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The Political Culture and Political Rhetoric of County Feasts and Feast Sermons, 1654–1714

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Newton E. Key
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Extract

In December 1655, four stewards for the Worcestershire feast wrote to the eminent divine Richard Baxter regarding possible worthy charities for money collected at their recent London feast. Baxter, elated by their offer, suggested that they set up a public lecture in a dark corner of their native county. He later recalled how well the charitable concerns of this first Worcestershire feast tied in with his concurrent actions to establish a clerical association in the county. Almost thirty years later, in 1682, Roger L'Estrange noted the same phenomenon of annual county feasts in London. Like Baxter, L'Estrange defended what he termed the “innocent county feasts,” and his Observator advertised both tickets and published sermons for more than a dozen county or city feasts during its brief run between 1681 and 1687. Such common cause between Baxter and L'Estrange is remarkable. Moreover, the “innocent” county feasts, which flourished for fifty years from the late 1650s, were often controversial and were the setting for feast sermons which often heaped vitriol on “parties,” whether religious or political. This article examines the rise of the county feasts in the 1650s and their peak in the 1680s in order to assess their significance in the development of late Stuart society, culture, and politics.

The county feast was in fact an urban phenomenon: natives of a county met annually, usually in London, for a sermon, dinner, and a subscription to a charity. The phenomenon has long been noted, though rarely analyzed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , July 1994 , pp. 223 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1994

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References

1 Keeble, N. H. and Nuttall, Geoffrey F., Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter, vol. 1, 1638–1660 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 193–94Google Scholar. See also ibid., pp. 196, 202, 206–7; and Nuttall, Geoffrey F., Richard Baxter (1965), p. 71Google Scholar. Baxter's comments are reprinted from Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696); for the connection between the London feast and the associated ministers, see pt. 1, pp. 90–96. Publication is at London unless otherwise noted throughout.

2 Observator, no. 129 (April 27, 1682), and subsequent issues.

3 Baxter and L'Estrange “had nothing in common”: Powicke, Frederick J., The Reverend Richard Baxter under the Cross (1662–1691) (1927), p. 136Google Scholar. L'Estrange attacked Baxter, in The casuist uncas'd (1681)Google Scholar and The relaps'd apostate (1661; 2d ed., 1681)Google Scholar.

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7 This neologism has some precedent: ibid., p. 228, discusses “proto-Whigs” and “proto-Tories” in the 1670s and 1680s.

8 Scott, Jonathan, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 1677–1683 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, criticizing Jones, J. R., The First Whigs: The Politics of the Exclusion Crisis, 1678–1683 (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar.

9 To be fair, Jones, Kishlansky, and others focus on Parliament to describe an age in which sessions and elections were brief and irregular.

10 Barry, Jonathan, “Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century Bristol,” in Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Reay, Barry (1985), p. 73Google Scholar, claims four annual feasts—one each for natives of Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset, and Wiltshire—were begun in Bristol in 1658. Barry, , “The Press,” p. 54Google Scholar, suggests that the Gloucestershire Society at Bristol was founded in 1654, “possibly by Royalists,” though the Gloucester Library catalog claims it began in 1657. I have counted only the Gloucestershire feasts, 1657–63, and those for Bristol, in 1685 and 1691.

11 Letsome, Sampson, The Preacher's Assistant, In Two Parts. Part I. A series of the Texts Of all the Sermons … published Since the Restoration (1753)Google Scholar. Of the sixty-six printed feast sermons noted, fourteen are published before 1660 (and thus are not in Letsome) and only two are post-1660 and not listed in Letsome. Of the fifty sermons listed in Letsome, five are not labeled “county feast,” though two are parish feasts and another a city feast (labeled “May 29” and “city feast,” respectively). The other two are labeled “May 29” and “mutual love.” Full references are given only to sermons cited.

