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Involving the Public: Parliament, Petitioning, and the Language of Interest, 1688–1720

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Philip Loft
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Abstract

This article examines the nature of petitioning to the Westminster Parliament from the beginnings of the “rage of party” to the establishment of the whig oligarchy. It uses the largely unused archive of the House of Lords, which survived the parliamentary fire in 1834, to provide systematic evidence of public subscription to petitions produced in response to legislation. A total of 330 “large responsive petitions,” signed by fifty-six thousand people, were presented to the Lords between 1688 and 1720. This enabled a wide range of social and geographical groups to lobby Parliament. Parliamentarians actively sought to direct the public into voicing opinion through petitioning on matters of policy. The intervention of the language of “interest” from the mid-seventeenth century helped to legitimize and control public involvement in politics in the eyes of elites, and offered an alternative to political mobilization based on party allegiances and conceptions of society organized by ranks or sorts. The participation of the public through a regulated process of petitioning ensured that the whig oligarchy was porous and open to negotiation, despite the passage of the Septennial Act and declining party and electoral strife after 1716.

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Articles
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2016 

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References

1 The petitions of the 1640s are explored in Antony Fletcher, The Outbreak of the English Civil War (London, 1981), 192, 195, 224. For an overview of petitioning in the eighteenth century, see Fraser, Peter, “Public Petitioning and Parliament Before 1832,” History 46, no. 158 (October 1961): 195–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joanna Innes, “Legislation and Public Participation,” in The British and Their Laws, ed. David Lemmings (Woodbridge, 2005), 102–32; Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain (Oxford, 2005), chap. 3.

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3 Scott Sowerby, Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2013), 145–52, 194–212.

4 This division follows that advanced in Innes, “Legislation and Public Participation,” 114–15.

5 For the role of petitions in relation to private bills, see Shelia Lambert, Bills and Acts: Legislative Procedure in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1971), chap. 5. I examine appeals to the House of Lords in “Peers, Parliament and Power under the Revolution Constitution, 1685–1720” (PhD diss., University College London, 2015), chaps. 1–2.

6 I focus on petitions with more than twenty signatures in order to make sense of the large number of petitions to Parliament and identify a separate “class” of legislative petitions. This is a means of filtering out petitions on less “general” issues and identifying those that drew in the public and reflected a degree of political organization by an interest group or a locality.

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16 Ashton Papers, River Weaver Navigation, British Library (hereafter BL) Add MSS 36914, fol. 84.

17 One notable exception is the dispute between the old and new East India companies, which did have a party-political dimension, but no large responsive petitions were presented to the Lords on this subject. For a discussion of the affair, see Horwitz, Henry, “The East India Trade, the Politicians, and the Constitution, 1689–1702,” Journal of British Studies 17, no. 2 (Spring 1978): 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation, 162.

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20 Septennial Act 1715, 1 Geo. I St 2, c. 38.

21 Hoppit and Innes, eds., Failed Legislation, 14–15.

22 Brewer, The Sinews of Power, 233; Commons Journal (hereafter CJ), xix, 245, 249–52, 273, 276–77, 283. Petitions on finance matters were presented to the Commons, reflecting the financial privileges of the lower house.

23 CJ, xii, 154, 423–24, 441, 465; Lords Journal (hereafter LJ), xvi, 380.

24 CJ, x, 103–4.

25 Weavers Court Minutes, CLC/L/WC/B/001/MS04655/011, fols. 245L, 290L, London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA).

26 Curriers Court Minutes, CLC/L/CK/B/002/MS06113/001, fols. 77, 83, LMA.

27 Court of Aldermen Minutes, 21 April 1707, COL/CA/02/02/9; Court of Aldermen Minutes, April 1717, COL/CA/02/02/12; Court of Common Council Minutes, January 1720, COL/CC/03/01/2, LMA.

28 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), Petition of Hackney Coachmen, December 1694, T 1/31/59.

29 Petition of the Landholders of Frome, 1710/11, PET/1/33, PA.

30 Petitions on the Act For Preserving and Encouraging the Woollen and Silk Manufactures of this Kingdom, 5–28 April 1720, HL/PO/JO/10/3/212/39-68, PA; CJ, xix, 180–391.

31 Jacob Price, “The Excise Affair Revisited,” in England's Rise to Greatness, ed. Stephen Baxter (Los Angeles, 1983), 257–322, at 293.

