THE MOVEMENT FOR THE REFORMATION OF MANNERS, 1688-1715 ANDREW GORDON CRAIG 1980 (reset and digitally formatted 2015) PREFACE TO THE 2015 VERSION This study was completed in the pre-digital era and since then has been relatively inaccessible to researchers. To help rectify that, the 1980 typescript submitted for the degree of PhD from Edinburgh University has been reset and formatted in Microsoft “Word” and Arial 12pt as an easily readable font and then converted to a read-only PDF file for circulation. It is now more compact than the original typescript version and fully searchable. Some minor typographical errors have been corrected but no material published post-1980 has been added except in the postscript (see below). Pagination in the present version does not correspond to the original because of computerised resetting of the text. Footnotes in this version are consecutive throughout, rather than chapter by chapter as required in the 1980 version. The original bound copy is lodged in Edinburgh University Library. A PDF scan of it is available at https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk /bitstream/handle/1842/6840/254333.pdf A further hand-corrected copy is available together with my research archive in the Special Collections Department at St Andrews University Library. http://www.st- andrews.ac.uk/library/specialcollections/ A note for researchers interested in the movement for the reformation of manners 1688-1715 and afterwards has been added as a postscript which lists other studies which have utilised this work and its sources in various ways. I am grateful to the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for its generous scholarship support while a research student at Edinburgh University undertaking this study in the 1970s and to the following for their encouragement, guidance and support during the creation and completion of this research. Primary supervisor: Harry Dickinson, Edinburgh University Secondary supervisor: Rosalind Mitchison, Edinburgh University Carnegie Trust external assessor: Hugh Trevor Roper, Oxford University External examiner: Angus McInnes, Keele University Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When citing this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Andrew Craig [email protected] www.publicinvolvement.org.uk/about/andrew-craig/ London June, 2015 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: THE CONCEPT OF 'MANNERS' IN LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND (5-8) CHAPTER ONE: THE LONDON GENESIS: MEN AND EVENTS (9-24) CHAPTER TWO: EARLY DAYS OF OPPOSITION AND STRUGGLE (25-43) CHAPTER THREE: REFORMERS OF MANNERS AND THEIR LONDON ALLIES (44-60) CHAPTER FOUR: TWO PRINCIPAL TARGETS FOR REFORMATION: (61-86) BAWDY HOUSES AND PROSTITUTES BLASPHEMY AND LORD'S DAY OFFENCES CHAPTER FIVE: TWO LESSER TARGETS FOR REFORMATION: (87-100) BARTHOLOMEW FAIR HOMOSEXUALS IN THE METROPOLIS CHAPTER SIX: 'THEN STOOD UP PHINEHAS AND EXECUTED JUDGMENT': VIEWS ON MAGISTRACY, THE COMMUNITY AND THE FAMILY IN REFORMATION OF MANNERS SERMONS (101-126) APPENDIX: PREACHERS OF SERMONS FOR REFORMATION OF MANNERS AT ST. MARY LE BOW AND SALTERS HALL IN LONDON BETWEEN 1697 AND 1715 (121-126) CHAPTER SEVEN: THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT VIEWED BY CONTEMPORARIES: (127-162) CIVIL AUTHORITIES THE ANGLICAN LEADERSHIP THE HIGH CHURCH CHAMPIONS CONCLUSION: THE IDEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE REFORMATION OF MANNERS MOVEMENT (163-171) BIBLIOGRAPHY (172-190) POSTSCRIPT: NOTE FOR FUTURE RESEARCHERS (191-192) 2 ABBREVIATIONS USED IN FOOTNOTES BL - British Library EUL - Edinburgh University Library Bodl. - Bodleian Library, Oxford University Lambeth - Lambeth Palace Library, London Guildhall - Guildhall Library, London MRO - Middlesex Record Office, London PRO - Public Record Office, London Folger - Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D. C. Add. MS - Additional Manuscript. (various collections) Bray MSS - Manuscripts of the Rev. Thomas Bray, Sion College Library, London Bristol MS - Bristol Central Library MS BL 611 B10162, 'Minutes of the Bristol Society for Reformation of Manners' SPCK Archives - Original and abstract correspondence to and from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, SPCK Library, London Wanley MSS - Correspondence of Humfrey Wanley, SPCK Library, London Vernon Letters - G. P. R. James ed., Letters Illustrative of the Reign of William III, from 1696 to 1708 addressed to the Duke of Shrewsbury by James Vernon, Secretary of State (1841), vol. II. SPCK Papers of Moment – ‘Papers of Moment MSS' in SPCK Library, London Wake Papers - Papers of Archbishop of Canterbury William Wake, Christ Church Library, Oxford. Sharp Papers - Papers of Archbishop John Sharp of York, Lloyd-Baker-Sharp MSS, Gloucester Record Office. Bulkeley Papers - Papers of Sir Richard Bulkeley, Portland MSS, Nottingham University Library. BL Loan 29 - Papers. of the Harley Family, Portland MSS, Loan 29, British Library CSPD - Calendar of State Papers Domestic EHR - English Historical Review HLQ - Huntington Library Quarterly 3 DNB - Dictionary of National Biography PMLA - Proceedings of the Modern Language Association Dates, Spelling and Punctuation Dates are given throughout in Old Style, though assuming the year to begin on 1 January and not 25 March. Spelling and punctuation have been modernised in quoted material throughout. Archaisms have occasionally been retained in footnotes for bibliographical reasons. Footnote style Sequential footnotes give author where known, title, date of publication, and page reference. Second and subsequent citations give author's name and/or key title word plus page reference. London is the place of publication unless indicated. THESIS ABSTRACT (from the 1980 original version) Previously unused manuscript sources and printed sources form the basis for an examination of the motivations, tactics and interactions with existing institutions of the participants in the movement for reformation of manners. Their providential and patriarchal beliefs are highlighted within the 1688 to 1715 period, whose climate of uncertainty and fear were crucial to sharpening the reformers' sense of urgency to achieve a more effective enforcement of secular laws against immorality and profaneness and thus ensure England's survival against foreign and domestic enemies. Founding members of the First Society for Reformation of Manners in London are identified, as well as their allies among the Anglican religious societies and elsewhere. Opposition to the ad hoc reforming societies from the capital's judicial establishment is analysed. The movement's efforts against sexual immoralities, swearing and cursing, and Sabbath-breaking are catalogued, together with attempts to suppress Bartholomew Fair and London's homosexual population. Sermons preached to reformers of manners in London are catalogued and studied for the reformers' views on magistracy, the community and the family. The final chapter examines opinions about the movement held by civil authorities, the Anglican leadership and champions of the High Church party, since reformation of manners became an element in the 'rage of party' in church and state. The conclusion places the movement for reformation of manners as one strand composing 'country ideology', a pervasive historical attitude in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries decrying any unbalancing of the constitution of the commonweal whether by immoralities, hypocrisy or political expediency. 4 INTRODUCTION THE CONCEPT OF ‘MANNERS’ IN LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND The word 'manners' in late seventeenth century English usage connoted much more than social graces. Modern usage has long departed from the sociological meaning of 'manners' inherent in dicta such as William of Wykeham's 'manners maketh man'. But such an axiom would have been crystal clear to men seeking a reformation of manners in England after 1688. They would, ironically, have agreed with Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651, chap XI) that 'manners' meant not merely 'decency of behaviour but those qualities of mankind that concern their living together in peace and unity'. The social fabric and each person's tangible estate within it depended on acknowledged codes of behaviour validated by the Christian religion's unimpeachable moral tenets. Good manners were synonymous with correct behaviour in this context and it was the divinely sanctioned role of the righteous magistrate, from the monarch down to the local justice of the peace, to maintain the standards of behaviour conducive to good manners. In a hierarchical society whose levels were linked by deferential obligations (subject to ruler, man to master, child to parent), corrupt manners could not be tolerated if the principle of social subordination was to survive intact. This was as true of the government of the household as of the government of the nation. Literature of the period abounded in the argument that unchecked corrupt manners such as blasphemy, drunkenness, prostitution or Sabbath-breaking contributed to social disharmony and the dissolution of the ties binding together families as well as communities.1 Toleration of deviant behaviour in any modern or 'liberal' sense was quite alien to patterns of thought in the late seventeenth century as expressed in