12 See O'Malley, Thomas, “Religion and the Newspaper Press, 1660–1685: A Study of the London Gazette,” in The Press in English Society from the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Harris, Michael and Lee, Alan (1986), pp. 25–46Google Scholar, and sources cited there. I have sampled other post-Revolution newspapers (Post Boy, 1695–1701; Post Man, 1695–1701; Flying Post, various issues, 1696; Daily Courant, 1702–4, 1706, 1708, 1710, 1712–13) to make sure advertisements were not migrating elsewhere.

13 Ninety-three feasts were advertised in the Gazette, while twenty-three were advertised only in other newspapers. Of the latter, ten were either before 1665, or feasts solely for London natives.

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15 Mason, Wilmer G., “The Annual Output of Wing-Listed Titles, 1649–1684,” in Library, 5th ser., 29 (1974): 219–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, calculates that the most titles printed in any one year was in 1680.

16 Sermons are by date of feast, not by publication date. The only discrepancy of more than two years between feast and sermon date is for three Staffordshire feast sermons preached between 1658 and 1663, first published in The Collected Works of John Lightfoot (1684).

17 That is, the average number of feast sermons drops from over two every year in the 1680s to about one in the 1690s to one every three years under the first Hanoverians (or one county feast sermon every nine years).

18 Langford (n. 4 above), p. 384, implies, on the basis of few references, that many feasts were revived after 1688 and that, through the eighteenth century, “it was common for county societies to meet and dine in the capital.” If they were common, few public records of the feasts exist, compared with the 1650s, 1680s, or 1690s.

19 Clarke, Samuel, Christian Good-Fellowship … in a Sermon preached … before the Gentlemen, Natives of Warwickshire … November the 30. 1654 (1655), p. 1Google Scholar.

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22 Hirst, Derek, Authority and Conflict: England, 1603–1658 (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), pp. 323–24Google Scholar; Nuttall (n. 1 above), pp. 70–74.

23 James, dedication.

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26 London Gazette, no. 1525 (June 28–July 1, 1680).

27 Were stewards selected or simply acclaimed at the feast? From 1699 several counties began advertising that stewards had already been “provided for the year ensuing.” But this late innovation suggests attendance was declining (London Gazette, nos. 3541 [October 16–19], 3546 [November 2–6], 3658 [November 28–December 2, 1700]). Perhaps in the same vein, the Kent Society advertised from 1697 onward that “no gentlemen residing in the county to be chosen stewards except they desire it” (ibid., nos. 3335 [November 1–4], 3438 [October 20–24, 1698], 3647 [October 21–24, 1700]). And when the Dorset feast was revived in 1706, each steward “engaged a Friend to serve” for the coming year (Daily Courant, no. 1439 [November 23, 1706]).

28 Pearce, Ernest Harold, The Sons of the Clergy (1928), pp. 288–89Google Scholar; Raikes, G. A., The History of the Honourable Artillery Company, 2 vols. (1878), 1:188–209Google Scholar.

29 [Phillips, John], Speculum Crape-Gownorum (1682), p. 6Google Scholar, and Speculum Crape-Gownorum, The Second Part (1682), p. 3Google Scholar.

30 Merchant-Tailors' was the site for 54 percent of the feasts at named London sites. Other feast sites included Stationers' (13; 15 percent), Mercers' (8; 9 percent), and Haberdashers' (6). Stationers' Company accounts for the 1680s include records of money received for letting out their hall to county feasts (Husk [n. 4 above], pp. 18–19).

31 Wheatley, Henry B., London Past and Present, 3 vols. (1891), 2:522–24Google Scholar; Pearce, p. 222; Raikes, 1:190–209.