32 Schweitzer, David, “The Failure of William Pitt's Irish Propositions 1785,” Parliamentary History 3, no. 1 (December 1984): 129–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 132.

33 Kümin, Beat and Wügler, Andreas, “Petitions, Gravamina and the Early Modern State: Local Influence on Central Legislation in England and Germany (Hesse),” Parliaments, Estates and Representation 17, no. 1 (1997): 39–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 52; Fletcher, The Outbreak of the Civil War, 192, 195, 224.

34 Joanna Innes, “People and Power in British Politics to 1850,” in Re-Imagining Democracy in the Age of Revolutions: America, France, Britain, Ireland 1750–1850, ed. Joanna Innes and Mark Philp (Oxford, 2013), 129–46, at 140.

35 Curriers Court Minutes, CLC/L/CK/B/002/MS06113/001, 83, LMA; Curriers Annual Accounts, CLC/L/CK/D/001/MS14346/003, 159, LMA.

36 Rothstein, Natalie, “The Calico Campaign of 1719–1721,” East London Papers 7 (July 1964): 3–21Google Scholar, at 9.

37 Mayor of Folkestone to New Romney Borough, 26 March 1716, NR/AZ/79, fol. 1, Kent Archives (hereafter KA).

38 Mayor of Folkestone to New Romney Borough, 12 April 1716, NR/AZ/79, fol. 1, KA.

39 Corporations of Winchelsea, Rye and Hastings to New Romney Borough, 17–18 April 1716, NR/AZ/79, fol. 3, KA.

40 Northern Tanners to Tanners of Chester, 1712, ZG 21/8/25; Ralph Doll to Thomas Wilson, 4 April 1717, ZG 21/8/59, Cheshire Archives (hereafter CA).

41 William and Thomas Wilson to Edward Croughton, 13 March 1711, ZG 21/8/30, CA; Bristol Tanners to Chester Tanners, 18 March 1712, ZG 21/8/32, CA.

42 Moses Pitt, The Cry of the Oppressed … (London, 1691), v.

43 The term voterate refers to the number of electors actually voting, as only in a small number of constituencies is it possible to provide estimates of the electorate. Figures are from Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley, and David Hayton, eds., The House of Commons, 1690–1715, 5 vols. (Cambridge, 2002), vol. 2; Petitions on the Woollen Industry, 2–7 July 1714, HL/PO/JO/10/3/205/15–17; Kensington Road Act, 14 June–5 July 1717, HL/PO/JO/10/3/208/19–27, PA; River Weaver Navigation, 6 April–2 May 1720, HL/PO/JO/10/3/212/20–38, PA; River Wear Navigation, 18–20 May 1717, HL/PO/JO/10/6/271/4026, PA; HL/PO/JO/10/3/208/10–11, PA.

44 Petition of the Several of Inhabitants of Wales, 1 June 1689, HL/PO/JO/10/1/408/80, PA. Figures are from Cruickshanks, Handley, and Hayton, eds., The House of Commons, 2:781–822. Those areas signing the petition include Carmarthenshire, Denbighshire, Llandudno, Montgomeryshire, and Pembroke.

45 Caroline Skeel, The Council in the Marches of Wales: A Study of Local Government During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1904), 167–68; TNA, State Papers, 29/27–39/84–131, Petitions on the Council of the Marches, 10 July 1661.

46 Quotes from Committee Book, 11 and 13 June 1689, HL/PO/CO/1/5, PA. Remaining Welsh civil litigation came under the jurisdiction of Westminster King's Bench in the 1770s. See Thomas Watkin, The Legal History of Wales (Chippenham, 2007), 156–57.

47 Knights, “London's ‘Monster’ Petition of 1680,” 39. The abolition of the council was also initially opposed by William III. See Life and Works of Sir George Savile, First Marquis of Halifax, ed. Helen Charlotte Foxcroft, 2 vols. (London, 1898), 2:210.

48 Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Relation of State Affairs, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1857), 1:518; Daily Courant, 22 September 1713.

49 Bowie, “Scottish Public Opinion,” 2:187–90, 207.

50 Correspondence of Reverend Robert Wodrow, ed. Thomas McCrie, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1842), 1:30–31.

51 The records of the convention are found in James Marwick, ed., Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland, 7 vols. (Edinburgh, 1870–1918).

