The Localism of the County Feast in Late-Stuart Political Culture Newton E

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The Localism of the County Feast in Late Stuart Political Culture Author(s): Newton E. Key Reviewed work(s): Source: Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 2 (1995), pp. 211-237 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3817821 . Accessed: 05/04/2012 13:17

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http://www.jstor.org The Localismof the County Feast in LateStuart Political Culture

NEWTONE. KEY

n 29 June 1678, Huntingdonshire natives residing in or visiting Londonhad the opportunityto witnessa glitteringentertainment, The Huntington Divertisement, or, an EnterludeFor the GenerallEnter- tainmentat the County-Feast,Held at Merchant-Taylors Hall. On 27 March 1690, Yorkshirenatives, also feasting in MerchantTailors Hall, were treated to a tri- umphant song by Thomas D'Urfey and Henry Purcell.These elaboratepieces, presented a dozen years apart and admittedly unrepresentativeof the sermons, processions, and huzzas that graced usual natives feasts, are nonetheless worth analyzingfor the issues and rhetoricthat the artistsand their patronsthought rel- evant. By examining these pieces of high culture as well as more typical fare, this essay delineates one aspect of natives feasts-their localist rhetoric-and places this rhetoricin its political and social context. Through the deployment of rhetoric and ritual, late Stuart London saw the creation (or reinvention)of a mythic county community.The provincialistmyth emphasizedcountry values-local unity, loyalty,purity-through a recitationof the county's past achievements. Country values were contrasted with factious, partisan, urban values. While provincial in its content, the provincialistmyth was a rhetoric deployed in national discourse. Paradoxically,the country values delineated through the feasts'use of local history,as well as the feaststhemselves, played a part in the development of party, a process that was central to late Stuart political culture. Equally paradoxically,the county feast stewards and feasterswere as much part of the London community as of their county community. Their dual social status shaped the meaning of feast rhetoric and its relation to the political nation.

Researchfor this articlewas assistedby a brieffellowship at the HuntingtonLibrary. Versions of the article were presentedat the BritishHistory seminar at the Huntington (1994), the MidwestConference on British Studiesat Toronto (1994), and the ChicagoEarly Modern Britain Group (1994). The authoris gratefulfor the commentsof Bob Bucholz,Carolyn Edie, and ChrisWaldrep.

HUNTINGTON LIBRARY QUARTERLY - 58:2 u, 211 212 -v NEWTON E. KEY

The masque-likenature of the anonymousHuntington Divertisement (1678)-the only known theatricalproduction presented at a natives feast and one of but a handful of privatetheatricals surviving from the period-allows us to glimpse the way the county feastersviewed themselves.1The dedication-to "The Nobility, and the Most GenerousGentry, that arepleased to Gracethis AnnualFestivity with their Presence"-distinguishes between those organizing "our Annuall Con- vention"and membersof the countryelite in the audience.2Only partof the divertisement was actuallyperformed-presumably because the author had specified not only propsand musiciansbut also some thirty-sevenactors and actresses.3 The intended production has at least three separatethemes: the topography and history of Huntingdonshire,the fate of younger sons, and the charitablerela- tionship between the feastersand the artisanpoor of the county. It invokes the county community through inventories of religious houses, market towns, and local festivals. It praises the Montagues as local patriots and patrons of charity, and the Divertisementitself is set at Hinchingbrook, county seat of the Mon- tagues, the earlsof Sandwich. A brief historicalnarrative emphasizes the shire'sunity and loyalty,beginning with "GreatCanutus" (p. 5). Much, but not all, of the local antiquariandetail

1. W. M., TheHuntington Divertisement, or, an EnterludeFor the GenerallEntertainment at the County-Feast, Heldat Merchant-TaylorsHall, June 29. 1678 [licensed16 May 1678, RogerILEstrange; printed by J. Bennet] (London, 1678). The copy consultedfor this articleis HuntingtonLibrary, RB 146724; page referencesare given in parenthesesin the text. Placeof publicationfor all pre-1800works is London, unlessotherwise noted. In TheLondon Stage 1660-1800, pt. 1, 1660-1700, ed. WilliamVan Lennep (Cardondale, 111., 1965);and pt. 2, 1700-29, ed. EmmettL. Avery(Cardondale, Ill., 1960), a numberof privateplays and entertainmentsnot performedat the courtare noted, but most of theseare the standardrepertory of writers such as Howard,Fletcher, and D'Urfey,performed at Inns of Court revels.The Huntington Divertisement appearsto be the onlyspecially commissioned entertainment, between 1660 and 1714, outsidecourt masques,performances feting George Monck in 1660, St. Cecilia'sDay Odes, and the Yorkshirefeast song (seebelow). Helpful for analyzingthe formof the Divertisementare Stephen Orgel, TheJonsonianMasque (Cambridge,1965); and David Lindley,ed., TheCourt Masque (Manchester, 1984). 2. The dedicationis dateda week beforethe feast.Were copies of the Divertisementavailable at the feast? 3. The author,W. M., is perhapsWilliam Mountfort. His marriagelicense suggests he was only fourteenin 1678, too young to have composedthe entertainment.But TheRevels History of Dramain English,vol. 5, 1660-1750, ed. John Loftiset al. (London, 1976), suggestshe might have been born around 1660, which would makehim eighteen.The play itself makesa (self-?)mockingreference: "There is hardlya Boy of 18 yearsold, but is Politicianenough to huff the FrenchKing out of Flanders,and make nothing to trip up his heels in Alsatiia;Or to cuff the Butterbox,if he will not cringeto the good Princeof Orange"(p. 17). Mountfortwas performingin London in 1678 and becameknown for impromptu entertainments.Later, of course,he becamea full-fledgedplaywright. THE LOCALISM OF THE COUNTY FEAST c- 213

derivesfrom Camden'sBritannia.4 Incidents mentioned illustrate Huntingdon's loyaltyto churchand state in the faceof vaguelydefined enemies. For example, the countydoes not "blushto boastHer presentpiety in EightyChurches (Which havesurviv'd the furyofth' lateAge)"; and "Godmanchester glories in herPloughs (Whereninescore Teams have their attendance paid T' ourSoveraigns in theirpro- gresse)"(p. 6). Huntingdon,however, had an unfortunaterecent history: "None can upbraidits Loyalty;its true,Th' Arch-RebellOliver [Cromwell] here drew's firstbreath ..., but thatOught not to stigmatizeth' surviving Town" (p. 7). The plot itselfconcerns the plightof youngersons, the relationshipbetween countryand city,and how this relationshipaffects national policy (charitable or otherwise)and outlook.The centralcharacters are countryJP SirJeofry Doe- Right,his sons, and his nephew.Sir Jeofry saunters through country meadows, "withHorace's Odes in his hand,"contemplating his "happyRural Banishment" (p. 1). His nephew,Theodore Meanwell, recites a "Sonneton The CountreyLife": Happy'sthe pesant[sic], whose indulgent fate Hath fixt him in a Ruralstate,

He studiesth' natureof the flowersand trees, Th' politickGovernment of th' Bees,

Nor doth'sbloud-thirsty sword or handdelight, To murder,plunder, rob, or t' fight, Exceptfor th' CountreysGood (P.4) As in a courtmasque, the stocksentiments of pastoralidyll oppose another view and wayof life.5

4. William Camden'sLatin Britannia, translated by PhilemonHolland as BritainorA Chorographicall Descriptionof the MostflourishingKingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland... out of the depthof Antiquities(1637), 497-500. Both the Divertisementand Camdenmention Huntingdonshire'sforests and deforestation;King Canutus'stravels from RamseyMere to Peterborough;Ramsey and Saltry,St. Neots, and Kimbolton.Camden mentions neither St. Ive, nor Hinchingbrook,however; from whence does this local knowledgederive? 5. Orgel,Jonsonian Masque, 192-93. "RuralHappiness. A Song,"in TheLast and BestEdition of New Songs. . in Townor Court(1677), [sig.A7], beginssimilarly: "How happy'sthe silly poor innocentSwain, / That spendsall his life in a Groveor a Plain."John Dryden'spoem "ToMy HonouredKinsman John Driden of Chestertonin the County of HuntingdonEsquire" (1700) (Poemsand Prose,comp. Douglas Grant [1955; reprint,Harmondsworth, England, 1985], 89), also begins:"How blessedis he who leadsa countrylife, / Unvexedwith anxiouscares and void of strife!/ Who studyingpeace and shunningcivil rage/ Enjoyedhis youth and now enjoyshis age." 214 s NEWTON E. KEY