32 Mannyngham, Tho., A Sermon Preached at the Hampshire-Feast … Feb. 16. 1685/6 (1686)Google Scholar, dedication; Assheton, William, A Sermon Preached … November the 21th, 1700 (1700), pp. 17–18Google Scholar; Willis, Thomas, The Excellency of Wisdom … In a Sermon Preached … Nov. 30. 1675 (1676), p. 32Google Scholar. One preacher claimed that their green boughs symbolized their forefathers' tactical disguise, when unity had gained victory. “Had they then divided into Parties and Factions, the Composition of Swanscomb had never found a place in our Annals, nor the Memorial of that moving Wood added to this Day's Pomp” (Stanhope, George, Christian Charity. A Sermon Preached before the Honourable Society Of the Natives of the County of Kent …. [1701], p. 25Google Scholar).

33 Song at the Loyal Feast in Westminster-Hall, August the 6th. 1685 (1685), broadside; Day, Cyrus Lawrence, ed., The Songs of Thomas D'Urfey (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), p. 33Google Scholar. Robert Bucholz kindly provided a recording of the Yorkshire Feast Song.

34 Oxfordshire feasters in Oxford were feted by singers and violinists in 1693. See Clark, Andrew, ed., The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, antiquary, of Oxford, 1632–1695, described by Himself (Oxford, 1891–1894), 3:433Google Scholar.

35 Ibid., 2:154; noted in Heal, , Hospitality (n. 4 above), pp. 350–51Google Scholar.

36 Hardy (n. 21 above), dedication.

37 Pratt, Samuel, Peace and Gratitude. A Sermon Preached before … the Natives of the County of Kent, Novemb. 23. 1697 (1697)Google Scholar, dedication; Portus (n. 4 above), p. 169; Daily Courant, no. 2017 (August 5, 1708).

38 Aylmer, G. E., The State's Servants: The Civil Service of the English Republic, 1649–1660 (1973), pp. 182–83Google Scholar. Percentages of geographical origins of Interregnum officials computed from Aylmer's sample (officials from outside England and Wales are deleted).

39 For figures and for counties grouped in each region, see Smith, Steven R., “The Social and Geographical Origins of the London Apprentices, 1630–1660,” Guildhall Miscellany 4, no. 4 (April 1973): 206Google Scholar.

40 Between 1654 and 1714, twenty-four English counties held one or more feasts, while fifteen held no feast. For the geographical distribution of London apprentices and merchants, see Jordan, W. K., The Charities of London, 1480–1600 (1960; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1974), p. 430Google Scholar; Clark (n. 4 above), p. 270; Kitch, M. J., “Capital and Kingdom: Migration to Later Stuart London,” in London, 1500–1700: The Making of the Metropolis, ed. Beier, A. L. and Finlay, Roger (1986), pp. 224–510Google Scholar.

41 For later resonance from the pulpit of Cavalier memories, see Kenyon, J. P., Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party, 1689–1720 (Cambridge, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 6.

42 James, , The Best Fee-Simple (n. 21 above), p. 36Google Scholar.

43 Fox, Fra., A Sermon Preached at the Herefordshire Feast, at St. Mary Le Bow, July 3 1683 (1683), p. 24Google Scholar. The “false-hearted English-men” included Herefordshire squire and Whig M.P. Colonel John Birch. Fox excused his own violent language and censure as being “pardonable from the son of That Father who was stript and plunder'd by a Band of Army-Saints” (ibid., sig. A4). No Fox is mentioned, however, in Matthews, A. G., Walker Revised (Oxford, 1948)Google Scholar.

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45 Hirst, Derek, “The Politics of Literature in the English Republic,” Seventeenth Century 5, no. 2 (Autumn 1990)Google Scholar: 84n, notes that the Gloucestershire Society of Bristol was “by no means the preserve of intransigent cavaliers,” in contrast to Barry, “The Press” (n. 4 above), p. 56.

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47 See Matthews, Walker Revised for the sequestered ministers—Craven, Isaac, Fowler, Matthew, Gardiner, Richard, Pierce, Thomas—and Calamy Revised (Oxford, 1934)Google Scholar for the Noncomformists—Samuel Annesley, Edmund Calamy, Samuel Clarke, Edward Fowler. Indicative of the confusing groupings in the 1650s is Ralph Robinson, who spoke before the Cheshire gentlemen in 1654, a year before his death. Receiving Presbyterian ordination, this Puritan divine was arrested in connection with an ex-Cavalier conspiracy in 1651 (Dictionary of National Biography).