52 Bob Harris, “The Scots, the Westminster Parliament, and the British State in the Eighteenth Century,” in Parliaments, Nations and Identities in Britain and Ireland, 1660–1850, ed. Julian Hoppit (Manchester, 2003), 124–45, at 128; idem, “Parliamentary Legislation, Lobbying, and the Press in Eighteenth-Century Scotland,” Parliamentary History 26, no. 1 (February 2007): 76–95Google Scholar.

53 CJ, xix, 180–391. As these were presented to the Commons, they have not survived.

54 Harris, “Parliamentary Legislation, Lobbying, and the Press,” 77.

55 John Hatsell, Precedents of Proceedings in the House of Commons, 4 vols. (London, 1818), 2:180–82. Peter Thomas explores the rare employment of prohibitions against strangers accessing the chambers of Parliament during the mid-eighteenth century in The House of Commons in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1971), chap. 8. For a similar exploration in the mid-seventeenth century, see Jason Peacey and Chris Kyle, “Under Cover of So Much Coming and Going: Public Access to Parliament and the Political Process in Early Modern England,” in Parliament at Work: Parliamentary Committees, Political Power, and Public Access in Early Modern England, ed. Jason Peacey and Chris Kyle (London, 2002), 1–24.

56 Jason Peacey, Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2013), 394–413.

57 Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation, 126–27; Paul Seaward, The Cavalier Parliament and Reconstruction of the Old Regime, 1661–1667 (Cambridge, 1989), 72–73; Jonathan Scott, England's Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge, 2000), 408–9.

58 Manuscript Minutes, 18 April 1695 (deleted entry), HL/PO/JO/5/1/30, PA. Violence and intimidation were occasional features of electoral contests. See William Speck, Tory and Whig: The Struggle in the Constituencies (London, 1970), 27–31, and the constituency profiles in Cruickshanks, Handley, and Hayton, eds., The House of Commons, vol. 2.

59 Count de Mayole, A Collection of State Tracts, Published on Occasion of the late Revolution in 1688, 3 vols. (London, 1705), 1:105. The petition is discussed further in Schwoerer, Lois, “Press and Parliament in the Revolution of 1689,” Historical Journal 20, no. 3 (September 1977): 545–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 552.

60 John Reresby, The Memoirs of the Honourable Sir John Reresby (London, 1734), 310.

61 Historical Manuscript Commission, Manuscripts of Lord Kenyon Fourteenth Report (London, 1894), 216.

62 Mark Goldie et al., eds., The Entring Book of Roger Morrice, 6 vols. (Woodbridge, 2007), 4:514.

63 LJ, xiv, 311.

64 Petition of Bailiffs, Wardens, and Assistants of Weavers of London and Canterbury, 14 August 1689, HL/PO/JO/10/1/413/140, PA.

65 Luttrell, Brief Relation, 1:568–69.

66 Hayton, David, “Accounts of Debates in the House of Commons, March–April 1731, Supplementary to the Diary of the First Earl of Egmont,” Electronic British Library Journal (February 2013): 1–40Google Scholar, at 37.

67 Anchitell Grey, ed., Debates of the House of Commons, From the Year 1667 to the Year 1694, 10 vols. (London 1769), 9:513.

68 CJ, xi, 667–68, 682–84.

69 The 1817 Act banned meetings of more than fifty people “for the purpose or on the pretext of considering … or preparing any petition” near Westminster Hall when Parliament or the courts were sitting. See 57 Geo. III c. 19 Clause XXIII. The Seditious Meetings Act of 1795 had not been so restrictive in terms of prohibiting meetings in Westminster. Richard Price, British Society 1680–1880: Dynamism, Containment, and Change (Cambridge, 1999), chap. 7, argues that the participatory nature of political culture and governing was a constant feature of the period from 1680 to the 1880s. France also saw a decline from “deliberative” to “demonstrative” political rallies during the nineteenth century; see Paula Cossart, From Deliberation to Demonstration: Political Rallies in France, 1868–1939 (Colchester, 2013).

70 Lambert, Bills and Acts, 168.

71 The Methods Proposed for making the River Dunn Navigable And The Objections To it Answered. With an Account of the Petitioner's Behaviour To The Land Owners (London, 1723), 6; Thomas Willan, The Early History of the Don Navigation (Manchester, 1965), 46.

72 CJ, ix, 719; Hirst, Derek, “Making Contact: Petitions and the English Republic,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 1 (January 2006): 26–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 40n63; LJ, xvii, 20; Lambert, Bills and Acts, 13.