For all is not well in arcadia.The younger sons complain that Sir Jeofrey has not providedfor them, and they contemplatetheir urban career options. Thomas:Apox on this hardfate of YoungerBrothers; where the Eldest... mustrun away with the Estate.... Richard: Introth, he aims to breed us up Scholarsfit for Fellowships in the University or some despicable Parsonage; Or some subservientOffices at the Inns of Court, for none of whichwe carea rush.... Thomas:My Fatherindeed threatens to bindeme to the plough tayl,if I will not be a Scholar;But ... I'll rambleto the Eastor West-Indiesfirst.... (P.9) Thomasthen readsa mocksonnet on the countrylife-while, in a raucousanti- masquein thebackground, a drunken fool gambles away his dothesto youngboys. Commentingon theirdrunken elder brother, Richard notes that "young brothers oft makethe bestGentlemen" (p. 15).A carrierbrings news from the metropolis, including notice that Huntingdon "Countrymen"there keep a charityfeast. [T]hey have set up a Monthly Club, which is kept the first Wednesday-nightin everyMonth; when in a glasseof Sackor Claretthey rememberYou here in the Country,and especially theirgreat Patrons; And once a Yearthey haveset[t]led a Feast forthe honourof ourCountry, where all the Lords,Knights, and Gentlemenare nobly entertainedat a good dinner, and the CharitableBenevolence bestowed to put out poor Childrenof our own Countryto be Apprentices.(P. 19) As in a court masque, the boundary between audience and action is continually crossed.Indeed, the carrierhimself represents the dangerousmixing of social classespossible in the metropolisand, specifically,among the countynatives at the feast.Although the carrierclaims his statusis too lowlyfor him to discusspol- itics-"for State-news,I will never know any; and ... I shall never tell none, to hazardmy ears;such matters will be besttold Youby yourLetters Sir" (p. 17)- he admitsthat only fortuneseparates him from the county feastersor, indeed, from SirJeofry's younger sons. "Thelast YearI was there,"the carrierremarks, adding, "I have been in my time a Merchantof almost all Trades;sometimes up, and sometimesdown; and yet I live"(p. 19; my italics). THE LOCALISM OF THE COUNTY FEAST v' 215

At the end, all the young men are happilyestablished in London.In its finale,the Divertisementswitches to a grandallegory with addressesfrom twelve "nymphs"representing wool carders,spinners, knitters, and lacemakers.The nymphsplead for charityand mercantilistpolicy: "Th' whole County'sgrown your Hospitall."Finally, fair Huntingtoniamakes separate addresses to each group of feasters-nobles, judges and lawyers, divines, gentry, citizens ("IndustriousCitizens! t' your generousTribe, / Much of this signalsplendour we ascribe"[p. 50])-and to all in general.For her last address,Huntingtonia turnsand speaksto the ladiesin the gallery.Though women probably attended only the entertainmentand not the feastitself, their presenceunderscores the mixedstatus of the feastersas audience.6 D'Urfey'swords to the Yorkshirefeast song, "Of Old, When Heroes ThoughtIt Base,"repeat in a briefcompass the localistthemes of the Huntington Divertisement:past local loyaltyto churchand state and the relationbetween county and metropolis.7Two versesemphasize the militarymight of ancient Yorkshire-"fam'dBrigantium"-and celebrate York as the supposedbirthplace of "victoriousConstantine." The thirdverse mentions "the bashful Thames" and narratesLondon's growth: once a "punytown," she now "rearsher tow'ring front so high."The fourth verse presentsthe history of the shire'smilitary virtue throughthe Warsof the Roses.The song also praisesthe conductof Yorkshire nativessince the Reformation,when in the fight against"Rome's slavery . . , none weremore loyal, none morebrave." For both provinceand metropolisthe historyis Whiggish-progressiveand concerned to justifypresent arrangements. Successiveverses focus on recentnational history. The countryhad nearlybeen overcomeby James II's Romish plans: "the glitt'ring Queen of Night / with black eclipsein shadow'do'er." But William of Orange,"the renown'd Nassau / came to restoreour libertyand law."(Purcell's music is especiallyglorious both at this verseand lateras the contraltoannounces "[t]his is the knellof fallingRome.") The last versereveals the links betweenantiquity and currenthistory, between Yorkshireand metropolisand theirrelevance to "thisglorious festival":

6. I am gratefulto Nicholas Rogersfor this point. Women certainlyattended the greatguild feastsin these same halls. See William Connor Sydney,Social Life in Englandffromthe Restorationto the Revolution, 1660-90 (London, 1892), 433-34. 7. Fromthe "YorkshireFeast Song" broadside [1690], publishedc. 1710. See MartinAdams, Henry Purcell: The Originsand Developmentof His MusicalStyle (Cambridge, 1995), 241-45. 216 ~ NEWTON E. KEY

Soundall to him That our mightydefender has been, And to all the heroesinvited him in. And as the chief agents In that royalwork, Longflourish the city And countyof York. The Yorkshiremagnate Thomas Osborne, the earlof Danby(created marquis of Carmarthenby Williamin 1689) is reputedto have commissionedthis costly song for £100. As one of the "ImmortalSeven" who invited William into England, he is cast as a hero in the piece,8which also casts the county natives in London-Brigantiumin Augusta-as heroesin the narrativeof England'sdeliv- eranceand improvement. The county natives meeting annually in London fostered a localist or "county"rhetoric. They createdan imaginedcommunity both within their meetingsand in recitationsof local history in feast sermonsand ephemera. Understandingtheir localism and the social composition of the county natives-those who would marchto a Londonchurch and then, aftera spe- ciallycommissioned sermon, march to the hall of a liverycompany to feast- helpsus understandthe role playedby the countycommunity in earlymodern English society and politics. The country-or county community-rhetoric and the contemporaryuse of local symbols lie within three contexts:one spatial,one social-structural,and one political.Spatially, the county communitywas provincialnot metropolitan,a geographictruism that emphasizedthe well-knownrhetorical contrast between the harmonious,honest countryand the factional,deceptive city; the country was hospitable,the city inhospitable.9In 1667, the Cityand CountreyMercury starklycontrasted "Citizen," who reportsLondon coffee-house dialogue of com- monersand even of women,with "Countryman,"who refusesto discuss"State affairs.""Pox o'your opinions," Countryman exclaims:

8. AndrewBrowning, Thomas Osborne, EarlofDanby andDuke ofLeeds, 1632-1712 (Glasgow,1951), 1:449-66. 9. See, for example,Raymond Williams, TheCountry and the City (New York,1973), chaps. 1 and 5; FelicityHeal, Hospitalityin EarlyModern England (Oxford, 1990), 112-13; and W. A. Speck,Society and Literaturein England,1700-1760 (Dublin, 1983), chap. 4. 10. The Cityand CountreyMercury, nos. 2 (10-13 June 1667), 10 (8-11 July). THE LOCALISM OF THE COUNTY FEAST ,. 217

Our honestCountrey men .. ., when they go abroadenquire how the Marketsgo, andhow the Growthsare, and how things are like to be this Harvest,and t' other Grass,and not about thingsabove them!10 Countyfeast sermons echo this contrast.And yet both newspaperand feastsermon originatedfrom within London. The social-structuralcontext of feastliterature is thatof elitewithdrawal-the demarcationof the countycommunity as a distinctgentry community. As a numberof historianshave argued recently, the draw of Londonand parliamentary busi- ness led to elite disengagementfrom everydaycounty administration and local society.The process,it hasbeen suggested, further divided patrician from plebian culture.1lDavid Cressy describes the wideninggap betweenceremonial cultures: "Openparish feasts were becoming private anniversary dinners, at thesame time as public theatresgave way to indoor masques.The classes and culturesof seventeenth-centuryEngland were drawing apart."12 County feast evidence suggests,however, that the "patrician"class was much wider-or moreelastic-during thelate Stuart period than historians might expect, and included minor gentry, arti- sans,and apprentices.Ironically, London citizens played a rolein furtheringthe countycommunity ideal. Below I suggestthat the Englishdeployed notions of a consensualcounty community as a politicalrhetoric within a developingpartisan context.I returnto thispolitical meaning after examining county localism through feastrhetoric.

As I have shown elsewhere,the county feast was a particulartype of natives feast.13Although parish feasts had long been part of the ritual calendarof Englishcity and rurallife, nativesof particularcounties or citiesperhaps began to meet in the early1620s. In November1621, JohnChamberlain noted

11. See JamesM. Rosenheim,"County Governance and EliteWithdrawal in Norfolk, 1660-1720," in A. L. Beier,David Cannadine,and JamesM. Rosenheim,eds., TheFirst Modern Society: Essays in English Historyin Honourof LawrenceStone (Cambridge, 1989), 95-125; and CharlesPhythian-Adams, Re-thinkingEnglish Local History (Leicester, 1987), 19. 12. David Cressy,Bonfires and Bells:National Memory and the ProtestantCalendar in Elizabethanand Stuart England(London, 1989), 32. 13. Newton E. Key,"The PoliticalCulture and PoliticalRhetoric of County Feastsand FeastSermons, 1654-1714," JournalofBritish Studies 33 (1994): 223-56. 218 s NEWTON E. KEY

that an idle custom being lately brought up, that all Cheshire men about [London],Staffordshire men, Northampton,Sussex, Suffolk (et sic de caeteris)should have a meeting once a year at some hall and laying their money together have a feast, it must not be done withouta sermon.14

Later, some countrymen set up annual feasts in their provincial city-Bristol, Hereford, Oxford, Winchester-but London was the most common site for an annualsermon and dinnerfor displacedcountrymen. County feasts in London wereresurrected during the mid-1650salong with-and for muchthe samerea- sons as-those of the clericalcounty associations formed by RichardBaxter and others.By 1660, however,ecumenical and evangelicalfervor had dissipated,and the continued-if irregular-existence of the feasts is best explained by their politicaland social functions. The feastersthemselves explained their purposes in termsof theirown county'shistory and cohesiveness. An attempt to unearththe origins of county feastingnecessarily confronts the feasters'mythic sense of their own communalpast. In 1702 RichardHolland claimedthat the Warwickshire feast was "of ancient use and honourable Renown, famousin the Reignof Q. Elizabeth;and since that time admir'd and imitated by other Countries."15In 1718 William Berrimanclaimed that the Oxfordshire feastwas "the first of the kind,that was ever established or celebrated"in London, "its first erection being dated but little less than an hundred years ago." Such claimsto antiquityand longevityare suspect, however. Any givencounty's feast was likelyto be abandonedand periodicallyrevived. The Oxfordshirefeast was "thelast and only one remaining,"Berriman declared; but, as his midcenturyedi- tor noted, "thiswas saidin the Year1718; since which time ... the Oxfordshire Feasthas beendropt, and Othershave been revived."16 At least 277 separatenatives feastswere held between 1654 and 1714. There areonly the two referencesto countyfeasts before this period(see n. 14), andrel- ativelyfew referencesappear after it. Extantrecords include 69 printedfeast sermons,about 120 advertisementsfor additional feasts, and occasional references to