48 But, while only three (Thomas Cartwright, George Hickes, and Thomas Wagstaffe) became nonjurors, they were outspoken concerning the politics of religion after the Revolution (Overton, J. H., The Nonjurors [New York, 1903]Google Scholar).

49 A rough measure of their fame is that over half (thirty-five out of sixty-two) of the feast sermon preachers are listed in the Dictionary of National Biography. About one-third (eleven out of thirty-eight) of the sermons before the Sons of the Clergy, 1676–1714, were preached by ministers who also preached a county feast sermon. See Cox (n. 20 above), pp. 179–80.

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51 Husk (n. 4 above), pp. 14–38.

52 These figures are based on stewards for whom we have more than just a last name, as compared with Woodhead, J. P., The Rules of London, 1660–1689 (1965)Google Scholar. The larger number represents those aldermen whose name and age (between age eighteen and year of death at the time of feast) correlate with stewards. The smaller figure represents aldermen definitively identified by name, age, and county of birth or estate correlating with stewards.

53 Loyal Protestant and True Domestick Intelligence, no. 232 (November 11).

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56 Hardy (n. 21 above), pp. 29–30; Samuel Clarke (n. 19 above), dedication; Gardiner, Rich., “A Sermon Preached … June 24. 1658,” attached to his XVI Sermons Preached in the University of Oxford and at Court (1659), p. 278Google Scholar.

57 London Gazette, no. 4141 (July 6–9, 1705).

58 James, The Best Fee-Simple (n. 21 above), dedication.

59 Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, ed. Browning, Andrew (Glasgow, 1936), p. 411Google Scholar; The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1605–1675, ed. Spalding, Ruth, Records of Social and Economic History, n.s., 13 (New York, 1990), p. 482Google Scholar. There is no evidence that a Yorkshire feast was held in 1687.

60 Mercurius Politicus, no. 420 (June 10–17, 1658).

61 Heal, , Hospitality (n. 4 above), p. 350Google Scholar.

62 London Gazette, no. 3350 (December 16–19, 1697). The Kent society had its own printer and was exceptionally well organized.

63 Sharpe, J. A., Early Modern England: A Social History, 1550–1760 (1987), p. 86Google Scholar. The 1686 Westminster feast for “loyal nobility and gentry” must have been a glittering affair; the date was changed from August to October so that several courtiers who were also stewards could attend James II's progress (Observator, vol. 3, no. 203 [August 25, 1686]Google Scholar).

64 Sharpe, p. 87.

65 Full discussion of the social structure of the feasters awaits further research into the status of the stewards. All county feasters had in some way entered the confusing world of London, a highly socially and geographically mobile populace. The above discussion is indebted to the following studies of social structure in early modern England: Smith (n. 39 above), pp. 195–202; Wrightson, Keith, English Society, 1580–1680 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1982), pp. 27–29Google Scholar, and “Estates, Degrees, and Sorts: Changing Perceptions of Society in Tudor and Stuart England,” in Language, History and Class, ed. Penelope J. Corfleld (Oxford, 1991), pp. 32–50Google Scholar; Clark, Peter and Slack, Paul, English Towns in Transition, 1500–1700 (1976), pp. 119–20Google Scholar.

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68 James, , The Best Fee-Simple (n. 21 above), pp. 34–35Google Scholar, and The Everlasting Covenant (n. 25 above), pp. 19–21; Samuel Clarke (n. 19 above), p. 12.

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76 Observator, no. 146 (May 31, 1682).

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81 Littleton (n. 21 above), p. 33.

