Religion, Loyalty and Sedition: The Hanoverian Succession of 1714

By William Gibson

The Hanoverian Succession of 1714 has not attracted the scholarly attention that it deserves. This is partly because the idea of the ‘long eighteenth century’, stretching from 1688 to 1832, has tended to treat the period as one without breaks. However, 1714 was in some respects as significant a date as 1688. It was the last time in British history that there was a dynastic change and one in which religious issues were at the forefront in people’s minds.

This collection of essays were among the papers delivered at conferences in 2014 to mark the tercentenary of the Hanoverian Succession of 1714, held at Oxford Brookes University and Bath Spa University. They reflect some of the major issues that were evident in the period before, during and after 1714. In particular, they deal with how disloyalty was managed by the government and by individuals. They also demonstrate how central religion was to the process of securing the Hanoverian Succession and to the identity of the new regime established by George I. Disloyalty – real or imagined – was apparent in legal suits, in sermons and preaching, and in the material culture of the period. And once the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 had been overcome, the need to secure the loyalty of the Church and clergy was a key objective of the government.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781786830562

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Religion, Loyalty and Sedition:

The Hanoverian Succession of 1714

Special Issue of

The Journal of Religious History,

Literature and Culture

2016

Edited by

WILLIAM GIBSON

Oxford Brookes University

with

Elaine Chalus, University of Liverpool

Roberta Anderson, Bath Spa University

Volume 2 November 2016 Number 2

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS

https://doi.org/10.16922/jrhlc.2.2

Editors

Professor William Gibson, Oxford Brookes University

Dr John Morgan-Guy, University of Wales: Trinity Saint David

Assistant Editor

Dr Thomas W. Smith, Trinity College, Dublin

Reviews Editor

Dr Nicky Tsougarakis, Edge Hill University

Editorial Advisory Board

Professor David Bebbington, Stirling University

Professor Stewart J. Brown, University of Edinburgh

Dr James J. Caudle, Yale University

Dr Robert G. Ingram, Ohio University, USA

Professor Geraint Jenkins, Aberystwyth University

Dr David Ceri Jones, Aberystwyth University

Professor J. Gwynfor Jones, Cardiff University

Dr Frances Knight, University of Nottingham

Professor Kenneth E. Roxburgh, Samford University, USA

Dr Robert Pope, University of Wales: Trinity Saint David

Professor Huw Pryce, Bangor University

Dr Eryn M. White, Aberystwyth University

Rt Revd and Rt Hon. Lord Williams of Oystermouth,

Magdalene College, Cambridge

Professor Jonathan Wooding, University of Sydney, Australia

Editorial Contacts

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

Publishers and book reviewers with enquiries regarding

reviews should contact the journal’s reviews

editor, Dr Nicky Tsougarakis [e-mail].

Cover image: Edward Cooper, ‘To the most Pious, Potent, Prudent, Serene,

August Monarch George the first’, c.1714–15, by permission of the

Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015.

CONTENTS

Illustrations

Contributors

Introduction: The Succession of 1714 in Context

William Gibson

ARTICLES

Politics, Religion and Propaganda: The Prosecution of Seditious Libel in the Last Years of Anne

Ruth Paley

Loyalty and Disloyalty: Sacheverell’s Seals

William Gibson

The Origins of Political Broadcasting: The Sermon in the Hanoverian Revolution, 1714–1716

James J. Caudle

Hanoverian Successions, Whig Schism, and Clerical Patronage: Chaplains of George and Caroline, Prince and Princess of Wales, 1714–1727

J. C. Lees

‘King George’s Religion’: Lutheranism and the religious politics of the Hanoverian succession

Ralph Stevens

Notes

ILLUSTRATIONS

Cover image: Edward Cooper, ‘To the most Pious, Potent, Prudent, Serene, August Monarch George the first’, c.1714–15, by permission of the Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015.

Picture 1: The Disloyal Seal, showing the crystal chain,

Picture 2: The face of the Disloyal Seal showing a cherub holding a crown over an altar,

Picture 3: The armorial bearing on the Disloyal Seal,

Picture 4: The face of Henry Sacheverell on the Disloyal Seal,

Picture 5: Queen’s College, Oxford, frontage of Front Quad: gateway with domed cupola,

CONTRIBUTORS

Editors

William Gibson is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford Brookes University and Director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History.

