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Publics and Participation in the Three Kingdoms: Was There Such a Thing as “British Public Opinion” in the Seventeenth Century?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2017

Tim Harris
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Abstract

This article explores where the people fit in to British history and whether there was such a thing as British public opinion in the seventeenth century. It argues that given the nature of the Stuart multiple monarchy, and the way the power structures of that monarchy impinged upon Ireland, Scotland, and England, the Stuarts' political authority was at times publicly negotiated on a Britannic level. People across Britain were engaged with British affairs: there was public opinion about British politics, in other words, albeit not British public opinion, since the people were bitterly divided at this time. However, because the crisis that brought down Charles I had been a three-kingdoms crisis, which in turn had helped spark the growth of a more sophisticated British news culture, the Restoration monarchy became increasingly sensitive to the need to try to keep public opinion across the Britannic archipelago on its side. In response to the challenge of the Whigs during the Exclusion Crisis, Charles II and his Tory allies sought to rally public support across England, Scotland, and Ireland and thus to represent “British public opinion” as being in favor of the hereditary succession. It was a representation, however, that remained contested.

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Articles
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 731 - 753
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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2017 

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69 Harris, Tim, “The Restoration in Britain and Ireland,” in The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution, ed. Braddick, Michael J. (Oxford, 2015), 204–19Google Scholar; idem, “The British Dimension, Religion, and the Shaping of Political Identities during the Reign of Charles II,” in Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c. 1650–c. 1850, ed. Claydon, Tony and McBride, Ian (Cambridge, 1998), 131–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Restoration. The first Irish newspaper—An Account of the Chief Occurrences of Ireland, Together with Some Particulars of England—appeared in February–March 1660 as part of a campaign to build support in Ireland for the restoration of Charles II. Munter, History, 7.

70 See the trilogy by Richard Greaves: Greaves, Richard, Deliver Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660–1663 (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; idem, Enemies under His Feet: Radicals and Nonconformists in Britain, 1664–1677 (Stanford, 1990)Google Scholar; and idem, Secrets of the Kingdom: British Radicals from the Popish Plot to the Revolution of 1688–89 (Stanford, 1992)Google Scholar.

71 George Wild, Bishop of Derry, to John Bramhall, Archbishop of Armagh, Derry, 10 March 1662/3, HA 16017, HEH.

72 Wodrow MSS, Quarto XXX, NLI; Stewart, Laura A. M., “Introduction: Publics and Participation in Early Modern Britain,” Journal of British History 56, no. 4 (October 2017): 709–30Google Scholar.

73 The Entring Book of Roger Morrice, 1677–1691, ed. Goldie, Mark, 7 vols. (Woodbridge, 2007)Google Scholar; Newsletters of Richard Bulstrode: From the Harry Ransome Humanities Center at Austin, Texas (Marlborough, 2002)Google Scholar.

74 Harris, “British Dimension,” 143–48; Harris, Tim, “England's ‘Little Sisters without Breasts': Shaftesbury and Scotland and Ireland,” in Anthony Ashley Cooper, The First Earl of Shaftesbury 1621–1683, ed. Spurr, John (Farnham, 2011), 183–205 Google Scholar; Gibney, John, Ireland and the Popish Plot (Basingstoke, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gillespie, Reading Ireland, 114.

75 Roger L'Estrange, Observator 3, nos. 151 (6 March 1685/6), 201 (18 August 1686), and 206 (4 September 1686).

76 Harris, Restoration, 333–35, 338–41.

77 Ibid., 187–88.

78 Knights, Mark, Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678–81 (Cambridge, 1994), 329–45Google Scholar; Harris, Restoration, 263–92, 317–22; Vallance, Ted, “‘From the Hearts of the People’: Loyalty, Addresses and the Public Sphere in the Exclusion Crisis,” in Religion, Culture and National Community in the 1670s, ed. Claydon, Tony and Corns, Thomas N. (Cardiff, 2011), 127–47Google Scholar.

79 MS 11,960, pp. 85–223, NLI; London Gazette, nos. 1714 (20–24 April 1682), 1751 (28–31 August 1682), 1867 (8–11 October 1683); Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Ormonde, K. P., Preserved at Kilkenny Castle, New Series, ed. Falkiner, C. Litton and Ball, F. Elrington, 8 vols. (London, 1902–20), 6:57 Google Scholar, 62; HMC, Ormonde, N.S. VII, 86–7, 110; The Council Book of the Corporation of Youghall, from 1610 … to 1800, ed. Caulfield, Richard (Guildford, 1878), 361 Google Scholar; [Earl of Conway] to Sir George Rawdon, 6 May 1682, HA 14570, HEH; Harris, Restoration, 390–95, 403–5.

80 Harris, Revolution, 49–54; Pincus, Steve, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven, 2009), 97–99 Google Scholar. For the address from the Catholic clergy of Ireland, see Lansdowne 1152A, fol. 404, BL.

81 Harris, Restoration, 260–328; Harris, Revolution, 73–94; Clifton, Robin, The Last Popular Rebellion: The Western Rising of 1685 (London, 1984)Google Scholar; Greaves, Secrets of the Kingdom, 253–89; Pincus, 1688, 104–16.

82 What has been described here is no longer Lake and Pincus's post-Reformation public sphere. Yet it is not quite their postrevolutionary public sphere either, although Lake and Pincus themselves saw the Restoration as a transitional period, acknowledging that a full-fledged postrevolutionary public sphere did not emerge until after the Glorious Revolution. Lake and Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 284. Alasdair Raffe, however, has questioned whether Lake and Pincus's postrevolutionary public sphere emerged in Scotland, preferring instead to talk in terms of a “culture of controversy.” Raffe, Alasdair, The Culture of Controversy: Religious Arguments in Scotland, 1660–1714 (Woodbridge, 2012)Google Scholar.

83 Harris, Revolution, 376–78, 389–90, 419–20.