82 London Gazette, no. 1868 (October 11–15); Clark, ed. (n. 34 above), 2:154, 193, 201, 229. Forty-nine specific charitable appeals are made in twenty-six sermons. Twenty-fivesermon appeals were for educational or other charities for the youth: schools, scholarships, apprenticeships (fifteen), the relief of poor children.

83 Calamy, p. 44; London Gazette, no. 3841 (August 31–September 3, 1702).

84 Basset, William, A Sermon at the Warwick-shire Meeting, November 25, 1679 (1679)Google Scholar, dedication. For the “modest” charity given by individual London merchants to “apprenticeship foundations” in an earlier age, see Jordan (n. 40 above), pp. 166–72.

85 Harris, Tim, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 17–18Google Scholar passim.

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92 William Clarke, p. 38; King, James, The Good Samaritan Exemplify'd in the Charitable Christian. A Sermon Preach'd … December the 1st, 1707. Being the Anniversary Meeting of the Natives of the County of Southampton (1708), pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

93 Bolton (n. 25 above), p. 20; Horton (n. 21 above), p. 57. This “fundamental problem” of English charity is discussed in Heal, , Hospitality (n. 4 above), pp. 12–16Google Scholar.

94 Lindesay, Tho., A Sermon Preached at the Anniversary Meeting of the Dorsetshire Gentlemen … Dec. 1. 1691 (1692), p. 35Google Scholar; Basset (n. 84 above), p. 23; King, pp. 5–6.

95 Annesley (n. 24 above), p. 16.

96 Pierce, p. 8; Walls, George, A Sermon Preached to the Natives of the City and County of Worcester … June 28, 1681 (1681), pp. 29–30Google Scholar.

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98 Tillotson, p. 23; Boraston, George, The Royal Law: Or, The Golden Rule of Justice and Charity. A Sermon … Nov. 29. 1683 (1684), p. 14Google Scholar.

99 Williams (n. 89 above), p. 25; Mannyngham (n. 32 above), p. 7; Boraston, p. 21.

100 Cartwright, Tho., A Sermon Preached to the Gentlemen of Yorkshire … The 24th of June, 1684 (1684), pp. 26–27, 36–37Google Scholar.

101 The History of the Association (1682), passim.

102 Haley, K. H. D., The First Earl of Shaftesbury (Oxford, 1968), pp. 432–33Google Scholar.

103 London Gazette, nos. 1712, 1714, 1718, etc., esp. 1736 (July 6–10, 1682)Google Scholar. The association was castigated or ridiculed in broadsides (The Norwich Loyal Litany [1682]), sermons (Thompson, Ric., A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church of Bristol, June XXI [1685], p. 21Google Scholar), and plays (Behn, A., The City Heiress; or, Sir Timothy Treat-all [1682], p. 2Google Scholar3). Scott (n. 8 above), pp. 18–19, recognizes the debate over associating but views it as so much “Elizabethan nostalgia,” rather than a recognition of a dangerously new form of politicking.

104 Remarques upon the New Project of Association: In a Letter to a Friend (Edinburgh, 1681; London, 1682)Google Scholar, passim; Haley, pp. 656, 687; Observator, nos. 78–79, 88, 94 (December 7, 1681–January 28, 1682).

105 Library of Congress, MS 18124, vol. 8, fols. 27, 34–38, 44 (March 9, 1682–April 18, 1682); Folger Library, MS L.C.1196 (March 21, 1682).

106 Harris (n. 85 above), p. 177.

107 Loyal Protestant and True Domestick Intelligence, no. 7 (November 7, 1681), no. 123 (March 2, 1682).

108 Folger Library, MSS L.C.1205 (April 13, 1682) and L.C.1209 (April 22, 1682); Hatton Corrrespondence, ed. Thompson, Edward Maunde, 2 vols., Camden Society, n.s., 22–23 (1878), 1:197–98Google Scholar; Impartial Protestant Mercury, no. 105 (April 21–25, 1682); Protestant Courant, no. 1 (April 24, 1682); Luttrell, Narcissus, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714 (1857; reprint, Farnborough, 1969), 1:179–80Google Scholar; Harris, pp. 176–78.