14. Letterto Sir Dudley Carleton,17 November1621; TheLetters ofJohn Chamberlain, ed. NormanEgbert McLure(Philadelphia, 1939), 2:408. I am gratefulto LoriAnne Ferrellfor this reference.There arealso referencesto Devon nativesfeasts, probably in 1632 and 1633, in YorkshireDiaries and Autobiographies, SurteesSociety no. 65 (1875), 126-27. 15. RichardHolland, A SermonPreach'd to the Natives... of Warwick,and ... Coventry,In ... London, December3. 1702 [1702?], 5. 16. William Berriman,"Sermon XI. Preachdto the Nativesof Oxfordshire... Nov. 20. 1718. Brotherly Love recommended,"in ChristianDoctrines and Dutiesexplained and recommended(1751), 1:225-26. THE LOCALISM OF THE COUNTY FEAST ^ 219

otherfeasts (mainly natives meeting in Oxfordand Bristol).17Among the 162 countyfeasts held in Londonbetween 1654 and 1714,most were held in the early 1680sor the 1690s:fifteen were held in the 1650s,four in the 1660s,ten in the 1670s,fifty-nine in the 1680s,forty-two in the 1690s,twenty-eight in the 1700s, and only four in the 1710s. Amongonly twenty-sevennatives feasts known to have been held between 1715 and 1776, more than half were for the newly foundedWelsh Societies of AncientBritons. Thus, the numberof activelypubli- cizedcounty feasts clearly declined after the deathof QueenAnne. Whatwas the rationalebehind the meetings?A Hanoverianera feast sermon stressed"native Affection."18 Thirty years earlier, in 1695, a feastpreacher out- lined four aims of a countyfeast: "satisfying the sensualappetite in eatingand drinking,""conversing together and Enlargingour Acquaintancein orderto advanceour TemporalInterest," "Reviving good Neighbourhood,continuance of Country-Love,and mutualAffection," and making"Collections ... for the Supportof our Poor Country-men."19Appetite, interest, and charitymay be obviousreasons for such meetings,but the ideologyof "Country-love"is pecu- liarand worth elucidating. County societiesmade use of the full panoplyof hierarchicalprocessions, tickets,and stewardsthat characterizedurban feasts.20 The annualrhythms of countyand guildfeasting paralleled each other. In the late seventeenthcentury,

17. These figurescover county, city, and even parishfeasts (if the latterwere publicized). Numbersare based primarilyon advertisementsin LondonGazette (1665-1715) and sermonsin SampsonLetsome, The PreachersAssistant, In TwoParts. Part I. A seriesof the TextsOf all the Sermons... publishedSince the Restoration(1753). (I have readsixty-five out of the sixty-ninepre-1715 feastsermons.) For advertisements, virtuallyall London newspapers,1654-87, have been searched,as well as (besidesthe London Gazette):Flying Post (random 1696; complete 1698-1701; September-December1702); PostBoy (October-December1695-97; complete 1698-1700); ThePost Boy, With the Freshest Advices, Foreign and Domestick(September-December 1709-10); PostMan (October-December1695-97; complete 1698-1700; random 1702; September-December1703-6; complete 1707; September-December1709; complete 1710; September-December1714-15); Daily Courant(September-December 1702-14, complete 1706, 1709-10; January1711; complete 1712; random 1715). I haveprepared a referencelist for advertisements,sermons, and ephemerafor each feast noted as part of an articleon these sourcesfor late Stuartlocal history. 18. Thomas Bullock,A SermonPreach'd before the HerefordshireSociety .. ., London,on ... February2. 1725 (1726), 22-23. 19. John Russe[l],A SermonPreach'd. . . to theNatives of Wiltshire.. ., Novemberthe 12th. 1695 (1696), sig. A2. 20. JonathanBarry, "Cultural Patronage and the AnglicanCrisis: Bristol c. 1689-1775," in John Walsh, Colin Haydon, and StephenTaylor, eds., The Churchof Englandc. 1689-c. 1835: FromToleration to Tractarianism(Cambridge, 1993), suggeststhat Bristol'scorporation feast had a similarinfluence on the form of nativesfeasts there (p. 193). 220 s NEWTON E. KEY 220 x~~ NEWTON B. KEY

Londonlivery companies increasingly held feastsin theirhalls in late autumn, the seasonwhen county feasting was at its peak.21County feast ritual punctuated early modern London'sceremonial life.22 Of the many voluntaryassociations that flourishedin the late seventeenthand eighteenth centuries, the London county feast societies employed the most pro- nounced historical and localist rhetoric. Other associations for transplanted natives-the Scots'societies and the WelshSocieties of Ancient Britons-and latersocial and charitable associations-the Society for Propagation of the Gospel in ForeignParts, the Societyfor PromotingChristian Knowledge, Sons of the Clergy(begun in the 1650s),school alumni, Lovers ofAncient Musick-followed the county nativesin adopting the "formalannual meeting," imprinting feast tickets with iconsof theirsocieties.23 But the countyfeasts' emphasis on localhistory and the relationshipbetween locality and nationsurpassed even the nationalist sentimentof Scotsand Welsh societies. A charityestablished in the mid-1650sfor impoverishedScots in Londonemphasized apprenticeships together with localist sentiment;its originalcharter declared the charityto be "forthe maintenanceof old or decayedartificers of the ScottishNation, and for trainingup theirchildren to handicraftemployments."24 But the Scots'societies did not developa pro-

21. See Ian W. Archer,The History of theHaberdashers' Company (Chichester, 1991), 126-31. 22. See MichaelBerlin, "Civic Ceremony in EarlyModern London," Urban History Yearbook (1986): 13-27. More than half the dated feasts(106 out of 192, or 55.2 percent)were held in Novemberand December, followingthe LordMayor's parade on 29 October.The other majorseason was June throughSeptember (30.7 percent).This patternsuggests a strongsurvival of the traditionalrural calendar (paralleling the sea- sons of Whitsun ales and harvestfeasts in the countryside)in the midst of elite metropolitanculture. See Cressy,Bonfires and Bells,24. 23 WilliamA. Bultmannand PhyllisBultmann, "The Roots of AnglicanHumanitarianism: A Studyof the Membershipof the S.P.C.K.and the S.P.G., 1699-1720," HistoricalMagazine of the ProtestantEpiscopal Church33 (1964): 39-40; PaulLangford, Public Life and the PropertiedEnglishman, 1689-1798 (Oxford, 1991), 491-95; KeithThomas, Rule and Misrulein the Schoolsof EarlyModern England (Reading, England, 1976), esp. 14-15; and WilliamWeber, The Rise ofMusical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England:A Studyin Canon,Ritual, and Ideology(Oxford, 1992), 109-10. For reproductionsof similar tickets,see E. P.Thompson, Customsin Common(New York,1991), platesI-III (union "charities,"dat- ing from 1725); and PaulLangford, A Politeand CommercialPeople: England, 1727-83 (Oxford, 1989), plate 13 (Magdalencharity, 1764). 24. The governmentissued letters patent for a Scots'Hospital in 1655 and establishedthe Scots'Corporation in 1664-65. SeeA SurveyOf the Citiesof Londonand Westminster. . . byJohn Stow, ed. John Strype (1720), 1:53-54; and GarretV. Portus,Caritas Anglicana, or, An HistoricalInquiry into those... Societies .. betweenthe Years1678 and 1740 (London, 1912), 168-69. SimilarScots' charitable societies formed in Boston, Massachusetts(in 1658, reformedin 1684), in New York(in 1744) and in Norwich, England(in 1775). RobertB. Adam, comp., The Constitutionand By-lawsof the Scots'Charitable Society THE LOCALISM OF THE COUNTY FEAST v- 221

nounced localist rhetoric, nor did the Societies of Ancient Britons in London (from 1714) and Bristol (from the 1760s), although they did make vague references to their Welsh customs and history. The St. David's Day sermons of the Ancient Britons, deliveredin Welsh, praisedthe preservationof the "Usagesand Constitutions of your Ancestors"and of their "primitiveLanguage before Julius Caesar'sTime."25 These societies also adopted feast rituals and apprenticeship schemes similarto those of the county societies.26 It was the role of the feast stewardsto decide which ritualsto perform,as well as which apprenticeshipsto fund. Compared with the feast stewardsof other London societies, county feast stewardswere not a prestigious group. Out of more than four hundred named stewards at county feasts in London, three- fourthswere titled "Mr."and another 15 percenthad no title. Only thirty (7 percent) were squiresor nobles.27County feast stewardswere unlikely to be squires or prominent landed gentry; a significant minority, however, were prominent Londoners. At least twenty-seven county stewards were London aldermen or common councilmen who had been apprenticedinto the various livery companies. Their fathersincluded a bishop, two knights, a squire, two gentlemen, and three yeomen, as well as two merchants, a mercer, two drapers, and an inn- holder.28In short, feast stewardswere drawn from a wide swathe of countrymen and townsmen, gentlemen and middling sorts.

