William Pitt and the origins of the Loyalist Association Movement of 1792

Historical Journal

Volumn 39, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 943-962

  Duffy, Michael ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 37849036131     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X00024717     Document Type: Article

References (123)

1. London, Public Record Office (P.R.O.), PRO 30/8/157(1), fos. 142V-143.
2. For discussion of the seriousness of the agitation see A. Goodwin, The friends of liberty. The English democratic movement in the age of the French revolution (London, 1979), pp. 208–267
3. R. R. Dozier, For king, constitution and country. The English loyalists and the French revolution (Kentucky U.P., 1983), pp. 26–54
4. K.J. Logue, Popular disturbances in Scotland 1780–1815 (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 30, 46–7, 148–51, 160–1
5. C. Emsley, ‘The London “Insurrection” of December 1792: fact, fiction or fantasy?’, Journal of British Studies, XVII (1978), 66–86.
6. David Eastwood, ‘Patriotism and the English state in the 1790s’, in The French revolution and British popular politics, ed. M. Philp (Cambridge, 1991), p. 154.
7. Harry Dickinson, ‘Popular conservatism and militant loyalism 1789–1815’, in Britain and the French revolution 1789–1815, ed. H. T. Dickinson (London, 1989), pp. 121–122.
8. J. Reeves, The Association papers (London, 1793), p. iv.
9. Reeves to Windham, 2 Aug. 1794, British Library (B.L.), Additional MSS 37, 847, fos. 42–42V.
10. J. H. Rose, William Pitt and the Great War (London, 1911, reissued 1934), p. 68
11. J. Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, Vol. II, The reluctant transition (London, 1983), 231 and n. 4
12. G. Tomline, Memoirs of the life of the Rt Hon. William Pitt (London, 1822), III, 463.
13. Earl Stanhope too discussed the Association Movement as the creation of Reeves and separate from Pitt: Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt (London, 1861), II, 178.
14. W. T. Laprade, England and the French revolution 1789–1797 (Baltimore, 1909), p. 79
15. Dozier, King, constitution and country, p. 58.
16. Dictionary of national biography. From earliest times to 1900, ed. L. Stephen and S. Lea (Oxford, 1921–1922), XVI, 858–859.
17. E. C. Black, The Association (Harvard, 1963), p. 237
18. D. E. Ginter, ‘The loyalist association movement of 1792 and British public opinion’, Historical Journal, IX (1966), 179.
19. A. Mitchell, ‘The association movement of 1792–3’, Historical Journal, IV (1961), 159.
20. H.M.C. Fourteenth Report, Appendix, Part v (henceforth HMC Dropmore), II (London, 1894), 337.
21. Dozier, King, constitution and country, p. 59.
22. Mitchell, ‘Association movement’, p. 59 and n. 19
23. Ehrman, Pitt, 11, 230–231.
24. See also Dozier, King, constitution and country, pp. 51–2, 57
25. Dickinson, ‘Popular conservatism’, p. 122 and n. 48
26. J. A. Caulfield, ‘The Reeves Association: a study of loyalism in the 1790s’ (unpublished University of Reading Ph.D. thesis, 1988), pp. 18–19
27. J. C. Mori, ‘The impact of the French revolution on the ideas and policies of William Pitt, 1789–1795’ (unpublished Oxford University D.Phil, thesis, 1992), p. 88.
28. Mitchell, ‘Association movement’, p. 59 n. 19
29. Ehrman, Pitt, II, 231 n. 1.
30. Grenville to Buckingham, ‘Dropmore, Friday night’, Huntington Library, Stowe MSS, STG Box 39/6. A home office investigation by Nepean in October/November produced a list of fourteen towns and cities where there were now ‘Associations for relief of pretended Grievances’ (H.O. 42/22 fos. 216–18).
31. B.L., Add MSS 58, 876, fos. 160v, 165–168 (cf. HMC Dropmore, 11, 344–6). The extract quoted earlier and cited in n. 13 above is part of a paragraph which begins ‘As to the declaration of association I have no doubt that it has been better considered and with more time than I can give it, but I have added words with a pencil which I wish you to consider as they would meet a very material and growing part of the mischief it not only bids discedere a contactê but it adds dividite turbidos. [The extract already quoted then follows and continues]… and a notice that counterparts of it are lodged with Messrs ABC etc at Aylesbury, Buckingham, Amersham, Wycombe, Chesham, Marlow, Colebrook, Beaconsfield, Newport and Olney. The money to be collected for and lodged with the County Treasurer. This will avoid county meetings which we do not wish to multiply’ (fos. 167 V-168). The letter concludes with a discussion of Buckingham's ability to call out the militia in an emergency.