Roberta Anderson is Senior Lecturer in History and co-director of the Centre for History and Culture at Bath Spa University.

Elaine Chalus is Professor of British History at the University of Liverpool.

Contributors

James J. Caudle is Associate Editor of the James Boswell Editions at Yale University.

William Gibson is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford Brookes University. He has written widely on religious history in the long eighteenth century and has edited most recently

James C. Lees completed his PhD at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, in 2013, and has since held post-doctoral posts in Rome, Weimar and Gotha. He is currently adapting parts of his doctoral thesis on the German Catholic Enlightenment for publication. His article in this collection is a companion piece to a forthcoming article on the chaplains of Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, 1729–51.

Ruth Paley is editor of the Lords 1660–1832 section for the History of Parliament and formerly assistant keeper at the Public Records Office. She is editor of Archives, the journal of the British Records Association.

Ralph Stevens is Tutor and Assistant Examiner, School of History & Archives, University College Dublin and was Jacobite Studies Trust Fellow, Institute of Historical Research, London in 2015.

RELIGION, LOYALTY AND SEDITION:

THE HANOVERIAN SUCCESSION OF 1714

INTRODUCTION: RELIGION AND THE SUCCESSION OF 1714

William Gibson

The three hundredth anniversary of the Hanoverian succession in August 1714 had to compete with the noisy commemorations of the outbreak of the First World War; in addition the anniversary of the Jacobite Rising of 1715, which was a consequence of the succession, has jostled alongside historical commemorations of Agincourt, Magna Carta, Waterloo and First World War battles of Loos, Gallipoli, Suvla Bay and Liege. In this respect, the editor of another collection of essays on the Hanoverian monarchy has rightly concluded that ‘history has not treated the Hanoverians kindly.’¹ In the wider context of the place of the Hanoverian succession in school and university syllabuses, the event is similarly neglected. Certainly in many syllabuses 1714 appears as a place-holder rather than as an intrinsically meaningful date or event. Moreover the growth of the idea of the ‘long eighteenth century’, stretching back to the Restoration and on to 1832, has eroded the significance of 1714 as a turning point. Such constructions of historical periodisation mean that for the Hanoverian succession it seems as if the monarch and the dynasty may have changed but the Revolutionary settlement of 1689 was unaltered. The papers collected here were written and presented at two conferences which commemorated the succession of 1714 at Oxford Brookes University and at Bath Spa University. They demonstrate that the neglect of 1714 is unwarranted and in need of revision.

1714 and the Glorious Revolution

A consequence of the erosion of the significance of 1714 is that it has sometimes appeared that historians have regarded 1714 as an epilogue, or at least an after-shock, of the seismic changes of 1688–9. Some have seen the succession as inextricably linked with 1688–9, as if it was the culmination or completion of the Revolution. This is in some ways natural given that the Act of Succession of 1701 was a corollary of the Revolutionary settlement of 1688–9. Moreover the two events share a good deal in common. On both occasions, the nation (whether by popular or governmental force) chose its Church and religion over the principle of hereditary monarchy. This was the last time that it can be seen that religion was more important than heredity in the settlement of the throne. In this way there was an element of popular support for the succession in principle. In religious terms it was also seen as a Protestant triumph over Catholicism and therefore drew on the deep anti-Catholic phobias of the post-Reformation period.²

In terms of Britain’s relationship with Europe, 1688 has been seen as essentially a European event – William of Orange’s solution to the problem of France.³ The same can point can be made about 1714. The Hanoverian succession may have followed Britain’s disengagement from Europe at the Peace of Utrecht of 1713, but the following half-century was a period in which European entanglements grew and Britain found herself becoming sucked into wars on the continent and further afield.⁴ In that sense, Utrecht was a momentary interlude between Marlborough’s wars in Europe and the later wars to contain France. The consequences for Britain’s economy and trade of long lasting warfare in Europe and further afield were dramatic.