of Boston(Boston, 1896); Rulesof the ScotsSociety in New York(New York,1744); andAn Accountof the ScotsSociety in Norwich,From its Risein 1775, until... 1784 (Norwich,n.d.). The quotationis from An Accountof the Institution,Progress, and PresentState of the Scots'Corporation in London(London, [1810?]),8. 25. W Wotton, A SermonPreached . .. beforethe BritishSociety . . Upon St. Davids-Day, 1722 (1723), dedication,sig. [A3-6]. 26. See SirThomas Jones, TheRise and Progressof theMost Honourable and LoyalSociety ofAntient Britons (1717); EmrysJones, "TheWelsh in London in the Seventeenthand EighteenthCenturies," Welsh HistoryReview 10 (1981): 470; and JonathanBarry, "The CulturalLife of Bristol,1640-1775" (D.Phil. diss., Oxford, 1985), 179. With ticketscosting half a guinea,the Ancient Britonswere restrictedmore clearlyto the elite;London Gazette, no. 5408 (14-18 February1716). 27. In contrast,two-thirds of the stewardsof the ArtilleryCompany of London (1669-82) or of the St. Cecilia'sDay feasts(1683-97) were squiresor nobles;see Key,"The PoliticalCulture and Political Rhetoricof County Feasts,"239. 28. This list is compiledfrom stewardswith the same namesas aldermanfrom J. R. Woodhead,The Rulers of London,1660-89 (London, 1965), who also have the same county of birth, county of birthof their parents,and/or county landholdings,and who are in the same age group.Another three or four were brothersof aldermenand anothertwenty share name and age groupwith specificaldermen, but the namesakehas no clearcounty connection. 222 x'. NEWTON E. KEY

Apprenticesoften attendedcounty feasts,in the firstinstance as objectsof charity.About half of the feastsermons recommended a specificcharitable purpose, and the charitymost often urgedand supportedwas the apprenticeshipof countryboys to Londontrades. Thomas Watts appended a list of thoseappren- ticed by the HerefordshireSociety to his 1723 feastsermon.29 Other preachers noted the numberof boys apprenticed.London natives in 1705 and Yorkshire nativesin 1708 were urgedto provideapprenticeships for childrenof "decay'd Members"of the societies.30Like chorusesof schoolchildrenat charityschool feastsduring the reignof Anne,apprentices would often grace the countyfeasts as an illustrationand symbolof nativebenevolence.31 Interestingly, feast preachers did not considerthe gapbetween charitable feasters and the objectsof theirchar- ity to be unbridgeable."[Wlho can say what great Traders, what large Estates, and what considerableFamilies may springfrom these beginnings,"noted a War- wickshirefeast preacher in 1679, reflectingon the apprenticeshipssupported by the feasters.32London apprenticeships integrated the boysinto civiclife and the politicalnation. And Warwickshirefeasters were reminded in 1680 and againin 1704 that boys apprenticedby the nativeshad risento become"New Men"- presumably,London tradesmen-and stewards of the feastitself.33 Socially,then, county feasters were of a profoundlyhybrid character: they felt a keensense of connectionwith theircounty but mosthad an evenmore tangible connectionwith London.Furthermore they were drawn from all but the poorest socialgroups, or at leastfrom a largegroup of uncertainstatus. This appliedin generalto youngersons or cadetbranches of middlinggentry, who apparently playeda largerole in establishingand maintainingthe countyfeasts. While the

29. ThomasWatts, Social Friendship and Charitydemonstrated... In a SermonBefore . . . the Nativesof the Countyof Hereford.. . December4, 1723 (1724), 33. 30. JosephDunstan, Brotherly Love Recommended: in a SermonPreached at the ... Meetingof theNatives of... London... On November17. 1704 (1705), 24; Daily Courant,no. 2017 (August1708). 31. See Barry,"Cultural Life of Bristol,"181; and CraigRose, "London'sCharity Schools, 1690-1730," HistoryToday 40 (March1990): 17-23. 32. William Basset,A Sermonat the Warwick-shireMeeting, November 25, 1679 (1679), 23. 33. RobertTayler, A SermonPreach'd at theAnniversary Meeting of the Warwick-shireMen . . . Novemb.25. 1680 (1680), 17. LukeMilbourn[e], Christian Good-Fellowship. A Sermon Preached at theMeeting ... of the Countyof Warwick... Decemberthe 7th. 1704 (1704), 23. For discussionof apprentices,see Ilana KrausmanBen-Amos, Adolescence and Youthin EarlyModern England (New Haven, Conn., 1994), esp. chaps.4-5, 9; and PaulS. Seaver,"Declining Status in an AspiringAge: The Problemof the Gentle Apprenticein Seventeenth-CenturyLondon," in BonnelynYoung Kunze and Dwight D. Brautigam, eds., Court,Country, and Culture:Essays on EarlyModern British History in Honorof PerezZagorin (Rochester,N.Y., 1992), 129-48. THE LOCALISM OF THE COUNTY FEAST 2223

youngerson themewas a literarycommonplace, contemporaries perceived the provisionof careersfor youngersons of gentryas a realsocial necessity. In the Jacobeancomedy Eastward Ho, a gentle-bornapprentice to a goldsmithexclaims: "Why,'sblood, sir, my mother'sa gentlewoman,and my fathera justiceof peace and of [the] quorum:and thoughI am a youngerbrother and a prentice,yet I hope I am my father'sson."34 Both Richardand Thomas in the Huntington Divertisementand Kent Societysermons (see below) emphasizegavelkind, or partibleinheritance, which, in contrastto primogeniture,provided more equal estatesto youngerand elder sons. Apprenticeshiplinked the mixedsocial and economicpaths of the feasters, as well as bridgingthe gap betweencountry and metropolis.It playeda role in both the county feast charitableschemes and the provisionfor gentrysons. D. R. Hainsworthnotes that gentryyounger sons and sons of cadetbranches enteredinto tradeand commercialapprenticeships in significantnumbers during the secondhalf of the seventeenthcentury, and they playedan increasingly importantrole in Londonsociety. Hainsworth argues that therewere "close and continuingconnections between gentry and bourgeoisie;a connectionin which youngersons played a majorrole."35 Natives feasts would allow younger sons to makeconnections in the city,maintain their social status, channel their religious andcharitable impulses, and unite for politicalclout. In anycase, it is significant thatfeasters at the marginsof the provincialelite and tied as muchto Londonas to theirnative shire should lead the makingof the countycommunity ideal.

0- III c

The localistrhetoric fostered at nativesfeasts often centeredon the recitationof county history on tickets, in ritual, and through feast sermons.The local Protestantmartyrology and charitiesemphasized during the 1650s differfrom the moresecular county achievements trumpeted in the 1690, a shiftthat reflects

34. GeorgeChapman, Ben Jonson,and John Marston,Eastward Ho, quoted in Seaver,"Declining Status in an AspiringAge," 129, 48; quotationon 131. 35. D. R. Hainsworth,"Manor House to Counting House:The GentryYounger Son in Tradein the SeventeenthCentury," in FrankMcGregor and NicholasWright, eds., EuropeanHistory and Its Historians (Adelaide,1977), 66-74, esp. 71; J. A. Sharpe,Early Moder England:A SocialHistory, 1550-1760 (London, 1987), 87; LindaPollock, "Younger Sons in Tudorand StuartEngland," History Today 39 (une 1989): 23-29; and FelicityHeal and Clive Holmes, TheGentry in Englandand Wales,1500-1700 (Stanford,Calif., 1994), 87-88, 255. 224 - NEWTON E. KEY

distinctchanges in sermonizingand rhetoric in Englishsociety at large.Here, the intentionis not to describethe periodizationof feastrhetoric or use of history but to showhow differentnatives feasts fostered common threads of localhistory in the late Stuartperiod. The stewardsinscribed a literal portrait of the county community on feast tickets.Two surviving examples-a ticketto the Bristolfeast of the "Gentlemen Nativesof the County of Wiltshire,"circa 1734, and a Kentishfeast ticket of 1700-sketch the themesof love of rurallife, localtopography, and countyhis- toryfound in moredetail in countyfeast sermons. The Wiltshirefeast ticket por- traysSalisbury Cathedral, with a shepherdand his flockin the foregroundand a miniatureStonehenge in the background.Stewards' names and feast details clut- ter the center of the Kentish ticket and are surroundedby coats of arms for the county,its two cathedrals,and the earlof Kent and othernobility. Canterbury and Rochestercathedrals are drawn to the left and right,while FatherMedway and FatherStour are below.A numberof unlikelylooking Saxons in kilts hide behindbranches to the left, whilemounted and armedNormans approach from the right.36 Feastritual often fleshed out the communal ideal through the use of local historical totems. When Southampton "countrymen"met in London in 1707, the town corporation sent "that famous Piece of Antiquity (which has remain'din their Town many Hundred Years)the Sword of Sir Bevis of Southampton ... to be carry'din the Processionfrom the Church to the Hall"37 Kent Society processions included "GreenBoughs," men "in Buff Coats with Bows and Arrows," and even "Trumpets,Hoyboys and Kettle drums." In 1699 and 1701 a strong- man led the Kentish procession,carrying "a tree weighing 400 weight..., with three or four children upon the boughs."38The 1731 inventoryof the Charitable Society of Natives and Citizens of Winchester,which met in that city annually from 1669, listed a porter's gown "with a silver plate with the city arms engraved