32. This letter is printed in Memoirs of the courts and cabinets of George the Third, ed. duke of Buckingham and Chandos (London, 1853), II, 228–30, and contains references to announcing the association about the time of the quarter sessions and to securing signatures of farmers and yeomen.
33. Memorandum of Thomas Grenville (quoting Burke) 15 Nov. 1792. B.L., Add MSS 60, 487(B).
34. Quoted by David Eastwood in ‘Patriotism and the English state’, pp. 151–152.
35. Court and cabinets, II, 228. See also Dundas's 22 November letter to Pitt quoted at the start of this article.
36. John Gifford, A history of the political life of the Right Honourable William Pitt (London, 1809), III, 282–3. Gifford changed his name from John Richards Green after his bankruptcy in the 1780s.
37. For his connections with Reeves see E. L. de Montluzin, The anti-Jacobins 1798–1800. The early contributors to the Anti-Jacobin Review (London, 1988), pp. 93–5 (he was also a friend of the journalist John Taylor who dined from time to time with Reeves pp. 32, 67)
38. J. L. Mallet (Reeves's house-guest in 1798), John Lewis Mallet: an autobiographical retrospect of the first twenty nine years of his life (Privately printed, Windsor, 1890), p. 199 (I am grateful to Mrs Elizabeth Sparrow for bringing this reference to my attention).
39. Dictionary of Canadian biography, VI, 1821–1835 (Toronto, 1987), 636.
40. Montluzin, The anti-Jacobins, pp. 67–68
41. Gentleman's Magazine, LXXXIX (1819), pt. 2, 565–566
42. Morning Chronicle, 30 Nov. 1792, p. 1 (for the list of committee members of the Crown and Anchor Association appointed at a meeting on the 29th).
43. L. Werkmeister, A newspaper history of England 1792–1793 (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1967), pp. 137, 403.
44. For Bowles's subsequent pamphleteering activities see Emma Vincent, ‘“The real grounds of the present war”: John Bowles and the French revolutionary wars, 1792–1802’, History, LXXVIII (1993), 393–420.
45. The history of parliament. The commons 1790–1820, ed. R. G. Thome (London, 1986), IV, 832–834
46. D.N.B., XV, 1318–1320
47. Morning Chronicle, 30 Nov. 1792, p. 1. Was the position of king's counsel granted to Plumer on 7 Feb. 1793 a reward for his services on this occasion? Plumer had defended Sir Thomas Rumbold before the house of commons in 1786, and was one of Warren Hastings's three counsels during his impeachment 1787–94.
48. For his defence of Reeves in 1796 see A. V. Beedell, ‘John Reeves's prosecution for a seditious libel, 1795–6: a study in political cynicism’, Historical Journal, XXXVI (1993), 799–824.
49. Connections could be made with Sir James Eyre, chief baron of the court of exchequer and at that time chief commissioner of the great seal, in that Reeves dedicated one of his earliest legal works to him, Plumer in his early career attended Eyre on circuit, frequently assisting him by taking down evidence at trials, and that Eyre died in 1799 (Beedell, ‘John Reeves's prosecution’, p. 801
50. D.M.B., VI, 963–4, XV, 1318–20).
51. Eyre was promoted to chief justice of the common pleas in February 1793. Equally, however, there was Sir William Ashhurst, judge of the King's Bench and also a commissioner of the great seal, who died in 1807, whose famous charge to the Middlesex grand jury on 19 November 1792 expressed sentiments similar to those supported by the association and was the first work it published (see The World, 3 Dec. 1792, p. 1).
52. Perhaps the description ‘respectable’ rather than ‘distinguished'judge denotes lesser fry at the same level as Reeves himself rather than these: all is speculation. Mary Thale in editing Selections from the papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792–1795 (Cambridge, 1983), p. 30, names Charles Yorke, without supporting evidence, as the single co-founder of the movement along with Reeves. Yorke, M.P. for Cambridgeshire, was another barrister and original member of the committee of the association, and he also appointed Reeves superintendent of aliens while he was home secretary in 1803, but he does not match so closely any of the three descriptions given by Gifford.
