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The Clergy and Print in Eighteenth-Century England, C The Clergy and Print in Eighteenth-Century England, c. 1714-1750 Jamie Marc Latham Selwyn College This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge September 2017 i The Clergy and Print in Eighteenth-Century England, c. 1714-1750 Jamie Latham, Selwyn College In much of the historiography surrounding print culture and the book trade, the worldliness of print remains a point of common emphasis. Indeed, many influential studies either assume or actively present the history of print as part of a broader ‘secularization thesis’. Recently, however, historians have challenged these narratives, recognizing the central role of religious print as a driver of growth within the book trade and discussion within the nascent ‘public sphere’. Yet the scholarship into ‘religion and the book’ remains fragmentary, focused on individual genres or persons, with no unified monograph or standard reference work yet to emerge. This dissertation addresses some of the barriers to synopsis by investigating the long-term print output of the largest social and professional group engaged in evangelizing Christianity to the public: the clergy of the Church of England. By focusing on the clergy, this dissertation evades the usual narrow focus on genre. In the past, book-historical and bibliographic studies have relied heavily on a priori classification schemes to study the market for print. While sufficient in the context of relatively well-defined genre categories, such as printed sermons, the validity of these classification schemes breaks down at the wider level, for example, under the conceptual burden of defining the highly fluid and wide-ranging category of ‘religious works’. This dissertation begins to remedy such problems by modelling the print output of a large population of authors who had the strongest stake in evangelizing Christianity to the public through print. It utilizes the latest techniques in the field of digital humanities and bibliometrics to create a representative sample of the print output of the Anglican clergy over the ‘long’ eighteenth-century (here 1660- 1800). Based on statistical trends, the thesis identifies a crucial period in the history of clerical print culture, the first four decades of the Hanoverian regime. The period is explored in detail through three subsequent case studies. By combining both traditional and digital methods, therefore, the dissertation explores clerical publishing as a phenomenon subject to evolution and change at both the macro and micro level. ii The first chapter provides an overarching statistical study of clerical publishing between 1660 and 1800. By combining data from two bibliographical datasets, The English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC), and the prosopographical resource, The Clergy of the Church of England Database (CCED), I extract and analyse a dataset of clerical works consisting of almost 35,000 bibliographic records. The remaining chapters approach the thesis topic through primary research-based case studies using both print and manuscript sources. The case studies were selected from the period identified in the preceding statistical analysis as a crucial transitional moment in the history of clerical publishing culture, c.1714 to 1750. These case studies form chapters 2, 3, and 4, each of which explore a different aspect of a network of authors who worked under the direction of the bishop of London, Edmund Gibson (1723-1748), during the era of Whig hegemony under Sir Robert Walpole. Finally, an appendix outlines the methodology used in chapter 1 to extract the sample of clerical printed works from the ESTC. Overall, the thesis demonstrates the profound influence of the clergy on the development of English print in the hand-press period. It thus forms both a historiographic intervention against the secularization thesis still implicit in discussions of print culture and the book trade, as well as providing a cautionary critique of the revisionism which has shaped recent investigations into the Church of England. iii Declaration This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface or specified in the text. Signed: JAMIE LATHAM Date: 27/09/17 It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submit- ted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my dissertation has already been submitted, or, is being currently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. Signed: JAMIE LATHAM Date: 27/09/17 Statement of Length This dissertation does not exceed the prescribed word limit of 80,000 set by the Degree Com- mittee of the History Faculty. Signed: JAMIE LATHAM Date: 27/09/17 iv Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the help and generosity of many people who have sup- ported me during my studies at Cambridge. My chief debt is to my supervisor Larry Klein. The project benefitted immeasurably from his patience, intellectual curiosity, and superlative knowledge of eighteenth-century history and culture. He fostered my early interest in computing as a means to investigate eighteenth-century print and reli- gious culture, while his guidance was a constant guard against my natural tendency to become distracted. For this, and much more, I am truly thankful. Warm thanks are also due to Philip Connell, who encouraged my studies from an early stage and, over our lunches at Selwyn, listened attentively and provided many valuable insights. At Selwyn too, David Smith went above and beyond the role of graduate tutor to provide coffee, conversation, and advice. It would be remiss if I did not also mention Hannah Barker and Daniel Szechi, whose teaching and supervision first stimulated my interest in eighteenth-century history while as a student at Manchester. In the course of re- searching this project, I have benefitted greatly from conversations with Gareth At- kins, Bill Gibson, Tim Hitchcock, Mark Goldie, Scott Mandelbrote, Rosemary O’Day, Isabel Rivers, Andrew Thompson, and Ewan Jones and Gabriel Recchia of the Con- cept Lab at CRASSH. I would also like to thank the British Library, especially the personnel of the early printed collections cataloguing and processing department, who provided me with a comprehensive subset from the ESTC. Iris O’Brien and Corine Deliot were ex- tremely accommodating in their work to make the dataset available. Particular thanks are also due to Steve Tabor at the Huntington, who provided valuable insight into the bibliographic standards adopted by ESTC cataloguers, and Arthur Burns, who allowed me behind-the-scenes access to the Clergy of the Church of England Database. Though I decided against using it in my final analysis, I want to thank Leo Lahiti and Mikko Tolonen at the University of Helsinki for giving me early access to their R package Bibliographica. It will undoubtedly be an innovative tool for studying large bibliographic datasets in the near future. v A few further practical words of acknowledgement are due. This project was made possible by a studentship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The Cranmer Fund of the Cambridge Faculty of History have been extremely generous. They awarded me with a studentship, a travel grant, and an essay prize, which al- lowed me to thoroughly investigate archives in England and Scotland and provided valuable funding towards a fourth year of writing up. I am also grateful to the librari- ans at Cambridge University Library, the Bodleian, Oxford, the British Library, Lam- beth Palace Library, St. Andrews University Library, and the Huntington Library. The Huntington generously awarded me a short term fellowship to study the wealth of print and manuscript collections on offer there in June 2016. In retrospect I may have spent a little too much of my time enjoying the Californian sunshine, and exploring the rich gardens of the Huntingdon grounds. Special thanks go to friends Matt Archer, Nora Slonimsky and Jamie Trace. Finally, there are a few who, despite bewilderment at my interest in clergymen and computing, admittedly unusual bedfellows, were nevertheless vital to the comple- tion of the PhD. Without Callie the project would never have been completed, let alone begun. She is a constant source of companionship, support, and good cheer. To my parents and grandparents, who are unquestioning in their encouragement, this dis- sertation is dedicated to them. Contents vi Abbreviations vii Note on Transliteration and Sources viii Introduction 1 From Early Print to Whig Supremacy 19 Chapter 1: A Statistical Analysis of Clerical Publishing in the Long 31 Print and Literacy in the Long Eighteenth Century 33 The Clergy and the Book Trade 36 Digital Approaches to ‘Bibliometrics’ 40 Creating a Bibliography of Clerical Printed Works, 1660-1800 43 Analysis of Results 50 Charts and Graphs 78 Chapter 2: Pamphlet Controversy 99 The Gibsonian Project 105 Daniel Waterland and the Social Networks of Polemical Divinity 110 Strong Ties: The Universities 118 ‘Weak’ Ties: The Church 122 Conclusion 125 Chapter 3: Addressing the Public 128 Content and Context 136 London: A Geography of Sin 141 Publication and Distribution
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