109 Durfey, Tom, “The Whig Feast,” in Poems on Affairs of State, vol. 3, 1682–1685, ed. Schless, Howard H. (New Haven, Conn., 1968), p. 181Google Scholar; Loyal Protestant and True Domestick Intelligence, no. 145 (April 22, 1682).

110 Library of Congress, MS 18124, vol. 8, fols. 46–47 (April 22, 1682); Heraclitus Ridens, nos. 65–66 (April 25–May 2, 1682).

111 The Loyal Feast (1682), broadside.

112 The History of the Association (n. 101 above), p. 23; “A Congratulatory Poem on the Whigs' Entertainment,” in Schless, , ed., 3:178Google Scholar; Luttrell, 1:212, 234.

113 Impartial Protestant Mercury, no. 104 (April 18–21, 1682).

114 And in 1684, Bolton scoffed at “the idle clamours of those [“the Dissenters themselves”] who oppose such Meetings of Love” (Bolton [n. 25 above], p. 22).

115 Observator, vol. 2, no. 84 (June 21, 1684), and vol. 3, no. 203 (August 25, 1686)Google Scholar; Folger Library, MS L.C.1544; Song at the Loyal Feast (n. 33 above).

116 Sermons for gentlemen educated at various schools discussed such uncontroversial subjects as the “Benefits of a Regular Education.” See Post Boy, nos. 752 (February 1–3, 1700), 762 (February 21–27, 1700)Google Scholar; Payne, William, Learning and Knowledge Recommended (1682)Google Scholar. Observator, vol. 2, no. 213 (February 5, 1685)Google Scholar, did note one attempt to establish an annual feast for “All Loyal Gentlemen heretofore Schollars of the Biggins School in Hitchin,” in 1685 (my emphasis).

117 Folger Library, MS L.C.1240.

118 Fox (n. 43 above), sig. A4.

119 A Rejoynder To the Whiggish Poem Upon the Tory-Prentices-Feast at Merchant-Taylors Hall (1682), broadside.

120 One anonymous Whig lumped “city feasts” with Tory polemical plays (The Tory-Poets: A Satyr [1682], p. 8Google Scholar). Besides L'Estrange's defense of county feasts, arch-Tory Nathaniel Thompson published the only newspaper account of a county feast, in London in November 1682 (Loyal Protestant and True Domestic Intelligence, no. 232 [November 11]). County feasts appear to have resumed their association with the Tories after the Revolution. In the first three years of publication of the Whig Post Man and the Tory Post Boy, 1695–97, the Post Man carried no notices of county feasts, whereas the Post Boy noted the publication of the Warwickshire feast sermon in 1695, and, in 1696, the Wiltshire stewards thought it worthwhile to advertise in the Tory paper for the return of lost tickets to their feast (Post Boy, nos. 99 [December 24–26, 1695], 238 [November 12–14, 1696]Google Scholar).

121 SirJones, Thomas, The Rise and Progress of the Most Honourable and Loyal Society of Antient Britons … (1717)Google Scholar; Clark (n. 4 above), p. 283; Williams, W. R., ed., Old Wales (1905–1907), 1:17–22Google Scholar; Jenkins, Geraint H., Literature, Religion and Society in Wales, 1660–1730 (Cardiff, 1978), pp. 61, 218, 244Google Scholar.

122 Hoadly, Benjamin, The Nature and Duty of a Public Spirit. A sermon Preach'd … March 1. 1716 …. (1717)Google Scholar, dedication. I am grateful to Philip Jenkins for this point.

123 Bolton (n. 25 above), pp. 2–3.

124 At Putney in 1647; cited in Wootton, David, ed., Divine Right and Democracy (Harmondsworth, 1986), p. 291Google Scholar.