53. The parliamentary history of England from the earliest period to the year 1803, XXXII [London, 1818], cols 661–2.
54. However, as E. C. Black and Mark Philp have pointed out, the endorsements on the association papers presented by Reeves to the British Museum (B.L. Add MSS 16, 919) are in two hands-Reeves and another using the initials J.M. (Black, The Association, p. 237 n. 8
55. M. Philp, ‘Vulgar conservatism 1792–3’, English Historical Review, CX (1995), 42–69, see p. 47 n. 4). Could this have been John Bowles?
56. For the affiliations of these two newspapers, which had combined their newsgathering facilities, see Werkmeister, Newspaper history, pp. 31, 34–5, 37, 120 (the Star moved towards neutrality by the start of 1793).
57. Dozier, King, constitution and country, p. 56
58. followed by Dickinson, ‘Popular loyalism in Britain in the 1790s’, in E. Hellmiith (ed.), The transformation of political culture (Oxford, 1990), p. 517
59. In the copy subsequently reprinted in the Association papers, the Annual register…for the year 1792 (London, 1810, pt. 2, p. 159)
60. by Laprade, England and the French revolution (pp. 76–7), Thursday is also added to these days. It was not in any of the original advertisements and may reflect a later desire for consistency by making the original conform with the days fixed subsequently for committee meetings.
61. Morning Chronicle, 23 Nov. 1792, p. 2.
62. See The Times, The World, Sun, 24 Nov. 1792.
63. Heriot to Reeves, 29 Nov. 1792, B.L. Add MSS 16, 919, fo. IIIV. Cf. Dozier, King, constitution and country, pp. 56–57
64. M. Philp, ‘Vulgar Conservatism 1792–3’, p. 47, the short paragraph in the Sun on the 23rd that ‘The better order of Britons are at length roused by the boldness of domestic enemies, and are forming themselves into Associations, for the purpose of repressing and defeating pernicious doctrines afloat in this country. The plan does infinite honour to the projectors, and we doubt not will be followed up with spirit and effect.’ is almost certainly the afternoon paper's response to the Morning Chronicle advertisement earlier in the day. I am grateful to Mr Christopher Harrison for locating copies of the Sun for me in Birmingham Central Library (copies of all other newspapers referred to are in the British Library).
65. Public Advertiser, 28 Nov. 1792, p. 2. This crucial interview was first noticed by John Caulfield (‘Reeves association’, pp. 21–2) but not knowing of Pitt's letter toDundas next day he could only guess at its implications. Heriot's letter to Reeves on 29 November (n. 32 above) would seem to indicate that the interview was in the morning, giving Nepean time to authorize free advertisement of the initial declaration for that afternoon's edition of the Sun.
66. Reeves to Windham, 1 Aug. 1794, B.L., Add MSS 37, 874, fo. 36V.
67. Court and cabinets, II, 228–30, Grenville to Buckingham 25 Nov. 1792.
68. In the absence of Pitt's letter and of knowledge of the interview with Reeves, Grenville's letter has long been thought to refer to the meeting of London merchants, bankers and traders at the Merchant Taylors' Hall, announced on 28 Nov. and held on 5 Dec. (Laprade, England and the French revolution, pp. 74–75
69. Mitchell, ‘Association movement’, p. 60 [locating it at the Grocers' Hall]
70. Goodwin, Friends of liberty, p. 264 n. 257
71. though this view has been challenged by Ginter, ‘Loyalist Association movement’, pp. 179–190
72. by Caulfield, ‘The Reeves Association’, p. 19, on the grounds that the declaration of that meeting was nothing like that intended by Grenville in his letter. The events of the 24th-26th, about which Grenville was writing, and Pitt's concurrent letter to Dundas, confirm their doubts and show that Grenville was referring to the government's projects for developing the Reeves association.
73. Grenville to Buckingham, 25 Nov., Courts and cabinets, II, 229.
74. P.R.O., PRO 30/8/198, Notebook 4, fo. 109.
75. Cf. PRO 30/8/198, Notebook 4, fo. 108v
76. with Court and cabinets, II, 226–228
77. fo. 110 with Huntington Library, Stowe MSS, STG Box 39/6 ‘Dropmore, Friday night’ [16 Nov. 1792].