73 LJ, xiii, 268–68.

74 Cook, Harold, “The Rose Case Reconsidered: Physicians, Apothecaries and the Law in Augustan England,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 45, no. 4 (October 1990): 527–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 545. Curriers Court Minutes, CLC/L/CK/B/002/MS06113/001, 206R, LMA.

75 CJ, ix, 29; Martin Dzelzanis and Annabel Patterson, eds., The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell, 2 vols. (New Haven, 2003), 2:51; Caroline Robbins, ed., The Diary of John Milward (Cambridge, 1938), 152.

76 Hayton, “Accounts of Debates,” 29; Historical Manuscript Commission, Manuscripts of the Earl Cowper, 3 vols. (London, 1888), 2:385.

77 CJ, xii, 83. Warnings would also be provided on specific bills.

78 LJ, xi, 362.

79 CJ, i, 419.

80 Manuscript Minutes, 3 June 1689, HL/PO/JO/5/1/24, PA.

81 Hatsell, Precedents, 3:234–35; William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, 36 vols. (London, 1806–1820), 5:445.

82 The Petition of the London-Clergy to the House of Lords against the Quakers Bill (London, 1721), 2.

83 A Complete History of the Late Septennial Parliament (London, 1722), 12, 65. For the use of print as a means of “escalating” lobbying and political campaigns to maintain pressure on Parliament in such circumstances, see Peacey, Print and Public Politics, 353, 360.

84 Willan, Don Navigation, 145.

85 Petition of Mayor, Corporation, Gentlemen, Traders, and Inhabitants of Tiverton, 2 March 1698, HL/PO/JO/10/3/189/2c, PA; Cruickshanks, Handley, and Hayton, eds., The House of Commons, 2:155.

86 The Historical Register, Containing an Impartial Relation Of All Transactions, Foreign and Domestic, 23 vols. (London, 1722), 7:32–33.

87 Plumb, Growth of Political Stability, argued the whig oligarchy was created through the single party government, the growth of the executive and its control over Parliament, and greater stability for landed families through stricter estate settlements.

88 George MacKenzie, A Friendly Return, to a Letter (Edinburgh, 1706), 29.

89 Bowie, “Scottish Public Opinion,” 2:236.

90 Ibid., 238.

91 A Calendar to the Records of the Borough of Doncaster, 4 vols. (Doncaster, 1899–1902), 4:189; Willan, River Navigation in England 1600–1750 (Oxford, 1936), 33.

92 The Clothiers Complaint: or, Reasons For Passing the Bill Against the Blackwell-Hall Factors and Showing it to be a Public Good (London, 1692), 23.

93 Petition of Persons Residing and Dwelling in Southwark, 15 January 1694, and Petition of Inhabitants of Southwark, 22 January 1694, HL/PO/JO/10/1/460/771b and d, PA; Manuscript Minutes, 22 January 1693, HL/PO/JO/5/1/29, PA.

94 Brewer, The Sinews of Power, 232.

95 Daniel Defoe, A Brief State of the Question Between the Printed and Painted Calicoes And The Woollen and Silk Manufacture … (London, 1719), 38.

96 LJ, xxi, 622.

97 This figure excludes the 1689 Welsh petition.

98 Life and Works of Sir George Savile, 2:470.

99 On interest see John Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1969); Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments For Capitalism Before Its Triumph (Princeton, 1977); Mark Knights, “Judging Partisan News and the Language of Interest,” in Fear, Exclusion, and Revolution: Roger Morrice and Britain in the 1680s, ed. Jason McElligott (London, 2006), 204–20; Langford, Public Life, 176–86; Steven Pincus, “From Holy Cause to Economic Interest: The Transformation of Reason of State Thinking in Seventeenth-Century England,” in A Nation Transformed: England After the Restoration, ed. Alan Houston and Steven Pincus (Cambridge, 2001), 272–98.

100 Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest, 316.

101 John Humfrey, The Obligation of Human Laws Discussed (London, 1671), 111–12.

102 John Owen, Truth and Innocence Vindicated In A Survey Of A Discourse Concerning Ecclesiastical Polity (London, 1669), 77, 297–98; Pincus, Steven, “Neither Machiavellian Moment Nor Possessive Individualism: Commercial Society and the Defenders of the English Commonwealth,” American Historical Review 103, no. 3 (June 1998): 705–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 730.

