7 - The Church in Danger: Prosecuting the Memorial (1705) and the Rights of the Christian Church (1706)

Summary

In 1707 Abel Boyer (1667–1729) declared that in the last year the government had controlled licentious writers. Several authors had stretched too far ‘the Liberty of English Men and presumed too much on the mildness of Her Majesty's Government’. Consequently, the ministry had thought fit to give ‘a seasonable check to their licentious pens’. Boyer proceeded to give the reader eight examples of writers who had been arrested and taken before the courts. Despite Boyer's claim that the ministry had controlled the press, alert readers will have noticed a rather more subtle narrative might be deduced from his comments. In fact, almost all of the cases named by Boyer arose from one publication, the Memorial of the Church of England, first published in the wake of the general election on or around 9 July in 1705. The Memorial excoriated both the queen and the ministry for failing to protect the Church. Despite Anne's claim at the start of her reign to love the Church, it now sat at a low ebb. Occasional conformity continued unabated, toleration allowed Dissenters political rights and the ministry, with Godolphin as a lord treasurer and leader, showed no love or understanding of the Church. Nor was the situation calmed by the presence of Robert Harley. By now entirely responsible for the press, Harley had been ridiculed during the recent election for his commitment to moderation. That all of Boyer's cases arose from the Memorial should alert us to another problem. None of the prosecuted authors had been accused of crimes normally associated with a licentious press. There were no charges of blasphemy or heresy, nor a discussion of religious unorthodoxy. Instead, they had been arraigned for scurrilously reflecting on senior politicians and bishops; they had abused men in authority and written scandalous and seditious libels.

Abel Boyer was always likely to present the prosecutions arising from the Memorial as a success. He had tried to gain Robert Harley's patronage for some time and tended to support Harleyite positions of moderation.Yet, there is a very different story to be told in this chapter. Far from being a success, the mere publication of the Memorial indicated just how disillusioned High Church clerics and writers had become by church policies by 1705.