78. Court and cabinets, II, 229
79. Dundas to Pitt, 22 Nov., P.R.O., PRO 30/8/157(1), fo. 143.
80. Gifford, Political life of Pitt, III, 288–289
81. Ehrman, Pitt, II, 231 n. 4. Reeves concluded his second declaration, published on the 26th following his interview with Pitt, with a statement deprecating private political meetings, condemning the terms on which the radical clubs had associated as seditious and often treasonable, but justifying meetings of his own association ‘for suppressing sedition, for propagating peaceable opinions, and for aiding the magistracy in subordination to the direction of the magistrates’ as allowed by the law and required by the times
82. The Times, 26 Nov., p. 1.
83. See appendix. There have been attempts to see Grenville as implicated while Pitt was not (Ehrman, Pitt, III, 230–1), but as shown above they rested on the mistaken transference of part of Buckingham's letter of the 27th to the 18th, and they totally disregard the intimate relationship between the two cousins: ‘… so inseparably connected that there is but one sentiment between them…’
84. Selections from the letters and correspondence of Sir James Bland Surges, ed. R. Hutton [London, 1884], p. 174, ‘…whatever is written to one may be considered as written to the other…’
85. Journal and correspondence of William Lord Auckland [London, 1861–1862], II,414. Throughout this period the two worked in close cooperation
86. (see M. Duffy, ‘Pitt, Grenville and the control of British foreign policy in the 1790s’, in Knights errant and true Englishmen. British foreign policy 1600–1800, ed. J. Black [Edinburgh, 1989], pp. 151–77).
87. See appendix, para 4, and Court and cabinets, II, 229. Pitt and Grenville worked together closely on the 24th. A board of trade official trying to deliver a letter to the foreign secretary found Grenville ‘so busily employed with Mr Pitt’ that he could not see him and had to leave it with an under-secretary
88. Fawkener to Hawkesbury, 24 Nov. 1792, B.L., Add MSS 38, 192, fo. 135.
89. The Times, 26 Nov., p. 1.
90. See also The World, the Sun, the Morning Chronicle, and the Star (where the Crown and Anchor meeting is dated the 22nd). Papers such as the Public Advertiser which had not published the first advertisement on the 24th, published it on the 27th, followed by this second declaration on the 28th. The correlation between the new declaration and the contents described in Pitt's and Grenville's letters leaves no doubt that it was to this that Grenville was referring when he wrote on the 25th that'… we are preparing an association in London which is to be declared in the course of next week’ (Court and cabinets, II, 229).
91. J. P. de Castro, The Gordon riots (Oxford, 1926), pp. 144–7, 162–3, 168–70
92. Stanhope, Life of Pitt, I, 41–2. Pitt's attitude on this occasion seems similar to that of the military officer in 1780 who locked the gates on the Temple volunteers to save his soldiers from being shot by ‘friendly fire’!
93. De Castro, p. 168.
94. For which see D. Philips, ‘Good men to associate and bad men to conspire: associations for the prosecution of felons in England 1750–1860’
95. P.J.R. King, ‘Prosecution associations and their impact in eighteenth-century Essex’, in Police and prosecution in Britain 1750–1850, ed. D. Hay and F. Snyder (Oxford, 1989), pp. 113–207.
96. See n. 38 above and HMC Dropmore, II, 339.
97. Grenville to the Attorney and Solicitor Generals, 23 Nov. 1792, B.L., Add MSS 59, 364
98. the circular letter was printed in the newspapers in the following week (see the Sun, 26 Nov., p. 2
99. Public Advertiser, 28 Nov., p. 2) and can be read in the Gentleman's Magazine (1792), pt. 2, p. 1146. The government newspaper, the Sun, alerted its readers on 23 Nov. (p. 2) that ‘GOVERNMENT, we are assured, is taking every necessary and effectual measure for the conviction and punishment of those, in every quarter of the Kingdom, who are accessory in disseminating those principles of Sedition and Treason which have been of late so industriously propagated.’ On the same day as the circular to the Custos Rotulorum, the treasury solicitor also circulated all regional government solicitors with instructions to prosecute all libellers, publishers and distributors of seditious libels
100. Black, The Association, p. 239.
101. The Times 26 Nov., p. 1
102. Justice Ashhurst's Charge can be read in Charges to the grand jury 1689–1803, ed. G. Lamoine (Camden Fourth Series, Vol. XLIV, London, 1922), 447–450.