103 Historical Manuscript Commission, Manuscripts of the Earl Cowper (London, 1888), 2:383.

104 Daniel Defoe, The Just Complaint of the Poor Weavers (London, 1719), 7.

105 John Humfrey , A Defence Of The Proposition (London, 1668), 99–100; Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest, 173; Thomas Burnett, An Essay Upon Government (London, 1716), 43.

106 Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest, 173.

107 Gentleman's Magazine 3 (1733), 465.

108 Craftsman 11 (1737), 262.

109 Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation, 332–33.

110 An Impartial Account, of the Nature and Tendency of the Late Addresses in a Letter to a Gentleman in the Country (London, 1681), 1.

111 Cobbet, Parliamentary History, 10:572.

112 The Right Of British Subjects To Petition and Apply to their Representatives, Asserted And Vindicated (London, 1734), xi.

113 Daniel Defoe, Two Great Questions Considered: I. What is the Obligation of Parliaments to the Addresses or Petitions of the People … (Edinburgh, 1707), 16.

114 Reasons for Making the River Weaver Navigable, c.1720, BL Add MSS 36914, fol. 117, Sheet 2; Weekly Journal, 10 October 1718.

115 Committee Book, 13 January 1694, HL/PO/CO/1/5, PA.

116 Speech of James Milner, 28 May 1713, HL/PO/JO/10/6/235, PA; Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation, 353–54.

117 The Right Of British Subjects, xxv.

118 Daniel Defoe, A Review Of The Affairs Of France: With some Observations on Transactions at Home, 9 vols. (London, 1705), 2:254.

119 Committee Book, 21 March 1694, HL/PO/CO/1/5, PA. For recent work on the role of political arithmetic in Parliament, see William Deringer, “Calculated Values: The Politics and Epistemology of Economic Numbers in Britain, 1688–1738” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2012), chap. 3; Gauci, Perry, “The Clash of Interests: Commerce and the Politics of Trade in the Age of Anne,” Parliamentary History 28, no. 1 (February 2009): 115–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 124; Loft, Philip, “Political Arithmetic and the English Land Tax in the Reign of William III,” Historical Journal 56, no. 2 (June 2013): 321–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

120 McElligott, ed., Fear, Exclusion, and Revolution, 209.

121 Reasons humbly offered by the Poor Journey-men Shoemakers … For preventing… the Act For Transportation of Leather (London, 1685); Manuscript Minutes, 30 March 1698, HL/PO/JO/5/1/33, PA.

122 Reasons Against the Bill For making the Rivers Ayre and Calder in the West Riding of Yorkshire Navigable (London, 1699); see also Making the River Dunn Navigable, 3.

123 For an analogy with regard to “local xenophobia” see Snell, Keith, “The Culture of Local Xenophobia,” Social History 28, no. 1 (January 2003): 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

124 Robert Hainsworth, ed., The Correspondence of Sir John Lowther of Whitehaven 1693–1698 (Oxford, 1983), 237, 245.

125 Mayor and Aldermen of Liverpool to the Mayor of Chester, 14 October 1699, ZM/L/4/556, CA.

126 Willan, The Navigation of the River Weaver in the Eighteenth Century (Manchester, 1951), 2, 9, 12, 15, 17.

127 Handley, “Provincial Influence,” 172.

128 A Dialogue Between Dick Branzenface the Card Maker And Tim Meanwell the Clothier (London, 1711), 6.

129 Peter Shakerly to George Kenyon, 20 January 1713, DDKE/acc. 7840 HMC/1141, Lancashire Archives.

130 John Lowther to William Gilpin, 5 January 1705, D/Lons/W2/1/39/6a, fol. 1, Cumberland Archives.

131 Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation, 219, 360–74.

132 Defoe, Just Complaint, 40–41.

133 “Declaration and ordinance Against tumultuous Assemblies, under Pretence of preparing Petitions,” in Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, ed. Charles Firth and Robert Rait, 3 vols. (London, 1911), 1:1139.

134 Langford, Public Life, chap. 3.

135 Innes, Joanna, “Local Acts of National Parliament: Parliament's Role in Sanctioning Local Action in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Parliamentary History 17, no. 1 (February 1998): 23–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 31, 33, 39, 42, 44.

136 Zaret, David, “Petitions and the ‘Invention’ of Public Opinion in the English Revolution,” American Journal of Sociology 101, no. 6 (May 1996): 1538–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

137 Fraser, Nancy, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text no. 25/26 (1990): 56–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 74–75.