36. WiltshireNotes and Queries(1896-98), vol. 2, facingp. 5; Henry R. Plomer,The Kentish Feast (Canterbury,1916), frontispiece.For other county feast tickets,see BodleianLibrary, MS. Wood 276 B, fol. 119 (1662), describedin TheLife and Timesof AnthonyWood, antiqwry of Oxfrd, 1632-1695, describedby Himself ed. AndrewClark (Oxford, 1891-94), 1:462-43, 2:199; and BeaverH. Blacker,ed., GloucestershireNotes and Queries(n.p., 1897), 3:449. The latterdescribes a 1793 LondonGloucestershire feastticket emblazonedwith GeorgeRidler, his dog, and the proverb"As Sure as God'sin Gloster." 37. Daily Courant,no. 1804 (26 November1707). 38. Plomer,The Kentish Feast, 15-19; and George0. Howell, ed., TheKentish Note Book(London, 1891), 1:208-9. THE LOCALISM OF THE COUNTY FEAST e- 225

on it" (purchasedbefore 1675), a cap, and four steward'sstaves.39 The Win- chester society feast stewardsand those of a Warwickshirefeast in London wore "Garlandsof Laurel."40In the 1680s both London parish and Westminstercity feasterssang loyal verses.41The historical totems in Yorkshire'sfeast song and Huntingdon'sdivertisement have been detailed above. Feast sermons provide the most extended localist detail and argument.The sermons that stewards decided to have published treat three themes-unity, charity,feasting-which derivedfrom the ancient notion of agape and the bibli- cal connotations of such "lovefeasts." But late Stuartpolitical and religiouscon- troversiescontinually threatenedto divide any would-be community. To make consensus concrete, one rhetoricalsolution was to emphasize localist tradition and historical (or mythological) county community. A portraitof the county and its history was a brief but importantpart of feast sermons, usually saved for the final application of the text at the conclusion. Stephen Chapman, sermonizingbefore the nativesof Bristolin 1702, apologized for not extolling something of the Excellenciesof this our Native City; also of the great Worth and Vertuesof our Ancestors:But this is a Subject fit ratherfor an History,than a Sermon;and much more becoming an Antiquary,than a Divine. Besides ... I am wholly unac- quainted with the Annals of this, tho' my Native Place.42 Many other preachers,however, developed the county connection at length-as, indeed, stewards and feasters expected them to do. Daniel Woolf and other

39. Recentlypublished in HampshireChronicle (23 August 1969). I am gratefulto Miss S. Foster,archivist, HampshireRecord Office, for this reference.See alsoJohn HenryTodd, A Mementoof the Charitable Societiesof Nativesand Aliens,In the Cityof Winchester(Winchester, 1869), 8-9. Localsymbolism seems to have expandedin laterfeasts. The GloucestershireSociety in the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies includedsongs and statuesof GeorgeRidler and his dog "recliningupon a barrel,with his pipe and jug, emblematicalof his conviviality."See Blacker,Gloucestershire Notes and Queries(n.p., 1897), 3:449 (London, 1890), 4:581-82. The WiltshireSociety of Bristolfeast procession included a shepherdand his dog; see John Latimer,Annals of Bristolin the EighteenthCentury (n.p., 1893), 183. 40. Tho. Mannyngham,A SermonPreached at the Hampshire-Feast... Feb. 16. 1685/6 (1686), dedication; William Assheton,A SermonPreached ... Novemberthe 21th, 1700 (1700), 17-18; and Thomas Willis, TheExcellency of Wisdom... In a SermonPreached ... Nov.30. 1675 (1676), 32. 41. Songat the LoyalFeast in Westminster-Hall,August the 6th. 1685 (1685), broadside;Cyrus Lawrence Day, ed., TheSongs of ThomasD'Urfey (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), 33. For a laterSomerset Society in Bristol song (ca. 1752), see BristolArchives Office AC/J3/13/8, cited in Barry,"Cultural Life of Bristol,"180. 42. StephenChapman, A SermonPreached before the Free-BornCitizens of Bristol,... August27. 1702 (Oxford, 1703), 20-21. 226 ND- NEWTON E. KEY

historiansremind us that in earlymodern England history could be eitherstory or inventory:chronological or chorographical.The latterwas the domainof the localantiquarian and countyhistorian.43 In nativesfeasts, history was deployed as a localinventory as well as a narrativeof pastlocal liberties and loyalty. County historiesand chorographiesbegan to be writtenin the 1570s andwere legion in the seventeenthand eighteenthcenturies. By the late Stuartperiod, such anti- quariancompilations, which had becomequite scholarly,were being penned in increasingnumbers by countryparsons. Although John Harris,who preached before the Southampton "county"natives in 1706 and published The Historyof Kent in 1719, was probablythe only feast preacherwho also wrote a county history, others, such as George Hickes, were prominent antiquarians.44 The riseof the Londoncounty feast roughly parallels the riseof the printed countyhistory. Late Stuart county feast preachers took advantageof recentanti- quarianscholarship and the largenumber of countystudies and mapspublished in the second half of the seventeenthcentury. Sir William Dugdale'sThe Antiquitiesof Warwickshireand Daniel King'scompilation, The Vale-Royallof England.Or, TheCounty Palatine of ChesterIllustrated, were published in 1656, the sameyear William Lambarde's A Perambulation of Kentwas republished.45In 1679 William Bassetreferred obliquely to Dugdalewhen he preachedabout

43. D. R. Woolf, "Eruditionand the Ideaof History in RenaissanceEngland," Renaissance Quarterly 11 (1987): 1-48, esp. 14-17; RichardHelgerson, Forms of Nationhood.The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago, 1992), 132-47; and JosephLevine, Humanism and History:Origins of ModernEnglish Historiography(Ithaca, N.Y., 1987), esp. 176-77. Cf. StanA. E. Mendyk, "SpeculumBritanniae": RegionalStudy, Antiquarianism, and Sciencein Britainto 1700 (Toronto,1989), wherethis distinctionis blurred(p. 14). 44. See W. G. Hoskins,Local History in England,2d ed. (London, 1972), 18-21; Langford,A Politeand CommercialPeople, 96-97; and JeremyBlack, "Ideology, History, Xenophobia, and the Worldof Printin Eighteenth-CenturyEngland," in JeremyBlack and JeremyGregory, eds., Culture,Politics, and Societyin Britain, 1660-1800 (Manchester,1991), 187. 45. King, an engraver,largely appropriated an early-seventeenth-centurytext for his Vale-Royall;see Mendyk, "SpeculumBritanniae, "86. King, in Vale-Royall,sig. Aaaa[1],notes other county surveysbesides Lambardeand Dugdalein print or forthcoming:Richard Carew Thesurvey of Cornwal (firstpublished 1602); John Norden, "The briefdescription of Middlesexand Hartfordshire"(Speculum Britanniae. The firstpart an historicalldiscription [sic] of Middlsex [firstpublished 1593] and 1598 SpeculiBritanniae pars the descriptionof Hartfordshire[first published 1598]); William Burton, TheDescription of Leicestershire [sic](first published 1622); AugustinVincent, "Descriptionof the County of Northampton"(never completed);Sampson Erdeswick, A Briefview of Staffordshire(begun 1593, firstpublished 1717). See JackSimmons, "The Writing of EnglishCounty History,"English County Historians, 1st ser.(East Ardsley,Yorkshire, 1978): 1-21. THE LOCALISM OF THE COUNTY FEAST - 227

Warwickshire,"famous for Antiquities."46Feast preachers used Thomas Fuller's The Historyof the Worthiesof England,arranged by county and publishedin 1662, more often as a sourcefor countrysayings than for county history.47 Duringthe 1650sseveral feast preachers referred to JamesHowell's recently pub- lishedLondinopolis.48 Samuel Clarke drew on his own Martyrologiein his 1654 Warwickshirefeast sermon.49 Feastsermons inventoried local topography, buildings and institutions,and worthies.In the eighteenthcentury one feastsermon even celebratedOxford- shire'snatural history, reminding natives of "therareness of its Minerals;the rich- ness of its Soil" and mentioningRobert Plot's geological work, The Natural Historyof Oxfordshire(1677).50 Numerous feast preachers singled out the county's chief churches,hospitals, and schools,especially as such "foundationsfor Piety and Charity"could remindlisteners of the feast'sown charitablecon- cerns.51Such public institutionswere most plentifulin the metropolis.One preachernoted, beforenatives of London:"Walk about London . . . tell her Markets,. . . Halls for Societies. . . considerher Bridwel. . . Bethlehem... Hospitals. . . and tell me if she deservesnot the nameAugusta." This same preacheradmitted that a full metropolitaninventory would have to include "[w]hatfilthiness is in her skirts,I meanher Suburbs."52As this commentsug- gests, even antiquarianinventory could be polemicallycharged. A preacher remindedHerefordshire natives of "thevenerable Old Cathedralthere with the Figures,as big as the Life,of its antientBishiops, some above500 Yearsstand- ing, yet all defac'dand mangled by sacrilegiousRebels" during the CivilWars and Interregnum.53

46. Basset,A Sermon,24. 47. See, for instance,John Williams,A SermonPreached at the Northampton-ShireFeast, November 8. 1683 (1684), 19. 48. Edm[und]Calamy, The CityRemembrancer. Or, A SermonPreached To the Native-Citizens, Of London . . ., the 23 June,A.D. MDCLVII(1657), 16-17; NathanielHardy, The Olive-Branch Presented to the Native Citizensof London,In a Sermonpreached... May 27 (1658), 28; Tho. Case, SensualityDissected ... : In a Sermonpreached To divers Citizens... Bornin the Countyof Kent... 9. ofJune. 1657(1657), sig. A[3]. 49. SamuelClarke, Christian Good-Fellowship .. . in a Sermonpreached... beforethe Gentlemen,Natives of Warwickshire. .. Novemberthe 30. 1654 (1655), 9; and idem, A Martyrologie,ContainingA Collection Of all the PersecutionsWhich have befallen the ChurchofEngland... Tothe end of QueenMaries Reign (1652), 64. 50. Berriman,"Sermon XI," 1:223-24. On Plot, see Mendyk, "SpeculumBritanniae," chap. 11. 51. The quotationis from Williams,A SermonPreached, 19-20. 52. Hardy,The Olive-BranchPresented, 27, 33. 53. Watts,Social Friendship, 24. 228 --%. NEWTON E. KEY

