of state, of the conclusion of a Prussian alliance, remarking that ‘the King of Prussia by a little good management and complaisance may be secured in measures more suitable to the state of Religion, and the common tranquillity of Europe’. Six weeks later, writing to undersecretary Delafaye, Whitworth commented ‘the good dispositions get ground here every day, and I hope the poor Protestants in Germany will soon feel the effects of our Reunion’.

In September 1719 Abel Boyer, a Huguenot exile and journalist, noted in his periodical The Political State of Great Britain that ‘the Popish Zealots were busy and industrious in several parts of Germany in raising a Persecution against the Reformed Protestants’. Boyer's account was based on two letters. The first described the fate of the reformed of Frankfurt am Main. The second concerned the reformed of the village of Freimersheim in the bishopric of Speyer.

These two contrasting perspectives not only show that both diplomats and journalists were concerned about the persecution of protestants in the Holy Roman Empire in 1719. They also aptly illustrate the purpose of this study. Such figures as Charles Whitworth and Abel Boyer have rarely been considered together. Indeed, for some, diplomatic history has little to learn from the latter and everything to learn from the former. For historians of periodicals and popular politics, by contrast, the opinions of such an ‘establishment’ figure as Charles Whitworth have little to do with their non-elite narratives. Yet considering religious concerns, common currency in eighteenth-century debate at both an elite and popular level, indicates how the accounts of Whitworth and Boyer interact in ways that have been previously ignored.

Much valuable work has appeared on the history of British diplomacy in the eighteenth century. The present work's aim is different.