103. It was followed by a similar charge from the chairman of the Middlesex bench, William Mainwaring, on 10 December (Charges to the grand jury 1689–1803. 451–5). The government-subsidized Sun printed Ashhurst's charge on 26 Nov. (p. 4, cols 2–3).
104. Perhaps Pitt was watching how Paris had become ungovernable once the Sections had been granted on 25 July 1792 the right of permanence - to convene frequent meetings by their own authority - and on 13 August were allowed to set up their own volunteer military companies. See M. Slavin, The French revolution in miniature (Princeton, 1984)
105. The making of an insurrection. Parisian Sections and the Gironde (Cambridge, Mass., 1986)
106. and his article on the Sections in Historical dictionary of the French revolution 1789–1799, ed. S. F. Scott and B. Rothaus (London, 1985), II, 885–889.
107. Court and cabinets, II, 229.
108. Court and cabinets, II, 229
109. entry for 25 Nov., The diary of the Rt Hon William Windhum 1784 to 1810, ed. Mrs H. Baring (London, 1866), p. 267
110. Public Advertiser 28 Nov., p. 2. How far did these interviews lead to the meeting of merchants, bankers and traders at the London Tavern on the 28th, which in turn called for a general meeting at the Merchant Taylors' Hall on 5 Dec. where resolutions supportive of the constitution were agreed to and left for others to sign, or to the resolutions of the City common council on the 29th to defend the constitution, suppress unlawful and seditious assemblies, and recommending the city wards to consider the best means of preserving tranquility and securing obedience to the laws
111. Annual register for 1792, Pt. 2, pp. 160–163
112. Public Advertiser 28, 29 Nov., p. 2
113. The Times 29 Nov., p. 2
114. The World 30 Nov., p. 2, which reported that'… the List, which is already in number near 400, will in a few days, amount to as many thousands…’. The Sun carried two supportive paragraphs on the 27th, one on each of the 28th and 29th, and four on the 30th including the announcement that ‘Hundreds of the most respectable Citizens of all descriptions daily enroll their names at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, for the purpose of assisting the patriotic views of the New Association’ (all on p. 2).
115. Dozier, King, constitution and country, pp. 59–67.
116. Public Advertiser 12 Dec. 1792, p. 2.
117. In early 1793 the Gentleman's Magazine (1793, Pt. 1, p. 48) listed 11 corporate bodies, 21 City wards, and 12 livery companies which had associated in London to support ‘the King and Constitution as established at the Revolution of the Year 1688’.
118. Mark Philp's study of the correspondents to the Reeves association points to the number from ‘slightly lower in the social structure’ uncertain whether they were socially qualified for such activity (‘Vulgar conservatism’, pp. 51–2).
119. For examples of membership of associations see Dickinson, ‘Popular conservatism’, pp. 115–116
120. N.E.J. Strange, ‘Manchester loyalism 1792–1798’ (unpublished Manchester University M.Phil, thesis, 1990), pp. 96–102.
121. M. C. Pottle, ‘Loyalty and patriotism in Nottingham 1792–1816’ (unpublished Oxford University D.Phil. thesis, 1988), contrasts the Nottingham Constitutional Association which made no specific reference to the Reeves association with that of Birmingham which adopted the Crown and Anchor resolutions (pp. 21–4). Strange indicates the importance of the second Crown and Anchor declaration to the leading Manchester association, the Bull's Head Association (pp. 79, 131–64). Reeves subsequently claimed that 2,000 associations were formed (Association papers, p. v) and Dozier estimates between 1,000 and 1,500, of which nearly 200 corresponded with Reeves's own association
122. King, constitution and country, pp. 61–62.
123. Reeves to Windham, 1 Aug. 1794, B.L., Add MSS 37, 874, fo. 36V. In 1793 Reeves received the Stewardship of the Manor and Liberty of the Savoy to add to his cache of remunerative posts (Black, The Association, p. 236).