By recountingcounty worthies, feast sermons self-consciously acted as the "PubliqueRegister of the Repairersof England'sbreaches."54 County feast preacherslisted benefactors of countyhospitals and almshouses. In 1657Thomas Case deriveda list of KentishProtestant benefactors from severalhistorical works.55The county feastersthemselves became part of this public inventory of localbenefactors: one Warwickshirefeast steward was praised for subscribing £80 "towardsthe placing of poor boies born in Rugbie, Apprenticesin London."56 Countybenefactors probably continued to be praisedin feasthall toasts.After Hickesclaimed Emperor Constantine for York, the preacherconcluded that "it is fitterto talk over the long Catalogueof our Worthiesat the Tablethan in the Pulpit."57Richard Helgerson's observation that "chorographies are repositories of proper names," and that, by the seventeenth century, "there are only county chorographies,"is certainly applicable to feastsermons.58 Otherlists of countyworthies were more general, such as thatpraising "those many BraveMen Born and Bred in [Warwickshire],famous ... in Church and State, in Court and Camp."59 Interregnum preachers recounted local Reformation"Saints" and martyrs in the 1650s.60A descriptionof Herefordshire as "theWomb of... the illustriousCliffords, Cecills, Scudamores,the very ancient Familyof Croft'sKnights, with others,"was drawn from Camden's Britannia.61Peter Shelley's Cheshire feast sermontook a differenttack: "The intermixtMatches of Families(which formerly were seldom out of the County) hath so generallyAllianc'd one to anotheras the whole is a kind of Literal Brotherhood"-observationsthat may remindus of some modernhistorians! Shelley then wedded local unity rhetoricto an argumentabout national loyalism, recallingCheshire's support both of GeorgeBooth's 1659 risingagainst the repub- licansand of his son's,Henry Booth's (now Lord Delamere), support of the 1688 Revolutionin the north:

54. Case, SensualityDissected, 87. 55. Ibid., dedication,sigs. A[3-5]. Sourcesinclude James Howell, Londinopolis(1657); Fuller,The Church- Historyof Britain(1655); AndrewWillet, Synopsispapism: that is, a generalview ofpapistry(1592, and numerouseditions through 1634). 56. See, for instance,Clarke, Christian Good-Fellowship, epistle dedicatory. 57. GeorgeHickes, TheMoral Shechinah.. . ; In a SermonPreached at the last Yorkshire-Feast..., June 11. 1682 (1682), 31. 58. Helgerson,Forms of Nationhood,133. 59. HollandA SermonPreach'd, 4; only Guy of Warwickwas mentionedby name. 60. Clarke,Christian Good-Fellowship, 9. 61. Unlike Rich. Gardiner,in "ASermon Preached ... On the AnniversaryMeeting of Herefordshire Natives,June 24. 1658," attachedto XVI SermonsPreached in the Universityof Oxfordand at Court (1659), 307, Camdendid not mention the Cecils (see Britain,617-22). THE LOCALISM OF THE COUNTY FEAST - 229

YourLoyalty hath been in thisAge sufficientlyremarkable. You werethe only Personswho stoodup in Defenceof our Lawsand Religion.... Nor did that PublicSpirit of our Ancientgentry, underthe Conductof the HonourableFather, expire with the Fatalissue of that gloriousDesign: But exertedit self as Need requir'd,with equal Vigour, by assistingthe no less Right HonourableSon; who did so zealouslyand successfullyrevive the Courageof our Country-Men,as verymuch Facilitatedthe late HappyRevolution.62 Specificlocal historical narrative in countyfeast sermons usually recounted eitherevents of the Saxonage or morerecent incidents from the civilwar. Feast sermonscontain virtually no racialargument about Germanicforefathers, and even Kent feastsermons lack referenceto the landingof Hengistand Horsa.63 Feastpreachers kept the chronologyof theirearliest local referentsshrouded in mist. The mythicalKing Luciuswas a populartotem at Londonand Kentish feasts.John Petter,for example,fancifully claimed that Luciusbuilt the first EnglishChristian Church at Dover-Petter was on moresolid ground when he spokeof Ethelbert'sencouragement of "thelight of Gospel."64And Yorkshire's FeastSong of 1690 echoedHickes's erroneous claim that EmperorConstantine had been bornat York.65 Kentfeast preachers invariably retold at lengththeir county's past during the lateStuart period, which was both the peakof countyfeast societies and "agreat epoch in the historyof Anglo-Saxonscholarship."66 They emphasizedKentish "ancientliberties"-a local ancient constitution that gave the communityunbro- ken continuity with the past.67 "Our County, in Caesar'stime," claimed one preacher,"was accounted the Civilestamong the Britains,not Conquer'd,but

62. PeterShelley, A SermonPreach'd before ... the NativesOf. .. Chester... December7th 1699 (1700), 26-27. 63. Contrastwith sourcesin Hugh A. MacDougall,Racial Myth in EnglishHistory: Trojans, Teutons, and Anglo-Saxons(Hanover, N.H., 1982). 64. John Petter,A SermonPreach'd before ... the Nativesof... Kent,Novemb. the 17th. 1698 (1698), 15-16. See also Calamy,The CityRemembrancer, 13. 65. Hickes, TheMoral Shechinah, 31. 66. David C. Douglas,English Scholars, 1660-1730, 2d ed. (London, 1951), chap. 3 (quotationon p. 52); T. O. Kendrick,British Antiquity (London, 1950), 101-40; JosephLevine, Humanism and History, 174-77. 67. Quotationis from SamuelPrat[t], Peace and Gratitude.A SermonPreached before the ... Natives... of Kent,Novem. 23. 1697, 21 See also EdwardBrown, A sermonPreach'd before . .. theNatives ... of Kent, Novemb.the 16th, 1699 (1699), 25; and Assheton,A SermonPreached, 15-17. 230 - NEWTON E. KEY

compoundedwith by the Romans."68And WilliamI ("Iwill not call him your Conqueror"),claimed another, had givenKent special privileges, granting "to all the Inhabitantsof the Provinceof Kent,the Preservationand free Enjoyment of all theirancient Laws and Customsunder the SaxonReigns."69 Preachers in 1690, 1697, and 1701 repeatedthe speciousSwanscomb tale of Kentishrespite from the Normanyoke, probablydrawing directly from Lambarde'sA Perambulationof Kentor Camden'sBritannia (newly translated in 1695).70Supposedly, the menof Kenthad marchedfrom Swanscomb in battledress hidden by greenbranches to meet the Conqueror.Upon detectingtheir weapons hitherto covered by shrub- bery(illustrated on the feastticket and represented by laurelsat the feast),William parleyedwith the men and allowedKent to retainits originalliberties and customs, including"Gavel Kind, or Give-all-Kin,whereby all lands are divided amongthe sons,and so all areFreeholders."71 County feast use of local historypromoted a rhetoricof countryvalues- ancientliberties and purity-that serveda nationaldiscourse. During the reignof WilliamIII (a second conqueror to some),the gallantry of SaxonKentish men, "ever to claimthe Front of the Battel,"and Swanscomb served as pleas to girdagainst con- temporarydivisions and to squelchparty in the faceof theexternal French threat. Had [theirKentish forefathers] then divided into Partiesand Factions,the Compositionof Swanscombhad never found a place in our Annals,nor the Memorialof that movingWood addedto this Day'sPomp.... And should... the Designsof our Enemiesprevail so far as to get footing upon EnglishGround again .. ., nothing can save us but Unity.72

68. Petter,A SermonPreach'd, 15. 69. Assheton,A SermonPreached, 14-17. 70. See Maud E. Simkins,"Political History," in TheVictoria History of the Countyof Kent(London, 1932), 3:279; William Lambarde,A Perambulationof Kent, 1576 ed. (London, 1826), 20-21; and Camden, Britain,324-25, 329. 71. "Williamthe Conqueror,who havingslain King Harold... at Battlein Sussex,marched to DoverCastle in orderto subdueKent; but the peopleencouraged by Stigand... assembledin the greatWoods at Swanscombnear Gravesend, expecting D. William,with eacha greenbough in his Hand, who coming next day,was annoyedto see a Wood marchingagainst him.... [Tlhe two valiantPrelates thus addressed him: 'Most noble Prince,the Commonsof Kent arecome to receiveyou as theirSovereign in Peace,provided they shallfor everenjoy their ancient customs, liberties and estates:If not, they resolverather to die free,than to live Slaves.'The Conqueror,not knowingtheir numbers consented to theirdemands." From EnglishPost (22-25 November1700), reprintedin Plomer,Kentish Feast, 17. See Howell, TheKentish Note Book,1:41-42; and Helgerson,Forms ofNationhood, 136-37 (on Lambarde'sdiscussion of gavelkind). 72. WilliamWake, A SermonPreach'dAt ... the GeneralMeetings of the Gentlemenand Othersof. .. Dorset, ... Decemb.the 2d. 1690 (1690), 33-34. THE LOCALISM OF THE COUNTY FEAST % 231