The case that the Revolution of 1688–9 was essentially a ‘palace coup’, or at least a metropolitan one rather than a popular national revolution, can also be made for the events of 1714. The decisions about the succession were largely those which revolved around Queen Anne’s bedchamber as she lay dying and even most of those who opposed the succession were in London for the critical weeks of August and September 1714. Outside London, there was a degree of popular unrest at the succession, and later on the coronation day, in Oxford, Taunton, Tewkesbury, Dorchester, Nuneaton and Bristol.⁵ Indeed the ‘Riot Act’ of 1714 was in part a response to the disturbances in the first weeks of George I’s reign. Nevertheless the Jacobite rising of 1715 did not attract wide popular support and in retrospect, though significantly not for people at the time, it can be concluded that the Hanoverian Succession was not widely opposed.

The ‘Alien’ Succession?

The Hanoverian succession has also had to cope with the vagaries of popular history. In many respects the tendency of media historians has been to emphasise the foreign character of the Hanoverian dynasty. This has led to some extraordinary exaggeration based on flimsy evidence. Kate Williams of Royal Holloway University of London on the Radio 4’s World at One programme on 1 August 2014 suggested that fifty people were more closely related to Queen Anne but were debarred from the throne under the 1701 Act of Succession because they were Catholics. She was not alone, Lucy Worsley on BBC 4’s The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain (May, 2014) made a similar claim. Both these assertions are erroneous. Queen Anne herself was the end of a line of Stuart descent, her sister Mary having died childless in 1694 and her brother-in-law William, also a Stuart through his mother, in 1702.⁶ Anne’s father, James II, had died in 1701 (leaving Francis Edward as his sole Catholic heir) and his brothers, Charles II and Henry Duke of Gloucester, had both died without legitimate issue. James II’s sister, Henrietta, had married Phillip d’Orleans and converted to Catholicism. Henrietta had four children, only one of whom was still alive in 1714, Anne Marie d’Orleans, who had married Victor Amadeus of Savoy. Anne Marie had two children, Charles Emmanuel and Victor Amadeus, both of whom were Catholics living in 1714. So Henrietta’s descendants in 1714 represent three of the cousins who stood between Anne and George of Hanover. And none of them could be described as more British than George of Hanover.

In the generation above James II, Charles II and Henrietta, the Stuart line had also been unlucky: James I and Anne of Denmark had eight children, six of whom died young or without issue. These included Henry Prince of Wales, who died of typhoid in 1612 and is often thought of as a great renaissance prince. This left Charles I’s sister Elizabeth, who married Frederick of the Palatine. Elizabeth and Frederick were, briefly, the elected King and Queen of Bohemia, reigning less than a year before they were ejected from their new kingdom by the Catholic Hapsburgs. Thereafter, Elizabeth, called the ‘Winter Queen’, lived in Holland and for the last two years of her life in London following Charles II’s restoration. Elizabeth had thirteen children; of these only two had legitimate issue. Thus the figure for the numbers of Catholics who really stood between Queen Anne and George I was in fact not fifty but fewer than ten.⁷

Moreover while it is easy to advance the claim that the House of Hanover was remote and foreign, this should not be pressed too far. Sophia of Hanover was keen to promote her identity as English and as a Stuart princess. When, after 1701, some tried to portray her as a foreign princess she indignantly emphasised that she regarded herself as thoroughly English. She read the English newsletters, received visitors from England and had a number of English friends and correspondents.⁸

So it has been easy, but erroneous, to suggest that the Hanoverians were only distantly connected to the throne. Compared with the Norman, Tudor and some Plantagenet dynastic changes, the succession of 1714 was of fairly close cousins.⁹ Nevertheless there was a strong crypto-Jacobite Tory view that the Hanoverian succession would bring aliens to the throne. Those who had gradually got cold feet about the legitimacy of the Glorious Revolution found themselves anxious about its logical consequences, one of which was the Protestant succession. Of course, as the Sacheverell trial showed, such men and women were prepared to suppress their worries while Anne was Queen, she was, after all, a Stuart and a direct heir of James II. But after her death, the succession of the House of Hanover broke the direct Stuart line of descent from James II. These worries showed themselves in a number of ways: some asked whether George of Hanover, while a Protestant who would receive communion in the Church of England, had been baptized by a non-episcopal Lutheran minister. Thus Jacobites and their fellow-travellers invented grounds on which to argue that he was not validly baptized, and therefore his right of succession might be questionable. In fact, George