125 Observator, vol. 2, no. 134 (September 17, 1684)Google Scholar; cited in Spurr, John, “The Church, the Societies, and the Moral Revolution of 1688,” in The Church of England, 1689–1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism, ed. Walsh, Johnet al. (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar.

126 Mannyngham (n. 32 above), p. 3; Edward Fowler (n. 21 above), pp. 26–27.

127 For anxiety about social and geographical mobility, see Sharpe (n. 63 above), p. 79.

128 Holmes, Clive, “The County Community in Stuart Historiography,” Journal of British Studies 19, no. 2 (1980): 73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

129 Macfarlane, Stephen, “Social Policy and the Poor in the Later Seventeenth Century,” in Beier, and Finlay, , eds. (n. 40 above), pp. 252–77Google Scholar, esp. 254. The preferred charity of feast stewards—apprenticeships—was, perhaps, least suited to the poverty of Augustan England. After 1650, demographic pressure eased, and the elderly, not the youth, were increasingly the bulk of the poor. Perhaps county feast apprenticeships served as a halfway measure between the decline in “hospitality” and the rise in local poor rates (Heal, Hospitality [n. 4 above], passim).

130 Trevelyan, G. M., The English Revolution, 1688–1689 (1938), pp. 243–44Google Scholar; cited in Morrill, John, “The Sensible Revolution,” in The Anglo-Dutch Moment, ed. Israel, Jonathan I. (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 73–74Google Scholar. County feasts, as voluntary philanthropic associations, preceded both the charity schools and the societies for reformation, despite the claims of Jones, M. G., The Charity School Movement: A Study of Eighteenth Century Puritanism in Action (Cambridge, 1938), p. 346Google Scholar; and Bahlman (n. 66 above), p. 107.

131 Jonathan Barry, who found county feasts in Bristol “run largely by retailers and skilled craftsmen,” has likewise questioned the traditional view of a patrician/plebeian split in ceremonial political cultures in Restoration England (Barry, , “Popular Culture” [n. 10 above], p. 73Google Scholar, and “The Press” [n. 4 above], p. 64).

132 Tatler, no. 153 (April 1, 1710), my emphasis; cited in Lawrence E. Klein, “Coffee Clashes: The Politics of Discourse in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century England.” I am indebted to Klein for allowing me to cite from his unpublished manuscript.

133 Jones, J. R., The First Whigs, pp. 8, 211Google Scholar, passim, and The Revolution of 1688 in England (New York, 1972), pp. 38–39Google Scholar; Plumb, J. H., The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1675–1725 (1967), chap. 2, esp. p. 51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is the view questioned, from another angle, in Scott (n. 8 above), pt. 1.

134 Roberts, Richard, A Sermon Preached at St. Thomas Church in Bristol. September 3. 1685 …. (1685), pp. 14–15Google Scholar.

135 William Speck, commenting on an earlier draft of this article, noted that up to 20 percent of electors in county elections were outliers, usually residing in London. Whether the county feasts actually helped mobilize the London-based country electors, a higher degree of partisan organization than I argue here, could be tested by comparing lists of feast stewards with late Stuart pollbooks.

136 Hutton (n. 72 above), pp. 304–7; Overton, J. H., Life in the English Church (1660–1714) (1885), pp. 212–13Google Scholar. For sermons preached before these societies, see Portus (n. 4 above), pp. 229–33; Hayton (n. 66 above), p. 54n.

137 William Smythies emphasized “Manners” at the Norfolk feast of 1671. See Smythies (n. 69 above), pp. 2–3. See also White (n. 79 above), p. 11. In 1698, Petter (n. 91 above), p. 21, noted the king's recent renewal of the “proclamation against atheism, irreligion and prophaness.” See Bahlman, pp. 15–16.

138 Kenyon (n. 41 above), chaps. 6–8; Bahlman, pp. 83–84.

139 Walsh, John, “Religious Societies: Methodist and Evangelical, 1738–1800,” Studies in Church History 23 (1986): 282CrossRefGoogle Scholar.