Followingthe Treatyof Ryswick,Kentish feasters were urgedto guardagainst "Enmitiesat home,"now that God had "disperse[d]the dangersof a Foreign Enemy."73Local partisanshipwas as great a concern as internationalpolicy. A 1701 sermon made clear how Kentish factions would serve Louis XIV's attempt at universalmonarchy: A mighty Prince of insatiableAmbition is framing to himself everydaynew pretencesto justifie his Attempts of renderinghis Dominions as large as his Desires.... [He] cannot have a more fatal Advantageput into his Hands, than the Quarrelsof Them who used to check Invaders.74

Other feast preachersmarshaled recent local history, especially of the civil wars, in service of particularcurrent political objectives.Hereford had remained a "LoyalCity" against the Scots, until betrayed"by false-heartedEnglish-Men" (an attack on Herefordshire'sformer Parliamentarianand Whig MP, Col. John Birch). Worcesterwas "famousfor its Loyalty and Sufferings,having been one of the first stages of the Civil War, to fight for gasping Monarchy; and at last the Scene of that fatal Defeat."75An Oxfordshirefeast preachercombined an Anglo-Saxon past with recent loyalty to the monarch during both the civil war and the 1681 Oxford Parliament.Ever since King Alfred, he noted, "[t]he Kings of England ... have made Oxford ... their City of Refuge."76In 1682, Edward Pelling recalled the Wiltshire natives' "[l]oyal Parents [who] suffered .. . [and their] Friends [who] feared not to roll in Bloud for the King and the Church sake."77The 1684 Herefordshire feast sermonizer, conflating civil war alle- giances with exclusion crisis partisan ones, proposed charity relief only for "[l]oyalpersons ... who either suffered in service of the late Royal Martyr;or, of late, in their faithfull adherenceto our present Soveraign;when the Tragedy of Forty-one was . . . designed to be re-acted, by some of the same men, but all of the same Principles."78Thomas Cartwright's1684 Yorkshirefeast sermon largely reviewed civil war disputes, belittled arguments underpinning recent

73. Prat[t], Peace and Gratitude, 20-21. 74. George Stanhope, Christian Charity.A Sermon Preached before. . . the Natives ... of Kent, Novemb. 20. 1701 (1701), 22-25. 75. Fra. Fox, A Sermon Preachedat the HerefordshireFeast.. .,July 3 1683 (1683), 24; Adam Littleton, A Sermon at a Solemn Meeting of the Natives ... of Worcester.. , June 24. 1680 (1680), 35. 76. John Hartcliffe, A Sermon Preachedat the Oxford-shireFeast ... Nov. 29. 1683 (1684), 29. 77. Edward Pelling, A Sermon Preached... Novemb. 27. 1682. Being the Day of the WiltshireFeast (1683), 26. 78. William Bolton, JosephsEntertainment of his Brethrenin a Sermon Preachedat the HerefordshireFeast ..., June the 25th. 1684 (1684), 20. 232 -,- NEWTON B.E. KEY

antimonarchicaltracts, and did not relatespecifically to the county.But even his extendedattack on the "CommonwealthPrinciples" of HenryNeville's Plato Redivivusand otherworks invoked the historicalmemory of the feasters'"Loyal Ancestorsof Yorkshire,"who opened "Veinsand Purses"for CharlesI at "Marston-More"and "Tower-Hill."79Feast sermons also madevague but omi- nous referencesto recentlocal events.For example,Thomas Bisse warned the revivedHerefordshire Society in 1728 aboutthe direeffects "[w]hen Party enters into a City or Town,and into which of these throughoutthe Landhas it not enter'd,yea, taken possession?"80In 1702 Stephen Chapman felt his fellow citizen feastersat Bristolneeded little reminderof "the FatalConsequences" of "Factionsand Parties":"This our NativeCountry hath severly smarted under its Yoke."81 Twoaspects of countyhistory sit uneasilynext to eachother in feastsermons, the county'spast peaceableunity and its loyalty.Feast preachers used county historyas partof a consensual"country" rhetoric. But it was a consensusagainst others:loyalty suggested partisanship. Moreover, private partisan meetings suggested separatistconventicling; public partisanexpression suggested riot and tumult. Thus, in the wake of the exclusion crisis, Rye House Plot, and Monmouth'sRebellion, Thomas Mannynghamurged civility at the 1686 Hampshirenatives feast on a day usuallyassociated with carnivalexcess. [M]y Directionsabout Manners ... I hope werenot altogether improperfor the Moderatingthe Jollitiesof a Shrove-Tuesday. . . .The most Ungovernablething that I perceiv'd,was in the LoudExpressions of yourLoyalty: and thatI supposeis now the onlyTumult, which your Excellent City will allowof.82

~IV-

Localistrhetoric-the county community myth-was deployedin a new,protopar- tisanpolitical culture. County feast sermons claimed to allay"[t]empers ... embit- ter'd... bydifferences of Nation,Party, or Religion."83Feast sermons urged county

79. Tho. Cartwright,A SermonPreached to the Gentlemenof Yorkshire.. ., 24th ofJune, 1684 (1684), 20, 35. 80. Thomas Bisse,Society recommended. A sermonpreached before the ... nativesof Herefordshire... February7, 1727(1728), 29. For Bisse,see DNB; see also Weber,Rise of MusicalClassics, 114-15. 81. Chapman,A SermonPreached, 23-24. 82. Mannyngham,A SermonPreached, dedication. On ShroveTuesday, see Cressy,Bonfires and Bells,18-19. 83. Tho. Lindesay,A SermonPreached at theAnniversary Meeting of the Dorset-shireGentlemen .. ., Dec. 1. 1691 (1692), 2. THE LOCALISM OF THE COUNTY FEAST - 233

nativesto avoidthose who invent"Political machin[es]."84 Merely meeting and talkingwere taken by somepreachers to be the rootof evil:"That feasting, or public eatingand drinking together, were the types of Unionand Confederacy amongst men,Satan knew well enough."85 Or, as anotherscolded, "When [men] should be in theirShops, and about their necessary Affairs, you mayfind them in the Coffee- Houses, or in the Taverns,Caballing together."86 In 1678 the Huntington Divertisementviewed with alarmthe policy-makingpretensions of a "Club"of the middlingsorts, personified by the busybodytownsman, Sedulous Prudent. This attackon partisanshipwas in factmost intenseduring the periodof the firstWhigs and Tories, and post-Restorationpreachers censured association even while they were preachingbefore groups meeting to furtherHigh Church Anglicanism.The countyconsensual ideal was oppositional rhetoric used to attack partisanopposition. It reflectedthe feasters' reluctance to admitto theirown partic- ipationin the evolvingpolitical culture. As late as 1728, Bisseportrayed county feastsin just such consensualterms, remarking that "werethe like Societiesheld amongthe severalNatives out of everyCounty, that inhabit or visitthis ourgreat Capital,it musthave a nationalinfluence to thegradual extinction of Party."87 Duringthe 1680s,when the nativesfeast reached its peak,party sentiments createdwhat contemporariesviewed as a dangerousexpansion of the political nation. Politicaldiscussions took place at virtuallyall social levelsand urban feasts readilyturned into partisanoccasions.88 Partisan feasts, furthermore, mixedsocial sorts and orders. Both Tory and Whig writers scoffed at the appearance of mere apprenticesamong the other'sranks. Tory royalistJohn Nalson bemoanedthe contemporaryage in which "everylittle blue-apronboy behind the counter"boldly tradesin "state-mendingand church-modelling."89When apprenticessubscribed a loyal addressin 1681, however,Tory broadsheets

84. Mannyngham,A SermonPreached, 7. 85. Bolton,Josephs Entertainment, 2. 86. EdwardFowler, A SermonPreached at the GeneralMeeting of Gloucestershire-Men.. ., Decemberthe 9th 1684 (1685), 26-27. 87. Bisse,Society recommended, 34. 88. Other London parish,guild, and artilleryfeasts were clearlypartisan occasions. See, for example,Folger Library,Newdigate Newsletters, L.C. 1244 (Grocer's),1246 ("loyalcitizens"), 1251 (St. Dunstans), 1387 (Bridghouse),1471 (Temple)(20 July 1682-29 December1683). 89. John Nalson,An ImpartialCollection (1682-83), quoted in ValeriePearl, "Change and Stabilityin Seventeenth-CenturyLondon," in JonathanBarry, ed., TheTudor and StuartTown: A Readerin English UrbanHistory, 1530-1688 (London, 1990), 144. 234 -s NEWTON E. KEY

claimed these as "the more Genteller and better sort of young Trades-men."90 Whig writers took a differentview, of course, and critiqued such meddling with state affairs: "Unhappy Youths! misguided by your zeal, / Come mind your Shops, and not the Commonweal."91 Feasting exacerbatedthis status politics. Tories complained of the "Roaring of the Mobile" at their opponents' feasts.92In 1682, for instance, one Tory poet disparagedan intended Whig feast: Tag, Rag, and Long-railwere all to come in, To sit at this King of Poland's[Shaftesbury's] Table: The Feast I conceive else was not worth a Pin, Without the consent of an insolent Rabble.93

In the same year, another poet attacked such social leveling at the Toryappren- tices' feast:

Here'sKnight and Chimney-sweeperat a board, A Porter'sthere Conjumbled with a Lord; So't be for th' good o'th'Cause what matter is't, Tho' Count and Cobler'sat it Hand to Fist?94

When a stock Tory characterin the WeeklyPacquet of Advicefrom Rome feebly tried to defend such social mixing at the apprentices'feast-"Illustrissmo's and Grandee's,and Porters,and Sons of Whores, and Prentices,so sweetly mixt, you'd wonder at it!"-the Whig "Trueman"derided the participation of such "little people" and appropriatedthe radical symbolism of the Norman yoke by com- paring the haunch of venison provided by the king with the mythical "Mess of Pottage"for which their forefathershad sold their birthright.95Partisan gather-

90. J. M., A VindicationOf the LoyalLondon-Apprentices: Against thefalse and scandalousAspersions of Richard Janeway,in his LyingMercury publish'd June 14 [1681?].See also TrueLoyalty in its Collours:or, a Survey of the LaudableAddress of the YoungMen andApprentices Of the Cityof London.To His Majesty.An heroick poem,broadside (17 June 1681). 91. The quotationis from TheBoys Whipt home: or, a RhymeUpon the Apprentices Poem, &rc. (13 August 1681). See alsoA Poemupon the PrenticesFeast at Merchant-Taylors-Hal(1682), which NarcissusLuttrell labeled"a whiggish poem" (Huntington Library, Bindley Pamphlets). 92. A LetterofAdvice to the PetitioningApprentices, broadside (1681). 93. "TheWhigs Disappointmentupon their intendedFeast," in A ChoiceCollection of 180 LoyalSongs, comp. Nath. Thompson (1685), 107. 94. WarHorns, Make room for the Buckswith GreenBowes (1682), 7. 95. TheWeekly Pacquet ofAdvicefrom Rome; Or, ThisHistory of Popery,vol. 4., no. 343 (11 August 1682); see ChristopherHill, Puritanismand Revolution(Harmondsworth, England, 1958, 1990), chap. 3, "The NormanYoke." THE LOCALISM OF THE COUNTY FEAST s 235

ings, it shouldbe noted,were not countyfeasts. Even so, socialgroups did mix at the countyfeasts, where attempts were made to recreatecounty community among all attendingcitizens. England remaineda hierarchicaland status- obsessednation. Yet, the protopartisannature of county feasts(and the con- structionof countycommunity rhetoric) encouraged not a separationof a gentry elite but rathera widerparticipation in meetingsand an expansionof the political nation. VI

Twenty-fiveyears ago one approachappeared set to dominateStuart social and politicalhistory: the countycommunity. In 1966, severaltalks on the BBCseries TheEnglish Revolution (published in 1968) focusedon "thecounty community." In one of thesetalks, Ivan Roots argued that "stubbornlocal patriotism" opened a riftbetween London and the localities.In another,D. H. Penningtonnoted the struggleduring the warbetween the "natural"county military organization and the "artificial'regional"' associations. In his appearance,Alan Everitt stressed the social(custom and kinship) basis of "countyfeeling," which increased during the seventeenthcentury.96 To provethat gentrycounty sentiment preceded obliga- tion to the nationstate, these and otherhistorians repeated the maximthat in early modern England "country"meant county.97 But suchunanimity regarding the countycommunity (or provincialist)thesis has gone. Severalhistorians have cast doubt on "thenotion of the countyas a self-conscioussociety."98 Clive Holmes suggests that county awareness did not play a major role in shaping elite consciousnessduring the Stuartperiod. Instead,the Englishelite shareda commoneducation and a commonculture

96. In E. W. Ives, ed., TheEnglish Revolution, 1600-1660 (New York,1968), 34-75, esp. 37, 41, 48, 51, 70. 97. See, for example,J. S. Morrill,Seventeenth-Century Britain, 1603-1714 (Hamden,Conn., 1980), 125; and DiarmaidMacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors:Politics and Religionin an EnglishCounty 1500-1600 (Oxford, 1986), pt. 1. 98. Cf. G. C. F Forster,"Government in ProvincialEngland under the LaterStuarts," Transactions of the RoyalHistorical Society, 5th ser.,33 (1983): 48; AndrewM. Coleby,Central Government and the Localities: Hampshire1649-1689 (Cambridge,1987), passim;and J. D. Davies, "The Navy,Parliament, and PoliticalCrisis in the Reign of CharlesII," HistoricalJournal36 (1993): 288. The quotationis from Anthony Fletcher,"National and LocalAwareness in County Communities,"in HowardTomlinson, ed., Beforethe EnglishCivil War(London, 1983), 151-74 (cf. Fletcher,Reform in the Provinces:The Governmentof StuartEngland [New Haven, Conn., 1986], 365-66, for a more positiveview). 236 ~ NEWTON E. KEY

centered in metropolitan London.99 Ann Hughes claims that historians have "been seduced into an overestimationof the county's importance";other cor- porate forums and pays (regions demarcatedby field system), she argues, had a greaterpull on loyalties. She suggests, moreover,that county "localism"was at best a rhetoricaltool used during civil strife, not an ingrained philosophy of a specific gentry community.100J. C. D. Clark even derisivelytitles two sections of his book on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English historiography "Provincialism:True but Unimportant?' and "Provincialism:Important but Untrue?"101 A middle way lies between the proponents of the county community thesis and its detractors.The county community was indeed a myth, but seventeenthcentury Englishmen createdit. Victor Morgan, who arguesthat even within the universitiesof the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries county identity and local consciousnesswere reinforced,points to a culture of regionalismor provincialism.102A relationshipbetween provincialismand nascent partisanpolitics can be seen in the materialsgenerated by county feasts in London. These natives feasts were an invented tradition, one with a purpose.103The myths they created and deployed not only reflected simultaneous expansion of both local and national consciousnessbut also helped shape early English nationalism. County community mythmakingis evident throughoutthe late Stuartperiod, but especiallyduring times of crisis. During the 1650s, country gentry showed their disapprovalof national governmentby focusing on the "tiesof neighbourhood and commensality and by the development of a common piety."104The

99. Clive Holmes, "TheCounty Communityin StuartHistoriography," Journal ofBritish Studies 19 (1980): 54-73; see alsoJ. A. Sharpe,Early Modern England, 115-16; and Heal and Holmes, Gentryin England, 199-228. 100. Ann Hughes, "LocalHistory and the Originsof the Civil War,"in Ann Hughesand RichardCust, eds., Conflictin EarlyStuart England: Studies in Religionand Politics,1603-42 (London, 1989), 224-53, esp. 229; and Hughes, "Militancyand Localism:Warwickshire Politics and WestminsterPolitics, 1643-47," Transactionsof the RoyalHistorical Society, 5th ser., 31 (1981): 51-68. 101. Revolutionand Rebellion:State and Societyin Englandin the Seventeenthand EighteenthCenturies (Cambridge,1986), chap. 4, esp. 64-65. 102. VictorMorgan, "Cambridge University and 'The Country,'1560-1640," in LawrenceStone, ed., The Universityin Society(Princeton, N.J., 1974), 1:183-246; and Morgan,"The Cartographic Image of'The Country'in EarlyModern England," Transactions of theRoyal Historical Society, 5th ser.,29 (1979): 129-54. 103. EricHobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Traditions," in Eric Hobsbawmand TerenceRanger, eds., TheInvention of Tradition(Cambridge, 1983), 12. 104. Heal and Holmes, Gentryin England,226. THE LOCALISM OF THE COUNTY FEAST v- 237

countyfeasts and feastsermons clearly performed the samefunction in London. Duringthe anarchyof 1659-60, ThomasFuller, the greatcompiler of "worthies" for eachcounty, naturally turned to the severalcounty communities for political action,even when urging common cause against the republicans: "Let the twoand fiftyShires of Englandand Wales ... be all as one, andunanimously advance the Worke,and not do as they dealt with poore Cheshire."105Countrymen re- embracedthe myth of separatecounty communities.Petitions and addresses flowedfrom the countiesin the 1640s, 1659-60, and from 1679 to 1683. The Interregnumcounty committees, Everitt argues, were in effectso many"'parlia- ments'in England."The samecan be saidof the countyfeasts-indeed, Annesley calledhis fellowfeasters of 1654 "theWil-shire Parliament."106 LawrenceE. Klein recentlynoted that "onelocus for eighteenth-century historicalself-understanding was the city."107Another locus that was important in the seventeenthcentury, but of decreasingimportance in the eighteenth,was the court.108A thirdlocus, the importanceof whichspans both centuries, was the country.And, at least to the natives feast societies, country meant county. Althoughthese societies were paradoxically the productof London,the country/ countywas of continuedbroad importance to earlymodern political and social identity.109Like the city and the court,it had referenceto tangibleplaces that wereequally the siteof constructedrelationships and centers of self-fashioning.It shouldnot surpriseus if historicalcategories were social as much or morethan geographical.10 EasternIllinois University

105. Thomas Fuller,An Alarumto the Countiesof Englandand Wales,with the Oath,ofAbjuration, For ever to be abjur'd.... By a loverof his nativecountrey (1660), 13. 106. Everitt,The CountyCommittee of Kent,7; SamuelAnnesley, The First Dish at the Wil-shireFeast, Novemb. 9. 1654 (1655), 16. 107. LawrenceE. Klein, "ATime of Progress?"(review article), Journal of BritishStudies 31 (1992): 294-300. 108. See the argumentin R. O. Bucholz, TheAugustan Court: Queen Anne and the Declineof CourtCulture (Stanford,Calif., 1993). 109. Comparethe mythic county communitypast deployedby the citizenyounger sons of gentryin late StuartLondon with the inventedtraditions of a new "antique"gentry in LateHanoverian Wales, in PhilipJenkins, "The Creationof an Ancient Gentry':Glamorgan 1760-1840," WelshHistorical Review 12 (1984): 29-49. 110. See also MichaelBraddick, "State Formation and SocialChange in EarlyModern England: A Problem Statedand ApproachesSuggested," Social History 16 (1991): 1-17, esp. 5.